Speaker

Ian Lesser is Distinguished Fellow and Advisor to the President at the German
Marshall Fund of the United States and a member of GMF’s steering committee. As Director
of Ian Lesser BV, he heads the Brussels office of GMF and leads GMF’s work on the
Mediterranean and the wider Atlantic. Dr. Lesser also holds the Chair in Transatlantic Affairs
at the College of Europe in Bruges. Prior to joining GMF, Dr. Lesser was a Public Policy
Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Vice President and
Director of Studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy. He came to the Pacific
Council from the RAND Corporation, where he spent over a decade as a senior analyst and
research manager specializing in strategic studies. From 1994-1995, he was a member of the
Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. A frequent commentator
for international media, he has written extensively on foreign and security policy issues. Dr.
Lesser received his D. Phil from Oxford University.