Speaker biographies
Leon Aron is a resident scholar and director of Russian studies at AEI. He is the author of the first full-scale scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). Since 1998, he has written AEI’s Russian Outlook, a quarterly essay on economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition. He has contributed numerous essays and articles to newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Times (London), Newsday, The National Interest, Post-Soviet Affairs, and the Times Literary Supplement. A frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, he has commented on Russian affairs on 60 Minutes, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, CNN International, C-SPAN, and National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation.
Thomas Graham Jr. currently serves as special assistant to the president and senior director for Russian affairs. Beginning in June 2002, he served as director for Russian affairs. From August 2001 until May 2002, he served as the associate director of the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State. From 1998 until 2001, he was a senior associate in the Russia/Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mr. Graham served as a Foreign Service officer from 1984 until 1998. His assignments included two tours of duty at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he served as head of the political/internal unit and as an acting political counselor. Between tours in Moscow, he worked on Russian and Soviet affairs on the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
Fyodor Lukyanov is editor in chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, Russia’s most authoritative source on global development issues. Since the journal’s interception in 2002, Mr. Lukyanov has greatly contributed in making Russia in Global Affairs one of the most prominent foreign policy publications in Russia. He comments frequently in a number of media outlets, including the daily Kommersant, the Moscow Times, and the online Gazeta.ru. He has also worked as a correspondent and editor for the Voice of Russia radio station and Russia’s Channel 3 television station, as well as a commentator for Segodnya, Moskovskie Novosti, Vremya MN, and Vremya Novostei newspapers. In addition, Mr. Lukyanov is a member of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, an influential independent organization providing foreign policy expertise.
Mikhail Margelov is chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Council of Federation, Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, and vice president of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe. Mr. Margelov has a wide range of foreign policy and media experience at the highest levels of the Russian government. In December 2000, he was elected to represent the Pskov region in the Council of Federation, in which he joined the committee for foreign affairs and was subsequently elected chairman in 2001. From January until March 2000, Mr. Margelov served as a consultant to President Vladimir Putin’s electoral headquarters, during which time he was in charge of contacts with foreign media. In 1996, Mr. Margelov worked for President Boris Yeltsin’s reelection campaign headquarters as chief coordinator for advertising, and subsequently served in the public relations department of the administration.
Angela Stent is professor of government and director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University. In January 2004, she was appointed national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council. From 1999 to 2001, she served on the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on Soviet and Russian foreign policy, U.S.-Russian relations, and East-West economic ties, including From Embargo to Ostpolitik: The Political Economy of West-German Soviet Relations, 1955–1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1981) and Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse, and the New Europe (Princeton University Press, 1999). Both books also were published in German. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies and Internationale Politik. She also has served on the boards of the U.S.-Russia Business Forum and Women in International Security. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Elizabeth Stewart is foreign policy advisor for Senator Gordon H. Smith (R-OR). Before joining Senator Smith in 2004, Ms. Stewart spent six years--(from 1995 until 2001)--on the staff of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. From 2001 to 2003, Ms. Stewart was a Transatlantic Fellow for the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Dmitri Trenin is deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment, and co-chair of the Moscow Center’s Foreign and Security Policy Program. From1993–97, Mr. Trenin held posts as a senior research Fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome and as a senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe in Moscow. He served in the Soviet and Russian armed forces from 1972 –93, including experience working as a liaison officer in the External Relations Branch of the Group of Soviet Forces (stationed in Potsdam) and as a staff member of the delegation to the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms talks in Geneva from 1985–91. He also taught at the Military Institute in Moscow from 1986–93.
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