Dr. Frances Z. Brown is a senior fellow and co-director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program. She previously worked at the White House, USAID, and in non-governmental organizations, and writes extensively on conflict, governance, and U.S. foreign policy.
In her last role before leaving government, Dr. Brown served as director for democracy and fragile states on the White House National Security Council (NSC) staff, where she helped manage policy processes on democracy support, key political transitions, and post-conflict stabilization efforts. Serving in both the Obama and Trump administrations, she also convened a fragile states interagency committee, aimed at elevating comparative insights on conflict into policy deliberations.
Prior to the NSC, Dr. Brown served at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Transition Initiatives, managing stabilization and political transition programs in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Africa from the field and Washington. Previous research roles include fellowships with the Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, the U.S. Institute of Peace, as well as her doctoral work at Oxford, which examined donors’ bottom-up state-building and stabilization programs in conflict-affected states. Other experience outside of government includes two years in Beirut, Lebanon; a year at the Kabul-based Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit; consulting for the Quadrennial Defense Review; shorter project-management roles in Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Pakistan; and political risk forecasting.
She has published field research projects on Afghanistan stabilization and subnational governance with the U.S. Institute of Peace, on Syria stabilization with Carnegie, and shorter analyses in the American Interest, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the International Herald Tribune, and elsewhere. On television, Brown has commented on U.S. foreign policy for BBC World News, ABC News (Australia), Al-Jazeera, and elsewhere. She is a security fellow with the Truman National Security Project and a prior term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Ralf Fücks is Managing Director of the Center for Liberal Modernity, following 21 years as President of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, the political foundation associated with the Greens. At the center of his work were green economics and ecological innovation, migration, the future of Europe, and international politics. Before that, he was co-chair of the German Green Party (1989/90) and Senator of Environment and City Development in Bremen.
Mr. Fücks is considered to be an innovative thinker, seeking cross-party discourse. He is an advocate for liberal ecology politics, focusing on innovation rather than prohibition. He is a regular contributor to national and international media and co-author to numerous books. In 1991, he was editor of the book “Sind die Grünen noch zu retten?” (Is There a Future for the Green Party?). In 2013 his book “Intelligent Wachsen – Die grüne Revolution” (Smart Growth – The Green Revolution) was published in German, followed by English, Polish and Russian editions. His second book, “Freiheit verteidigen – wie wir den Kampf um die offene Gesellschaft gewinnen” (Defending Freedom – How We Can Win the Fight For An Open Society) is dealing with the challenge liberal democracy is facing at home and globally. In September 2019, the anthology “Soziale Marktwirtschaft ökologisch erneuern” (“Greening the Social Market Economy”) was published by Fücks together with Thomas Köhler at the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung.
