Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama is Dean of Faculty and Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. He has, in recent years, focused on the role of culture and social capital in modern economic life, and on the social consequences of technological change. In the past, he has written extensively on Soviet foreign policy in the Third World.

Dr. Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. It made the bestseller lists in the United States, France, Japan, and Chile, and has been awarded the Los Angeles Times' Book Critics Award in the Current Interest category, as well as the Premio Capri for the Italian edition. He is the author of Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity was published by Free Press in July 1995, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order, and, most recently, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, which was published in April 2002.

Francis Fukuyama was born on October 27, 1952, in Chicago. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. In 1981-82 he was also a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy.

Dr. Fukuyama is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics. He holds an honorary doctorate from Connecticut College and Doane College, and is a member of advisory boards for the National Endowment for Democracy, The National Interest, the Journal of Democracy, and The New America Foundation. He is a member of the AmericanPolitical Science Association, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Global Business Network. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

Elena Panaritis

Elena Panaritis

Elena Panaritis is a specialist in the creation of markets in illiquid assets, property rights, and public sector management. She is a visiting lecturer in International Finance at the Whaton School, University of Pennsylvania since 2001, and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University SAIS where she teaches Social Capital, Institutions, and Economic Development.

For the past 11 years, she served as Economist, Private/Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank where she worked on privatization, property rights, market development, registries and judicial reform. She has developed a paradigm that allows for the formalization of markets. A key example of her work in several countries was her design and management of pioneering work on applying institutional reforms in the area of property. This has had notable success in Peru. She also worked for programs in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. She has authored and co-authored articles on property rights and public sector reform.

She holds a post-graduate degree in International Economics and European Studies from Johns Hopkins Univerity; a bachelors in Economics from the American College of Greece. She attended the National University of Engineering in Athens where she studied architecture.