Frost, Lyman, Marshall, Sestanovich Join NED Board Of Directors

Contact: Jane Riley Jacobsen
(202) 378-9700 or jane@ned.org

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Former U.S. Representative Martin Frost (D-TX),  Ambassador Princeton Lyman, Progressive Policy Institute President Will Marshall, and Ambassador Stephen Sestanovich have joined the Board of Directors of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).  Frost and Sestanovich were elected for a three-year term on June 19, 2009; Lyman and Marshall were elected to a similar term today. 

“The Endowment is privileged to welcome these four exceptional members to its Board,” said NED Chairman Richard Gephardt.  “Their regional expertise and extensive knowledge of democratic practices will greatly benefit the work of NED and its hundreds of grantees around the world.”

Congressman Martin Frost is a keen observer of national politics who has held a number of leadership positions for the Democratic Party including Caucus Chair, Ranking Democrat for the Rules Committee, and Chairman of the DCCC — he is considered one of the party’s top strategists. From 1979-2005, Mr. Frost served as a member of Congress representing the Dallas-Fort Worth area in north Texas. From 1990-95, he also chaired a special House Task Force established to help eastern and central European nations transition to democracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has continued democracy building efforts through work with the National Democratic Institute.

Ambassador Princeton N. Lyman is an adjunct senior fellow for Africa policy studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. Ambassador Lyman’s career in government included assignments as deputy assistant secretary of state for Africa, U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, director of refugee programs, ambassador to South Africa, and assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs. He has published books and articles on foreign policy, African affairs, economic development, HIV/AIDS, UN reform, and peacekeeping.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), established in 1989 as a center for political innovation in Washington, D.C. In this capacity, he has been one of the chief intellectual architects of the movement to modernize progressive politics for the global age. PPI’s policy analysis and proposals were the source for many of the “New Democrat” innovations that figured prominently in national politics over the past two decades. The Institute also has been integral to the spread of “Third Way” thinking to center-left parties in Europe and elsewhere.

Stephen Sestanovich is the George F. Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis professor of international diplomacy at Columbia University. His particular areas of expertise are Russia and the former Soviet Union, Caucasus and Central Asia, and U.S. foreign policy. From 1997 to 2001, he served as ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the secretary of state for the new independent states. In this capacity, he was the State Department’s principal officer responsible for policy toward the states of the former Soviet Union.

NED was created in 1983 as a private, nonprofit, grant-making foundation with a mission to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. With an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress, the NED Board, which is independent and bipartisan, makes more than a thousand grants each year to support prodemocracy groups in nearly 90 countries. The Endowment supports projects that promote political and economic freedom and participation, human rights, a strong civil society, independent media and the rule of law.

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