Speaker biographies

October 6, 2005

Dieter Dettke has been the executive director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s Washington, D.C. office since 1985. Dr. Dettke was a research associate at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Bonn and served as the political counselor of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Parliamentary Group of the German Bundestag from 1974 to 1984. He also served as a staff director at the Office of the State Minister of the German Foreign Ministry in 1982. He is a foreign policy and security specialist, has published widely on these issues, and is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program.

Helga Flores-Trejo is the director of the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s operations in North America. She is an expert on foreign policy, development issues, and EU affairs. Ms. Flores Trejo previously served as senior program officer at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in charge of the Parliamentary Support Program. There she worked on issues related to parliamentary control of the security and defense forces. She served for three years as a senior advisor on European policy for the State Government of Hamburg and represented the state at the German Bundesrat’s Committee on European Affairs. Prior to that, she was an advisor on foreign policy and development issues at the German Bundestag.

Ulf Gartzke has been the director of the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation’s Washington, D.C. office since July 2004. Before joining the Hanns-Seidel-Foundation, Mr. Gartzke worked at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was in charge of the forum’s engagement with the global automotive industry. Previously, he gained professional experience with DaimlerChrysler’s Washington Affairs Office, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the World Bank in Paris, and the Christian Social Union (CSU) Party in Munich. Mr. Gartzke is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), and the Tönissteiner Kreis.

Claus Gramckow was appointed acting representative of the Transatlantic Dialogue Program of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Washington, D.C., in February of 2004.   He is also president of his own firm, the Hanseatic Institute Inc., a consulting and public affairs company in Arlington, Virginia, which he organized in January of 1999.  Prior to starting his own business, Mr. Gramckow worked as program director at the transatlantic dialogue program of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Washington from 1990 to 1999.  He has also been the representative for the German-American Council of State Legislators Partnership of Parliaments, along with the Initiative Berlin-USA in the United States.  Mr. Gramckow earned a German Marshall Fund Congressional Fellowship from the American Political Science Association in 1986, and worked for three years as a legislative assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

Radek Sikorski is the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative and a 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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