November 9, 2004

Speaker Biographies

Zeyno Baran is director of international security and energy programs at the Nixon Center. Before joining the Nixon Center in January 2003, Ms. Baran directed the Caucasus Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In 2001 she was selected as a member of a Greek-Turkish working group striving to improve bilateral relations. In 1998, Ms. Baran established the Georgia Forum at CSIS. She has also worked on Caspian oil and gas pipeline projects since 1996 and frequently travels to the region.

Jonathan Davidson is the senior adviser for political and academic affairs at the European Commission Delegation to the United States. From 1981 to 1991, Mr. Davidson was the director of the University of South Carolina's Washington office. From 1963 to 1981, he served in the British Diplomatic Service in England, India, Thailand, Senegal, and the United States. At the British Embassy in Washington, he was responsible for congressional liaison and U.S. political relations (from 1975 to 1979) and was head of information and press relations (from 1979 to 1981).  

Helga Flores Trejo, who was born and raised in Mexico, has been a German citizen since 1997. Since 2003 she has served as the director of the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s operations in North America.  Ms. Flores Trejo previously served as senior program officer at the Organization for Security and Cooperation Mission in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. There she worked on issues related to parliamentary control of the security and defense forces. She served for three years as the senior adviser on European Policy for the State Government of Hamburg and represented the state at the German Bundesrat's Committee on European Affairs. Before that, she was an adviser on foreign policy and development issues at the German Bundestag. 

Joost Lagendijk has been a member of the European Parliament for the Dutch Green-Left Party since 1998. As chairman of the Parliament's Turkey Delegation, he has played an important role in advocating Turkey's EU membership. Mr. Lagendijk is the Greens’ spokesman in the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, and he is considered to be the Party's authority in the field of conflict prevention and the reconstruction of the Balkans. Before being elected to the European Parliament, Mr. Lagendijk was the Green Party's campaign manager in the Netherlands. From 1994 to 1997, he was a publisher at the publishing house Babylon-De Geus in Amsterdam, and from 1988 to 1994, he was a publisher at the TMW company in Haarlem.

Radek Sikorski is the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative and resident fellow at AEI. He was Poland’s deputy minister for foreign affairs from 1998 to 2001. As the country’s deputy minister for defense in the first democratically elected government after the fall of Communism, he spearheaded Poland’s drive to join NATO. From 1986 to 1989, Mr. Sikorski was a war correspondent to Afghanistan and Angola, contributing to the Spectator (London) and National Review. He is the author of Dust of the Saints: A Journey to Herat in Time of War (1989) and The Polish House: An Intimate History of Poland (1997). His photograph from Afghanistan received the World Press Photo award in 1988. From 1981 to 1989, Mr. Sikorski was a political refugee in the United Kingdom.

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