Speakers at Harvard Kennedy School
Martin Schulz (video address)
President of the European Parliament
Since 1994, Martin Schulz is a Member of the European Parliament and has served in a number of committees, first serving on the sub-committee on Human Rights and then on the Committee on Civil Liberties and Home Affairs. He led the SPD MEPs from 2000 and was subsequently elected Vice-Chair of the Socialist MEPs.
In 2004 he was elected group leader of the second largest group in the European Parliament. As leader of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, Martin Schulz campaigned for social justice, promoting jobs and growth, reforming financial markets, fighting climate change, championing equality and creating a stronger and more democratic Europe.
Martin Schulz was elected President of the European Parliament on 17 January 2012 for a mandate of two and half years with 387 votes. On 1 July 2014 he was re-elected President with 409 votes, becoming the first President in the history of the European Parliament to be re-elected for a second term.
David O’Sullivan
Ambassador of the EU to the US
David O’Sullivan is the Ambassador of the European Union to the United States and the Head of the Delegation of the European Union to the United States. Prior to arriving to the United States, he was the Chief Operating Officer of the European Union’s diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS). He has held a number of high level positions including Head of Cabinet to Romano Prodi and Secretary-General of the European Commission between June 2000 and November 2005. In 2010 he was appointed as Director General for Relex with the responsibility of setting up the EEAS and was appointed the Chief Operating Officer on 1 January 2011.
J. Stapleton Roy
Former US Ambassador to China, Distinguished Scholar and Founding Director Emeritus of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center
Ambassador Roy was born in China, spending much of his youth there during the upheavals of World War II and the Communist revolution. A fluent Chinese speaker, he joined the US Foreign Service in 1956 and spent much of his career in East Asia, retiring in 2001 with the rank of Career Ambassador. He also specialized in Soviet affairs and served in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. His final post with the State Department was as Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research.
Ellis Mathews
Head of Division for China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mongolia, European External Action Service
Ellis Mathews is Head of Division for China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Mongolia in the European External Action Service (EEAS). He started his career at the UK Department of Trade and Industry in London before joining the European Commission. He subsequently held posts at the Euratom Supply Agency and as Head of the Trade and Commerce Section at the Delegation of the European Commission in Japan. On his return to Brussels he started work on EU-Canada relations before becoming Head of Unit ad interim for Relations with the United States and Canada in DG External Relations and later the EEAS. He has also served as Deputy Head of Division in the EEAS Human Resources Directorate. He was educated at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford, where he took a BA in Modern Languages (French and German), and as a postgraduate at St. Catherine’s College (University of Oxford) Kobe Institute, where he read Japanese Studies.
Henry Chu
London Bureau Chief, Los Angeles Times and Nieman Fellow at Harvard University
Henry Chu, currently on a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, joined the Los Angeles Times in 1990 and worked primarily out of the San Fernando Valley office before moving to the foreign staff in 1998. He served as Bureau Chief in Beijing from 1998 to 2003, Rio de Janeiro from 2004 to 2005 and New Delhi from 2006 to 2008 before locating to London in 2009. He was born in Indianapolis but grew up in Southern California and received his Bachelor’s from Harvard University. His most exotic assignment so far has been a week spent along the Ohio-Kentucky border.
Dimitris Avramopoulos
European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship
Dimitris Avramopoulos is the European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship. Prior to assuming his current role in 2014, Mr. Avramopoulos served in a wide range of key ministerial positions within the Greek government, including Minister of National Defense (2013-2014 and 2011-2012), Foreign Minister (2012-2013), Minister of Health and Social Solidarity (2006-2009), and Minister of Tourist Development (2004-2006). Mr. Avramopoulos also served as the Mayor of Athens from 1995 to 2002, has been the Vice President of the Greek New Democracy Party since 2010, and has many years of experience within the Greek diplomatic service. He brings an incredible wealth of expertise to his new role within the European Union and the prevailing conversation on migration. Mr. Avramopoulos holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Law and Political Science from Athens University (1978) and was a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics in 2003.
Suzanne Sheldon
Director of the Office of International Migration, PRM – U.S. Department of State
Suzanne Sheldon is Director of the Office of International Migration in the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM). The office articulates and implements the foreign policy of the United States as it relates to migration and supports assistance programs that help foreign governments address migration challenges and assist vulnerable migrants. Ms. Sheldon leads the United States’ participation in a number of international forums, including in the United Nations and European Union. She has held domestic and overseas positions with the Department of State since 1999. Ms. Sheldon is a graduate of Smith College, Boston College Law School, and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Eugenio Ambrosi
International Organization for Migration (IOM), Regional Director for Europe
Eugenio Ambrosi is the new Regional Director of IOM’s Regional Office for the EU, Norway and Switzerland. Prior to this, he was the Senior Regional Adviser for Europe and Central Asia in the Office of the Director General at IOM’s Headquarters in Geneva. Mr. Ambrosi came to IOM in 1991 where he has since held senior positions including Director for the Regional Office in Buenos Aires and Director of the Dakar Regional Office. He has extensive experience and knowledge of European issues and IOM policies, programs and operations, in addition to several years of executive experience with IOM’s Regional Bureau for Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Ambrosi is a Master in Law and holds a Post Graduate degree in International Law and Multilateral Diplomacy.
Prof. Karen Jacobsen
Director of the Refugees and Forced Migration Program at Feinstein International Center, Tufts University
Karen Jacobsen PhD is Acting Director at the Feinstein International Center where she also leads the Refugees and Forced Migration Program, and Associate Professor of Research at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University. In 2013-2014 she was on leave from Tufts, leading the Joint IDP Profiling Service (JIPS) in Geneva. Jacobsen’s current research focuses on urban refugees and IDPs, and on livelihoods and financial resilience in disaster- and conflict-affected areas. She works closely with UN agencies and NGOs to conduct surveys and profiling exercises of refugees, IDPs and migrants in urban settings. She has numerous publications, including two books, “A View from Below: Conducting Research in Conflict Zones” (with Mazurana and Gale), and “The Economic Life of Refugees” (2005), which is widely used in course on forced migration. She holds a B.A. from University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts institute of Technology. She is a citizen of both South Africa and the U.S.
Kalin Anev Janse
Member of the Management Board, Secretary General of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)
Kalin Anev Janse is Secretary General of the European Stability Mechanism. He is also Secretary General of the European Financial Stability Facility.
Kalin Anev Janse previously worked for the European Investment Bank where one of his tasks was to coordinate the setup of the EFSF. Prior to this, he worked as a Consultant for McKinsey & Company in the Netherlands and as an investment banker at JPMorgan (London).
Kalin Anev Janse studied MSc. Business Administration in Strategic Management at the Rotterdam School of Management and Wharton School University of Pennsylvania.
Joseph Dunne
Acting Director for Impact Assessment and Added Value in the Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS)
Joe Dunne has worked in the European Parliament since 1987. He is currently acting Director for Impact Assessment and European Added Value in the newly-formed Directorate General for European Parliamentary Research Services (EPRS). At the same time he retains the duties he took up in 2012 as head of the Unit on “European Added Value”, intended to break fresh ground in terms of Better Regulation, forward assessment and planning and supporting the legislative initiative reports of the European Parliament.
Joe has previously served as Head of Secretariat for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (2004-2012), was Deputy Chef de Cabinet for President Pat Cox (2002 – 2004), worked in the Cabinet of the Secretary General from 1999 to 2002, and served as Head of Service on the secretariat of the Conference of Committee Chairmen (1996-1999). His earlier career in the EP was divided between the Committee on Energy Research and Technology and the Delegation for relations with the New Independent States.
Before the Parliament, Joe Dunne spent nine years in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs which included a period as Secretary of the Embassy in Madrid (1982 – 1986).
Joe Dunne was born in January 1957. He was educated at St Paul’s CBS North Brunswick Street and Trinity College Dublin, where he graduated with a First Class B.Mod in 1978.
Marco Magnani
Visiting Fellow at School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University
Marco Magnani is a visiting fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at the John Hopkins University in Washington, DC. He has led the research project Italy 2030 at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as a Senior Fellow.
He worked for nearly 20 years in investment banking in New York at JPMorgan and in Milan at Mediobanca.
Marco holds a degree in Economics from the University of Rome and an MBA from Columbia University. He published Sette Anni di Vacche Sobrie (UTET, 2013) and Creating Economic Growth: Lessons for Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Kristalina Georgieva
Vice-President of the European Commission for Budget and Human Resources
Before joining the European Commission in February 2010, Kristalina Georgieva has held various positions at the World Bank. She started working there in 1993, initially as Environmental Economist, then Senior Environmental Economist. She continued as Sector Manager on Environment for the East Asia and Pacific Region, and later became the Director in charge of World Bank environmental strategy, policies and lending.
In 2004 her work took her to Moscow, where she was World Bank Director for the Russian Federation, responsible for a large portfolio of World Bank projects in tax administration, customs, education, health, environment and regional development.
In 2007-2008 she held the position of Director for Sustainable Development and, finally she was appointed Vice President and Corporate Secretary of the World Bank Group. At this post, she acted as the interlocutor between the World Bank’s senior management, its Board of Directors and the 186 countries that make up the World Bank Group shareholders.
Pierre Vimont
Secretary General of the European External Action Service
Vimont holds a licence in law. He is a graduate of the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris and the École nationale d’administration. French President Nicolas Sarkozy appointed him to the position of Ambassador to the United States on 1 August 2007. On 25 October 2010, he was selected by the European Union’s (EU) High Representative to be the first Executive Secretary General of the European External Action Service, which began operation on 1 December 2010.
Charles Maier
Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History, Harvard University
Charles S. Maier is Professor of History at Harvard University, specialised in comparative 20th century European political, economic, and social history; global and international history including comparative empires; Cold War and European-American relations; and German and Italian national histories. He served as Director of the Center for European Studies from 1994 to 2001 and fall 2006, and as Chair of the undergraduate Social Studies Program from 1991 to 1995, and served as acting Chair during 2007-08. Guest Directeur des Etudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris in spring 2007. He published Among Empires in spring 2006 and is currently collaborating with William Kirby and Sugata Bose on a world history of the twentieth century and writing on the rise and decline of territoriality and on the history of the modern state. Maier currently teaches undergraduate courses on world history in the modern era, on World War I and World War II, on political trials, and together with Niall Ferguson, a two-semester sequence on international history. He supervises graduate reading fields in early modern and modern international history, modern social and economic history, and German and Italian history. He has directed dissertations on the comparative history of the welfare state, aspects of the Nazi Regime, and the history of the German Democratic Republic, among other topics, and encourages research in the era since 1945.
Vivien Schmidt
Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Boston University
Vivien Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University, and Founding Director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe. Recent honors, fellowships, and awards include an honorary doctorate from the FreeUniversity of Brussels (ULB), Senior Visiting Research Scholar at the Free University of Berlin, and the prestigious Belgian Franqui Interuniversity Chair held at the Free University of Brussels and Louvain. Prof. Schmidt has also been a visiting professor or scholar at Sciences-Po Paris, LUISS in Rome, Oxford, Cambridge, the Copenhagen Business School, and the European University Institute. She has published widely on European political economy, institutions, and democracy as well as lately on the Eurozone crisis. Recent books include the forthcoming Resilient Liberalism: European Political Economy through Boom and Bust (co-edited, Cambridge 2013), Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union (co-edited, Routledge 2011), Democracy in Europe (Oxford 2006), and The Futures of European Capitalism (Oxford 2002). She received her MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, her BA from Bryn Mawr College, and also attended Sciences-Po Paris.
Viviane Reding
MEP, former Vice-President of the European Commission for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship
Viviane Reding is a Luxembourg politician, currently serving as Member of the European Parliament. From 1986 to 1998, she was President of the Luxembourg Union of Journalists. On 27 November 2009, she was elevated in the “Barroso II Commission” to Vice-President responsible for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship
Kent Walker
Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Google
Kent is responsible for managing Google’s global legal team and advising the company’s board and management on legal issues. Before joining Google, Kent held senior legal positions at a number of leading technology companies. Earlier in his career, Kent was an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, where he specialized in the prosecution of technology crimes and advised the Attorney General on management and technology issues.
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin
Chair of the Article 29 Working Party, DG Justice, European Commission
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin has been a member of the French Data Protection Authority since January 2004. Appointed as Deputy Chair of this authority from February 2009 to September 2011, she became its Chair as of September 21, 2011. She was reelected by the members of the Commission on 4 February 2014. She was elected Chair of the Article 29 Working Party for a two-year term on 27 February 2014.
Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland
Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Director of the MediaLab, Entrepreneurship Program, MIT
Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland has helped create and direct MIT’s Media Lab, the Media Lab Asia, and the Center for Future Health. He chairs the World Economic Forum’s Data Driven Development council, is Academic Director of the Data-Pop Alliance, and is a member of the Advisory Boards for Google, Nissan, Telefonica, the United Nations Secretary General, Monument Capital, and the Minerva Schools. In 2012 Forbes named Sandy one of the ‘seven most powerful data scientists in the world’, along with Google founders and the CTO of the United States. His most recent book is “Social Physics” published by Penguin Press.
Jim Waldo
Chief Technology Officer, Harvard University, and Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science
Jim Waldo is the Chief Technology Officer for Harvard University, where he is responsible for the architecture and implementation of the technology environment. He is also a Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard, where he teaches courses in distributed systems and privacy.
Jim has designed clouds at VMWare, and was a Distinguished Engineer with Sun Microsystems Laboratories, where he was the technical lead of the Darkstar project. Prior to (re)joining Sun Labs, he was the lead architect for Jini, a distributed programming system based on Java. Jim has also done research and product development in the areas of medical sensing, object-oriented programming and systems, distributed computing, and user environments.
Before joining Sun, Jim spent eight years at Apollo Computer and Hewlett Packard working in the areas of distributed object systems, user interfaces, class libraries, text and internationalization. While at HP, he led the design and development of the first Object Request Broker, and was instrumental in getting that technology incorporated into the first OMG CORBA specification. He edited the book “The Evolution of C++: Language Design in the Marketplace of Ideas” (MIT Press), and was one of the authors of “The Jini Specification” (Addison Wesley). He is also the author of “Java: The Good Parts”.
Jim received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He also holds M.A. degrees in both linguistics and philosophy from the University of Utah. He is a member of the IEEE and ACM.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen
12th NATO Secretary General and former Prime Minister of Denmark
Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been at the centre of European and global politics for three decades as Secretary General of NATO, Prime Minister of Denmark, Danish Minister of Economic Affairs, and a leading Danish parliamentarian. He has long advocated for stronger ties between the world’s democracies, including a truly “Integrated Transatlantic Community”, a Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement between the EU and North America, and a global community of democracies.
In 1998, Mr. Rasmussen became chairman of the Liberal Party and leader of the opposition. In 2001, his party won a landslide victory and he became Prime Minister of a coalition consisting of the Liberal Party and the Conservative People’s Party. His government was re-elected in 2005 and 2007.
During the Danish Presidency of the European Union in 2002, Mr. Rasmussen played a key role in concluding the accession negotiations with 10 candidates for EU-membership. Mr. Rasmussen has often mentioned the EU Summit in Copenhagen in December 2002 as a truly historic event and one of the highlights of his political career.
During the 1980s, he played a key role in Danish foreign and economic policy, serving as deputy chairman of the Liberal Party and Minister of Taxation. Mr. Rasmussen was promoted to Minister of Economic Affairs in 1990 and served as the Danish negotiator of and signatory to the Maastricht Treaty.
Tarja Halonen
11th President of the Republic of Finland
President Halonen has an impressive and lengthy background in public service, having held a number of elected and appointed positions. Prior to her election as the first female President in Finnish history, she served as Minister for Foreign Affairs (1995-2000); Minister of Justice (1990-91); Minister for Nordic Cooperation (1989-91); and Minister at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (1987-90). She also held a number of top committee positions while serving a member of the Finnish Parliament from 1979 to 2000. Prior to her time in national office, Halonen served as a trade union attorney (1970-74; 1975-79) and as a member of the Helsinki City Council (1977-96).
Halonen has held various national and international honorary positions including as Co-Chair of the UN High-level Panel on Global Sustainability (2010-12), Co-Chair of the International Labour Organization (ILO) World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization (2002-04) and Co-Chair of the UN Millennium Summit in 2000. Among many other positions, she is currently the Co-Chair of the High Level Task Force for International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) (2012-) and a member of the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (2014-). A graduate of Helsinki University, Halonen also holds 17 honorary university degrees.
Nicholas Burns
Sultan of Oman Professor of the Practice of International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Nicholas Burns is Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is Faculty Chair of the school’s Middle East Initiative, India & South Asia Program, and is director of the Future of Diplomacy Project. He writes a bi-weekly foreign affairs column for the Boston Globe. He is also Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and a Senior Counselor at the Cohen Group. He served in the United States Foreign Service for twenty-seven years until his retirement in April 2008. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008. Prior to that, he was Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005), Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001), and State Department Spokesman (1995-1997). He worked on the National Security Council staff (1990-1995) where he was Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and, before that, Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H.W. Bush. Earlier in his career, he worked at the American Consulate General in Jerusalem and in the American Embassies in Egypt and Mauritania. He serves on the Board of several corporate and non-profit organizations.
Emily O’Reilly
European Ombudsman
Emily O’Reilly was elected as the European Ombudsman in 2013. She is an author and former journalist and broadcaster who became Ireland’s first female Ombudsman in 2003 and in 2007 she was also appointed Commissioner for Environmental Information and Freedom of Information Commissioner.
As former political editor, broadcaster and author, her career attracted significant domestic and international recognition including a Harvard University Fellowship in 1988 and multiple national awards.
She has written three critically acclaimed books on Irish politics and media and is a current member of the International Advisory Board of Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.
Ms O’Reilly is a graduate of University College Dublin with a Degree in European Languages and Literature (1979) and holds a Graduate Diploma in Education from Trinity College Dublin (1980). She was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate in Laws by the National University in Ireland in 2008 for her work in promoting human rights throughout her career as a journalist and through her work as Ombudsman. In 2014 she was conferred a second time with an Honorary Doctorate of Law from University College Dublin in Ireland.
In the course of her journalistic career, she won two awards: Journalist of the Year and Woman Journalist of the Year.
Richard Corbett
MEP and former advisor to the President of the European Council
Richard Corbett is a Labour Member of the European Parliament (in the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats political group), and Deputy Leader of the Labour MEPs. He was first elected in 1996 (in a by-election in Merseyside). Since 1999, he has represented the region of Yorkshire and the Humber. He is also Vice-Chair of the European Movement in the UK.
In 1996 he was elected, in a by-election, to be a Member of the European Parliament. He remained in this role until the 2009 election and was re-elected in 2014. As MEP for Yorkshire & Humber, he crisscrossed the region to meet constituents, businesses, trade unions, chambers of commerce, local authorities, NGOs, charities, and others.
Karl Kaiser
Director of the Program on Transatlantic Relations at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Karl Kaiser is Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School and Director of the Program on Transatlantic Relations of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He was educated at the Universities of Cologne, Grenoble and Oxford and taught at the Universities of Bonn, Johns Hopkins (Bologna), Saarbruecken, Cologne, the Hebrew University, and the Departments of Government and Social Studies of Harvard. He was a Director of the German Council on Foreign Relations, Bonn/Berlin and an advisor to Chancellors Brandt and Schmidt. He was a member of the German Council of Environmental Advisors. He serves on the Board of Foreign Policy, Internationale Politik, the Advisory Board of the American-Jewish Committee, Berlin, and the Board of the Federal Academy of Security Policy, Berlin. He is a recipient of the Atlantic Award of NATO. Professor Kaiser is the author or editor of several hundred articles and about fifty books in the fields of world affairs, German, French, British and US foreign policy, transatlantic and East-West relations, nuclear proliferation, strategic theory, and international environmental policy. He holds a Ph.D. from Cologne University and an Honorary Doctorate of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Jose Manuel Martinez Sierra
Jean Monnet ad personam Professor for the Study of European Union Law and Government, Director of Real Colegio Complutense, Harvard University
José Manuel Martínez Sierra is Jean Monnet ad personam Professor for the Study of European Union Law and Government, Faculty Affiliated of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard and Faculty Associate of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. He is a Member of the IGLP Advisory Council at Harvard Law School, chair of the Internationalization and Innovation in Higher Education Study Group, co-chair of the European Union Law and Government Study Group and co-chair of the Center Periphery Europe Study Group at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard.
Stefano Manservisi
Head of Private Office, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
In September 2014, Stefano Manservisi was appointed Head of Private Office by Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Prior to his new role, Manservisi served as Director General for DG Home Affairs in July 2010. He has also served as Director General for DG Development and Relations with Africa, Caribbean, Pacific States since November 2004. Manservisi joined the European Commission in 1983, where he worked as administrator and Head of Cabinet in several Directorates-General and Cabinets. Stefano Manservisi holds a law degree from the University of Bologna and also studied at the University of Paris I Panthéon – Sorbonne, and the University of Strasbourg.
Mia Bloom
Professor of Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts
Mia Mellissa Bloom is Professor of Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell and the author of “Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror” (NY: Columbia University Press 2005), “Living Together After Ethnic Killing” edited with Roy Licklider (London: Routledge 2007) and “Bombshell: Women and Terror” (U Penn Press 2011). She is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and has held research or teaching appointments at Princeton, Cornell, Harvard, and McGill Universities. Bloom has a PhD in political science from Columbia University, a Masters in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, a Bachelors from McGill University in Russian and Middle East Studies and speaks nine languages. She regularly appears on CNN, Fox News, CSPAN, and NBC Nightly News.
Jytte Klausen
Professor of International Cooperation, Brandeis University
Jytte Klausen is the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of International Cooperation at Brandeis University and an Affiliate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Her most recent books are “The Cartoons That Shook the World” (Yale University Press 2009), about the worldwide protests against the Danish cartoons of the Muslim Prophet, and “The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe” (Oxford University Press 2005, pb. 2007). In 2006, Klausen founded the Western Jihadism Project with the aim of providing an integrated approach to the study of Western violent extremists associated with Al Qaeda. She is currently working on a book about the Western adherents to Bin Laden’s movement.
Farah Pandith
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, Senior Fellow, HKS, and former first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities, US Department of State (moderator)
Farah Pandith was appointed the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities in June 2009 by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Under the leadership of Secretary John Kerry, the Office of the Special Representative is responsible for executing a vision for engagement with Muslims around the world based on a people-to-people and organizational level. In the years since her swearing in, Special Representative Pandith has traveled to more than 80 countries and launched youth-focused initiatives including Generation Change, Viral Peace, the Transatlantic Leadership Network, and Hours Against Hate. In January 2013 she was awarded the Secretary’s Distinguished Honor Award for “exceptionally outstanding service to the agencies of the US Government resulting in achievements of marked national or international significance.”
Jonathan Faull
Director-General, Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, European Commission
Jonathan Faull worked in various positions in the Directorate General for Competition and was appointed Deputy Director General in 1999. He was Commission Spokesman and Director General for Press and Communication (2000–2003) and Director General for Justice, Freedom and Security (2003–2010). From 2010 to 2014, he was Director General for Internal Market and Services.
Athanasios Orphanides
Professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management, MIT Sloan
From May 2007 to May 2012, Athanasios Orphanides served as governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus and was a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank. Following the creation of the European Systemic Risk Board in 2010, he was elected a member of its first Steering Committee. Earlier, he served as senior adviser at the Board of Governors of the FED.
Ignazio Angeloni
Member of the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM)
Since 2014 Iganzio Angeloni is the ECB representative on the Supervisory Board of the SSM. Prior to this he was the Director General for Macro-Prudential Policy and Financial Stability and Chair of the Financial Stability Committee at the ECB, and the coordinator of the ECB’s preparation for the SSM. Between 2008 and 2012 he was Advisor to the ECB’s Executive Board. From 2005 to 2008 Mr. Ageloni was the Director-General for International Financial Relations at the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Dirk Schumacher
Managing Director & Senior Economist, Goldman Sachs & Co. KG, Frankfurt
Dirk Schumacher is a senior economist on the European Economics team covering the Eurozone, with a specific focus on Germany and Switzerland. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1999 and was named managing director in 2010. Prior to joining the firm, Dirk worked in the research department at Commerzbank while writing his PhD dissertation at the Center for Financial Studies in Frankfurt. Dirk earned a master’s degree in economics from Bonn University in 1997 and a PhD from Frankfurt University in 2002.
Hans-Helmut Kotz
Senior Fellow, Center for Financial Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt and Resident Faculty, Center for European Studies at Harvard University
Hans-Helmut Kotz is a Senior Fellow, Center for Financial Studies, and program director, SAFE Policy Center, both at Goethe University, Frankfurt, and Visiting Professor of economics at Harvard. He is a senior advisor to McKinsey and Unicredit as well as on the Supervisory Board of Eurex Clearing AG. Between 2002 and 2010 he served on the board of Deutsche Bundesbank, in charge of Financial Stability, Markets, and Statistics.
Daniel Calleja Crespo
Director General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, European Commission
Since 2012, Daniel Calleja is Director General of DG Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneuship and SMEs, where he was previously Deputy Director General. Previously, he held various high-cabinet posts, including Head of Cabinet of the Vice-president of the European Commission. He was also Director for Air Transport at the European Commission for seven years.
Mingpo Cai
Chairman, President and Managing Partner at Cathay Capital Private Equity
Mingpo Cai is a founder and President of Cathay Capital. He has also successfully founded and ran several companies between China and France, in the industrial, distribution and textile sectors. In addition to a broad entrepreneur experience, he has advised many French multinationals in doing business and carrying out M&A in China.
Rebeca Minguela
Entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of Blink, and General Manager at Groupon
Rebeca Minguela founded Blink at the end of 2011 while working at Bain Capital Private Equity. In March 2012, she quit Bain Capital to become Blink full time CEO/CMO, raising $4.3M from leading tech and travel investors. In only 1 year, Blink became the last minute hotel booking app leader in Europe, with more than 800,000 downloads, almost 3,000 hotels, available in 6 languages, partnerships with the main travel players and media companies in Europe. In September 2013, Blink was acquired by Groupon, where Rebeca in now working as GM launching new innovative mobile/web products. She is also advisor for several early stage startups. Her background is in Engineering and Business (HBS MBA), Management consulting (BCG) and Private Equity (Bain Capital)
Lambert Koch
Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research and Rector of the University of Wuppertal
Prof. Lambert Koch is an economist specialized in entrepreneurship and innovation policy, as well as innovation systems research and technology transfer. In 1999 he was appointed to the newly created Chair of Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at the Bergische Universitaet Wuppertal (University of Wuppertal, Germany). In the following years his departmental leadership gained the university several awards as “Germany’s Best Entrepreneurship School”. Koch is at the same time director of the university’s Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research. Elected President of the Bergische Universitaet in 2008, he has on two occasions been honored with the “President of the Year” award presented by the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers. Since 2011 he has been an expert member of the German Chancellor’s “Future Trends Dialogue” group.
Joan Farre-Mensa
Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
Joan Farre-Mensa is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit, where he teaches the Entrepreneurial Manager course in the MBA required curriculum. His research is situated at the intersection of entrepreneurial and corporate finance, with a particular focus on understanding how a firm’s listing status affects its financing environment and its real and financial policies. Joan earned his Ph.D. in economics at New York University. His earlier education was in his native Spain: he holds an M.Phil. in economics from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Universitat de Barcelona.
Karel De Gucht
Former European Commissioner for Trade
Karel de Gucht was the European Commissioner for Trade from February 2010 until October 2014. In this position, he prepared and launched the free trade negotiations with the United States. He has also served as Belgium’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and as the European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response.
L. Daniel Mullaney
US Chief Negotiator for TTIP
Dan Mullaney is Assistant United States Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East at the Office of the United States Trade Representative. From 2006 to 2010, Mr. Mullaney was the Senior Trade Representative in the United States Mission to the European Union in Brussels, Belgium.
Thea Mei Lee
Deputy Chief of Staff, AFL-CIO
Thea Lee is Deputy Chief of Staff at the AFL-CIO, where she has previously served as Policy Director and Chief International Economist. Her research projects include reports on the North American Free Trade Agreement, the impact of international trade on U.S. wage inequality, and the domestic steel and textile industries.
Melinda St. Louis
Director of International Campaigns, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
Melinda St. Louis is the Director of International Campaigns with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. Public Citizen is a leading consumer organization in the United States, which for four decades, has championed citizen interests before the U.S. Congress, the executive branch agencies and the courts. Ms. St. Louis monitors U.S. trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization, as well as regional and bilateral trade and investment talks, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and coordinates with civil society partners around the globe to promote the public interest in the context of these globalization and international commercial and investment agreements. Prior to joining Public Citizen, for more than a decade, St. Louis was a leading advocate and campaigner on global economic justice issues, playing leadership roles in the Jubilee USA Network, Witness for Peace, and the Campaign for Labor Rights, among other grassroots advocacy organizations. Ms. St. Louis has lived and worked in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and currently serves on the boards of the Latin America Working Group and Witness for Peace. She received an M.P.P. in International Policy and Development from Georgetown University.
Robert Z. Lawrence
Robert Z. Lawrence, Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, Harvard Kennedy School
Robert Z. Lawrence served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1998 to 2000. Lawrence has served on the advisory boards of the Congressional Budget Office, the Overseas Development Council, and the Presidential Commission on United States-Pacific Trade and Investment Policy
Anthony L. Gardner
Ambassador of the US to the EU
Anthony L. Gardner was sworn in as the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union in February, 2014. Prior to assuming his current position, Ambassador Gardner was Managing Director for six years at Palamon Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in London.
Ambassador Gardner has dedicated more than twenty years of his career to U.S.-European affairs, as a government official, lawyer and investor. He served as Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council in 1994-95. During that period, he worked closely with the U.S. Mission to the EU to launch the New Transatlantic Agenda.
Speakers at the European Parliament
Anthony Teasdale
Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS)
Anthony Teasdale is Director General of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), the in-house research centre and think tank of the European Parliament, established in November 2013.
From 2002 to 2006, Anthony was Head of Policy Strategy and Legislative Planning for the EPP Group in the European Parliament. From 2007 to 2012, he worked for successive Presidents of the European Parliament – Hans-Gert Poettering and Jerzy Buzek – latterly as deputy chef de cabinet.
Anthony attended Balliol and Nuffield Colleges, Oxford University, (took a first in PPE and an M. Phil in Politics).
Klaus Welle
Secretary General of the European Parliament
Klaus Welle has had a long career in the European Parliament. To date, Mr. Welle has been Secretary General of the European Parliament since 2009. In this capacity he is the European Parliament’s most senior official. From 2007 until 2009 he was the head of the Cabinet of the President of the European Parliament. From 2004 until 2007, he was the Director-General for Internal Policies at the European Parliament. From 1999 until 2003, he was the Secretary-General of the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament. Mr. Welle holds a degree in Economics from he University of Witten/Herdecke, Germany.
Manfred Weber
Chairman of the European People’s Party Group at the European Parliament
Having been elected to the European Parliament in 2004 in his home region of Bavaria, Germany, Manfred Weber sat on the Committees on Constitutional Affairs, on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs as well as on Regional Development. As Rapporteur, he negotiated in 2008 for the European Parliament Directive on common standards and procedures in Member States for returning illegally staying third-country nationals, the first Directive in the field of home affairs to be adopted through the ordinary legislative procedure. From 2006 to 2009, he was appointed Spokesman on Home Affairs of the EPP-ED Group. He has been a Member of the EPP Group Bureau since 2006. After the European elections in 2009 he was elected Vice-Chairman of the EPP Group, and was responsible for setting the political strategy and the policy in the area of Justice and Home affairs. He was elected Chairman of the EPP Group in 2014. At age 42, he is the youngest group leader in the current Parliament as well as the youngest-ever group leader of the EPP.
Ana Gomes
MEP and Member of the EP Delegation for Relations with the United States
Ana Gomes is a Member of the European Parliament since 2004 and was re-elected in 2009. She is also a City Council Member without executive functions at the Sintra City Council. Working as a diplomat since 1980, Ana Gomes suspended her career to enter party politics in 2003.
As a diplomat, she served in the Portuguese Missions at the UN in New York and Geneva, and also in the Embassies in Tokyo and London. Between 1999 and 2003, she was Head of Mission and Ambassador in Jakarta, where she played an important role both in the process leading up to the independence of East Timor and in the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Portugal and Indonesia.
In the European Parliament, her main areas of activity are: human rights, security and defense, international relations, gender issues and development
John F. Sammis
Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to the European Union
A career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, John F. Sammis has been the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to the European Union since August 2014. U.S-European relations have been a major focus during his three decade diplomatic career. Mr. Sammis served previously at USEU as the Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs in 2003-2007 and was Economic-Counselor in Berlin from 1998-2001. His second tour in the Foreign Service was in East Germany a few years before the fall of the Wall and he later worked on the economic aspects of German unification in Washington.
For the past two years, Mr. Sammis served as Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs Mexico City, where he began his Foreign Service career in 1983. He later was involved in the initial preparations for the Brady Plan and NAFTA and with Mexico’s recovery from the peso crisis of 1994-95. As the NSC Director for Western Hemisphere Regional Economic Affairs in 2001-03, he focused extensively on North American trade and economic affairs. Mr. Sammis won the State Department’s 2013 Cordell Hull award for achievement by a senior office in economic diplomacy for his contributions to strengthening U.S.-Mexican economic relations.
Prior to his tour in Mexico City, John spent three years as the Deputy U.S. Representative to the UN Economic and Social Affairs Council in New York. His other overseas tours have included Beijing and Taipei. In Washington, he has been a member of the Policy Planning Staff and taught economics at the National Defense University.
John received his BA from UC Berkeley and did graduate work in history and international economics at UC Berkeley and the Fletcher School. His wife, Colette Rhoney, is a social media strategist.