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USA foundation

The Wilton Park USA Foundation exists to support policy dialogue in the US and abroad on crucial issues of transatlantic concern, with a focus on international development, prosperity, diplomacy, and security.

The Foundation is chaired by Tom Woods of Woods International, LLC.

For more information, or to speak to someone about getting involved, please contact Tom Woods woodsthomasm@gmail.com.

Board members

  • Tom Woods, Chairman, President, Woods International, LLC
  • Michael Auslin, Michael Auslin, Vice Chairman, Williams-Griffis Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
  • Ambassador Phillip Carter (Rtd), former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of African Affairs, US Department of State
  • Lewis Leibowitz, The Law Office of Lewis E. Leibowitz
  • Lesley-Anne Long, Global Strategist (International Development)
  • Michael Moodie, Assistant Director and Senior Specialist at the Congressional Research Service (CRS)
  • Harvey Rishikof, Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Standing Committee on Law and National Security of the American Bar Association

Biographies

Tom Woods

Tom is the Chair of the Wilton Park USA Foundation Board.

He is also the President of Woods International, LLC, a private sector consulting firm based in Washington, DC and focused on economic growth strategies and public private partnerships for global development. He is also a leading expert on US-Africa relations, including economic development, political, and security issues. Tom serves as the Chairman of the World Bank hosted Global Steering Committee for Quality Assurance of Medical Products, which is an international coalition of the largest health financing institutions working together with the private sector to save lives from the threat of falsified medicines. Tom is a founding and current board member of the Nigerian Interfaith Action Association (NIFAA) and provides strategic guidance to the coalition of Muslim and Christian faith leaders working to address health and development challenges in collaboration with government and development financing institutions.

Tom served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (2004-2006) and led US engagement with 25 countries in west and southern Africa, including oversight of US Embassies in the region. He also led US economic policy toward Africa, including trade and investment issues. He worked under and provided policy advice to Secretary of State Colin Powell and to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Earlier, Tom was the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Africa at the US Agency for International Development (2002-2004). In this role, he oversaw the agency’s more than $1 billion Africa development budget. He is the recipient of numerous State Department awards, including Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards. Tom began his government career as a Presidential Management Fellow within the State Department Bureau of African Affairs.

Tom earned a BA in International Studies and economics with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

 

Michael Auslin

Michael serves as the Vice Chair of the Wilton Park USA Foundation Board. He is the Williams-Griffis Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was previously an associate professor of history at Yale University and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, where he was also the Director of Japan Studies.

Michael was previously a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) in Washington DC, where he was also the Director of Japan Studies. He specialised in global risk analysis, US security and foreign policy strategy and security and political relations in the Indo-Pacific region.

Michael’s latest book is ‘The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region’ (Yale University Press). He is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review. His writing also appears in leading publications, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Week, and Politico, and he comments regularly for US and foreign print and broadcast media.

Previously, Michael was an Associate Professor of History at Yale University, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Tokyo. He has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a Fulbright Scholar and a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund, among other honours.

 

Ambassador Phillip Carter (Rtd)

Phillip Carter is a global strategist with proven executive leadership skills.  A former US Ambassador, he brings 34 years of expertise in the areas of human rights, political-economic reform, good governance, security sector assistance, counter-terrorism, social and health development, business facilitation, and conflict prevention.

Prior to his current position, Ambassador Carter served as the Deputy to the Commander for Civil-Military Engagement at the US Africa Command. During previous tours in Washington, Ambassador Carter was a Senior Advisor, Acting Assistant Secretary, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary to the Africa Bureau as well as Director for West African Affairs and Deputy Director in the Office for East African Affairs at the US State Department.  Earlier in his career, Ambassador Carter worked as a financial economist dealing with international debt and capital matters.  In addition to Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea, Ambassador Carter worked at diplomatic missions in Gabon, Madagascar, Malawi, Bangladesh, Canada, and Mexico.  Ambassador Carter is the recipient of several prestigious awards from the US, Ivoirian and Malagasy governments.  He earned a M.A.in international and development economics from Yale University and a B.A. in economics and history from Drew University. He speaks French and Spanish.

 

Lewis Leibowitz

Lewis is a prominent international trade and customs attorney based in Washington DC. He established an individual law practice in 2015 after nearly four decades with large law firms.

He advises clients on international trade legal and strategic opportunities and challenges. Regarding economic development and international competitiveness, Lewis has long experience in the tools aimed at improving international competitiveness of companies and countries.  A noted specialist in the law and policies affecting foreign trade zones and global free zones, special economic zones, trade and investment related international agreements, and related concepts in the US and other countries.  For corporate clients, he often consults on complex issues affecting global competitiveness.

Lewis also advises clients on the intricacies of trade remedies, such as coping with antidumping and countervailing duty orders, safeguard proceedings and trade-related domestic and foreign legislation.  In addition, he handles customs related matters dealing with classification, valuation, country of origin, foreign trade zones and penalties. Lewis has a wealth of experience in a wide variety of international trade matters, having represented clients in trade matters for nearly four decades.

Among his leadership positions, he is a former Chairman of the National Association of Foreign Trade Zones (NAFTZ) and participated in the creation of the World Free Zones Organization.

 

Lesley-Anne Long

Lesley-Anne is an internationally recognised leader in digital global health and a highly networked and experienced international development actor. A progressive and innovative thinker, she is skilled at driving transformative change through collaborative, inclusive, transparent and productive action.

Lesley-Anne has helped establish an array of international development initiatives, including in health, education, child rights and law, across 17 countries. A former practicing family law Barrister, Lesley-Anne also has served as Dean of the Faculty of Health and Social Care at The Open University (UK), Global Director of mPowering Frontline Health Workers (US), and Director of Digital Square (US), the founder and first Director of HEAT (Heath and Education Training, to train over 38,000 community health workers in Ethiopia), Assistant Director of International Development at the Open University, and the first CEO of the African Justice Foundation.

Lesley-Anne is now working as an international development strategist, providing direction and technical advice to governments, regional organisations, technology developers, program implementers, the private sector, NGOs, and academic institutions in Africa, the U.S. and Europe.

A member of several international boards and committees, Lesley-Anne is also a frequent international speaker on global and digital health.

 

Michael Moodie

Michael is the Secretary of the Wilton Park USA Foundation Board.

Michael is an Assistant Director and Senior Specialist at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) where he oversees the work of more than 80 analysts and information professionals in the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division.  Mr Moodie brings to this position a career of more than 40 years addressing international policy issues in government, the policy research community, and academia.

In government, Michael was nominated by President George H W Bush and confirmed by the Senate to be the Assistant Director for Multilateral Affairs of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) where he was responsible for non-nuclear arms control issues in Europe (conventional weapons, Open Skies, and confidence building measures), chemical and biological weapons, and the work of the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD) and the United Nations among other issues.  From 1983 to 1987, he served as Special Assistant to the Ambassador and Assistant for Special Projects at the US Mission to NATO in Brussels, Belgium. He has also worked as Manager of the Proliferation Community of Interest of the Intelligence Community’s Global Futures Forum and Director of Proliferation Issues for the Long-Range Analysis Unit of the National Intelligence Council.  He has also been a consultant to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the US Navy.

In the policy research community, from 1993 to 2005, he served as President of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute (CBACI), a nonprofit, policy research organization he co-founded to address the growing challenges posed by chemical and biological weapons and to promote arms control efforts banning their use. Michael has also been the Senior Advisor to the President at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where, among other responsibilities, he worked directly with the President to help shape the institution’s research agenda and programmatic activities.  He has also held senior positions at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and the Foreign Policy Research Institute.  For two years, he worked as Executive Editor of WMD Insights, an on-line publication that provided US and foreign perspectives on critical nonproliferation issues.  He is currently an Associate Fellow in the International Security Program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London.

In academia, Michael has been a Visiting Professor at George Mason University and Georgetown University.

He was educated at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

 

Harvey Rishikof

Harvey is Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Standing Committee on Law and National Security of the American Bar Association. Next year he will be a Visiting Professor of Law at Temple Law School. He was most recently the former Director and Convening Authority for the Office of Military Commission, and senior counsel in Crowell & Moring’s Privacy & Cybersecurity and Government Contracts groups in Washington, DC.

Prior to joining the firm, he was most recently the Dean of Faculty at the National War College at the National Defense University, Washington DC, co-chair of the ABA Cybersecurity Legal Task Force alongside Judy Miller, and a lifetime member of the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Over his career, he has been a member of Hale and Dorr and has held multiple positions in government focused on national and cyber security issues. He  served as senior policy advisor to the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX), the agency responsible for counterintelligence and insider threat management across the federal government. He has also served at the FBI as a legal counsel to the deputy director of the FBI focusing on national security and terrorism and served as liaison to the Office of the Attorney General at the Department of Justice. Prior to serving as dean, Harvey was a professor of National Security Law at the National War College and dean of Roger Williams University School of Law. He was the assistant to the Chief Justice of the US Administrative Office of the US Courts – Judicial Fellow. He was also a federal law clerk to Judge Leonard I. Garth (3d. Cir.).

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