Transatlantic Steering Group

Chairman

Ambassador Adrian A. Basora is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Director of the Project on Democratic Transitions, an in-depth assessment of the political, economic and social transitions of post-communist Europe/Eurasia twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Bulgaria

Ivan Krastev

Ivan Krastev is a political scientist and Chair of Board of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria. Since 2004 Mr.

Czech Republic

Alexandr Vondra

Alexandr Vondra is the vice-chairmain for European Affairs of the Czech Republic. Between September 2006 and January 2007 he worked as the Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic. Between 2004 and 2006, he worked as the Managing Director in Dutko Worldwide, Professor of Euro-American relations at the New York University in Prague, and the President of the Czech Euro-Atlantic Council.

Jiri Zlatuska

Jiri Zlatuska is a Senator in the Czech Parliament, Dean of the Informatics Faculty at Masaryk University and a member of the Council for Research and Development of the Government of the Czech Republic. Previously he was a Rector at Masaryk University and the Executive Chairman of the Czech Nominating Committee for 1999 Eisenhower Exchange Fellow Multi-Nation Program.

Georgia

Vladimer Papava

Vladimer Papava is a Senior Fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, a Senior Associate Fellow of the Joint Center formed by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (Johns Hopkins University-SAIS) and the Silk Road Studies Program (Uppsala University), a Member of the Georgian Parliament, and a member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. From 1994-2000 he was Minister of Economy of the Republic of Georgia. As a member of the Georgian government, he was one of the leading participants in negotiations with the IMF and World Bank.

Hungary

Béla Greskovits

Béla Greskovits is Professor of Political Science at the Central European University where he teaches courses on the politics of development. He is author of The Political Economy of Protest and Patience: East European and Latin American Transformations Compared (Central European University Press 1998), and numerous articles and book chapters on the politics of economic reforms. His current research focus is the political economy of major industries. In 1998-99 he was holder of the Luigi Einaudi Chair at the Institute for European Studies at Cornell University. In 2003-04 he was Visiting Professor of Social Studies at Harvard University.

Poland

Jan-Krzysztof Bieleck

Jan-Krzysztof Bielecki is President of Pekao Bank and the former Prime Minister of Poland.

Romania

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi

Alina Mungiu-Pippidi is a political scientist and a consultant in the field of state building. She has consulted for the European Commission, the Berteslmann Foundation, Carnegie Endowment, World Bank. Alina is currently consulting for United Nations Development Programme RBEC and country offices of Albania, Serbia and Kosovo and Freedom House.

Gabriel Petrescu

Gabriel Petrescu is Executive Director of the Open Society Foundation Romania, and more recently CEO and President of the Board of Pattern Invest. He also runs his own business training and consulting company, Business Risc Control SRL.

Serbia

Sonja Licht

Sonja Licht is President of the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence, and President of the Board for the Fund for an Open Society in Belgrade. She was a long time member of the Yugoslav democratic opposition, a sociologist by training. From 1991 to 1995 she was one of the two co-chairs of the International Helsinki Citizens' Assembly. She is presently also the Chair of the Task Force on the Future of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Slovakia

Martin Bútora

Martin Bútora is Honorary President of the Institute for Public Affairs and the Program Director of the "European Integration and Transatlantic Relations" program. He was one of the founders of the political movement Public Against Violence, and was a Human Rights Advisor to President Václav Havel. More recently he was the Slovak Ambassador to the United States.

Pavol Demeš

Pavol Demeš is Director of the German Marshall Fund's Bratislava office. Prior to this he served as the Executive Director of the Slovak Academic Information Agency, was Foreign Policy Advisor to the Slovak President, was Foreign Minister from 1991-92, and acted as Director of the Department of Foreign Relations in the Ministry of Education.

United States

Harry G. Barnes, Jr.

Harry G. Barnes, Jr. is currently chairman of the board of the Romanian- American Enterprise Foundation, and is a Senior Advisor to the Asia Society. He serves on the boards of the Project on Ethnic Relations, the Center for International Environmental Law, and the Institute for Sustainable Development. He is also a member of the advisory committee to Human Rights Watch Asia.

Avis T. Bohlen

Avis Bohlen is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and a member of the Board of Directors of the International Research Exchange. She was formerly the Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control , the US Ambassador to Bulgaria, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Paris, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Canadian affairs for European security issues.

Valerie Bunce

Valerie Bunce is the Aaron Binenkorb Professor of International Studies and Professor of Government at Cornell University. Her research and teaching address comparative democratization, the origins and consequences of imperial decline, inter-ethnic cooperation and conflict, peace-making after internal wars, and the diffusion of capitalism from the West to the “rest.”

Trudy Rubin

Trudy Rubin writes the Worldview column on international affairs for The Philadelphia Inquirer and is a member of the paper's editorial board. Her column runs in many US papers and she is a frequent traveler to Iraq and the Middle East. She has served as the Middle East correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, staff writer at the Economist, an exchange journalist at the Moscow News, and a radio correspondent in Prague in 1968. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001.

Sharon Wolchik

Sharon Wolchik is a professor of political science and international relations at George Washington University and an Adjunct Chair of the Advanced Area Studies Program on Eas

Kenneth Yalowitz

Kenneth Yalowitz is currently the Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, Dartmouth College. He founded the Member Georgia Forum, a group of private American citizens formed to support Georgia in moving forward with democratization, economic reforms and development, and the protection of human rights, including minority rights.

Western Europe

Jonathan Brownell

Jonathan Brownell is a retired lawyer and a former environmental studies professor and activist. He has taught at Dartmouth University and at Cambridge University teaching in the CEE Program.

Katarina Mathernova

Katarina Mathernova is a Director in Directorate General for Regional Policy in the European Commission in Brussels. Prior to the EC, she worked as a private sector development specialist at the World Bank in Washington, and previously she served as Chief Institutional and Policy Advisor to the Slovak Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs. In 2000, she was chosen Slovakia Woman of the Year.

Jacques Rupnik

Jacques Rupnik is a Professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris and specializes in post-communist transitions. He was a member of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Executive Director of the International Commission for the Balkans at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and an advisor to Czech President Vaclav Havel.

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