Democracy

Steven Bosacker oversees the GMF Cities program.  He was previously director of public sector innovation and strategic partnerships at Living Cities, a collaborative of philanthropic foundations and financial institutions committed to closing the income and wealth gap among people in US cities.

Bosacker built a career in Minnesota as the city coordinator of Minneapolis, chief of staff to Governor Jesse Ventura, and executive director and corporate secretary to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents. He has held leadership roles on the advisory boards of the Congressional Management Foundation, the National Civic League, and CityHealth, which recommends the best policy solutions to ensure all people can make good health choices.

Bosacker holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Metropolitan State University.

An internationally-recognized nongovernmental organization (NGO) leader, Pavol Demeš served from 2000-10 as director of GMF's Bratislava office, where he oversaw GMF's activities in Central and Eastern Europe. He now works in Bratislava as a transatlantic fellow.

Before joining GMF, Demeš was executive director of the Slovak Academic Information Agency-Service Center for the Third Sector, a Slovak NGO committed to enhancing civil society. Previously, Demeš led a distinguished political and civic reform career serving his country as foreign policy advisor to the president of Slovakia (1993-97), minister of international relations (1991-92), and director of the department of foreign relations in the ministry of education (1990-1991). In 1999 he was awarded a six-month public policy research fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. 

Gordana Delić is the regional director of the GMF Balkans program, the Balkan Trust for Democracy and deputy managing director of the Transatlantic Trusts. She has 25 years of experience in the nonprofit sector in the area of civil society development, with extensive experience in program management and development, grant solicitation, corporate philanthropy, research and planning, election processes, get-out-to vote campaigns, human rights, and reconciliation. Delić has knowledge of both the nongovernmental and governmental sectors in the Balkans, as well as of international donor strategies, programs, procedures, and operations in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe. Prior to joining the Balkan Trust for Democracy, Delić worked at Freedom House Serbia. Her international experience includes five years of work on different democracy development programs in Slovakia. Delić is fluent in Serbian, English, and Slovak. She also communicates in Czech, German, and Spanish.