Dr. Anders Aslund, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Anders Åslund has been a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute since 2006. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He examines the economies of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, as well as focuses on the broader implications of economic transition. He worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1994 to 2005, first as a senior associate and then from 2003 as director of the Russian and Eurasian Program. He also worked at the Brookings Institution and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. He earned his doctorate from Oxford University.
Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Russia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. He was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of East European Economics. He worked as a Swedish diplomat in Kuwait, Poland, Geneva, and Moscow. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and an honorary professor of the Kyrgyz National University. He is co-chairman of the board of trustees of the Kyiv School of Economics and chairman of the Advisory Council of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE), Warsaw.
He is the author or coauthor of 13 books, including The United States Should Establish Permanent Normal Trade Relations with Russia (2012), The Last Shall Be the First: The East European Financial Crisis (2010), The Russia Balance Sheet (2009), How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy (2009)
Dr. Harley Balzer, Georgetown University
Harley Balzer is Associate Professor of Government and International Affairs and an Associate Faculty Member of the Department of History at Georgetown University. From 1987 to August 2001 he served as Director of the University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies
Dr. Balzer earned a BA in History and Political Science Magna Cum Laude at Washington University (St. Louis) and MA and PhD degrees in History from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught at Grinnell College and Boston University, and has held post-doctoral fellowships at the Harvard university Russian Research Center and at MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society. During 1982-83 he was a Congressional Fellow in the office of Congressman Lee Hamilton, where his duties included helping to secure Congressional authorization of the Soviet and East European Research and Training Act of 1983 (now known as Title VIII), legislation that has provided approximately $5 million per year for study of the Soviet Bloc and its successor states. During 1996-97 he was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the US Institute of Peace.
During 1993 Dr. Balzer took a partial leave from Georgetown to serve as Executive Director and Chairman of the Board of the International Science Foundation, an organization established by George Soros to disburse $100 million to support basic science in the countries of the former Soviet Union. He was responsible for ISF’s program of peer-reviewed research grants and its telecommunications initiative, which evolved into a separate, $130 million program. Since 1997 he has been a member of the Governing Council of the Basic Research and Higher Education Program for Russian universities, administered by the Civilian Research and Development Foundation with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York and Russian Ministry of Education. The program currently supports 16 centers for research and education at universities in 15 cities across Russia. Dr. Balzer’s research interests include political economy, Russian domestic politics, education, Russian and Soviet social history, science and technology, and US-Russian relations.
He is currently completing work on three major projects. One is a comparative analysis of Russian and Chinese integration with the global economy. The second, focusing on current Russian political conditions, is tentatively titled “Russia’s Dilemmas: Putin, Population and Petroleum.” The third deals with financing higher education in The Russian Empire, the USSR, and the Russian Federation, with the working title “State-Private Partnerships in Russian Higher Education: Historical Models and Current Policy.”
Dr. Balzer twice lived in the Soviet Union for a year under the auspices of IREX, Fulbright-Hays and the Academy of Sciences. He travels regularly to Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Rahul Choudaha, World Education Services
Rahul Choudaha is director of research and strategic development at World Education Services, New York (wes.org/ras). In this role, Choudaha leverages his strategic mindset and entrepreneurial spirit to lead a team that is responsible for research, innovation and growth initiatives.
Widely recognized for his thought leadership, Choudaha blogs on DrEducation.com and advises on student mobility trends with implications for market development, enrolment management and transnational education. He has presented nearly 75 conference sessions and has been quoted in global media including BBC, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He is a recipient of the Tony Adams Award for Excellence from the European Association of International Education. He is also the Chair-elect of NAFSA’s International Education Leadership Knowledge Community.
Choudaha earned a doctorate in higher education from the University of Denver, a master’s degree in management and a bachelor of engineering degree from India.
Dr. Dan E. Davidson, American Councils for International Education
Dan E. Davidson, President of American Councils for International Education, has focused much of his professional life on the development, oversight, and support of international initiatives in educational development, training, and research, primarily through the work of American Councils and its partner organizations in the U. S., Eurasia, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In its four decades, American Councils has developed into one of the premier American education and international training organizations, designing and implementing large-scale U.S. and foreign government-funded exchange and fellowship programs, as well as major initatives in research, development and innovation funded by private foundations and donor groups.
Dr. Davidson received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University, and has studied as well at Bonn, Moscow State University and the Harvard Institute for Social Enterprise. He is author or editor of forty-four books and more than 60 articles in the fields of language, culture, and educational development and holds the rank of professor at Bryn Mawr College (Pennsylvania) where he has taught and directed 35 Ph.D. dissertations in the field of Russian and second-language acquisition.
From 1992–1995, Dr. Davidson also served as co-chairman of the Transformation of the Humanities and Social Sciences initiative sponsored by philanthropist George Soros. The program produced over four hundred experimental textbooks for schools and colleges in Eurasia. Dr. Davidson has overseen the creation and development of national testing/assessment projects/programs in the Republic of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S., with support from USAID, the World Bank and the five respective governments of those nations, as well as privately-funded programs supporting the development of international cooperation in the study and teaching of the humanities and social sciences.
Currently, Dan Davidson serves as a co-chair of the Innovation Working Group of the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission, Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the European Humanities University (Vilnius), and Chair of the College Board World Languages Academic Advisory Committee. He is immediate past president and current Executive Committee member of the Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL), elected vice-president of the International Association of Teachers of Russian Language and Literature, and board chair of the Center for Educational Testing, Assessment, and Methodology (Kyrgyzstan), the first independent educational testing center in Central Asia.
Dr. Davidson is an elected foreign member of the Russian and the Ukrainian Academies of Education and recipient of an honorary professorship from Kyrgyz National University (Bishkek) and of honorary doctoral degrees from Almaty State University (Kazakhstan), the Russian Academy of Sciences (Division of Language and Literature), and the State University of World Languages (Uzbekistan). He has received awards for distinguished service to the profession from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) in 1995 and the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages of the Modern Language Association (ADFL/MLA) in 1997. In 2005 he received the Kyrgyz National Medal of Honor (“Dank”).
Svetlana Filiatreau, George Mason University
Svetlana Filiatreau, Eurasia Programs Coordinator, Global & International Strategies, Provost’s Office. Svetlana Filiatreau joined the Office of Global and International Strategies in 2011. Ms. Filiatreau leads the development of GMU’s international strategy for engagement with Russia, former Soviet states, and Central and Eastern Europe. Svetlana conducts research on educational systems, identifies suitable partners for research and educational collaboration, creates the appropriate program structures for these agreements, represents the university in the networking events, and manages partner relations with agencies, embassies, and NGOs in Eurasia and stateside.
Ms. Filiatreau holds a Master’s degree with the specialization in community-based development and is a Ph.D. Candidate in International Education. Svetlana’s research and professional interests include university-based ethical, moral, and civic formation of undergraduate students in post-Soviet states; the role of ethical leadership of higher education institutions in Ukraine’s democratic transformation; university campus internationalization; and development of academic cross-border partnerships.
Dr. Fiona Hill, The Brookings Institution
Fiona Hill is director of the Center on the United States and Europe, and senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. She is a frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, who has researched and published extensively on issues related to Russia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, regional conflicts, energy, and strategic issues. She is also the co-author of the recently published book, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin (Brookings Press, 2013).
Her book with Brookings Senior Fellow Clifford Gaddy, The Siberian Curse. How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold, was published by Brookings Press in December 2003; and her monograph, Energy Empire: Oil, Gas and Russia’s Revival, was published by the London Foreign Policy Centre in 2004. Other select publications include: “Putin and the Uses of History” (with Cliff Gaddy), The National Interest, January 4, 2012; “Putin’s Next Move in Russia” (with Cliff Gaddy), in the Brookings Interview series, November 2011; “How Russia and China See the Egyptian Revolution,” Foreign Policy (online), February 15, 2011; “Dinner with Putin: Musings on Modernization in Russia,” in the Brookings Foreign Policy Trip Reports, October 2010; “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? The Realities of a Rising China and Implications for Russia’s Energy Ambitions” (with Erica Downs), in the Brookings Foreign Policy Paper series, August 2010; “Fear of Democracy or Revolution: The Reaction to Andijan?” (with Kevin Jones) in The Washington Quarterly, Summer 2006; “Turkey and Russia: Axis of the Excluded?” (with Omer Taspinar) in Survival, Spring 2006; “Whither Kazakhstan?” In the National Interest, October 2005; “Beyond Codependency: European Reliance on Russian Energy,” U.S.-Europe Analysis Series, July 2005; “A Spreading Danger: Time for a New Policy Toward Chechnya,” (with Anatol Lieven and Thomas de Waal) Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief, March 2005; and “Governing Russia: Putin’s Federal Dilemmas,” New Europe Review, January 2005.
From 2006-2009, Hill was on leave from Brookings as the National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at The National Intelligence Council. Prior to joining Brookings, Hill was director of strategic planning at The Eurasia Foundation in Washington, DC. From 1991-1999, she held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, including associate director of the Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project (SDI), director of the Project on Ethnic Conflict in the Former Soviet Union, and coordinator of the Trilateral Study on Japanese-Russian-U.S. Relations.
Hill holds an A.M. in Soviet Studies and a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University where she was a Frank Knox Fellow; an M.A. degree in Russian and Modern History from St. Andrews University in Scotland; and has pursued studies at Moscow’s Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages. Hill is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the Board of Trustees of The Eurasia Foundation.
Francisco Marmolejo, World Bank
Francisco Marmolejo recently joined the World Bank, where he serves as Lead Tertiary Education Specialist and as Coordinator of the Network of Higher Education Specialists. Previously, he served as founding Executive Director of the Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration, a network of more than 160 higher education institutions and organizations primarily from Canada, the US and Mexico, headquartered at the University of Arizona, USA, where he also worked as Assistant Vice-President for Western Hemispheric Programs. Previously, he was an American Council on Education Fellow at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
His past positions include Vice-President for Administration and Academic Vice-President at the University of the Americas in Mexico. Also, he has served as International Consultant at the OECD Programme on Institutional Management of Higher Education in Paris. Marmolejo has been part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and World Bank peer review teams conducting evaluations of higher education in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He serves or has served on advisory or governing boards at a variety of universities, and professional organizations, including the Mexican Association for International Education, the American Council on Education’s Commission on International Initiatives, NAFSA, the International Association of Universities, World Education Services, and the Centre for Internationalization of Higher Education at UNICAT-Milan.
Marmolejo holds an MA in Organizational Administration from the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, and has conducted doctoral work at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Ambassador Steven Pifer, The Brookings Institution
Steven Pifer is director of the Brookings Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Initiative and a senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. He focuses on arms control, Russia and Ukraine. He has offered commentary regarding these issues on CNN, Fox News, CNBC, BBC, National Public Radio and VOA, and his articles have appeared in the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, among others.
A retired Foreign Service officer, his more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine (2001-2004), U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000), and special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council (1996-1997). In addition to Ukraine, he served at the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Moscow and London as well as with the U.S. delegation to the negotiation on intermediate-range nuclear forces in Geneva.
Ambassador Pifer is co-author of The Opportunity: Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Arms (Brookings, October 2012). His other publications include “Missile Defense in Europe: Cooperation or Contention?” Brookings Arms Control Series Paper #8 (May 2012); “Ukraine’s Perilous Balancing Act,” Current History (March 2012); “NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control,” Brookings Arms Control Series Paper #7 (July 2011); “The Next Round: The United States and Nuclear Arms Reductions After New START,” Brookings Arms Control Series Paper #4 (November 2010); “Ukraine’s Geopolitical Choice, 2009,” Eurasian Geography and Economics (July 2009); “Reversing the Decline: An Agenda for U.S.-Russian Relations in 2009,” Brookings paper (January 2009).