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Roundtable VIII: Speaker Bios

Anders Åslund

Anders Åslund is presently a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics. Dr. Aslund has long engaged in monitoring the transformation of formerly socialist economies to market-based economies. While the central areas of his studies are Russia and Ukraine, he also focuses on the broader implications of economic transition. Prior to his tenure at the Institute, Dr. Åslund was Director of the Russian and Eurasian Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. He served as an economic advisor to the Russian government from 1991 to 1994 and as an economic advisor to the Ukrainian government from 1994 to 1997.

Ilan Berman

Ilan Berman is Vice President for Policy at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC. An expert on international terrorism and regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Russian Federation, Mr. Berman’s writings have appeared in such publications as the WSJ Europe, Middle East Quarterly, the Washington Times, the Jerusalem Post and the Journal of International Security Affairs and Strategic Review.

Robert Bensh

Robert Bensh is President and CEO of Cardinal Resources; he joined the firm in February 2004. From 2000 until 2004, he was Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of Carpatsky Petroleum Inc. In the late 1990s, Mr. Bensh held various senior corporate positions in several US and UK energy companies; in the early 1990s, he was employed by the US Department of Defense and the US Department of Justice.

Joseph Biden

Joseph Biden is United States Senator from the State of Delaware. In that capacity, he also serves as the Chairman of the Senate's powerful Foreign Relations Committee.

Oleksandr Biletsky

Oleksandr Biletsky is the President of European Movement in Ukraine, the NGO most responsible for promoting the notion of eventual EU membership for Ukraine.

Peter Borisow

Peter Borisow is the President of Media Finance Management, a consulting firm which specializes in informing Hollywood about the financial viability of the films it produces. Concurrently, he is the President of Hollywood Trident Foundation, which specializes in attempting to give Ukrainians greater visibility globally in the field of media and entertainment.

Ellen Bos

Ellen Bos is Professor of Political Science at Andrassy University in Budapest, Hungary. Dr. Bos brings great expertise to the subject of the transitional democracies in Eastern Europe.

Audrius Bruzga

Audrius Bruzga became Ambassador of Lithuania to the United States on Feb. 26, 2007. Ambassador Bruzga previously served as the Lithuanian envoy to Finland (2002-07), director of the First Bilateral Relations Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1999-2002) and head of the ministry’s West European Division (1998-99).

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski is a Counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Professor of American Foreign Policy, Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, D.C. From 1977 to 1981, Dr. Brzezinski served as National Security Advisor to the President of the United States.

Krzysztof Bobinski

Krzysztof Bobinski works at the Unia & Polska Foundation – a pro-European NGO in Warsaw; he is the Founder of EU-Polska. He was, for several years, the Financial Times' correspondent in Warsaw.

Jan Bugajski

Jan Bugajski is Director of the Eastern European Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The project is engaged in an ongoing analysis of broader political trends encompassing twenty states and aspiring states in Eastern Europe, including the political and security impact of NATO and European Union enlargement.

Igor Chapulec

Igor Chalupec is the former president of PKN-Orlen, Poland's largest energy provider. January 2006 saw him became the most popular media figure of all presidents representing Poland’s biggest enterprises, regaining, after a two mouth break, the leadership in the “Bosses of the Polish Economy” ranking compiled by the Institute of Media Monitoring.

Ariel Cohen

Ariel Cohen is a well-known international expert on Ukrainian, Russian, Eurasian, European and Middle Eastern foreign, security and economic affairs; U.S. and global energy security; terrorism; organized crime and corruption, and other political risk factors. Dr. Cohen is Senior Research Fellow in Russian and Eurasian Studies and International Energy Security at the Davis International Studies Institute at the Heritage Foundation, working closely with Congressmen and Congressional staff members and cabinet-level foreign decision makers. He has over 20 years experience and responsibility in research project management, government relations/political public relations, journalistic writing, and broadcasting.

William H. Courtney

William H. Courtney is Senior Vice President of CSC/DynMeridian Corp. From 1998 to 2000, he served as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. In 1997-98, Ambassador Courtney was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of the NSC staff for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. Previously, he served as Ambassador to Georgia and Kazakhstan.

Keith Crane

Keith Crane is currently Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation. Dr. Crane is one of America’s most prolific authors on the subject of “nation building”, concentrating particularly on issues pertaining to social and economic spheres of activity.

João de Vallera

João de Vallera is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Portugal to the United States. Ambassador de Vallera has served at the Permanent Mission to the European Communities in Brussels, as Director General of European Affairs, as a delegate to the Convention on the Future of Europe, and as envoy to Dublin, Berlin and now Washington. His tenure in DC propels him into an international focus, since Portugal inherited the EU presidency from Germany in July, 2007.

Orest Deychakiwsky

Orest Deychakiwsky is senior staff advisor at the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Commission) whose country responsibilities currently include Ukraine, Belarus and Bulgaria. He has served as a member of U.S. delegations to numerous OSCE/CSCE meetings and as an international election observer in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Bosnia. Mr. Deychakiwsky has authored or co-authored a sizable number of speeches, statements, resolutions, and articles on issues pertaining to Ukraine or U.S.-Ukrainian relations.

Thomas A. Dine

Thomas A. Dine is the Senior Director at the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation in charge of its U.S.-Ukraine Program to Consolidate and Expand Democracy at the Local and National Levels. Most recently, Mr. Dine was Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Previously he was President of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague, a position he held for eight years. From 1993 to 1997, he served as the Assistant Administrator of Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Dine was Executive Director of AIPAC from 1980 to 1993.

Volodymyr Dubovyk

Volodymyr Dubovyk is Associate Professor and Assistant Chairperson at the Department of International Relations, Institute of Social Sciences, Odessa National University as well as Senior Research Fellow and Director at the Center for International Studies, ONU. He spent 2006 in the United States as a Fulbright Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s Kennan Institute.

Robert Fielding

Robert Fielding is the Program Director of the Ukrainian Program run by the American Center for International Labor So
lidarity, AFL-CIO. Mr. Fielding brings more than two decades of experience to issues facing workingmen in Eastern Europe.

Bohdan Futey

Bohdan Futey has served as Judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims since 1987. Judge Futey is actively involved with Democratization and Rule of Law programs organized by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the Department of State and the American Bar Association in Ukraine and Russia.

Michael Gahler

Michael Gahler is Vice-Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. He has served in the European Parliament since 1999, as a member of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats Group.

Alcee L. Hastings

Alcee L. Hastings is a US Representative from the State of Florida as well as the Co-Chair of the United States Helsinki Commission. The US Helsinki Commission, in its monitoring capacity, has been vital to the emergence of vibrant democratic politics and a strong civil society in Ukraine.

Kostyantyn Hryshchenko

Kostyantyn Hryshchenko is currently the Vice Chairman of the Republican Party of Ukraine and Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to PM Yanukovich. From 2000-2003, he served as Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States. In the 2003-2004 period, Ambassador Hryshchenko held the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. Earlier in a his diplomatic career, he served as Ambassador of Ukraine to the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and as the Head of the Ukrainian Mission to NATO.

Rastislav Kacer

Rastislav Kacer is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Slovak Republic to the United States. Ambassador Kacer arrived to Washington, DC from his post of State Secretary (Deputy Minister) of Defense of the Slovak Republic, which he had held from February 2001. Before, he was the Director General of the Division of International Organizations and Security Policy at the Slovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His main task at the Ministry of Defense was Slovakia’s accession process to NATO, which is being successfully concluded after Slovakia’s invitation to join the Alliance at the Prague Summit in the fall of the year 2003.

Yevhen Kaminsky

Yevhen Kaminsky is the Head of the Trans-Atlantic Research Department at the Institute of World Economy, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Dr. Kaminsky has been a member of NASU since 1985.

Adrian Karatnycky

Adrian Karatnycky, Founder and President of the Orange Circle, served for over a decade as Executive Director and President of Freedom House, a leading U.S-based non-governmental organization that monitors and promotes democratic change. At Freedom House, Mr. Karatnycky presided over major analytic research projects like the Survey of Freedom in the World and the Nations in Transit annual reports, and devised assistance programs to democratic civic groups and think tanks in Central and Eastern Europe, opening the Freedom House Kyiv office in 1993. He is co-author of three books and a contributor to such publications as the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and the International Herald Tribune.

Frederick Kempe

Frederick Kempe assumed the position of Atlantic Council President and Chief Executive Officer on December 1, 2006. Mr. Kempe came to the Council from the Wall Street Journal, where he had won national and international prizes while serving in numerous management and reportorial capacities—editor, associate publisher, columnist and correspondent. He is the author of three books, a Bloomberg News columnist and a regular commentator on television and radio both in Europe and the United States.

Volodymyr Kosterin

Volodymyr Kosterin currently occupies the position of Chairman of the Green Party of Ukraine. Concurrently, he is deeply involved in philanthropic work and, in particular, with the Ukraine 3000 Fund.

David Kramer

David Kramer is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs of the U.S. State Department. In his current post, Mr. Kramer oversees policies affecting Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, as well as regional nonproliferation issues. Before joining the Government, he was a Senior Fellow at the Project for the New American Century, Associate Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Assistant Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, all in Washington.

Taras Kuzio

Taras Kuzio is President of Kuzio Associates, an independent consultancy and government communications company based in Washington DC and Kyiv; concurrently, he is a Research Associate at the Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University. Dr. Kuzio has prepared papers, given talks, and participated in the preparation of reports to numerous U.S. government agencies, including the United States Department of State, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the U.S. Institute for Peace.

F. Stephen Larrabee

F. Stephen Larrabee is a Senior Staff member at RAND in Washington, D.C. and holds the RAND Corporate Chair in European Security. From 1978-1981, Dr. Larrabee served on the U.S. National Security Council staff in the White House as a specialist on Soviet-East European affairs and East-West political-military relations.

Nico Lange

Nico Lange is the Director of the Ukraine Programme and Kyiv Office of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Mr. Lange has proven to be a critical force behind many of the recent forums dedicated to studying Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic Future.