Board:
President Martti Ahtisaari
Chairman of the Board - Mr. Ahtisaari was elected President of the Republic of Finland in February 1994. He held office from the 1st of March 1994 to the 29th of February 2000.
Upon leaving office, Mr. Ahtisaari took on the Co-Chairmanship of the New York-based EastWest Institute and the Chairmanship of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. He is a member of the joint advisors' group for the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundations, which operates in various countries. He also serves as Chairman of the Balkan Youth and Children Foundation and Global Commission of the International Youth Foundation, as well as of the international board of the War-Torn Societies Project. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA).
Other post-presidential activities have included inspection of the IRA's arms' dumps with fellow inspector Cyril Ramaphosa, and the drafting of a report on the human rights and political situation in Austria as a member of a group of "three wise men".
In Finland, President Ahtisaari is active on the corporate governing boards of Elcoteq Networks and UPM-Kymmene. In addition, he is an honorary chairman of the Pro Baltica Forum, an honorary chairman of the International Committee of Vyborg Library, a member of the board of trustees of Inter Press Service International Association, a member of the board of Naantali Music Festival, and a member of the steering committee of the Northern Research Forum.
Tatiana Stoyanova Kalkanova, PhD
Dr. Kalkanova is a Member of the Bulgarian Parliament. In addition, she is a member of the Parliamentarian Commission of Education and Science, as well as the Parliamentarian Commission of Civil Society Affairs. Previously, Dr. Kalkanova taught Bulgarian Language and Literature at the American College of Sofia and was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Senior Scholar at Boston College in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Vladimir Milcin
Mr. Milcin is Executive Director of the Open Society Institute in Macedonia and Founder of two alternative theatres in Skopje: Theatre at St. Nikita the Naked (1970) and Theatre Workshop FF (1980). In the period before the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Vladimir Milcin directed theatre productions in Serbian/Croatian, Albanian, Turkish and Hungarian languages in all the former Yugoslav republics, with the exception of Slovenia.Vladimir was the Dean of the Faculty of Drama Arts in Skopje 1983 - 1987 and 1989 - 1993. He is one of the founders of the Association of Yugoslav Democratic Initiative, UJDI (1987) and one of the founders of the Helsinki Citizen Assembly in Macedonia (1992).
Since 1991, Vladimir Milcin participated as speaker in a number of international conferences, seminars and workshops on political topics and cultural issues, organized by: University of Kent, Summer University Amsterdam, University of New York City, European Cultural Foundation, Marcel Hucter Foundation, Carter Center - Atlanta, Carnegie Endowment, Helsinki Citizen Assembly, Transeuropéennes, Swedish Committee for Human Rights, Macedonian Human Rights Committee in Australia, Ohrid Summer Schools etc.
Branka Minic
Branka Minic is Director of Workforce Development at Manpower, Inc. A world leader in the employment services industry, Manpower specializes in permanent, temporary, and contract recruitment; training; career transition; and organizational consulting services. Headquartered in the U.S., the company’s network spans 4,300 offices in 67 countries and territories. In her role, Ms. Minic has helped to develop and implement Manpower’s highly regarded TechReach program, a comprehensive effort to enable un- and under-employed workers to assume career-path technical and professional positions. She holds an MSEE degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, and MSCS degree in Computer Science from the University of Miami.
Dimitry Panitza
Mr. Panitza is Chairman of the Free and Democratic Bulgaria Foundation. After a brief spell working as a bank clerk in Paris, he moved to the US and in 1952 joined the Reader's Digest Editorial department. Over the years he moved through the magazine's hierarchy, and retired from Reader's Digest in 1994, as the magazine's Managing Editor. Under his stewardship, Reader's Digest expanded its foreign language editions to Russian, Hungarian, Czech and Polish.
In 1991, Mr. Panitza and his wife Yvonne decided to set up the Free and Democratic Bulgaria Foundation (FDBF), in Sofia, whose purpose is to facilitate the process of democratisation of Bulgarian society through: pluralism, free press, free markets, tolerance, educated youth, open dialogue. Its activities comprise: Street Children Programmes (including a recently established Youth Day Care Centre for young people aged 16 and over), Outward Bound Programmes, and Civil Society Programmes.
Erion Veliaj
Mr. Veliaj is Executive Director of Balkans YouthLink, a youth-led NGO working to promote peace and build mutual trust among all nationalities in the Balkan. He is currently directing the MJAFT! (ENOUGH!) Campaign, Albania’s largest awareness campaign on the country’s most endemic problems. In the past, he has worked for several humanitarian, democratization, and civil society-building organizations in the Balkans, Central and Latin America, and Africa.
Maria Livanos Cattaui
Maria Livanos Cattaui became the Secretary General of ICC in July 1996. Her immediate task was to raise the public profile of ICC as the world business organization and make it a more vigorous advocate of business in dealings with international organizations and governments. She works regularly with the World Bank, speaking often at many of their international seminars and in 1998, convened the Geneva Business Dialogue - a conference designed to build cooperation between business and governments in meeting the challenges of globalization. Held against a background of global financial and economic turmoil, the conference attracted extensive media coverage. She holds board and advisory board memberships on the Institute of International Education (New
York), the International Youth Foundation (Baltimore), the International Crisis Group (Brussels), the Council of Women World Leaders (Kennedy School/Harvard), the Center for Strategic & International Studies (Washington), the EastWest Institute (New York), the Elliott School of International Affairs (George ashington University), the Schulich School of Business, York
University (Toronto) and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Pavol Demes
Pavol Demes has been the Director for Central and Eastern Europe of the German Marshall Fund of the United States since January 2000, and is based in Bratislava, Slovakia. Previously he served as the Executive Director of the Slovak Academic Information Agency-Service Center for the Third Sector, a leading NGO in the country. He also served as Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the Slovak Republic (1993-97), and from 1991-92 he was the Slovak Minister of International Relations. An internationally recognized NGO leader, Demes served as the elected spokesperson of the Gremium of the Third Sector, a volunteer advocacy coalition, and has served on the boards of national and international associations and foundations (including the Children of Slovakia Foundation). In 1999 he was awarded a six-month public policy research fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. Prior to the "Velvet Revolution" in November 1989, Demes was a bio-medical researcher at Comenius University in Bratislava. He is a graduate of Charles University in Prague (1980).
He received the EU-US Democracy and Civil Society Award (in 1998 by President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, and President of the European Commission Santer), the USAID Democracy and Governance Award (1999), the Democracy and Civil Society Award by Serbian NGOs (2000), Award from the Ukrainian Civic Campaign PORA ( 2005), Royal Dutch decoration Knight of the Order of Orange Nassau (2005), Yugoslav Star of First Class (2005, by the President of Serbia and Monte Negro).
Sandi Cesko
Sandi Cesko is President and CEO of Studio Moderna and he is recognized as a leading authority in the International Direct Marketing industry in Central and Eastern Europe. As the co-founder of the first Slovenian computer company, ORIA and direct marketing company Studio Moderna, Sandi ranks amongst the most successful business entrepreneurs in Slovenia. He was instrumental in advising many new Slovenian companies who now hold prominent positions in Slovenia and the international market place.
He was member of the Board of Directors for numerous companies, among them, President of the Supervisory Board for the Fund for Privatization, set up to aid the transition process to a market economy. Currently he is a Vice president of the Supervisory Board of Telekom Slovenia and member of the Supervisory Board of the Slovenian Investment Bank (SIB). Due to his exceptional organizational and leadership skills, but moreover, his outstanding talents as a negotiator and debater, he was elected directly to the Senate. Sandi Cesko brings a lot of valuable insight into the process of expanding into new markets.
Olga Israel
Olga Israel just completed her mandate as chairperson of the European Union of Jewish Students, umbrella organization for 34 national unions of Jewish students across the continent. She was born in 1979 in Belgrade, Serbia. Olga graduated from the Universities of Belgrade and Munich with degrees in banking, insurance and finance. Olga was awarded a Fellowship with the Ford Motor Company that enabled her to study as a "Community Leader" at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University in New York, USA.
In 2007 Olga was awarded the International Leadership Prize by the American Jewish Committee. She appeared as a key note speaker at various conferences (e.g. the Annual General Meeting of the American Jewish Committee in May 2006 in Washington DC, the Legacy Heritage Fellows International Leadership Conference in March 2005 in Prague, the Edmond and Benjamin de Rothschild Foundations leadership conference on social entrepreneurship in May 2007 in Paris, etc.). She also contributed with various articles and publications, one of them being the Vatican’s forthcoming publication on Socialization, education and youth. Olga speaks Serbian, English, German, Hebrew and Russian.
