Board Of Directors

Independent Diplomat mourns the loss of A. Whitney Ellsworth, chairman, treasurer and great friend. Whitney’s enormous support, wisdom and heart have made ID what it is today, and we are eternally grateful.

 

Independent Diplomat is a 501(c)3 non-profit organisation supervised by the following board: 

Avis Bohlen

Adjunct professor at Georgetown University; former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control; former US Ambassador to Bulgaria; former Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Paris; former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs; chair of the board of directors for International Research & Exchange Board (IREX) and member of the board of the American Academy of Diplomacy. 

A. Whitney Ellsworth (Chair), In Memoriam 1936-2011

Publishing consultant; former publisher of The New York Review of Books; former board member and chairman of Amnesty International USA; former member and vice-chairman of AI International Executive Committee; board member and secretary of Human Rights First and board member The Andrei Sakharov Foundation (USA).

Stefanie Grant

Visiting research fellow at the University of Sussex; human rights lawyer and consultant; former director of research at Amnesty International and former Head of Research and Development Branch of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Lukas Haynes (Acting Chair)

Vice president of Mertz Gilmore Foundation; former acting director of international peace and security and the NY office of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; former fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government; former policy planning staff for U.S. Department of State as speechwriter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Alice Henkin

Head of The Aspen Institute's Justice & Society Program; former chair of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York's Committee on International Human Rights; member of the Council on Foreign Relations; former board member of Human Rights Watch; Vice chair of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch and member of the Children's Rights and Africa division advisory committees; board member of Realizing Rights. 

Parag Khanna

Director of the Global Governance Initiative and senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation; author of How to Run the World:  Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance and The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order; former senior geopolitical advisor to United States Special Operations Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; former Global Governance Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Jan Krukowski

President of Jan Krukowski & Company; trustee of the Teacher’s College at Columbia University; trustee of the American Symphony Orchestra; trustee of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and board member of the Film Forum.

Jennifer Lake (Secretary)

Legal advisor, Independent Diplomat; formerly on the legal staff of the United Nations, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization and the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal; former counsel to New Zealand in the Rainbow Warrior Arbitration and former head of the division of the New Zealand Crown Law Office responsible for both international law and Treaty of Waitangi issues.

Victor Navasky

Publisher emeritus and former editor of The Nation; director of the Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University; author of Kennedy Justice, Naming Names and A Matter of Opinion; co-author with Christopher Cerf of The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation and board member of the Authors Guild, PEN and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Scott Ogur (Treasurer)

CFO of Algorithmic Trading Management and interim CFO of Drybar Holdings; former CFO and Chief Investment Officer of Scimitar, a private venture capital firm investing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Romania, Switzerland, and the U.A.E.; former portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan Private Bank; former auditor and accountant at Price Waterhouse, Chemical Bank and J.P. Morgan.

David Rieff

Writer and policy analyst; author of nonfiction books including Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir, At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West and The Exile: Cuba in the Heart of Miami and editor of Reborn: Journals & Notebooks, 1947-1963 and Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know.

 

Trustees

Independent Diplomat is also a UK charitable company whose trustees include Stefanie Grant, Edward Mortimer, Carne Ross and Gardner Thompson.