Board of Directors
Abel G. Aganbegyan was one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s chief economic advisors and among the first influential Soviet economists to voice the need for restructuring the economic and business infrastructure of the Soviet Union. Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, educated in Moscow, he was the head of the Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering, Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk from 1967-1985. In 1985 Abel Aganbegyan returned to Moscow and was Head of the Economic Branch of the Academy of Science and a member of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences. Until his recent retirement he was the President of the Academy of National Economy under the Government of the Russian Federation. He continues with the Academy as the head of the Doctor of Business Administration program and studies problems of public health at the laboratory formed within the Department of Economics and Management in the Public Health Service.
Author of more than 260 scientific research publications and books, published in twelve countries including the United States, his most recent book, Social and Economic Development of Russia, will be available in the United States soon.
Viktor Erofeyev is an internationally acclaimed Russian writer who struggled with the Soviet System during the 70s and was asked to leave the powerful Writers Union, but reinstated in the 80s. He is the author of several fiction and non-fiction works including Russian Beauty, that has been published in over ten languages including English. Mr. Erofeyev edited The Penguin Book of New Russian Writing, an important collection of contemporary literature. A three-volume collection of his works, including his novel The Last Judgment, was recently published in Russia. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker magazine and hosts a popular television program in Russia.
Lisa Goldman currently serves as Marketing Consultant for Sumitomo Chemical’s Global Vector Control initiative, primarily focused on the company’s corporate social responsibility programs and the Olyset long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito net. In the first quarter of 2007, she consulted with the AllAfrica Foundation on preparation of the business plan for its forthcoming HealthAfrica website.
In 2004, Lisa developed the Internet site and partnerships for Quincy Jones’ “We Are the Future” concert to help children in conflict zones around the world. In the same year she was a founding investor of Adina for Life, Inc.—a new juice and music company started by Greg Steltenpohl, who pioneered the fresh juice industry as CEO of Odwalla.
Since 2000, Lisa has worked with Youssou N’Dour, the celebrated African musician, as a Director of his YND Foundation in Dakar. Their project Joko aims to stimulate Internet use and economic development among a cohesive African community in rural and urban areas within Senegal, and around the world in the Senegalese Diaspora.
In March 2005, she obtained international sponsorship for Africa Live, a two-day concert to raise awareness about malaria. The line-up included many of the greatest living African musicians and was attended by more than 30,000 people. A documentary of the event was televised globally on the BBC, Arte, TV5, PBS and across Africa.
In 1995 Lisa co-founded and was the CEO Construct, an Internet company that fused engineering and design to create compelling virtual worlds and communities. The high creative standards at Construct led to three major design prizes for the company: Prix Ars Electronica 1999: Golden Nica, for The Difference Engine #3, in collaboration with Lynn Hershmann; Absolut Vodka: Electronic Arts Award, 1998; and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Mixing Messages Exhibition, 1997. Construct was acquired by a New York based special effects production studio in 1999.
From 1992 to 1995, Lisa co-founded and was Director of The Interactive Media Festival, an international competition, gallery and exhibition of interactive media. She graduated with honors in Fine Arts from Rice University and also studied at the Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne. She serves on the board of YND Foundation in Dakar as well as TRACK TWO.
Lizbeth Hasse, lawyer, negotiator and mediator, (J.D. and M.A., University of California, Berkeley) has 25 years of international practice in intellectual property, media, entertainment and commercial transactions and negotiations. She serves as a mediator and neutral evaluator in complex and often sensitive civil and commercial cases. She has assisted in resolution of challenging disputes involving Enron, Sun Microsystems, Adelphia, MasterCard, SONY, major motion pictures, a multi-platinum music group, among others. She is a member of The Masters Forum of the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution and a certificated mediator from the United Nations Training Program in Civilian Personnel of Peace-keeping, Mediation and Election Monitoring at the International Faculty of the Scola St’Ana, Pisa, Italy. She served as election monitor and mediator in Kyrgyzstan’s Fergana Valley during 2001 elections.
Since late 1980’s, Ms. Hasse has helped draft legislation in Eastern European, African, Asian and Central Asian countries. Her advisory work has been supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Soros, Rockefeller Fund, Washington Research Institute and others. Ms. Hasse also consults as a Rule of Law and Democratic Governance Specialist and in 2000-2002 surveyed countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus to assess for USAID a decade of institution building programs in those regions. She was active in the early 90’s on Media and Piracy Commissions set up by the Ministries of Culture and Communications for USSR/Russia.
Ms. Hasse served as chief legal counsel for international joint venture projects based in Russia, Ukraine and Senegal. Much of her legal representation is for media and technology clients in the software, motion picture, publishing, digital media and telecommunications industries. She has developed intellectual property policies for tech companies and institutions of higher education. As an attorney, Ms. Hasse is A-V rated (highest ethical rating and pre-eminent in the field) by Martindale-Hubbell.
Ms. Hasse lectures and publishes on intellectual property, mediation, media, constitutional law and international matters and was a 1986 Fulbright Fellowship recipient (France). She taught as a Visiting Faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Paris V, Udayana University in Indonesia and the American University of Armenia. Along with serving on the board of TRACK TWO she serves on the Boards of Heart To Heart International Children’s Medical Alliance, the Presidio College of Management and is on the Founding Board of the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California.
J. Mitchell Johnson, founder and CEO of Abamedia, LP, has been responsible for creating more than 100 hours of documentary programming that have been broadcast and sold worldwide. As a producer and director, he has won numerous awards at film festivals across the United States. Most recently he produced and directed “Yanks for Stalin” for The History Channel, and was the originator and series producer of Abamedia’s critically acclaimed prime-time PBS series, “Red Files,” distributed worldwide by Buena Vista Television and Home Video. Red Files won the year 2000 “Best Limited Series” award from the Los Angeles-based International Documentary Association (IDA). Most recently Abamedia has released Johnson’s first dramatic feature film entitled, World Without Waves.
Mr. Johnson is the founder of www.RussianArchives.com, a public-private initiative that has provided ground-breaking access to the Russian State Film and Photo Archives. He also founded Snapse, a collaborative, streaming media editing and exchange system that serves the emerging markets for video creation, mashups, and other multi-media use. Snapse provides digital rights management to global media content owners and users.
Johnson began traveling to Russia in 1994 in a media co-venture with ABC News in New York. He was the architect and executive producer of a groundbreaking news magazine series based on “20-20” that aired all over the former Soviet Union. In 1996 he founded Abamedia, LP. Abamedia eventually became the Russian Government’s trade representative for its State Film and Photo Archives at Krasnogorsk, one of the premiere audio-visual archives in the world.
A Master’s graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema, Johnson has been Chairman of the Media Panel for the Texas Committee for the Arts and President of the Texas Independent Producers Association, and in 2005 chaired the Education and Technology Panel of the 2nd Annual US-Russia Exchange Symposium, sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia. Currently he serves on the boards of Fort Worth Sister Cities International, the Lone Star Film Society, the Mental Health Association of Tarrant County Texas, as well as TRACK TWO based in San Francisco.
John A. (Mac) McQuown is an entrepreneur who co-founded KMV, a leading credit analytic firm and served as its Chairman until it was acquired by Moody’s in 2002. Prior to KMV he co-founded and served as CEO of Diversified Corporate Loans, LLC. McQuown co-founded in 1981 and remains a Director of Dimensional Fund Advisors, the first and leading small-cap “passively managed” equity fund, with global proprietary distribution. He also co-founded Chalone Wine Group, Loan Performance (formerly Mortgage Information Corp) and Stone Edge Vineyard and Winery.
Before turning entrepreneur, he was Director of Management Sciences at Wells Fargo Bank where he had overall responsibility for creating the world’s first equity index funds, and where he first became immersed in the measurement of corporate credit risk. He co-founded and was first Chairman of Wells Fargo Investment Advisors (now dba Barclays Global Investors). McQuown received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University, and his MBA in Finance from Harvard Business School. He is a member of the Advisory Councils to the Dean of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and to the Dean of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego as well as on the board of TRACK TWO.
Carol Miskel began working with The Russian-American Center (now TRACK TWO) in 1997. She has helped coordinate conferences involving the former Republics of the USSR, and working with Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research helps coordinate projects co-sponsored with TRACK TWO. From 1982-1994 she was in the entertainment retail business, owning a compact disc and video store in San Francisco and three video rental stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1979-1981 Miskel was the marketing director of Blume, Middag and Associates, a West Coast entertainment promotion and marketing company for music recording companies. After college and until 1977, she was in the music publishing business for shelter Records in Hollywood, California and published songs for artists such as Tom Petty, Leon Russell and Phoebe Snow.
Joseph Montville is the Chairman of the Board of TRACK TWO: An Institute for Citizen Diplomacy and director of the Esalen Center for Theory and Research/TRACK TWO Beyond Fundamentalism project. In this capacity he manages the Esalen program to promote Muslim-Christian-Jewish reconciliation or what is being called The Abrahamic Family Reunion.
He is Distinguished Diplomat in Residence at American University, Senior Fellow at and chair of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, George Mason University, and Senior Associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies. His Expertise includes conflict resolution: East Central Europe, the Baltics, the Middle East, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Russia, Canada, and Latin America. Montville founded the preventive diplomacy program at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 1994 and directed it until 2003. Before that he spent 23 years as a diplomat with posts in the Middle East and North Africa. He also worked in the State Department’s Bureaus of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs and Intelligence and Research, where he was chief of the Near East Division and director of the Office of Global Issues. Montville has held faculty appointments at Harvard and the University of Virginia Medical Schools for his work in political psychology. He defined the concept of Track II, nonofficial diplomacy. Educated at Lehigh, Columbia, and Harvard Universities, Montville is the editor of Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington Books, 1990) and editor (with Vamik Volkan and Demetrios Julius) of The Psychodynamics of International Relationships (Lexington Books, 1990 [vol. I], 1991[vol. II]).
Dulce Murphy was a founder and then the director of the Esalen Institute Soviet American Exchange Program that began in 1980. She then became the president and executive director of The Russian-American Center (TRAC) in San Francisco, a continuation of the same organization. For the past twenty-seven years she has been on the cutting edge of non-governmental Russian-American relations. In the spring of 2004, The Russian-American Center changed its name to TRACK TWO: An Institute for Citizen Diplomacy to signify the expansion of its mandate to include other countries, teaming with its Russian colleagues to that end.
Track-two diplomacy involves non-governmental individuals and groups that aim to fill the moral and intellectual voids of official peacemaking leadership.
Jay Ogilvy is a cofounder of Global Business Network, headquartered in San Francisco, and a Partner of GBNs parent company, Monitor, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Trained in philosophy (Yale PhD in 1968), he taught for 7 years at Yale, 1 at Texas, 4 at Williams College. Then he transitioned into contract research and consulting at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) from 1979 to 1986. In 1987 he and four friends founded Global Business Network, a boutique consultancy that specializes in using scenario planning to develop long-range strategies for large corporations and government agencies. Jay is the author of Many Dimensional Man: Decentralizing Self, Society and the Sacred (Oxford, 1977; Harper & Row, 1980); Creating Better Futures (Oxford, 2000); China’s Futures with Peter Schwartz (Jossey-Bass, 2001); Living Without a Goal (Doubleday, 1996). He is a frequent facilitator of invitational conferences for Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research, and chairs Esalen’s Global Potentials Program, and he is also on the board of TRACK TWO.
Vladimir Pozner is an internationally known political commentator and journalist. Born in France, Mr. Pozner lived for fifteen years in the United States before moving to the Soviet Union. His personal experiences in both the United States and the Soviet Union give him a unique perspective on the Russian-American relationship. He is the author of several books including the best seller, Parting With Illusions and is the host of one of Russia’s most popular television programs.
Stephan A. Schwartz is an author, lecturer and experimentalist who has spent his life exploring extraordinary human functioning, and how individuals and small groups can, and have, effected social change. He has played an active role in several major social transformations: the civil rights movement in the 1960s; the transformation of the military from an elitist conscription organization to an all-voluntary meritocracy in the 70s; and citizen diplomacy between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 80s and 90s. Mr. Schwartz is a BIAL Fellow, and a Research Associate of the Cognitive Sciences Laboratory of the Laboratories for Fundamental Research. He is the author of 41 technical reports and peer reviewed publications, as well as many newspaper and magazine articles. His books include, The Alexandria Project, The Secret Vaults of Time, Mind Rover and, most recently, Opening to the Infinite. He is presently writing a biographical work on Benjamin Franklin.