Advisory Council
Advisory Council
Andrew Adair
Andrew Adair is an American lawyer and policy advisor based in Berlin, specializing in U.S. public policy as it impacts German and transatlantic business. In 2018, Andrew founded DC / Berlin Consulting, an independent practice whose mission is “Translating Washington for Germany.” In that capacity Andrew serves a range of German clients in various transatlantic-focused activities, including organizing delegations to Washington, presenting foresight lectures at business conferences, and producing customized written policy analysis for trade associations, investors, and think tanks. Andrew has also appeared regularly in German media, including TV broadcasters ARD, Welt, Deutsche Welle, and TV-Berlin. In addition to a self-published transatlantic newsletter, Andrew has also published pieces about Washington politics in German-language publications including NTV Online, Business and Diplomacy, and Mittelstand.
Before launching DC / Berlin Consulting, Andrew spent 15 years in Washington, D.C. working in a national advocacy organization, as counsel to Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) — a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee — and before that, as a practicing lawyer. Andrew received his J.D. with honors from the George Washington University Law School, where he was the Executive Managing Editor of The George Washington University International Law Review. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Michael Auslin
Michael Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A historian by training, he specializes in contemporary and historical U.S. policy in Asia and political and security issues in the Indo-Pacific region. A best-selling author, Dr. Auslin’s latest book is The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region (Yale). Dr. Auslin is also the author of Asia’s New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific (Hoover Press, forthcoming). He is a longtime contributor to the Wall Street Journal and National Review, and his writing appears in other leading publications, including The Atlantic, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Politico.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and 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 honors, and serves on the board of the Wilton Park USA Foundation. Dr. Auslin received a BSc from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and his PhD in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Sudha David-Wilp
Sudha David-Wilp is a senior transatlantic fellow and deputy director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States's (GMF) Berlin office. She joined GMF’s Berlin office in September 2011; and oversees GMF’s outreach to the Bundestag and engages with the media as an expert on relations between Germany and the United States. She has written commentary for Foreign Policy, Axios, der Tagesspiegel, and CNN and has been featured in interviews on Bloomberg News, the BBC, NPR, as well as ZDF and ARD. Before moving to Berlin, she was the director of international programs at the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress in Washington, DC for nearly eight years. At the Association, David-Wilp was responsible for congressional study groups and international programs for current members of Congress and senior congressional staff. She received her bachelor’s from Johns Hopkins University, with a major in international relations and a minor in writing seminars. She received her master’s in international relations from Columbia University.
Jodi Herman
Jodi Herman is the Vice President for Government Relations and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for Democracy, serving since May 2016. Herman previously worked as the Democratic Staff Director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for Ranking Member Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD). Herman has also worked in private practice at the law firm Mowry & Grimson in Bethesda, MD, and served in the Clinton Administration as a Special Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador at the Organization of American States. Herman holds a Juris Doctor with Honors from The George Washington University’s School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies from American University’s School of International Service.
Ronald K. Lorentzen
Ron Lorentzen is a Senior International Trade Advisor at the Washington, DC, office of the law firm, Kelley Drye & Warren, LLP, affiliated with both Kelley Drye’s international trade and government relations and public policy sections. In 2017, Ron retired from nearly 37 years of public service in the leading trade agencies of the U.S. federal government, having served in such positions as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Trade Enforcement and Compliance, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Trade Enforcement Policy and Negotiations, the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for World Trade Organization (WTO) and Multilateral Affairs, and the Chairman of the Steel Committee at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris.
Ron’s service in government was recognized with numerous awards, including the prestigious Presidential Rank Award, the Department of Commerce’s Stephen C. Kaminski Memorial Award, and the U.S. Trade Representative Office’s William B. Kelly Award, among others. Ron received a Master of Arts degree from the Johns Hopkins Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington and a Bachelor of Arts degree in French language and international relations studies from Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois.
Mari Manoogian
State Rep. Mari Manoogian was born and raised in Birmingham, Michigan, and is serving her second term representing the 40th District, which includes Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Bloomfield Township, and a portion of West Bloomfield Township. She currently serves as the Deputy Democratic Caucus Whip and as the Minority Vice Chair for the House Committee on Energy.
At 28, Manoogian is the youngest woman serving in the 101st Legislature, and the first Armenian-American woman to serve in the Michigan House of Representatives. Prior to joining the Legislature, she served in various capacities of public service at the federal level, including interning for then-Congressman John D. Dingell, working with the Council on Foreign Relations, and assisting Ambassador Samantha Power at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Manoogian also worked in the Office of English Language Programs and eDiplomacy at the U.S. Department of State where she served with foreign and civil service officers.
Manoogian is a third-generation Armenian-American whose great-grandparents came to America in the 1920s to escape the Armenian Genocide. She earned both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. She is an avid Detroit sports and Team USA fan and enjoys figure skating, reading, traveling, and spending time with her family. Manoogian is a member of Saint Sarkis Armenian Church in Dearborn and lives in Birmingham.
Luis Navarro
Luis Navarro is an Electoral Strategist for the National Education Association, the nation's largest union, representing nearly three million educators in all 50 states. Luis previously served as Senior Resident Director for the National Democratic Institute of International Affairs in Georgia (2009-2014) and both presidential campaign manager (2007-2008) and the last chief of staff (2008-2009) for then-United States Senator Joe Biden. Over the course of his career in American Politics, Luis was the political director for John Kerry's presidential campaign through the Iowa Caucus (2003-2004) and the Service Employees International Union (1999-2003) as well as Executive Director of the Florida Democratic Party (2005-2006). He has also been a senior aide for the AFL-CIO, the Democratic National Committee and two former Members of Congress. He is a Eurasia Program Fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an occasional contributor to the Atlantic Council.
Dalibor Rohac
Dalibor Rohac is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he studies European political and economic trends. Specifically, he is working on Central and Eastern Europe, the European Union (EU) and the eurozone, US-EU relations, and the post-Communist transitions and backsliding of countries in the former Soviet bloc. He is concurrently a visiting junior fellow at the Max Beloff Centre for the Study of Liberty at the University of Buckingham in the UK and a fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Before joining AEI, Rohac worked in the office of the president of the Czech Republic in Prague. His scholarly articles have been featured in professional journals, among them Constitutional Political Economy, Economic Affairs, and the European Journal for the History of Economic Thought. He has a PhD in political economy from King’s College London; an MPhil in economics from St Antony’s College, University of Oxford; an MA in economics from George Mason University; and a BA in economics from Charles University in Prague.
Jean Schindler
Jean Schindler is Special Assistant to the President at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES). She previously spent eight years at the National Endowment for Democracy on the Government relations and Public Affairs team. While there, she stood up and directed the Penn Kemble Forum on Democracy, now one of DC's premier fora for young foreign policy professionals. She has also consulted with the QED Group and Tesco, and served as Chief of Staff for the Muslim American Leadership Alliance, a small non-profit dedicated to peace through storytelling. As part of her personal commitment to democratic processes, she has also been an Arlington, VA, county poll worker for the last decade. She has also been a short-term observer on three OSCE election mission. Jean holds a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles (Summa Cum Laude), and an MA in diplomatic history from the London School of Economics. She has also studied in Paris, Seoul, and Hong Kong.
Kyle Simpson
Kyle Simpson is Senior Advisor at Thompson Coburn LLP, working with clients to implement workable incentives for carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS), liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities, and climate friendly electric power generating systems. Simpson previously served as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy, where he developed and oversaw domestic and international energy policy. As Associate Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy. He has been involved in major environmental initiatives, such as minimizing the environmental impact of natural gas and oil production, raising the efficiency of refrigerators and other appliances made in the United States, and spearheading the effort to lift the ban on the export of crude oil produced from the Alaska North Slope.
Torrey Taussig
Dr. Torry Taussig is a Research Director in the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution's Center on the United States and Europe.
In 2018-19, Taussig was a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow based in Berlin, Germany, where she served as a foreign policy advisor in the German Bundestag and the Transatlantic Division of the German Foreign Office. Taussig works on US-EU relations, great power competition, and authoritarian challenges to democratic states and institutions.
Previously, Taussig held pre-doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships at the Brookings Institution. In this capacity, she led the Brookings Foreign Policy Program's Democracy Working Group and the "Democracy and Disorder" publication series launched in 2018. Taussig received a master's and a doctorate from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a bachelor's in political science and economics from Williams College.
