The United States - Central and Eastern European Environment Foundation
Who We Are
UCEF Board Members ready to white water raft on the Soca River in Bovec, Slovenia.
UCEF Staff
Betsy Hoffmeister is a local expert in the environmental non-governmental movement in Central and Eastern Europe, having worked for the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe from 1996-1999. As a member of the NGO Support Department, Ms. Hoffmeister was responsible for designing grants programs that brought together non-profit organizations from fifteen different CEE countries to work on solving common environmental problems. She participated in raising nearly $2 million in for REC projects. In the field of public participation, Ms. Hoffmeister designed a grants program that allowed NGOs from across the CEE and NIS to work together to prepare for and participate in the Pan European Environmental Ministerial Conference in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1998. She has also worked on global climate change and stratospheric ozone issues for the USEPA, and for the Environment, Health and Safety division of Seattle City Light, a public utility. Ms. Hoffmeister holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Washington in Seattle, and a BA from Brown University in Environmental Studies. In both programs she specialized in environmental policy and policy planning to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses. She speaks fluent French and conversational Hungarian.
Frana Milan received a double Masters in Public Administration and International Studies from the University of Washington, where she focused on non-profit management, environmental policy, and globalization issues and taught courses on international political economy and global climate change. She holds a Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and French from the Ohio State University. Through professional experience and countless volunteer hours with non-profit organizations and campaigns, Ms. Milan is well-versed in project management, administration, volunteer coordination, and outreach and organizing. Most recently, she served as International Organizer for the Earth Day Network, where she was responsible for coordinating and promoting the Earth Day 2000 activities of citizen groups and local and national governments in 40 countries in the European region. She was also responsible for developing partnerships with groups in the European region and for the production of the Worldwide Network Bulletin, a newsletter sent to some 3000 groups in 184 countries. The Central and Eastern European region was the site of some of the most successful and numerous Earth Day 2000 events. Ms. Milan has lived in France and has traveled extensively in Eastern and Western Europe. She is fluent in French, proficient in Spanish, and is always practicing her few words of Croatian.
Jernej Stritih, of Ljubljana, Slovenia, is serving an extended term as Executive Director of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe. Mr. Stritih has wide ranging experience in the field of international and national environmental policy, forest ecology, management of nature conservation, institution building and project management, and environmental financing. From 1990 to 1991, Mr. Stritih was Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister for Environmental Protection and Regional Development of Slovenia and was involved in the reform of the forest sector. From 1993 to 1994 he was State Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning of Slovenia. During that period he was Chairman of the Board of the Slovenian Eco-Fund and Member of the Board of the State Fund of Agricultural Land and Forests.
Starting in the mid eighties, Mr. Stritih was active in environmental non-governmental organizations in Slovenia, managing the environmental program for the Scouts organization. From 1989 to 1991 he was in the Executive Committee of the Slovenian Green Party. In 1989, together with six partners, Mr. Stritih established "Oikos," a private environmental consultancy, and served as the Chairman of the Board. In later years, he was their Managing Director and Senior Consultant. Among other international projects, he was the Regional Coordinator for National Environmental Action Plans in Central and Eastern Europe for the EAP Task Force Secretariat at OECD. In 1996 he became Executive Director of the REC. Since 1996, he is also a member of the EBRD Environmental Advisory Committee and from 1999 a member of the European Consultative Forum on Environment and Sustainable Development. Mr. Stritih graduated from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Forestry Department, in 1987, and performed research in the field of silviculture, forest ecology and nature conservation at that university until 1990.
Robert Herbst is Chairman of the Board of the National Wildlife Refuge Association and Chairman of the Board of the National Infrastructure Revitalization Institute. He has forty-seven years experience as a business, environmental and conservation executive. Mr. Herbst served as Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife, and National Parks and Acting Secretary for the U.S. Dept. of Interior. He was considered by the Carter White House as one of the " Best" sub cabinet administrators in the government. Recently, Mr. Herbst was selected by the Clinton administration to be America's board member of the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe. Mr. Herbst conceptualized and initiated 12 of the nation's environmental and natural resource organizations during his career. He has been Chairman of the Board of organizations too numerous to mention. Mr. Herbst has a degree in Forest and Wildlife Management from the University of Minnesota, and was recently elected a Fellow of the Washington Academy of Science.
W. Carey Crane, III has been involved in a variety of positions over the last 25 years. From 1989-96, he served as Chairman for the Alliance for Environmental Education, which works to support environmental education and training initiatives. Mr. Crane serves on the Board of Tara Wildlife Management and Service, Inc., a Mississippi-based business dedicated to wildlife habitat restoration and preservation through the use of integrated resource land management techniques. Mr. Crane is currently President of Lochnau, Inc. and is a co-host of Green Wave Radio, an environmental talk-radio show, which highlights environmental entrepreneurs in business, academia, and government. He is also very active in Boy Scouts of America.
Victor Failmezger is a recognized expert in international business and intercultural relations. During his almost 30 year career he has been a long-term resident of both Europe and Asia and has served inside the government and in the private sector. His area of expertise is the identification, evaluation and successful introduction of a wide range of new, innovative technologies into both the government and commercial marketplace. Mr. Failmezger serves as CEO and Vice President of his family-run international consulting firm, CVF, L.C., which focuses on international market studies and analyses; real estate property development; and international personnel relocation. He has also served as the Director of Special Projects at GETF, where he now works on a contractual basis. Mr. Failmezger is proud to be a retired U.S. Navy Commander, where he served as the Director of the U.S. Navy Scientific and Technical Group, Europe, a 7-member European-based research team. Specifically charged with monitoring East European and Soviet commercial industries and emerging technologies, he directed his team to travel to more than 40 European trade exhibitions and fora per year to report on a wide range of technologies and industries. Mr. Failmezger speaks fluent Italian and German, and he has degree in history from Southern Methodist University, a Master's in International Relations from Boston University, is a Graduate of the Foreign Service Institute in Italian, and a graduate of the Defense Language Institute in German.
Mary Gade is a partner in the Environmental Practice Group at the law firm of Sonnenschein Nath and Rosenthal, where her responsibilities include: Clean Air Act issues; regulatory affairs and rulemaking proceedings at federal and state levels: compliance counseling in all environmental areas; brown field redevelopment; siting and licensing of environmentally sensitive public and private properties; litigation, enforcement defense and Superfund proceedings; water pollution matters; and environmental issues arising in corporate and real estate transactions. Prior to joining the firm, Ms. Gade served for eight years as Director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. While serving as Director of IEPA, Ms. Gade acted as a consultant to the World Bank on a project with the National Environmental Protection Agency of China on hazardous waste management. She also worked with US AID on an environmental monitoring project in the Baltic Republics. She designed and implemented the US TIES project with China, UNEP, and the World Bank on pollution prevention in three key industrial sectors. She has received two White House Awards for her agency's model efforts at government reinvention. Ms. Gade was a founding member of the Environmental Council of States and Foundation EARTH. She is member of the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute, Resources for Future, and the Pew Foundation's Center for Global Climate Change. Most recently, she has served as a member of the Environmental Transition Advisory Team for the Bush-Cheney Transition Team. Ms. Gade received her law degree from University of Washington in St. Louis and is fluent in Italian.
Thomas Gause is both producer and host of the TV series “Making a Difference,†which airs regularly in Fairfax County, VA, Montgomery County, MD, and the District of Columbia. He has done international consulting in Brazil for the University of Wisconsin; for Carvajal & Cia in Colombia; for Earthwatch in China; and for the U.S. Information Agency in Mexico, St. Lucia, Barbados, and Grenada. Mr. Gause served as Regional Director of the U.S. Small Business Administration in Illinois, and was Chairman of the Environmental Quality Advisory Council for Fairfax County, VA. For 19 years, he hosted and coordinated the Audubon Lecture Series at the National Museum of Natural History. He is a board member of the National Capital Area United Nations Association and the National Wildlife Refuge Association. His awards include the Smithson Medal from the Smithsonian Institution.
Over the past thirty years, David F. Hales has held a variety of positions that demonstrates his commitment to conservation, human rights and sustainable development. From 1994 until 2001, he served as Deputy Assistant Administrator and Director of the Center for Environment at the US Agency for International Development. In this capacity, he served as the senior environmental officer of the Agency and represented the Agency and the US in multilateral negotiations, including the United Nations Commissions on Sustainable Development and Human Settlements. He has been the key decision-maker for US and Agency policy regarding sustainable development, finance for development, and environmental issues and has led US negotiations on environmental treaties and agreements, including the Framework Convention on Climate Change, Convention on Biodiversity, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, and the World Heritage Convention. He has also served as Director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources; Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks at the US Department of the Interior; Commissioner of the Michigan Radioactive Waste Management Authority; Samuel Trask Dana Professor of natural Resources at the University of Michigan; and Director of the Lincoln Park Zoological Gardens. Mr. Hales is now engaged in preparations for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, and in efforts to promote private sector leadership in the transition to sustainability.
William Howard became president of the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) in August 1996, after spending more than 25 years in the conservation field. WHC is an international organization that works with private landowners, primarily corporations, to manage the unused land on their property for wildlife habitat. Before becoming WHC's president, Mr. Howard was President and Chief Executive Officer of the National Wildlife Federation, in Washington, D.C., where he served in various positions since 1979. Mr. Howard also was the Executive Director of the Oklahoma Wildlife Federation; served on a gubernatorial Blue Ribbon Panel to rewrite Oklahoma's state forestry practices regulations; was named Conservationist of the Year by the Oklahoma Izaak Walton League; and received a Governor’s Conservation Services Citation in Oklahoma. He served as a Presidential appointee on the North American Wetlands Conservation Council and as co-chairman for the production of a far-reaching publication, "Blueprint for the Environment." He has served on the boards and executive committees of many organizations, including the Oklahoma Chapter of the Wildlife Society and the Windstar Land Trust Conservancy in Colorado. He has served on the steering committees for the Presidential Environmental Inaugural Ball for presidents Bush and Clinton. Currently, Mr. Howard serves on the board of directors of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, Advisory Board of the Clean Beaches Council, and is active with the U.S. National Committee for Ramsar.
William Kramer has had a 30-career as an entrepreneur in the knowledge business. In 1976, he created Kramerbooks & afterwords, the bookstore/café that has revolutionized modern bookselling. Recently, Mr. Kramer led the fight to protect the privacy and First Amendment rights of book buyers, by opposing a subpoena issued by the Office of the Independent Counsel to turn over records of one of its customers to a Grand Jury. Of the thousands of subpoenas issues by the OIC in the course of five years of investigation, the Kramerbooks subpoena may be the only one successfully opposed in court. Upon retirement from active involvement in the book trade in 1997, Mr. Kramer founded The Knowledge Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to facilitating the creation of state-of-the-art knowledge resource centers in emerging economies. Several projects are currently underway in Africa and Central Europe. Through his work with The Knowledge Initiative, Mr. Kramer has become deeply engaged in the issues surrounding distributed learning worldwide, and the challenges that face both content providers and consumers. Mr. Kramer’s association with GETF and the Regional Environmental Center began with the exploration of a project in the Czech Republic to establish a resource center concerned with forestry and environmental remediation. At present, Mr. Kramer is Vice President of SCUULnet, Inc., a new broad-ranging Internet services company serving the education market. SCUULnet will be offering Internet strategic planning services, an e-procurement network, decision support tools, and training in a variety of web-based academic and administrative programs and services for education.
Jack Lorenz, of Alexandria, Virginia, received his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Tulsa in 1961. Highlights of his career include a stint as the Director of Environmental Affairs at the Falstaff Brewing Corporation in the late 1960s and early '70s. Starting in 1973, Mr. Lorenz began his career at the Izaak Walton League of America (IWLA) as the editor of "Outdoor America" Magazine. By 1974, he became Executive Director of the IWLA, a position he retained until 1992, whereupon he assumed the role of Writer in Residence. Mr. Lorenz was responsible for establishing the IWLA's Save Our Streams program, which became the most copied citizen action water quality enhancement project in North America up until this day. Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush all invited him to the White House to solicit his advice, and he served on numerous presidential commissions and task forces. He co-authored two books, "An Environmental Agenda for the Future" and "Inside the Environmental Movement." His honors and awards are numerous, among them: Water Conservationist of the Year, 1989; Award of Honor, Natural Resources Council of America, 1993; the Chevron Conservation Award, 1994; and he was elected to the Izaak Walton League's Hall of Fame.
As a scientist and a policy advocate, Gilbert Radonski, of Cape Carteret, North Carolina, has proven himself to be a leading expert on the conditions and needs of fisheries in United States. He served as Executive Secretary of the Sports Fishing Institute (SFI) starting in 1975, and became that organization's President in May 1981, a position he held until May 1994. He led SFI's successful efforts to translate the resource needs of fisheries into public policy initiatives. SFI was very influential in the passage of a National Recreational Fisheries Policy, and the Wallop-Breaux amendments to the Federal Aid in Sports Fishing Restoration Act. Mr. Radonski served on the Board of Directors of the Year of the Ocean Foundation in Washington, D.C.; was on the Operating Committee of the Living Lakes Foundation in Washington, D.C.; is the past Chairman of the Natural Resources Council of America and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the National Wildlife Foundation. Mr. Radonski holds a degree in Fish and Wildlife Management from the University of Minnesota, where he also performed graduate studies in Fisheries Research.
Lois Varrick is Corporate Vice President of CORE International, Inc., an international management consulting firm, and Director of the firm's Office of Training. Over the past 13 years, Ms. Varrick has been involved in numerous U.S. Government-sponsored trade development and business-to-business linkage activities. She has managed projects for the firm, including in-country, U.S.-based, and third country training programs. Her management expertise includes responsibilities as a Deputy Project Manager for an economic assessment of the telecommunications and power sector markets in Egypt and for the development of a Five-year Fiscal Recovery and Capacity Building Plan for the U.S. Virgin Islands, completed in March 2000. Ms. Varrick has played a bridge role between private-public, public-public, and private-private institutions that function in numerous sub-sectors including energy, transportation, environment, telecommunications, management information systems, and government-specific human capacity building. She has provided technical assistance to numerous not-for-profit entities and to U.S. government officials in the areas of grant development, grant funding and resources expansion (fund leveraging), and grants management. Ms. Varrick has a decade of international experience, having worked in over 40 countries. In Central and East Europe, she has been involved in numerous bilateral and multilateral funded infrastructure projects in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Ms. Varrick previously served as Senior Country Representative for Central and East Europe at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). She was also a registered lobbyist in the Connecticut Legislature for several industry and professional associations.
Stephen Wassersug manages projects with NASA, the Department of Labor, the EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Commerce Department, while working closely with other federal, state and local agencies. He served for 26 years with the USEPA at senior executive levels at all media programs, and was Special Assistant to the Administrator of the EPA from January to August 1994. The last 12 years with EPA included management of Superfund and RCRA hazardous and solid waste programs in EPA region and headquarters. From 1990 through 1994, Mr. Wassersug was assigned to Hungary by the U.S. government to establish the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe in conjunction with other governments and nongovernmental organizations from within and outside the region. Mr. Wassersug has also worked as an international waste expert with organizations including OECD, UNEP, UNDP, and the World Bank. Mr. Wassersug also worked as Director of International and Federal Programs for Jacobs Engineering, one of the world's largest engineering and hazardous waste remediation firms. He has a Master of Science in Public Health from the University of Massachusetts.
Board Alternate
Robert Johnson, of Germantown, Maryland, who will serve on the UCEF Board of Directors as an alternate to Mr. William Howard, has been Vice President of Programs at Wildlife Habitat Council of Silver Spring, Maryland since 1995. Mr. Johnson is responsible for developing and directing new aspects of the organization's programming. His diverse environmental experience includes an 11-year stint at the Tennessee Valley Authority as the manager of the Environmental Performance Department. At the USEPA, he was responsible for managing the development and implementation of programs to protect and improve quality of lake, coastal, and wetland resources. He was elected President of the North American Lake Management Society in 1983, and received that organization's award for outstanding service in 1985. He is a Member by Appointment of the County Executive to the Montgomery County, Maryland, Water Quality Advisory Panel. Mr. Johnson holds an honors degree in physics from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, has a degree in oceanography from New York University, and did graduate work in environmental studies at the University of Maryland and George Washington University.
UCEF Advisory Committee
Magalen Bryant is a noted environmentalist and businesswoman. Among her many accomplishments, she built the Leesburg Greenway Toll Road. On her farm in Mississippi, in addition to raising crops Ms. Bryant also supports special wildlife projects and hosts environmental conferences. She is the Chairwoman of the Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Ms. Bryant has numerous business interests in several companies, including in Europe.
Anamarija Frankic, Ph.D., a native Croatian, is currently working in Virginia as an environmental consultant for the GEF/World Bank and as a senior marine scientist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William & Mary. She earned her B.S. in experimental biology, and M.S. in limnology and ecology at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. She worked as an ecologist in the UNESCO’s World Heritage National Park Plitvice Lakes, from where she had to leave when the war started in 1991 and became a refugee. In 1993 she received the Eastern-European USAID Fellowship to pursue her Ph.D. in marine science at VIMS. She came to the U.S. with a commitment to help guide the sustainable development of the environmental, social and economic resources in Croatia, as well as in the U.S. She has been pursuing this goal in her graduate studies, through her work on the ecosystem management and biodiversity projects at the GEF/WB, as well as working as a Sea Grant Fellow for the U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka. For her dedication to marine science, her application of this science to the development of Croatia, and her role as a leader in the environmental awareness of this region, she received the Dean’s Prize for Advancement of Women in Marine Science, and was awarded a prestigious International Fellowship by the American Association of University Women. Her specialty and interest is to work on project with interdisciplinary environmental issues, and to develop best management solutions and practices for conservation and sustainable uses of natural resources. She speaks fluent English, Croatian, and basic Italian.
Christine Olsenius of Annapolis, Maryland is an environmental consultant specializing in water resource management, organizational planning and development, environmental education and issues analysis. Her projects include working with federal agencies to develop and implement a national watershed initiative; developing a program to enhance the effectiveness of local, watershed organizations over a 9 -- state region; publishing a watershed newsletter for 3500 people; assisting in the early planning of a National Recreational Lakes Commission; assessing water management trends for organizations and public officials; assisting National Geographic Magazine in the development of a Special Water Issue; and shaping a National Clean Boating Campaign with industry and nonprofit groups. She was vice president of the Lake Superior Center in Duluth Minnesota from 1989 through 1992, the Vice President for Education of the Freshwater Foundation of Navarre, Minnesota from 1985 to 1988, and the Director of the Freshwater Society of Navarre, Minnesota from 1977 to 1985. Ms. Olsenius has given speeches and presented papers across the United States and in Brussels and the former Soviet Union.
Charlotte Roe joined the U. S. Organization of American States mission in August 1999. As a career Foreign Service Officer she served overseas in La Paz, Bolivia; Santiago, Chile; Tel Aviv, Israel; Bogotá, Columbia; and Budapest, Hungary. Her principal areas of expertise are in citizen participation, multilateral organization and transboundary environmental cooperation. As political and economic counselor to the U. S. mission to the Organization of American States, Ms. Roe administers the annual $2.5 million fund for the purpose of hemispheric democracy strengthening projects by the Organization of American States; represents the U.S. government in the Political/Juridical Committee and the Committee on Civil Society; and promotes the pursuit of U.S. policy interests within the context of hemispheric Summit mandates. In previous assignments within the Department of State, Ms. Roe engaged the Department of State in trilateral talks to develop a transboundary environmental impact agreement with Canada and Mexico; assessed environmental policy development and implementation by international financial institutions, international and regional organizations; promoted sustainable development cooperation; and monitored processes of democratic reform in countries in transition from authoritarian rule. Prior to her Foreign Service career, Ms. Roe was a legislative representative for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and a field representative for AFL-CIO. Ms. Roe has an MA in political science from Ohio State University, and speaks French, Spanish, and elementary Hungarian.
Michael Stanley-Jones serves as a Senior Researcher for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Prior to joining SVTC's Sustainable Water Program in 1996, Michael served for three years as a Lecturer for Civic Education Project, Inc., and taught Political Science and Environmental Policy at the School of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic. While in Europe Michael co-organized with the Danube Environmental Forum, a network of 51 nongovernmental and citizen-based organizations drawn from 10 nations which facilitated NGO participation in the Environmental Programme for the Danube River Basin. He also served as an Advisor to the Union for the Morava River, a Czech and Slovak river conservation organization, and represented upper Danube basin environmental interests in negotiations over the Danube River Basin Convention and Danube Strategic Action Plan before the intergovernmental Task Force of the Danube Environmental Programme. Currently, Michael acts as Co-Director of Interactive Health Ecology Access Links (IHEAL), an international service organization promoting electronic access and risk communication of health and environment information. In February 2000, Michael was appointed as an UN/ECE Expert Advisor to the Aarhus Convention Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTR) Task Force. He holds a BA in Government (1983) from San Jose State University and MA in Political Science (1992) from the Claremont Graduate School's Center for Politics and Policy.
Gerald (Jerry) L. Stokes is a recognized national conservation leader with 28 years of professional experience in natural resources and landscape conservation planning and policy. He has led a task force of managers, researcher and citizens in a collaborative 5-year planning process for the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in Montana. He provided interagency leadership on various efforts involving the US Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and the US Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, as well as with the US National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service's efforts to manage a 105 million acre National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). As the Forest Service's Chesapeake Bay Program liaison to the Environmental Protection Agency, the Soil Conservation Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Corps of Engineers, state agricultural, water quality and forestry agencies, and Congress, Dr. Stokes led efforts to address forestry-related non-point source pollution, wetlands management and protection, habitat protection and growth management. He is justifiably proud of his efforts to resolve recreation user and landowner conflicts through the development of a conservation and recreation management plan for a 32-mile reach of the most privately owned corridor of the Blackfoot River in Montana, resulting in over $2 million in donation of conservation easements to the Nature Conservancy. Dr. Stokes served four years on the Board of Trustees of the Town Creek Foundation and is a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)'s World Commission on Protected Areas. His international experience includes work in Southern Africa, Bangalore, India, and Western Europe.
Sarah J. Tisch, Ph.D., has had over 12 years of leadership and management experience in international rural development, with a focus on designing and leading activities that integrate gender and equity issues into technical projects, and foster women’s leadership and economic empowerment. Her proven success in collaborating with NGOs, local leaders, institutions, and donors has helped those stakeholders to transform their vision into funded projects with measurable results. She demonstrates an ability in leading multicultural and multidisciplinary teams in strategic program vision planning and development, creating sustainable programs with local control, and fostering new partnerships. Ms. Tisch has been with Winrock International since 1986, and has served as Director and Leader of Winrock’s Global Leadership and Human Development Program starting in 1996. In that capacity, she oversees a project portfolio of over $25 million of grants and contracts and staff/project offices/activities over 20 African countries, Russia and Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Nepal, and has brought in over $30 million of grants and contracts focusing on women’s leadership women’s NGO capacity building and networks, and applied distance education using information technology. She has worked in the Philippines, Ukraine, Russia, and Nepal, and has had short term assignments in China, Viet Nam, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, Kazakhstan, Angola, Kenya. Her many professional affiliations include: member of the Board of Project Kesher, Founding member, Women’s Edge, Founding member, Gender and Agricultural Research and Development Consortium, Elected member of the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission for Agriculture, a bilateral official US and Russian government organization that dispersed 20 million USD to Russian agribusiness projects on a competitive basis, and First President and founding member of the Association of American Implementers of International Aid in Russia (1995), a group of over 50 USAID-contractors and NGOs. She was an assistant professor in International Political Economy at Washington State University and a Visiting Lecturer at Hamilton State College in New York. Her PhD and Masters of Political Science are from State University of New York at Binghamton. She speaks fluent Russian, and basic Tagalog and Nepali.