Who's Who at CSI [ Board of Advisors | Board of Directors | Principal Staff ]

Board of Advisors

Greg Cole founded the Center for International Networking Initiatives at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. Together with Natasha Bulashova of Pushchino State University in Russia, he created the highly acclaimed Friends and Partners Web site.

Gulmira Dzhamanova is executive director of the Central Asian Sustainable Development Information Network in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Herbert J. Ellison is a historian of Russia and 20th century communism at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. In 1994 he completed a four-part television series, aired on PBS, titled Messengers from Moscow. In 2000 he created a PBS documentary on the Yeltsin years.  Dr. Ellison has served as chairman of the board of directors of IREX, the nation's leading scholarly exchange program with the former Soviet bloc, and also headed the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.  

Catherine A. Fitzpatrick is executive director of the International League for Human Rights. She previously worked for the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York City, and for Helsinki Watch (now Human Rights Watch/Helsinki), where she headed research on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Ms. Fitzpatrick is the translator of the works of a number of major political figures in Russia, including Yeltsin, Shevardnadze and Yakovlev. Her most recently translated publications (Fall 1995) are The Solzhenitsyn Files (Edition Q) and Zhirinovsky: The Paradoxes of Russian Fascism (Addison-Wesley and Viking).

Francis Fukuyama is a professor of public policy and director of the International Commerce and Policy Program at George Mason University.  A former deputy director of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, Professor Fukuyama's books include The End of History and the Last Man (1993), Trust: The Social virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (1996), and The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (2000).

Dennis McConnell formerly taught finance at the University of Maine Business School. He has completed more than 25 working visits to Eastern Europe and Eurasia--lecturing on finance and entrepreneurship, assisting in the development of new business schools, and consulting on privatization. His service as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Sofia in 1992 stimulated Dr. McConnell's interest in faculty and curriculum development and lead to his creation of the CEEMAN-L mailing list, which provides academic information/links to faculty/administrators in Business Schools/Economics departments throughout the region.

Michael A. McFaul is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, and author and editor of several monographs, including Russia�s 1996 Presidential Election, The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy; and Privatization, Conversion and Enterprise Reform in Russia. His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, New York Times, and Washington Post.

S. Frederick Starr is chairman of the Central Asia--Caucasus Institute at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. He served 11 years as president of Oberlin College and before that was founding director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, DC. A historian, Dr. Starr has written 18 books on Russian and Eurasian history, politics and culture.

Sharon Tennison founded the Center for Citizen Initiatives, based in San Francisco. A leading figure in the "citizen diplomacy" movement of the 1980s, Ms. Tennison and her organization took thousands of Americans to the former USSR as "personal ambassadors." With six offices in Russia, CCI employs 87 full-time staff (65 in Russia) and operates six multi-year programs in the Eurasia which are targeted at private sector development and democratization.

Andrei and Elena Topolev are co-founders and directors of Agentsvo Sotsialnoi Informatsii (Agency for Social Information) in Moscow. ASI is the only professional news agency which reports on the activities of Russia's third sector. ASI is a non-commercial, non-governmental organization founded by the charitable funds 'Soul of Man,' 'No to Alcoholism and Drug Addiction,' and the pedagogical association 'Rainbow.' The agency also provides consulting services to NGOs, organizing press conferences and media campaigns. It has regional affiliates in Saint Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Ekaterinburg.

Board of Directors

Ronald S. Bemis is a retired partner and shareholder at Stafford Frey Cooper, a Northwest regional law firm founded in 1905 and based in Seattle. His major area of emphasis was civil litigation.

 

Richard Greene created and manages StudyUSA.com, a Web site for international students seeking information about universities and colleges in the USA. Previously Mr. Greene worked as a product planner at Microsoft Corporation. From 1989-91, he coordinated the Memorial Database Project for the archives of Russia�s Memorial Society. Before that, Mr. Greene worked as a human-rights case worker and computer manager at the Second World Center in Amsterdam.

 

Vladimir Raskin is Project Manager/New Markets at AT&T Fixed Wireless in Redmond, WA. A graduate of the Moscow Transport University in 1982, he worked there as a researcher and assistant professor until1992. He received his Ph.D. from MTU in 1990. From 1992 to 1996, Mr. Raskin was deputy director, Moscow Center for Human Rights (now the Russian Center for Human Rights). From 1996 to 2000 he was a research associate he was a research associate at the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington.

 

Daniel C. Waugh teaches in both the history department and the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, whose program in Russian, East European and Central Asian studies he directed between 1991 and 1996. A specialist in medieval Russian history, Dr. Waugh is currently extending his teaching and research into the history of Central Asia. He is also an avid mountain climber and has led or participated in expeditions to Mt. Elbrus, the Karakoram, and other locations in Central Asia. 

Principal Staff

Holt Ruffin, executive director and founder of Civil Society International, is a graduate of Stanford University (BA, 1966) and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University (MPA, 1975). Mr. Ruffin�s work experience includes six years in the Economics/Policy Research Department of Bank of America and in the International Division of Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco. Articles by Mr. Ruffin have appeared in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Freedom Review, Money Manager, Crisis, and other publications. Most recently, he was lead author of The Post-Soviet Handbook: A Guide to Grassroots Organizations and Internet Resources, Revised Edition (University of Washington Press, 1999); co-editor with Daniel Waugh of Civil Society in Central Asia (Center for Civil Society International and University of Washington Press, 1999); and co-editor with Richard Upjohn of Internet Resources for Eurasia (Center for Civil Society International, 2000). In early 2000, Mr. Ruffin was a short-term scholar at the Kennan Institute of Advanced Russian Studies in Washington DC.

 

Richard Upjohn is associate director of CSI and a graduate of Trinity College in Connecticut.

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