Whither the World: Changing Geopolitics and the Nature of Leadership
Join us for our 13th GMAP Alumni Weekend in London, UK, January 10-12, 2020.
We look forward to sharing with you everything that London has to offer, and we very much hope you will join us!
As well as a chance to see and network with your fellow alumni, and engage in UK focused scholarship, there will be opportunities to meet the GMAP Class of 2020 and, of course, enjoy the delights of the city!
The Alumni Weekends are also an excellent opportunity to organize a reunion with your classmates. The following classes are celebrating big reunions this year, so we encourage you to consider celebrating together at the London Alumni Weekend:
Class of 2005 – Celebrating 15 years!
Class of 2010 – Celebrating 10 years!
Class of 2015 – Celebrating 5 years!
SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 10
3:30 – 5:00 p.m. Welcome & Registration
Location: St. Ermin’s Hotel
5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Student & Alumni Structured Networking Event and Cocktail Reception (Business Dress)
Location: Crystal Ballroom, St. Ermin’s Hotel
7:00 p.m. Alumni Weekend Opening Dinner (Business Dress)
Location: Cloisters Room, St. Ermin’s Hotel
Opening Remarks:
Dr. Deborah Winslow Nutter
Senior Associate Dean, Professor of Practice, GMAP Director
The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Speaker:
Lord Michael Dobbs, F73, F75, F77
Author of “House of Cards” and British politician
SATURDAY, JANUARY 11
8:00 – 9:00 a.m. Westminster Walkabout: Walking Tour of Hotel Neighborhood led by Dean Nutter
9:00 – 10:20 a.m. The Digital Revolution
Location: Marlborough Room, St. Ermin’s Hotel
Panelists:
Arthur Sculley, GMAP 2009
Raymond Ressy, GMAP 2015
10:20 – 10:40 a.m. Coffee Break with Students
Location: Cloisters Room, St. Ermin’s Hotel
10:40 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Global Gas and the Power Revolution: Perspectives from Two Industries Shaking up the Energy Transition
Location: Marlborough Room, St. Ermin’s Hotel
Panelists:
Tom Morris, GMAP 2003
Philippe Rose, GMAP 2014
12:00 – 1:45 p.m. Lunch and Talk
Location: Cloisters Room, St. Ermin’s Hotel
Speaker:
Rachel Sylvester
Columnist, The Times
2:00-4:00 p.m. Tour of the Houses of Parliament or the Churchill War Rooms
4:15 – 5:30 p.m. A Talk with Gill Bennett OBE, Author and Former Chief Historian, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Location: Marlborough Room, St. Ermin’s Hotel
5:30 – 6:30 p.m. Free Time
7:00 p.m. Dinner at the National Liberal Club (Business Dress) Meet in Hotel Lobby at 6:30PM for departure.
Opening Remarks: Honoring Aldo Aldama-Breton, F02 (GMAP), of the AABS-ASEM Scholarship:
Dr. Deborah Winslow Nutter
Andrea Rasca, F02 (GMAP)
Founder and Executive Dreamer, Mercato Metropolitano
Founder, Founders without Borders
Speaker:
Rachel Kyte, F02 (GMAP)
Dean, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Former Chief Executive Officer of Sustainable Energy for All, and Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 12
8:00 – 8:45 a.m. Morning Discussion with Mac Regan, GMAP 2006, on US Diplomacy and the 2020 Presidential Elections
Location: Marlborough Room, St. Ermin’s Hotel
9:00 a.m. – 12 p.m. Whither the World: Changing Geopolitics and the Nature of Leadership
Location: Marlborough Room, St. Ermin’s Hotel
Coffee Break: 10:20-10:40 a.m.
Panelists:
Christian Bachheimer, GMAP 2017
Kamran Balayev, GMAP 2017
Moges Gebremdhim, GMAP 2019
Ichiro Inoue, GMAP 2005
Len Ishmael, GMAP 2018
Bettina Muscheidt, GMAP 2001
Bill Pennington, GMAP 2016
Jorge Tuddon, GMAP 2018
Moderator:
Dr. Deborah Winslow Nutter
12:00 – 5:00 p.m. Lunch and Tour at The Wallace Collection
7:00 p.m. Alumni Weekend Closing Dinner
MODERATOR BIOGRAPHY
Deborah Winslow Nutter
Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Practice
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
Deborah Winslow Nutter is Senior Associate Dean and Professor of Practice at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University. She is the founding director of the Global Master of Arts Program (GMAP), Fletcher’s signature hybrid master’s program, in which she teaches foreign policy leadership and team dynamics. GMAP attracts senior international affairs professionals from around the world in business, government, the United Nations, and NGOs.
Dean Nutter holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, where she held several fellowships, including an Honorary Presidential Fellowship. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from Colby College and studied at Oxford University. Prior to Fletcher, she taught at Bowdoin and Simmons Colleges, serving as Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Affairs at Simmons and leading its internationalization effort. Dr. Nutter has been a Fellow at Harvard University at both the Center for International Affairs and the Center for Science and International Affairs and spent one year as an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow. Dean Nutter lectures and writes on the intersection of geopolitics and leadership, using major historic world leaders and the challenges they faced as a basis for evaluating leadership performance and success. Her research and teaching also focus on leaders’ relations with their key advisers, including spouses. Her publications include Soviet Foreign Policy in Transition with Cambridge University Press, and journal and newspaper articles on security studies, transatlantic relations, international political leadership, India’s role in world affairs, and Winston and Clementine Churchill. She coined the word “Triplomacy” to describe diplomacy in the current era.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Gill Bennett OBE
Author and Former Chief Historian,
British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
As a historian in Whitehall for over thirty years, Bennett provided historical advice to twelve foreign secretaries under six prime ministers, from Edward Heath to Tony Blair. She served as Chief Historian of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from 1995-2005 and was the Senior Editor of the UK’s official history of British foreign policy, Documents on British Policy Overseas.
Bennett is now involved in a range of intelligence-related research, writing, and training projects for various government departments. She is an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and was the 2006-07 distinguished visiting fellow lecturer at the Joint Services Command Staff College. A specialist in the history of secret intelligence, she published a ground-breaking biography, Churchill’s Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence, part of the Cabinet Official History Series, in 2006. She was also part of the research team working on the official history of the Secret Intelligence Service by Professor Keith Jeffery, published in 2010. Other publications include Six Moments of Crisis: Inside British Foreign Policy (2013), and The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy That Never Dies (2018).
Rachel Sylvester
Columnist, The Times
Biography taken from thetimes.co.uk
Rachel Sylvester is a political columnist at The Times. She started writing about politics in 1996 and was a lobby correspondent on The Daily Telegraph before becoming political editor of The Independent on Sunday. She joined The Times in 2008.
Lord Michael Dobbs, F73, F75, F77
Author of “House of Cards” and British politician
Biography taken from michaeldobbs.com and edited for length
He’s spent too much of his life hanging around all the wrong places at interesting times. He was with Margaret Thatcher when she took her first steps into Downing Street as Prime Minister, and he was there again with John Major when he was kicked out. In between he got bombed in Brighton and banished from Chequers (after a row with Maggie), and helped win a few elections. In the quieter moments wrote a book called House of Cards.
In his restless search for a proper job, he’s also been Deputy Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, a TV presenter and newspaper columnist, and widely acclaimed speaker.
After creating the iconic figure of Francis Urquhart he has gone on to write a series of novels about Winston Churchill that had the critics falling over themselves in praise. Now he’s created the most dangerous character of his career, Harry Jones. As the Financial Times said, “think Die Hard with a stiff upper lip.”
He also has many years of experience in the United States, with a doctorate from Harvard and Tufts universities. He also worked on the Boston Globe throughout the Watergate scandal.
He is a highly skilled raconteur and is much in demand for corporate and literary events. He has also helped raise tens of thousands of pounds for charities in recent years. Yes, there is a softer side to him, yet his past follows him. One newspaper described Dobbs as “Westminster’s baby-faced hit man.” Another said he was “a man who, in Latin America, would have been shot.” A third wrote that “he was clearly put on this earth to write thrillers of the most shameless page-turning quality.”
Well, they might say that. Michael Dobbs couldn’t possibly comment.
Rachel Kyte, F02 (GMAP)
Dean, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Former CEO of Sustainable Energy for All & Special Representative
of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All
Rachel Kyte is the 14th dean of The Fletcher School, the nation’s oldest graduate-only school of international affairs, which attracts students from all corners of the globe and at all stages of their careers.
Prior to Fletcher, Kyte served as special representative of the UN secretary-general and CEO of Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL). She previously was the World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change, leading the Bank Group’s efforts to shift its operations and campaign for the Paris Agreement.
In her UN role and as CEO of SEforAll, Kyte led efforts to promote and finance clean, affordable energy and low-carbon growth as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the context of the Paris Agreement. She grew SEforALL into an organization that employs over forty staff and has partnerships with companies, governments, and civil society organizations. She continues to serve as co-chair of UN Energy.
Kyte is the recipient of numerous awards in leadership, climate action and sustainable development, and was recently named one of TIME’s top 15 women leading the fight against climate change.
Andrea Rasca, F02 (GMAP)
Founder and Executive Dreamer, Mercato Metropolitano
Founder, Founders without Borders
Andrea has worked in food innovation & internationalization for over 25 years, merging his background in business, food, and international relations. He has studied in the USA, Japan, Italy, UK, and Spain, founded multiple businesses, and currently serves as an advisory board member for the MBA program at Imperial College London.
ACCOMMODATION
The London International Residency and GMAP Alumni Weekend will take place at the historic and beautiful St. Ermin’s Hotel, around the corner from Westminster Abbey. Built upon the site of a 15th century chapel dedicated to St. Ermin, the hotel has played an important part in London’s history, as it is rumored that a tunnel runs from underneath the grand staircase in the Lobby all the way to the houses of Westminster. You can learn more about the hotel’s fascinating history in the book House of Spies: St. Ermin’s Hotel, the London Base of British Espionage.
The hotel is offering a special rate for Alumni Weekend: £199 (GBP) for a superior room (includes VAT and breakfast) for single occupancy. Double occupancy will be an extra £10 per night.
Recommended reading about the hotel and neighborhood:
House of Spies, Peter Matthews
St. Ermin’s Hotel has been synonymous with British espionage since the 1930s, when the SIS (MI6) was situated nearby at 54 Broadway. Bristling with intelligence officers such as Ian Fleming and Nöel Coward, the hotel was initially revealed by the notorious double agent Arthur Owens, code named SNOW, to be a covert base for the Secret Intelligence Service’s Section D, before three gloomy private rooms on the third floor became the birthplace of Winston Churchill’s SOE in the early days of World War II. During the late 1940s, the traitorous spies Kim Philby and Guy Burgess would hand over intelligence to their Russian counterparts when they regularly met in the hotel’s Caxton Bar, while St. Ermin’s proximity to government offices ensured its continued use by both domestic and foreign secret agents. This first book on the history of the hotel reveals the remarkable stories of the spies who met there and the secrets they were sharing.
Westminster: A Biography: From Earliest Times to the Present, Robert Shepherd
This is the remarkable story of Westminster, a royal capital that became the birthplace of parliamentary government and the centre of a world power. It is about the place, its people and their close relationship. They have made and shaped one another. The ancient heart of Westminster is only the size of a village, yet it boasts world famous buildings: the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Number 10 Downing Street. As befits a village, Westminster is rich in folklore and gossip, yet its story is central to Britain’s history and anywhere that has parliamentary government. This biography of Westminster traces the extraordinary transformation of a secluded island on the banks of the Thames into a spiritual centre, a royal ceremonial stage and a political capital. It brings to life the monarchs and prime ministers for whom Westminster has been home, the architects and writers whom it inspired, and the protestors and rebels whom it provoked. It is a tale of inspiration, intrigue, power, protest and terror.
ATTENDEES
CLASS OF 2001
Nancy DiBiaggio, Realtor specializing in international buyers & sellers, Keller Williams, in Denver, Colorado, USA (GMAP’01, MALD’04)
Bettina Muscheidt, Former EU Ambassador to Libya (2016-18) and Yemen (2012-16), EU, in Brussels, Belgium
CLASS OF 2002
Oriana Pound, Chief of Staff, PwC, in London, UK
CLASS OF 2003
Tom Morris, SVP Russia, OMV AG, in St. Petersburg, Russia
CLASS OF 2004
Douglas Planeta, Chief Investment Officer, Sageworth, in the USA
CLASS OF 2005
Ichiro Inoue, Professor, Kwansei Gakuin University, in Japan; Visiting Scholar, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, D.C., USA
Diana Perez Buck, Founder and President, Mothers at Risk, in Brussels, Belgium
CLASS OF 2006
John (Mac) Regan, Mercer Worldwide Partner (retired); Author, Global Citizen Patriots (2016) and The 2020 American Revolution (2019)
CLASS OF 2007
Steven Farber, Independent Consultant, Farber International, in Tel Aviv, Israel
Benjamin Lodmell, Managing Member, Lodmell Family Office, LLC, in West Palm Beach, Florida, USA
*Mara Lodmell (Guest of Benjamin Lodmell)
Nils Ritterhoff, on sabbatical, in London, UK
Eric White, Seattle, Washington, USA, & Brittany, France
CLASS OF 2009
Terrence Dudley, Independent Consultant (Tech Finance & Development), in London, UK
Arthur Sculley, Co-Founder, Hyperjar, in London, UK
CLASS OF 2011
Kari Sides Suva, Consultant, Rivermill Consulting, in Portland, Maine, USA
CLASS OF 2012
Nadja Milanova, Officer, Operations Division, NATO, in Brussels, Belgium
*Emil Milanov (Guest of Nadja Milanova)
CLASS OF 2013
Guilherme Athia, CEO, Atlantico Europe, in Brussels, Belgium
CLASS OF 2014
Juan Carrizosa, Managing Director, Banque Cramer, in Geneva, Switzerland
Philippe Rose, Senior Manager, Renewable Power Asia Market Development, Shell New Energies, in London, UK, and Beijing, China
CLASS OF 2015
Jörgen Bengtsson, Programme Officer, Investment and Innovative Financing, European Commission, Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development in Brussels, Belgium
Mandy Birch, SVP, Engineering Strategy, Rigetti Computing, in Berkeley, California, USA
Serhat Cubukcuoglu, Senior Researcher, Axis Worldwide, Inc., in New York, USA
Fatima Jika, Bank Examiner, Central Bank of Nigeria, in Abuja Nigeria; PhD Researcher, Loughborough University
Raymond Ressy, Private Sector Investment Advisor, Department for International Development, in London, UK
CLASS OF 2016
Joanna (Asia) Lisiecka, Africa Project Coordinator, European Border and Coast Guard Agency, in Warsaw, Poland
Christie Morgan, Senior Military Advisor, National Intelligence University European Academic Center, in Stuttgart, Germany
William (Bill) Pennington, Commodore and Commander Task Force 67, U.S. Navy, in Sigonella, Sicily, Italy
*Kate Pennington (Guest of Bill Pennington)
Patrick Salmon, U.S. Navy Liaison to the French Navy Staff, U.S. Navy, in Paris, France
Michael Thorgersen, Sr. Management & Program Analyst, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, in Washington D.C., USA
CLASS OF 2017
Christian Bachheimer, Group Director, Djarum Group, in Indonesia
Samir Bajaj, VP HR, Fiserv, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Kamran Balayev, Entrepreneur, International Risk Ltd, in London, UK
Mark Conway, Lincoln, Massachusetts, USA
Kayleigh Forhan, Regional Program Manager, U.S. European Command, in Stuttgart, Germany
Trish Manzke, Director, European Affairs for the United States Navy, in Washington D.C., USA
David Sanders, Senior Director, APAC, CFA Institute, in Hong Kong SAR
Kade Spears, Head of Specialty, SCOR | Channel, in London, UK
Priscilla Wong, Global Health & Women’s Education Advocate, International Health & Education Development Professional
Sang Yeob Kim, Programme Officer, UNDP, in Quito, Ecuador
CLASS OF 2018
Iftin Fatah, Senior Investment Officer, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, in Washington, D.C., USA
Len Ishmael, Advisor: Global Affairs, Brussels Diplomatic Academy, in Brussels, Belgium
Brian Radliffe, Director of International Operations (retired), AT&T in Bridgewater, New Jersey, USA
Jorge Tuddon, Consul for Press and Media, Consulate General of Mexico in New York, in New York, USA
Etigwe Uwa, Senior Partner, Streamsowers & Kohn, in Lagos, Nigeria
CLASS OF 2019
Temitope Akin-Fadeyi, Principal Manager, Development Finance Department, Central Bank of Nigeria, in Abuja, Nigeria
Sara Ascher, Executive Director, International Council of Unitarians & Universalists, in Boston, USA
Christa Case Bryant, National Political Reporter, The Christian Science Monitor, in Boston, USA
Daniel Freeman, Analyst, United States Air Force, in Kailua, Hawaii, USA
Moges Gebremedhin, Regional Director, Research Triangle Institute, in Nairobi, Kenya
Scott Malcomson, Director of Special Projects, Strategic Insight Group, and Partner, FutureMap, in New York City, USA
Neri Martinez, Chief of Staff, Office of Economic Impact and Diversity, US Department of Energy (DOE), in Washington, D.C., USA
Michael Mueller, Corporate Security Manager, Krones AG, in Frankfurt, Germany
Margaux Repellin, Media Attache and Social Media, Embassy of France to the United States, in Washington D.C., USA
Maria Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros, Asia Program Director, Growald Family Fund, in Rockville, MD, USA
Background on GMAP Alumni Weekends: In 2011, GMAP began hosting alumni weekends during the midyear international residencies to offer our alumni community the opportunity to experience again the intellectual stimulation and camaraderie of their GMAP year. The weekend activities include special speaker events, workshops, and seminars that offer our alumni the opportunity to hear from leading experts and thought leaders on a range of critical topics, engage in meaningful discussions on current affairs, and update and deepen their knowledge of international affairs. Furthermore, these events are also about renewing the bonds of friendship and community that characterize the GMAP experience, as well as making new connections to build one’s professional network and further their career. Our alumni leave the weekend intellectually stimulated and engaged, with an expanded professional network as well as a deeper and broader knowledge of the trends shaping our world today.