Speaker Biographies
Natalia Bourjaily is the vice president for the Newly Independent States (NIS) at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). ICNL promotes the legal framework for the freedom of association and civil society worldwide. ICNL has worked on projects in over ninety countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and other regions. Ms. Bourjaily has provided technical assistance on the NGO legal framework in all countries of the NIS, has written extensively on NGO legal matters, and is widely regarded as the leading international expert on NGO law in the NIS.
Maureen Greenwood is the advocacy director for Europe and Eurasia in the Washington, D.C., office of Amnesty International USA. She currently manages advocacy campaigns for Amnesty International USA on Europe and Eurasia and on worldwide issues such as human trafficking and global corporate social responsibility. She has testified in Congress on central Asia, Kosovo, Turkey, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, and human trafficking. She received a United Nations human rights award in 2002. Ms. Greenwood has been traveling to the former Soviet Union since 1986. She previously worked in Moscow from 1993–95 as the U.S. representative in the Union of Councils’ Russian-American Bureau on Human Rights. From 1996–97, she served as the director for research and advocacy for the Union of Councils, where she researched and edited the 250-page report, Anti-Semitism in the Former Soviet Union, 1995–1997.
Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the editor of The National Interest and a senior fellow in strategic studies at the Nixon Center. Dr. Gvosdev is a frequent commentator on U.S.-Russian relations, Russian and Eurasian affairs, general aspects of U.S. foreign policy, and developments in the Middle East. He is the author or editor of six books, including The Receding Shadow of the Prophet: The Rise and Fall of Radical Political Islam and the edited volume Russia in the National Interest. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. Prior to coming to Washington, he was an assistant professor and associate director of the J.M. Dawson Institute at Baylor University, where he taught courses on church-state relations and political science.
Andrew Kuchins is a senior associate in the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously, Kuchins was director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Kuchins researches and writes widely on Russian foreign and security policy. He is a member of the governing council of the Program on Basic Research and Higher Education in Russia, the advisory committee of Washington Profile, and the editorial board of the journal Demokratizatsiya. Before coming to the Endowment, Kuchins served from 1997 to 2000 as associate director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. From 1993 to 1997, he was a senior program officer at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, where he developed and managed a grant-making program to support scientists and researchers in the former Soviet Union. From 1989 to 1993, he was executive director of the Berkeley-Stanford Program on Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies.
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