You are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

MercurysBall2 ago

German Marshall Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Marshall_Fund

The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is a nonpartisan American public policy think tank and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting cooperation and understanding between North America and Europe.

Founded in 1972 through a gift from the West German government on the 25th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, GMF contributes research and analysis on transatlantic and global issues; convenes policy and business leaders at international conferences; provides exchange opportunities for emerging American and European leaders; and supports initiatives to strengthen democracies.[1] GMF focuses on policy, leadership, and civil society

The president of GMF is Karen Donfried, who joined in April 2014. Donfried was previously special assistant to President Barack Obama. Past presidents of GMF include Benjamin H. Read (1973–1977), Robert Gerald Livingston (1977–1981), Frank E. Loy (1981–1995), and Craig Kennedy (1996–2014)

GMF was founded as a permanent memorial to Marshall Plan assistance through a grant from the West German government. It was founded by Guido Goldman, who was the director of Harvard's West European Studies program in the early 1970s. Goldman, an American whose family had fled Germany in 1940, lobbied the West German government, particularly Finance Minister Alex Möller for an endowment to promote European and U.S. relations on the 25th anniversary of Marshall Plan aid.[4] Working with a planning group that was to constitute the Fund's initial Board of Trustees - including physicist Harvey Brooks, diplomat Robert Ellsworth, journalist Max Franke, economist Richard N. Cooper, and educator Howard Swearer - Goldman eventually received an agreement to support an independent institution in 1971

Other charter members of the Board of Trustees included economist Carl Kaysen, judge Arlin M. Adams, and businessman Donald M. Kendall. The first president, selected in 1973, was Benjamin H. Read, who was later to become U.S. Under Secretary of State for Management

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, GMF was among the first U.S. organizations to establish a presence in what had been East Berlin, in 1990. It moved its Bonn operations to Berlin in 1992. In 2006, GMF acquired its current headquarters in Washington, DC, a building that until 1963 had housed the West German chancery, and that had hosted such figures as John F. Kennedy, Konrad Adenauer, Lyndon B. Johnson, and George C. Marshall. German Chancellor Angela Merkel dedicated the new building.

Speakers at GMF events have included John Kerry, Robert Gates, Madeleine Albright, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Catherine Ashton, Condoleezza Rice, Wolfgang Schauble, Gordon Brown, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, among many other European and U.S. heads of state and government, cabinet ministers, and legislators.

Stockholm China Forum is a bi-annual, trilateral conversation between European, U.S. and Chinese officials, academics, business leaders and other influencers. The forum has run since 2007, when it was established to create an informal, off-the-record space to foster transatlantic cooperation on China policy, and trilateral cooperation on areas of agreement and mutual interest.

https://www.gmfus.org/transatlantic-leadership-initiatives/young-transatlantic-network-future-leaders