Center for Global Affairs
FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES
divisional dean and clinical associate professor, Center for Global Affairs at NYU-SCPS
Vera Jelinek's mission to create a community of global citizens has spanned two decades at New York University. After an initial career in international educational exchange, she joined NYU as the director of International Programs, Social and Natural sciences. While overseeing the growth of programs at NYU-SCPS, Jelinek established a new international affairs department. In 1999, the prestige and overall excellence of the International Affairs program allowed Jelinek to found The Lillian Vernon Center for International Affairs at NYU. The Vernon Center provided Jelinek with the opportunity to develop innovative and compelling public programs that attracted world leaders, the UN community, authors, journalists, and scholars.
Under Jelinek's direction, 2004 brought the birth of the Master of Science in Global Affairs program and the emergence of the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS in lower Manhattan's historic Woolworth Building. Currently, the CGA has over 200 graduate students and presents public programs during the academic year that bring together NYU students and the greater New York community for conversations on critical global issues with experts in the field. Jelinek maintains close ties with international and nongovernmental organizations, the UN community, international media, and the U.S. Department of State. She has a Ph.D. in Modern European History from NYU, an M.A. in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a B.A. in History from Queens College. She is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Women, and Who's Who in the East. She is conversant in French, Italian, and Hungarian.
Topsenior fellow in Global Affairs
Alon Ben-Meir is professor of international relations and Middle East studies, as well as a noted journalist and author with over 25 years of direct involvement in foreign affairs. In addition to his essays on global conflict issues, Ben-Meir writes a weekly article about current international policies and events.
Ben-Meir is the author of numerous books, including The Middle East: Imperative and Choices; Israel: The Challenge of the Fourth Decade; In Defiance of Time; Framework for Arab-Israeli Peace; The Last Option; and A War We Must Win. His book Lost Perspectives, which addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was published in 2009. Ben-Meir is fluent in Arabic and Hebrew and holds an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Oxford University.
academic chair and clinical professor
Mark Galeotti is a specialist in transnational organized crime, security affairs, and modern Russia. He started his academic career concentrating on conventional security issues, including the impact of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the implications of the disintegration of the USSR. However, in his fieldwork he encountered the rising new generation of gangsters carving out their portions of the decaying Soviet Union and was one of the first Western academics to recognize this as an emerging security concern. Since then, he has become increasingly interested in the transnationalization of not just Russian, but all forms of organized crime, and their impact on the international order and development as a shadowy opposite to the global citizenship at the heart of the mission of the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS.
Galeotti read history at Cambridge University and received his doctorate in politics from the London School of Economics. He has worked as a researcher in the British Houses of Parliament and in the City of London, and as visiting professor of public security at Rutgers University-Newark. Before joining the faculty of the CGA, he was head of the history department at Keele University in the UK and the founding director of its Organized Russian and Eurasian Crime Research Unit, the only such specialized center in Europe. He has served as an advisor to the British Foreign Office and has worked with a wide range of commercial, law enforcement, and government agencies, from the State Department to Interpol.
Galeotti founded the interdisciplinary journal Global Crime and wrote a monthly column on post-Soviet affairs in Jane's Intelligence Review from 1991 to 2007. He has published widely, with 11 authored and edited books to his name and numerous other pieces, from articles in peer-reviewed academic journals to newspaper op-eds. His present projects include a global history of organized crime and an analysis of the Russian "mafiya."
clinical assisant professor
Thomas Hill is a peacebuilding practitioner and researcher with a decade of experience focusing on Iraq. In partnership with the University of Duhok, he is directing a two-year project at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS, entitled "Building Capacity of Iraqi Academics in Peacebuilding Instruction and Practice." Since 2003, he has made more than 20 visits to Iraq and has overseen the design, development, and implementation of a series of interrelated research and educational projects focused on the development of sustainable peace in Iraq. He leads the CGA's new peacebuilding concentration, which he helped establish after being awarded an NYU Curricular Development Challenge Fund grant.
Hill also is an associate research scholar at Columbia University's Center for International Conflict Resolution, where he has led the center's work on Iraq, as well as a Ph.D. candidate in the Education, Culture, and Society program at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. He has worked in partnership with the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani to help introduce peace and conflict studies to undergraduate students and has co-taught courses at the University of Duhok's new M.A. program in Peace and Conflict Studies.
Hill regularly works with the Iraqi Peace Foundation, a countrywide organization composed of university instructors, civil society activists, and other community leaders committed to strengthening a culture of peaceful conflict resolution throughout Iraq. A former journalist, his research interests include the role of universities as actors and sites for peacebuilding, the importance of community-centered approaches to civil-society-led peacebuilding, and the use of conflict analysis and assessment as tools for integrating development and peacebuilding.
clinical associate professor
Carolyn Kissane serves as clinical associate professor at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS, where she teaches graduate courses examining the Central Asian region, transformations in China, the geopolitics of oil, comparative energy politics, resource security, civil society organizations, and women's movements. She serves as the coordinator of the energy and environment concentration at the center and is faculty advisor to the Energy Policy International Club.
Kissane held a two-year fellowship from the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs and received a Fulbright Hayes Doctoral Dissertation Research Award; Teachers College, Columbia University dean's grant; National Security Graduate Enhancement Fellowship; IREX Caspian Sea Fellowship; IREX travel grant for study in Kazakhstan; and an IREX Individual Advanced Research Opportunities Grant to examine the impact of natural resources on civil society development. In recognition of her unwavering commitment to education, she was awarded the esteemed NYU Excellence in Teaching Award in 2007 and nominated for the NYU Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008 and 2009. She received the NYU-SCPS Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009.
In 2009 Dr. Kissane received a grant from the Canadian government to lead a group of students to visit the Canadian Oil Sands in Fort McMurray and to visit with oil sands leaders in Calgary. Her work in Canada continues in the form of event partnerships and a special series on the Arctic, which she is organizing with the Government of Quebec.
Complementing her academic, public service, and consultant experience, Kissane is the author of numerous publications, including an article on history education in Comparative Education; "Freedom House: Countries at the Crossroads," a report on Kazakhstan, Central Asia; "Great Decisions Series;" and "Evaluating Human Rights Education." She also has chapters on transitional challenges in education in Central Asia and human rights education in Europe, an article on women's education and democratization in the post-Taliban era, and another focusing on the oil extractive industry published in Globalization, Societies, and Education. She is currently writing a book on oil.
Kissane received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.
EVERETT MYERS, Ph.D., M.B.A.
clinical assistant professor
Everett Myers has devoted most of his professional life to being an international banker/investment banker. For many years he worked for Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., in their corporate and investment banking divisions and also served as country manager in Japan for PaineWebber (Tokyo), Inc. Myers has been an active entrepreneur throughout his business career, having been one of the founding partners in a boutique investment bank, developing and executing esoteric cross-border tax arbitrage financings, as well as managing a number of smaller business endeavors. He is a member of Delta Pi Epsilon, the Association for Institutional Research, and is an evaluator for The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) in Business, Network Management Programs, and is also a specialized evaluator for Distance Education Programs.
Myers received his Ph.D. from New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. He also holds an M.B.A. in Finance from St. John's University. His research interests lie at the crossroads of education and economics with an emphasis on human capital and its implication for sustainable economic development.
clinical associate professor
Michael F. Oppenheimer is a professor of international relations and political economy. He also does extensive consulting, specializing in futures-oriented policy analysis for the U.S. foreign policy and intelligence communities, think tanks, and NGOs. He is an expert on the global economy, U.S. foreign policy, and national security strategy. He has published on a wide range of topics, including Europe's future, international trade distortions, and U.S. trade policy. For the past decade, Oppenheimer has worked for Washington foreign policymakers and intelligence officials on a range of strategic projects.
Oppenheimer is credited with expanding the use of scenarios and alternative analyses for the U.S. intelligence community. He worked directly for the chairman of the National Intelligence Council in establishing the method and process and in creating the scenarios for Mapping the Global Future. He has conducted workshops for The Brookings Institute on legitimacy and the potential use of force against Iran and for the Council on Foreign Relations on early warning and conflict prevention. He was a U.S. delegate for a track-two dialogue with Iranian experts, sponsored by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
In April 2007, Oppenheimer conducted a scenario workshop at NYU on the future of Iraq, published by the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS as Iraq 2010. He also conducted similar workshops on Iran in June 2008, and Russia 2020 and China 2020 in 2010. He chairs the Policy Impacts group of a new U.S. government-sponsored expert network on the national security impacts of global climate change. He is currently a fellow at the Institute for Homeland Security and a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security on future threats.
Oppenheimer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Roundtable at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, and the American Council on Germany. He is a frequent speaker on the origins and leading indicators of conflict, domestic sources of foreign policy, and new approaches to thinking about the global system. Before joining the CGA, he was president of Global Scenarios, a New York-based consulting company, and executive vice president of The Futures Group, a Connecticut-based international research and consulting company with government and corporate clients.
clinical assistant professor
Before moving to New York in 2008 to join the Department of Sociology at Columbia University as a visiting scholar, Jens Rudbeck was a lecturer at the International Development Program at Roskilde University and at the Department of Political Science, Copenhagen University, Denmark. His primary areas of expertise are international development aid, political conflicts and political reforms in Africa, and social movements in developing countries. In addition to teaching various issues of development studies, he has been a researcher at the Intra-State Conflict Program at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. His research has mainly focused on political struggle and regime change in sub-Saharan Africa. He has also served as a member of the Danish Military Intelligence Service academic network on conflicts in Africa. He holds an M.A. in International Development and a Ph.D. in Political Science.
clinical assistant professor
Jennifer Trahan is a clinical assistant professor at the Center of Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS. She teaches International Law; Human Rights; International Criminal Tribunals and Their Law; Transitional Justice; and U.S. Use of Force and the “Global War on Terror.” She has served as counsel to the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch; Iraq Prosecutions Consultant to the International Center of Transitional Justice; and worked on cases before the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. She is the author of Genocide, War Crimes, and Crimes Against Humanity: A Digest of the Case Law of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Human Rights Watch, 2010), and Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: A Topical Digest of the Case Law of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (Human Rights Watch, 2006).
The latter book was recently released by Universidad Iberoamericana in Spanish, and Trahan's earlier books have been translated by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) into Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, and by Human Rights Watch into French. She is also the author of numerous law reviews, including “Why the Killing in Darfur is Genocide” and “The Rome Statute’s Amendment on the Crime of Aggression: Negotiations at the Kampala Review Conference,” as well as several articles about the work of the Iraqi High Tribunal. Trahan has also served as an observer for the Association of the Bar of the City of New York to Meetings of the International Criminal Court’s Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression, as chairperson of the American Branch of the International Law Association’s International Criminal Court Committee, and as a member of the American Bar Association 2010 ICC Task Force.
Trahan was an NGO observer at the recent ICC Review Conference in Kampala, Uganda. She has also taught as an adjunct at Columbia University, Fordham Law School, Brooklyn Law School, The New School, and lectured at Salzburg Law School’s Institute on International Criminal Law. She spent 10 years in private practice as a litigator at the New York City law firm Schulte, Roth & Zabel, LLP. She holds a J.D. from New York University School of Law and an LL.M from Columbia Law School, specializing in international law.
ADJUNCT FACULTY
GIUSEPPE AMMENDOLA, Ph.D., M.A., DOTT.
For over twenty-five years, Giuseppe Ammendola has been teaching courses in international trade and investment, international management, international marketing, international finance, international political economy, international relations, American government, U.S. foreign policy, and the European Union. In addition to teaching at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS, he has taught at the City University of New York. He has also taught and lectured at various Italian graduate business schools and postdoctoral institutions.
Ammendola consults for mid- and small-sized companies on strategic management, marketing, and business plan evaluation and writing. His writings include the book From Creditor to Debtor: The U.S. Pursuit of Foreign Capital--The Case of the Repeal of the Withholding Tax, published as part of the Foreign Economic Policy of the United States - Outstanding Studies series, as well as the internationally recognized country study "The Government of Italy" in Michael Curtis, ed., Western European Government and Politics. He is also the editor and main author of The European Union: Multidisciplinary Views. As a guest commentator on Bloomberg TV, Ammendola's analyses in several languages on the U.S. economy and capital markets have reached millions worldwide. He has given hundreds of presentations (including many in Spanish, French, and Portuguese) to corporate and nonprofit international managers as well as general audiences on many aspects of the global economy.
Ammendola earned a Doctorate in Economics and Business summa cum laude from the University of Naples and a Ph.D. in Political Science with a specialization in International Political Economy from the Graduate School of the City University of New York, where he also worked at several research institutes. He came to the United States as a Fulbright scholar. Ammendola has received the NYU-SCPS Excellence in Teaching Award.
Barbara Borst has taught at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS since 2000 and has led the CGA's field intensive courses to Ghana in May 2008 and June 2009. She teaches courses on democratic transitions, the news media and global affairs, global civil society, African affairs, and humanitarian aid and intervention.
In addition, Borst teaches international reporting at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She received an NYU Award for Teaching Excellence in February 2007. She earned a B.A. in English Literature from Yale University and an M.A. in International Relations from Boston University's overseas program in Paris. A journalist specializing in international affairs, she worked for the Associated Press as an editor on the international desk and frequently reported from the United Nations. The AP recently published her article and photos on the efforts of two Kenyan women to rescue their community from the AIDS epidemic. While based abroad for a dozen years in Nairobi, Johannesburg, Paris, and Toronto, she reported frequently for Newsday, the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, the Los Angeles Times, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, and others.
PETER BRORSEN, M.A., Ph.D.
Peter W. Brorsen is the founder of Social Capital Bank, a social enterprise fostering change in fragile states. He is a Fellow at the Weatherhead Institute for International Affairs at Harvard University where he researches ways to strengthen peace agreements following civil war. He concurrently serves as governance advisor with United Kingdom’s stabilization missions and as conflict advisor with Australia’s development agency, AusAID.
Peter has been stationed in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and USA for public, private and academic institutions, including United Nations, the BBC and OECD. He has studied psychology, journalism, and political science at Aarhus University (Denmark), American University (Washington, DC), the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and at Yale University. He holds two MAs and is completing his PhD (international relations) in 2012.
Patty Chang holds a D. Phil. in International Relations from the University of Oxford, an M.I.A. in International Security Policy from Columbia University, and a B.A. in European Studies from Barnard College. She has taught courses on International Relations and Civil Wars in Africa at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS since 2009. Currently, she is a consultant and researcher in international security. Her work focuses on conflict management and post-conflict peacebuilding, especially small arms and light weapons control, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants, and security sector reform. Her regional expertise is in the sub-region of West Africa, and she has conducted extensive field work in Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. Her recent research has focused on the microfoundations of violence and small arms diffusion in civil wars. She has worked with a number of different organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), EuropeAid, the Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, and the United Nations Department of Political Affairs.
Belinda Cooper is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York and a co-founder of its program on Citizenship and Security. She writes and lectures on human rights and international law and is the editor of War Crimes: The Legacy of Nuremberg, which explores the interconnections between the Nuremberg tribunal and today's international criminal tribunals. She has taught human rights, international law, transitional justice, and gender and law at Humboldt University in Berlin, the New School, Seton Hall Law School, and Ohio Northern University Law School.
Cooper lived in Berlin, Germany from 1987-1994, working closely with members of the East German opposition in 1988-89 and following developments in the region after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She returned to Berlin in 2002 as a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. She has written for a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, Newsweek, World Policy Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor. A fluent German speaker, Cooper has also contributed to German-language print media, radio and TV, appeared as a guest on German radio, and taken part in numerous panel discussions in Germany. She is also a translator of German scholarly books and articles, including many texts on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany and, most recently, a textbook on international criminal law, and has worked as a translator on the case of Turkish-German Guantanamo detainee Murat Kurnaz. Cooper has also taken part in human rights fact-finding missions and has coauthored reports on domestic violence in Armenia, Uzbekistan, and Tanzania. Cooper graduated summa cum laude with her B.A. in History from Yale College and received her J.D. from Yale Law School.
Dong Dong is currently a visiting scholar at the Columbia University Institute for the Study of Human Rights and is working on several projects related to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in China. Her research interests include media sociology, the geopolitics of disease, global civil society, contemporary East Asian politics, and societal transitions in developing countries. Her previous work as a broadcast journalist in China led her to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She is completing her doctoral dissertation on journalistic practices and the public health crisis in contemporary China. Dong received her B.A. in Journalism from Fudan University in Shanghai and her M.Phil. in Mass Communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Chris Gadomski joined the adjunct faculty at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS in September 2005 where he teaches graduate courses on Energy and the Environment and the Economics and Financing of Energy. His current research interests include financial, social, technological, and institutional obstacles to renewable and nuclear energy technology development.
As a business development consultant in the energy sector, Gadomski has advised leading multinational firms and institutions, including the United Nations Development Program, World Bank, U.S. Department of Energy, and UNDP/Global Environment Facility. Current assignments include solar thermal power project development, and energy efficiency and conservation consulting in California. Gadomski also directs the nuclear energy research team at New Energy Finance, a leading provider of financial information, analysis, and services to investors in renewable energy and low carbon technologies. There he is developing a robust methodology for forecasting global nuclear investment in new build and innovative technologies and tracking expenditures in operations and maintenence, fuel cycle, and decommissioning activities. Gadomski has published on energy and power generation topics in Modern Power Systems, EuroMoney, Nuclear Engineering International, World-Generation, the China Business Review, and Independent Energy Magazine. Gadomski is a member of the United States Energy Association and the American Nuclear Society.
A PMP-certified project manager, Asif Gangat has professional experience across different spheres, including upstream crude market analysis, performance improvement, process management, and quality assurance--in both the public and the private sectors.
At present, Gangat works with the Global Oil Group at PIRA Energy. While his work focuses on short- and long-term global crude supply forecasts, his regional expertise is in the Middle East, a region that he has studied extensively and in which he was born and raised. More recently, at PIRA’s annual client retainer conference, he spoke on Iraq’s near- and long-term crude output potential and its implications for global crude supply.
Prior to PIRA, he worked with Antoine Halff on U.S. oil market fundamentals. Gangat also consulted for a U.S.-based desalination energy recovery device manufacturer on how the company can position itself in the emerging “osmotic power” market by leveraging its current platform as a leading producer of energy recovery devices. In the field of performance improvement, he worked with the New York City Housing Authority and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation Development (HPD).
Gangat studied at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he attained his master's degree, specializing in international energy and management. His undergraduate degree is from Pace University. Gangat is proficient in English, Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu.
Robert Lane Greene writes for the Economist. He has covered American politics, international affairs (including the United Nations and the European Union), and energy. He also has written a regular foreign-affairs column for the website of the New Republic magazine, and his work has appeared on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune. Greene is currently writing a book on the politics of language. He is a consultant for Freedom House, an NGO that monitors political and civil rights around the world, and an adjunct lecturer in global affairs at NYU-SCPS. He is also a frequent television and radio guest commentator. Greene holds an M.Phil. in European Politics and Society from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He received his B.A. in International Relations and History at Tulane University, and in 1996 was a State Department intern at the U.S. embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Alan Gross has mediated and trained for 20 years at many venues in the northeastern United States and New York City, where he is currently serving as the special projects coordinator for the Safe Horizon Mediation Program. He has previously acted as senior director, training coordinator, and 9/11 family mediation coordinator for Safe Horizon. His work with 9/11 victims was recognized with a U.S. Department of Justice Volunteer for Victims award. He has also acted as ombudsman for the American Psychological Association and the New York Mayor’s Action Center; as an arbitrator for AAA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA), and attorney-client fee disputes; and as mediator for the Post Office and the United States Army.
Gross holds M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University and was formerly psychology professor and department chair at the University of Maryland and a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. He is the author of a textbook and more than 50 chapters, articles, and papers related to conflict resolution and social psychology. He has served as a business consultant, radio talk show host, and as founder of an innovative company trading in benefits from class action settlements. As a founding member and board member of Mediators Beyond Borders, he has, with other ADR professionals, developed and delivered training and other means of assisting refugees and former child soldiers in West Africa. During the past two years he has trained Liberian refugees, Ghanaian attorneys and land settlement officers, UN Special Court staff in Sierra Leone, and a diverse countrywide peace network in Iraq. He is currently involved in peacebuilding projects in Colombia, Sierra Leone, and the United States Gulf Coast.
Lukas Haynes is vice president of the Mertz Gilmore Foundation in New York, where he manages grantmaking programs to promote solutions to climate change, defend human rights, and invest in underserved New York City communities. From 2002-2006, Haynes was program officer for international peace and security at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where he made grants to support U.S. foreign policy institutes and a major initiative to strengthen university research at the intersection of science, technology, and security studies. From 2000-2001, he served on the U.S. Department of State's policy planning staff and as a speechwriter for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. After leaving government, Haynes was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Haynes has taught courses in international relations at Occidental College and the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He has also given lectures on military intervention, nuclear nonproliferation, and international grantmaking at Harvard, West Point, and Princeton. From 1996-1997, Haynes served as regional representative for OXFAM in the former Yugoslavia and as OXFAM's regional strategy adviser in Sierra Leone and Liberia. In both capacities, he helped humanitarian relief operations transition to post-conflict rehabilitation programs. Prior to that, he conducted policy research at the Salzburg Global Seminar, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the International Crisis Group. Haynes is a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He earned an M.A. in International Relations from Oxford University. He is also a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of Independent Diplomat, a diplomatic advisory group.
Brad Heckman is a vice president of Safe Horizon, the nation’s leading victims services and violence prevention agency. In that capacity, he has overseen the agency’s mediation, families of homicide victims, legal services, anti-trafficking, batterers' intervention, and anti-stalking programs. He is currently launching--and will serve as CEO of--the New York Peace Institute, an independent spin-off of Safe Horizon that will provide dispute resolution services to communities, courts, schools, and individuals in New York City and beyond. Mr. Heckman served as international director of Partners for Democratic Change, for which he developed community peacebuilding centers throughout Eastern Europe, the Balkans, South Caucasus, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a B.A. in Political Science from Dickinson College.
William Hewitt has been an environmental professional and activist for nearly 25 years. He is a writer and editor, as well as the principal of Hewitt Communications. He was the director of public affairs for the New York City regional office of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for 11 years. He is the blogger on climate change for the Foreign Policy Association. Hewitt has been involved with two presidential campaigns (Bruce Babbitt and Bill Bradley) and two New York City mayoral races (David Dinkins and Mark Green), working primarily on environmental issues. He was an activist leader with the Sierra Club in New York, working on urban issues and acid rain.
Hewitt has taught on international relations, U.S. environmental politics and policy, and climate change at Pace University. He has written articles and book reviews, as well as op-ed pieces and letters on sustainability, energy, and environmental issues for the American Planning Association; the Foreign Policy Association; Nature Reports Climate Change; Grist; Crain's NY Business; the Sierra Club; Greenpeace; and Newsday. He has had opinion pieces and letters on international affairs published by the Financial Times, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Snow Lion, and has published three papers in the Journal of Psychohistory. He has also written on health, nutrition, and sports for a number of publications and has published short fiction, poetry, and essays in several literary magazines. Hewitt has an M.S. in International Affairs from the New School where he concentrated on conflict and security issues, with particular attention to the psychology of conflict.
Todd Johnson is currently the senior research manager for Ferrari Consultancy, a New York City-based firm that provides strategy consulting services exclusively to chief executive officers of multinational corporations. Prior to joining Ferrari Consultancy, Johnson was Africa group director for Diligence, LLC, a risk management firm that specializes in pre-investment due diligence, competitive intelligence, and political risk consulting in emerging and frontier markets. He began his career and served for eight years as a political-military analyst with the United States government, where he focused on southern Africa. Johnson has lived and worked in South Africa and the United Kingdom. He has a B.A. in Political Science with distinction from the University of Kansas and a Master of International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where he jointly focused on African politics and energy policy. He has been a contributing writer for the Jane's Information Group and appeared as a commentator for the BBC and the South African Broadcasting Corporation.
SOPHIA N. JOHNSON, Ph.D., M.A.
Sophia N. Johnson is a political economist. Johnson holds a concurrent appointment as adjunct professor in the Department of Politics at New York University and serves as adjunct associate professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
Her research focuses on the relationship between nonstate actors in newly liberalized state environments and the effectiveness of state economic reform policy on political governance. She is particularly interested in the effects of decentralized planning on political authority, and how different economic policies affect collective action, political institutions, and public policy in South Asia and South America. Her courses include Sustainable Economic Development; Developing Countries in the Global Economy; International Relations Theory and Diplomacy; Ethnopolitical Landscape; and, The Politics of Cultural and Ethnic Pluralism. She is currently working on a book, Emerging Norms in Economic Governance: An Examination of Authority Structures and the Growing Importance of New Forms of Governance in Liberalized India.
Johnson received a B.A. in Political Science and History in 1995 from the University of Toronto. She earned an M.A. in Political Science in 2005 and a Ph.D. in Global Affairs in 2009. both from Rutgers University.
MARK LITTLE, M.PHIL
As Director at Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Mark works closely with companies to implement robust sustainability practices. His focus areas include strategy and integration, corporate transparency, ethics, human rights, stakeholder engagement, and supply chain sustainability. Mark has advised companies on both global and country-level sustainability initiatives, and has worked extensively in China, Japan, Europe and the United States.
Mark's primary focus is in the healthcare industry, and he leads BSR's Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology practice worldwide. He is an expert on international public health, and has published several articles on his work with India's National AIDS Control Organization. Mark holds a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.Phil in International Development from the University of Oxford, St. Antony’s College.
Robin Ludwig is a specialist in elections and democratization, with over 30 years of experience at the United Nations. She has provided assessments, advice, and assistance for elections in East Timor, The Gambia, Indonesia, Kenya, Kosovo, Malawi, Moldova, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, and South Africa. While in Malawi, she advised the government on preparations for, and the conduct of, a national referendum that led to Malawi’s first multiparty elections the following year. Ludwig managed the long-term United Nations observation mission for both electoral events. In 2001, she spent a sabbatical semester at Yale University, studying voter expectations, hopes, and fears in the aftermath of first-time elections. She has published a variety of articles and monographs on the subject of UN electoral assistance. In addition to her elections work, she helped to establish the annual observance of the International Day of Peace, working with a network of over 400 civil society organizations worldwide, and served as special assistant to the first United Nations deputy secretary-general.
Beginning in 2003, Ludwig became project manager of an innovative university program funded from a 1997 $1 billion contribution to the United Nations by Ted Turner. As part of the program, she engaged the participating universities in a global project on human security. She has lectured widely at universities in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. and given talks and provided training to a variety of regional and civil society organizations. Ludwig has a B.A. from Albion College, an M.I.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in World Politics from the University of Michigan.
Sylvia Maier joined the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS and the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU as an assistant professor/faculty fellow in September 2007. Previously, she was an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Maier's research focuses on gender and multiculturalism, honor-based violence against women, the legal accommodation of Muslim minority rights in Western Europe, and the role of ICTs in women's empowerment in the global south. She has authored and co-authored numerous articles and book chapters, including "Honor Killings and the Cultural Defense in Germany," "Shared Values: Democracy and Human Rights in the European Neighborhood Policy" (with Frank Schimmelfennig), "Women and Internet Use in Five South Indian Villages: Obstacles and Opportunities" (with Michael Best), and "Empowering Women Through ICT-Based Business Initiatives: An Overview of Best Practices in E-Commerce/E-Retail Projects" (with Usha Nair). She has also authored several shorter pieces and reviews. Maier is currently completing a book tentatively titled, Mainstreaming Muslims: Islam, Culture, and the Law in France and Germany. She earned her B.A. in Political Science at the University of Vienna, Austria, and her M.A. (1999) and Ph.D. (2001) in Political Science from the University of Southern California.
Francesco Mancini is currently deputy director of studies at the International Peace Institute (IPI), where he serves as principal liaison between the program staff and the office of the senior vice president, Edward C. Luck, and the president, Terje Rod-Larsen. He also heads the larger IPI program, “Coping with Crisis, Conflict, and Change” and directs IPI work on peace operations. When he joined IPI in 2004, he served in the Security-Development Nexus program, covering security sector reform. Mancini is also an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and held the same position at New York University. Since 2004, he has been teaching a graduate seminar on conflict assessment. Prior to joining IPI, he served as an associate at the EastWest Institute in New York. From 1996 to 2001, Mancini was a senior management consultant at Charles Riley Consultants International in Paris, where he focused on business strategy and change management, managing multimillion dollar reforms in major public sector companies in France, Italy, and Morocco. He earned his B.S. in Business Administration from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.
Mancini received an M.I.A. from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he studied International Security Policy and Conflict Resolution. While at Columbia, he was awarded a fellowship within the Satzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. In 2002, he researched the peace negotiations in Cyprus at the University of Cyprus in Nicosia. Recent publications include “Security & Development: Searching for Critical Connections” (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009; “The Company We Keep: Private Contractors in Jamaica,” in Gordon Peake, Eric Scheye, and Alice Hills (eds.), Managing Insecurity: Field Experiences of Security Sector Reform (London: Taylor & Francis, 2008); and "In Good Company?: The Role of Business in Security Sector Reform," Policy Paper (London and New York: Demos and International Peace Academy, 2005). He also contributed to Richard Samuels (ed.), Encyclopedia of United States National Security (London: SAGE Publications, 2006).
FRANCESCO MANCINI, M.I.A.
Francesco Mancini is currently deputy director of studies at the International Peace Institute (IPI), where he serves as principal liaison between the program staff and the office of the senior vice president, Edward C. Luck, and the president, Terje Rod-Larsen. He also heads the larger IPI program, “Coping with Crisis, Conflict, and Change” and directs IPI work on peace operations. When he joined IPI in 2004, he served in the Security-Development Nexus program, covering security sector reform. Mancini is also an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and held the same position at New York University. Since 2004, he has been teaching a graduate seminar on conflict assessment. Prior to joining IPI, he served as an associate at the EastWest Institute in New York. From 1996 to 2001, Mancini was a senior management consultant at Charles Riley Consultants International in Paris, where he focused on business strategy and change management, managing multimillion dollar reforms in major public sector companies in France, Italy, and Morocco. He earned his B.S. in Business Administration from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.
Mancini received an M.I.A. from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, where he studied International Security Policy and Conflict Resolution. While at Columbia, he was awarded a fellowship within the Satzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. In 2002, he researched the peace negotiations in Cyprus at the University of Cyprus in Nicosia. Recent publications include “Security & Development: Searching for Critical Connections” (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009; “The Company We Keep: Private Contractors in Jamaica,” in Gordon Peake, Eric Scheye, and Alice Hills (eds.), Managing Insecurity: Field Experiences of Security Sector Reform (London: Taylor & Francis, 2008); and "In Good Company?: The Role of Business in Security Sector Reform," Policy Paper (London and New York: Demos and International Peace Academy, 2005). He also contributed to Richard Samuels (ed.), Encyclopedia of United States National Security (London: SAGE Publications, 2006).
MARIE-HELEN MARAS, Ph.D., M.Phil, M.A.
Marie-Helen Maras is an adjunct assistant professor of the Center for Global Affairs. Her background includes approximately seven years of service in the US Navy with significant experience in security and law enforcement from her posts as a Navy Law Enforcement Specialist and Command Investigator. While in the Navy, she supervised her personnel in conducting over 130 counter-surveillance operations throughout Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
Maras holds several graduate and undergraduate degrees: a DPhil in Law and an MPhil in Criminology and Criminal Justice (University of Oxford); an MA in Industrial and Organizational Psychology (University of New Haven); a BS in Psychology and a BS in Computer and Information Science (University of Maryland University College). The majority of her research and publications have focused on the legal, economic, social, and political implications of security measures in the United States and the European Union. She has several publications; including articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, a chapter in an edited volume, and books. She recently published a major work at Jones and Bartlett (February 2011), a book titled, Computer Forensics: Cybercriminals, Laws and Evidence, and is presently working on another book on terrorism and counterterrorism.
Maras is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York. She has also taught several graduate courses on terrorism and counterterrorism, crisis management and disaster preparedness, transnational organized crime, and crime scene investigation at the King Graduate School, Monroe College. Moreover, Maras has taught graduate seminars in Security and the War on Terror and the Burdens of Seeking Security at the Center for Criminology, University of Oxford. Furthermore, she is an International Editor for the Journal of Applied Security Research and the President-Elect of Protect New York, a professional organization that brings together academics and professionals concerned with responding to the threat of terrorism, as well as the creator and co-editor of the Protect New York Newsletter.
Her research interests include security, terrorism, organized crime, human rights, criminal profiling, and cybercrime.
COLETTE MAZZUCELLI, Ph.D., M.A.L.D.
Colette Mazzucelli has taught a variety of courses at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS since 2005, including peacemaking and conflict resolution, international relations in the post-Cold War era, ethnic conflicts, and Europe in the 21st century. In addition, she is introducing an India regional course in the M.S. in Global Affairs program. Her passion for global affairs was nurtured as an undergraduate in history, philosophy, and modern languages at the University of Scranton (B.A., magna cum laude, 1983). Her graduate studies at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (M.A.L.D., 1987), the Center for European Studies, Harvard University, and the Department of Government, Georgetown University (Ph.D., 1996), also reflect her engagement in the transatlantic community.
Mazzucelli's doctoral research, conducted as a Fulbright Scholar at the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) Paris in 1991, contributed to the volume France and Germany at Maastricht: Politics and Negotiations to Create the European Union (Routledge, 1999; Kindle Edition, 2007). In 1992-93, she assisted with the ratification of the Treaty on European Union in the Federal Republic of Germany as a Bosch Foundation Fellow. She is the author of numerous chapters in edited volumes as well as diverse commentaries for the AICGS Advisor (Johns Hopkins University), Atlantic-Community.org, Enduring America (University of Birmingham), LIBERTAS, as well as Conversations on Diplomacy and Power Politics. In 2007 she was a Fulbright Scholar in Belgium and Germany. As an educator, Mazzucelli is a member of the UN Chronicle Advisory Group at the United Nations and the board of directors at the Center for War/Peace Studies. She has an extensive background in technology-mediated learning and is increasingly focused on the uses of mobile phone technology in global affairs education as part of her research at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the recipient of 11 national and international fellowships in seven countries, including Bosch, Fulbright, and Rotary. Her biography appears in Marquis Who's Who in the World 2011 and Marquis Who's Who in America 2011.
Erin McCandless is a peacebuilding and development specialist, consultant, and founder and executive editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. She has over 15 years experience working in areas of integrated program design and management, policy development and advising, research, writing and publishing, and teaching and training. She has 10 years of experience working in conflict and post-conflict recovery contexts globally, including three years with United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) from 2004 to 2007, lastly as a peacebuilding and recovery policy advisor in the Office of the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General. She consults with the United Nations and other international organizations on a range of peace, security, and development issues.
McCandless is author of more than 50 publications. Her areas of specialization include peacebuilding, conflict analysis and prevention, and links with development; economic and early recovery; UN peace operations, integrated missions, strategic frameworks, benchmarking, exit and transition strategies; disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration; poverty reduction strategies and conflict sensitive policymaking; natural resources and conflict/peacebuilding; civil-society, government and donor relations; social movements and social change; capacity-building; peace and conflict evaluation and impact assessment; and peace research methodologies.
MARIANNE MøLLMAN, MSc, LL.M.
Marianne Møllmann is senior policy advisor at Amnesty International's headquarters. She joined Amnesty International after 8 years with Human Rights Watch, working first as researcher on women's rights in Latin America, then focusing on women's rights more globally as advocacy director. She has a background in strategic brand planning with Young & Rubicam Europe and Leagas Delaney in London, as well as more than a decade of experience in the not-for-profit world, in communication, advocacy, research, management, and fundraising.
Marianne’s opinion pieces on women’s issues have appeared, among other places, in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, and she is frequently cited on issues related to human rights and social change in the US and international media. She regularly blogs on RHRealityCheck.org and the Huffington Post.
Marianne constantly grapples with the tension between policy effectiveness, political realities, and how to actually generate change. She has an impressive track record of bridging seemingly insurmountable differences on issues ranging from abortion and rape in war, to luxury car purchases and making apples look “bad” (in a good way).
Marianne holds a MSc from Ecole des Affaires de Paris in France and an LL.M. in international human rights law from Essex University in the United Kingdom. She grew up in Copenhagen, Denmark, and is now settled in Brooklyn, NY, though she spends a lot of her time in London. Marianne speaks fluent English, Spanish, and Danish, and can hold her own in French.
NAIRA MUSALLAM, M.A, A.B.D.
Naira Musallam is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia University and a doctoral candidate in the Social-Organizational Psychology program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her doctoral work examines key factors related to the effectiveness of NGOs working in conflict zones, and more specifically, NGOs operating in the Palestinian Territories. For the last seven years she has been working at the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she conducted research related to dynamical systems theory, intractable conflicts, power, identity, and peace processes. She is currently editing the Arabic version of the Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice.
She has over 10 years of experience in the Middle East working with governmental agencies, educational institutions, and the nonprofit sector. She has worked with a variety of organizations that address political, educational, humanitarian, and development issues related to the Middle East, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Amideast, International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Adler Research Center, Mar Elias Institutions, Amnesty International, and local NGOs. She is the recipient of several fellowships and awards granted by the U.S. Department of State, the Earth Institute, and Columbia University.
Patricio Navia is a master teacher in the liberal studies program and an adjunct assistant professor at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. He is also a professor of political science at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales of the Universidad Diego Portales and the director of the Observatorio Electoral at the same school. Before obtaining his Ph.D. in May 2003, he was a graduate student in the Department of Politics at New York University. Previously (April 1995-August 1997), he served as assistant director of Student Development Services at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1992, he graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a B.A. in Political Science and Sociology and obtained an M.A. in Political Science at the University of Chicago in 1994.
Michelle Patron is a senior director at PIRA Energy Group where she oversees PIRA's political risk coverage. She has over a decade of experience analyzing international energy issues. Prior to joining PIRA in 2004, Patron was an International Affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and conducted energy research at Deutsche Bank. She spent five years as an international policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) under the Clinton and Bush administrations. During that time, she advised the U.S. energy secretary and other senior U.S. officials on relations with major energy-producing and -consuming regions, including Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, China, Nigeria, and the European Union (EU). In 2001, Patron served as energy attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. Prior to the DOE, she worked at the International Energy Agency, the White House, UNICEF, and the Center for International Environmental Law.
Patron holds a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.A. from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She is a commentator for CNBC, BBC, NPR, the New York Times, and the Economist. She has written for Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, and the Los Angeles Times.
Ted Perlmutter, director of knowledge management at Columbia University’s Center for International Conflict Resolution, is a technology consultant and information systems architect. He is responsible for website coordination and database development and has been involved in the creation of the Religious Peacemaking Database project. Perlmutter’s research interests focus on how Internet technology can promote knowledge networks among political and social activists. Presently a visiting fellow at the Center for European Studies at New York University, he is developing a course on Internet technology and international conflict resolution.
Perlmutter’s research in this area includes work with Suzette Brooks Masters, on a Ford Foundation sponsored project entitled "Networking the Networks: Improving Information Flow in the Immigration Field." He has published numerous articles and book chapters on immigration, refugees, political parties, and civil society. Perlmutter has taught in the New York University political science department as a lecturer and an assistant professor (1987-1992). He has been the recipient of a German Marshall Fund Grant for the Study of Germany and the Fulbright Commission Fellowship for Study in Italy for research on xenophobic politics in Europe from 1993 to 1995. He was a visiting fellow at the Italian Academy for Advanced Italian Studies on America at Columbia University (1997-1998). Perlmutter holds a B.A. in Political Science from Wesleyan University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University.
CATHERINE SHEVLIN PIERCE, M.A.
Catherine Shevlin Pierce is a consultant in international development. She worked in international organizations for 28 years, initially at the World Bank and subsequently at the United Nations. She has assisted countries to identify and implement policies and programs addressing the interaction between population trends, resources, environment, migration, and sustainable development.
Pierce has extensive experience in the areas of human rights, reproductive health, and women's microfinance initiatives and has served as a member of the United Nations Population Fund's delegation and technical resource team for several UN Global Conferences focusing on environment, human rights, population, and, women's issues. She managed the UN Global Training Program in Population and Development situated in universities in Botswana, Chile, Egypt, India, and Morocco and chaired the UN Development Group Task Force on Knowledge Sharing. From 2000 to 2003, as the director of the UNFPA Technical Services Team for the Pacific--based in Suva, Fiji--Pierce advised governments and civil society organizations on strategies to address the impact of population trends, environmental degradation, and globalization on small island countries.
Elected to the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Pierce has written widely on population and development issues and has been an invited speaker at various international conferences and professional meetings. She has taught courses on history, international relations, refugees and internally displaced persons, and humanitarian assistance and humanitarian intervention. She graduated cum laude from Marymount College and holds an M.A. in History from Purdue University and an M.A. in Demography from Georgetown University. In 2005 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Purdue University. Pierce is a member of the Board of Directors of Engender Health, an international NGO addressing health needs in developing countries.
LUCILLE PILLING, Ed.D., M.P.H., R.N.
Lucille Pilling teaches courses in corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS. She also teaches global public health management and policy at NYU Wagner. Her research is on the management of multiorganizational alliances. Her book, Global Health Alliance: Lessons Learned, was published in February 2007. Her current research is on the metrics of CSR. An article on the intersection of brand and social responsibility was published in 2009.
Pilling is a CSR strategist with expertise in corporate sustainability, public health and public private partnerships. Her firm, Pilling and Associates, collaborates with corporations, nonprofits, and environmental organizations to develop and implement CSR business, marketing, and communication strategies. Recent clients include: Griffin Health Services Corporation; Association for Corporate Contribution Professionals; Africare; LIMRA; Henry Schein Inc., a Fortune 500 company; Tunnell Consulting Government Services; The Green Standard; Business Council for International Understanding; John Snow Inc.; and JHPIEGO at Johns Hopkins.
Pilling previously served as vice president for International Programs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America; senior program officer at Columbia University, where she managed a $50 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation initiative; and program officer at UNFPA. She lived and worked in Africa and Latin America for 13 years (Ghana, Kenya, Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Zimbabwe) and provided technical assistance in Liberia, Thailand, the Philippines, Romania, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Haiti. Her contracts were with Program for Africare, Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), JHPIEGO, John Short Associates, John Snow Inc., Johns Hopkins University, Aga Khan Foundation, ILO, USAID in Ghana, Kenya, Bolivia and Costa Rica, and the U.S. Peace Corps in Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Working in the private sector before moving to Africa, she had broad experience in pharmaceutical advertising for Kallir, Philips, Ross, and in international marketing for Avon. Pilling earned an Ed.D. in Organization and Leadership and an M.P.H. from Columbia University following a B.S. in Nursing from the University of Pennsylvania.
PATRICK REED, Ph.D., J.D., M.A.L.D.
Patrick Reed has taught the politics of international economic relations and related subjects in the international relations program at NYU-SCPS since 1995. He is an international trade lawyer with the law firm of Simons & Wiskin. His law practice concentrates on U.S. international trade, customs, and import-export law, including international trade agreements, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He represents business clients in administrative proceedings held before federal agencies responsible for international trade matters and in litigation in the U.S. Court of International Trade and other federal courts. Reed graduated from Indiana University. He received his law degree from Columbia University School of Law. He received a master's degree and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, with concentrations in international law and international economic relations. He is the author of a treatise on judicial review in international trade matters, The Role of Federal Courts in U.S. Customs & International Trade Law (Oceana 1997). His article "Relationship of WTO Obligations to U.S. International Trade Law: Internationalist Vision Meets Domestic Reality," was published in the Georgetown Journal of International Law (2006).
JOHN P. RENNINGER, Ph.D., M.A.
John P. Renninger retired from the United Nations Secretariat in 2005 after 30 years of service. He is now an international consultant and lecturer. Beginning in 1992, Renninger occupied senior positions in the UN Department of Political Affairs (DPA), where he was the senior American. His last two positions were director, Americas and Europe Division (2003-2005) and director, Asia and Pacific Division (2001-2003). In these positions he provided political advice and helped shape the diplomatic initiatives of the secretary-general, particularly regarding early warning, preventive action, and peacemaking. He represented the United Nations at many meetings of other intergovernmental organizations, including the European Union (EU), the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
At UN headquarters, Renninger was intimately involved with the transition to independence in South Africa, where he served as an election monitor. He also helped plan the consultation leading to the independence of East Timor and played a key role in designing the UN mission dispatched to Afghanistan following the overthrow of the Taliban regime. From 1989 to 1992, he worked in the fields of inter-agency coordination and economic affairs. From 1974 to 1989, he was at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), eventually becoming senior advisor to the executive director for research. In this position he had extensive contact with the academic world and authored various books, monographs, and articles concerning UN issues. From 1969 to 1971 he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone. Renninger received a B.A. in Political Science from Northwestern University, an M.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh.
Maya Sabatello is a human rights and international law specialist and teaches at the Center for Global Affairs (CGA) at NYU-SCPS and in Columbia University's Human Rights program. Her fields of interest include law and society, public policy, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and comparative politics. She has lectured on subjects including terrorism, torture, comparative human rights, politics of identity, disability, and bioethics.
Sabatello has worked extensively with human rights organizations, and has been a permanent representative for a nongovernmental organization at the United Nations where she participated in the UN sessions on the formulation of the International Convention on the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities, at the UN's Commission on the Status of Women, and in the UN's Working Group on Girls. Sabatello has published in journals including Human Rights Quarterly, the Journal of Medicine and Law, Disability and Society, and the International Journal of Children's Rights. Her book, Children's Bioethics: The International Bio-Political Discourse on Harmful Traditional Practices and the Right of the Child to Cultural Identity (Martinus Nijhoff/ Brill Publishing) was published in 2009, and her book, Voices From Within: Civil Society's Involvement in the Drafting of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, is forthcoming.
Sabatello has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Southern California, an LL.B. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is a member of the Israeli Bar Association.
Patricia Samwick is the president of Samwick Management Group (SMG), a consulting firm specializing in marketing, fundraising, and sales. She has spent more than 20 years working in the field of international finance, as well as advising global NGOs. Her consulting projects have included work on a major UN affiliate's donor base repositioning. Prior to forming her own consulting group, Samwick spent more than 18 years with Citigroup working extensively in Latin America, south Asia, and the Middle East. Her most recent position was as sales director for the Global E- Business Group, where she was responsible for sales to universities in Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, and the United States. Currently, she is working on a book detailing the life of a female consultant in Kuwait. Samwick has been an adjunct lecturer at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs for the past six years and joined the faculty of the Center for Global Affairs at NYU-SCPS (CGA) as an adjunct instructor in early 2004. Samwick holds a B.A. from Connecticut College and an M.I.A. from Columbia University's School of International Affairs. She also earned a certificate from the George H. Heyman, Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at NYU-SCPS in fundraising and philanthropy.
LISA SCHUMANN-PONTI, Ph.D., M.B.A.
Before entering the academic world, Lisa Schumann-Ponti worked for over 15 years in commercial banking as a corporate credit analyst and corporate lending officer for the U.S. operations of international banking institutions. Her experience includes international trade lending in developed, as well as developing, European markets. Since leaving banking, Ponti has taught courses in corporate finance, as well as both microeconomics and macroeconomics. She is presently a member of Delta Pi Epsilon, the American Educational Research Association, and the American Economic Association and serves as a member of the Policies Commission on Business and Economic Education.
Ponti received her doctorate from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development and her M.B.A. in Finance and International Business from New York University’s Stern School of Business. Her research interests include financial and economic literacy among college students and the population at large.
Christine Shaw worked for the United Nations from 1969 until recently. There she was engaged in analytical work geared toward both the diplomatic and academic communities. She served as senior economic affairs officer in the Development Policy and Planning Office of the Department for Economic and Social Affairs. She was the department's trade specialist, writing regularly for the UN's World Economic and Social Survey, as well as preparing policy-oriented papers and background material for the Committee for Development Policy. Shaw also served as a report writer for a number of United Nations world conferences and summits. For several years, she has been teaching courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics, and international economics at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and SUNY. A specialist in trade, development, and globalization, she holds a B.A in Economics and Sociology from Harvard, an M.A. in Economics, Statistics, and Demography from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University. She is a member of the American Economic Association.
JOSEPH STEPHANIDES, L.L.B., L.L.M.
Mr. Stephanides served with the United Nations Secretariat for 28 years. Before his retirement, he served as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Georgia. He was based in Sukhumi where the United Nations Observer Mission(UNOMIG) maintained its operational headquarters. Prior to the above appointment, he served as Head of the Addis Ababa Office of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE).
Mr. Stephanides` broad experience in UN Peacekeeping Missions includes service as Head of the Office of the UN Secretary-General in Iran(UNOSGI), in connection with the implementation of Security Council resolution 598(1987) on ending the war between Iraq and Iran and regional security issues. He also served as Head of the Kamanjab and Sesfontein Political Office of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group(UNTAG).The latter prepared the ground for Namibia`s independence by stabilizing the situation and supervising free and fair elections.
At the UN Headquarters in New York, Mr. Stephanides served as Director of the Security Council Affairs Division, Department of Political Affairs, as Deputy Director of the same Division and Chief of the Sanctions Branch, as well as Chief of the Security Council Practices and Charter Research Branch. During his tenure, he actively encouraged improvements to the working methods and practices of the Security Council. He was instrumental in launching the Interlaken, Bonn-Berlin and Stockholm processes which greatly assisted the work of the members of the Security Council in applying better targeted and less injurious to civilian populations sanctions measures. He also encouraged members of the Security Council to favorably consider the appointment of panels of independent experts, who could be counted upon to expose patterns of violations of sanctions regimes.
Before his assignment to the Security Council Affairs Division, he served as Deputy Director of the West Asia Regional Division in the Department of Political Affairs. Other United Nations positions held by Mr. Stephanides, include the position of Senior Officer at the UN Centre for Science and Technology for Development, as well as Deputy Chief of the New York Liaison Office of the United Nations Human Rights Division.
As an Adjunct Professor of United Nations studies, he teaches Modern Diplomacy at the Long Island University, Graduate UN Certificate Programme. He is a member of the International Law Association (ILA) and a former member of the ILA Human Rights Sub- Committee. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Sanctions and Security Research Program of the Fourth Freedom Forum and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Before joining the United Nations in September 1980, Mr. Stephanides held diplomatic postings with the Cypriot Foreign Service in Bonn, Washington D.C. and New York, including that of Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations.
Mr. Stephanides holds an L.L.B degree from Athens University, School of Law and an L.L.M degree in International Legal Studies from New York University, School of Law. He pursued further postgraduate studies at Georgetown University, School of Law and at Bonn University, School of Law.
Christopher Walker is director of studies at Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization supporting democratic values and standards around the world, where he helps oversee a team of senior analysts and researchers in devising overall strategy for Freedom House's analytical publications. These projects include "Countries at the Crossroads: A Survey of Democratic Governance;" "Nations in Transit: Democratization in East Central Europe and Eurasia;" "Freedom of the Press: a Global Survey of Media Independence;" and "Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties." Walker is responsible for generating special studies and reports, initiating task forces, and responding to critical news and democracy issues through statements and op-eds. Before joining Freedom House, he worked at the EastWest Institute and the European Journalism Network. He has contributed to a wide range of publications, includingthe International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the National Interest, the Moscow Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Miami Herald, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Newsday. Walker received his undergraduate degree from Binghamton University, State University of New York, and his master's degree from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
John Zindar is a partner with American Business Organization, Inc., a transatlantic business development consultancy, and also with Strategic Ventures & Research Inc., a venture capital advisory group. He is also an advisory board member for Turtlesnap Ventures, Inc., a Baltimore-based technology transfer consultancy.
Zindar served 10 years as a U.S. Army Intelligence officer with meritorious service, and acquired a very real-world foundation in training, psychological warfare, and international negotiation and diplomacy. As a liaison officer with the British Military Intelligence Corps, he developed a special expertise in terrorism counteraction and low intensity conflict operations. Working in politics in Washington, D.C., he contributed to the conclusion of the 1993 peace treaty in El Salvador; lobbied for free trade initiatives; produced award-winning, PBS-broadcasted programs on Third World conflict; and initiated a reforestation project in Guatemala. In addition to work as a freelance journalist in Central America, Zindar has spent nearly 20 years in business and economic development--and international risk analysis--under various consulting engagements in Europe, North America, and Latin America. He has served as an advisor to the minister of economics of Germany, as well as the minister of foreign affairs of Panama. He has also given expert testimony on the teaching of torture at the School of Americas before the U.S. Congress, and on the Western Sahara for the United Nations.
Zindar has been published in American Defense Monitor, Doing Business With Germany, the Economist, International Herald Tribune, London First Magazine, Military Intelligence Review, the Times of London, Wall Street Journal Europe, and the Washington Business Journal. Zindar holds an M.A. in International Economics and Latin American studies from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.B.A. from the Edinburgh Business School, and a triple-major B.A. from Ripon College (Wisconsin). where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.