Board of Directors
Click on board members’ names for biographies.

The Honorable Ernest F. Hollings, Founding Chair

Ernest F. Hollings, a Democrat, represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1966 until his retirement in 2005. He served as chairman of the Committee on the Budget and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Senator Hollings was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and graduated from The Citadel in 1942 and from the University of South Carolina Law School in 1947. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, he served in the South Carolina general assembly, including as speaker pro tem; as the lieutenant governor and then governor of South Carolina; and as a presidential appointee to several federal commissions. As a senior member of the Committee on Appropriations, Senator Hollings played a key role in creating the Hollings Center. Senator Hollings’s abiding interest in U.S. relations with the Middle East began with his military service in North Africa during World War II.

Ambassador Nicholas A. Veliotes, ret., Chair

During his diplomatic career, Ambassador Veliotes served in Naples, Rome, New Delhi, Vientiane, and Tel Aviv. He was ambassador to Egypt and Jordan and Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East and South Asia. After service in the U.S. Army, he earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, and while a Foreign Service officer he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. After retirement from the Foreign Service, he served as president of the Association of American Publishers until 1997. Ambassador Veliotes is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Middle East Institute, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Association of Berkeley Fellows. He also serves on the boards of the American Academy of Diplomacy, AMIDEAST, ANERA, and the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

Mary Ellen Lane, Vice Chair

Dr. Mary Ellen Lane is the Executive Director of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, which currently has 22 members in the Near and Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Europe, West Africa and Central America. Dr. Lane has helped to secure support for existing centers and worked to establish centers in areas of the world where infrastructure was lacking to support research exchange. She has worked with U.S. and host-country scholars and officials to establish and make viable the West African Research Association, the Hong Kong-America Center, the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies, Mexico-North Research Network, the Center for Khmer Studies, the Center for South Asia Libraries, the Palestinian American Research Center, the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, and the American Institute for Afghanistan Studies. Along with the doctorate in Egyptology she received from the University of Paris IV Sorbonne, Dr. Lane has also earned degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

.Katherine H. Gronberg, Treasurer

Since January 2006, Katherine H. Gronberg has served as Vice President of Morhard & Associates, L.L.C., a government affairs consulting firm. Previously, Ms. Gronberg served as the clerk of the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, where she was responsible for appropriations for the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, portions of the Department of Justice, U.S. trade agencies, and several independent agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Small Business Administration. Prior to her position in the Senate, Ms. Gronberg worked on the New Hampshire primary campaign of then-Governor George W. Bush. She graduated from Yale University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Bologna, Italy, in 1998-1999. Ms. Gronberg received her MBA from the University of Virginia in May 2009.

Amy Hawthorne, Secretary (ex officio)

Amy Hawthorne, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs, was appointed as the founding Executive Director of the Hollings Center in January 2006. Previously, Ms. Hawthorne was an international consultant on Middle East politics based in Washington, D.C., and Cairo, and an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focused on the issue of democracy in the Arab world and was the founding editor of the Endowment’s noted Arab Reform Bulletin. She has published and lectured about Arab politics and has testified before the U.S. Congress. She also previously served as senior program officer for the Middle East and North Africa at IFES, a Washington-based NGO, where she managed programs to promote democracy in the region. Beginning as a college student, Ms. Hawthorne has spent extensive time in the Middle East. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in history, with honors, from Yale University and a Master’s degree in modern Middle Eastern studies from the University of Michigan, and reads and speaks Arabic. As a graduate student, she received a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, a Rackham Fellowship, an International Institute grant, and an award for her thesis on Islamic law. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Al Azhar University in Egypt, one of the Islamic world’s oldest and most important seats of learning. Ms. Hawthorne was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served on the Council’s Task Force on U.S. Policy toward Arab Reform.

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, ret.

Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University and the first Distinguished Chair for Middle East/Islamic Studies at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. Ambassador Ahmed earned his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He is widely published and also serves as Nonresident Scholar at the Brookings Institution, as Senior Distinguished Fellow for the Hassan Family Foundation, as Senior Fellow for the Case Foundation, as Consulting Distinguished Scholar for the Buxton Initiative, and as Senior Advisor for the Center for Workable Solutions. Ambassador Ahmed also serves as Trustee of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, as Trustee of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions and as President of the Advisory Council of the Society for Dialogue and Action. He has won numerous awards for his humanitarian and interfaith work, including the Star of Excellence, one of Pakistan’s highest honors, and Professor of the Year Award (2004) for Washington, D.C., by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Ambassador Wendy J. Chamberlin, ret.

Wendy Chamberlin has served as President of the Middle East Institute since March 2007. She previously served as deputy high commissioner for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees where she helped provide vision and leadership for humanitarian operations. As assistant administrator in the Asia-Near East Bureau for the U.S. Agency for International Development, Ambassador Chamberlin promoted the expansion of civilian reconstruction programs in Iraq as well as development assistance programs in South Asia and the Middle East. Ambassador Chamberlin was in the U.S. diplomatic service from 1975 to 2004, serving as U.S. ambassador to Pakistan as well as to the Laos People’s Democratic Republic. Her assignments also included deputy in the Bureau of International Counter-Narcotics and Law Programs, deputy chief of mission in the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, director of press and public affairs for the Near East Bureau, and director of global affairs and counter-terrorism at the National Security Council. A graduate of Northwestern University, Ambassador Chamberlin has a Master’s degree in education from Boston University and participated in the Executive Program at Harvard University. She also holds an honorary Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

Richard Ekman

Richard Ekman has been President of the Council of Independent Colleges since 2000. He previously served as vice president for programs at Atlantic Philanthropies and, from 1991 to 1999, as secretary of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. From 1982 until 1991, he was a member of the staff of the National Endowment for the Humanities, first as director of the Division of Education Programs and subsequently as director of the Division of Research Programs. His previous experience includes service as vice president and dean of Hiram College, where he was also a tenured member of the Faculty of History. Earlier, he served as assistant to the provost at the University of Massachusetts Boston and as associate director of the Department of Expository Writing at Harvard University. Dr. Ekman holds a Ph.D. in the history of American civilization from Harvard University, the institution from which he also received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees (magna cum laude). Dr. Ekman has been awarded honorary degrees by Georgetown and Marywood Universities and Alderson-Broaddus, Bethany, Hastings, Otterbein and Ursinus Colleges. He is co-author, with Richard E. Quandt, of Technology and Scholarly Communication (1999).

The Honorable Robert L. Livingston

Robert L. Livingston was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election in 1977 and was re-elected to 11 successive two-year terms. He served as a member of the House Appropriations Committee through most of his time in Congress, including as Chairman from 1995 to 1998, and on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. He was chosen by his peers to serve as Speaker-designate for the 106th Congress. Following his departure from Congress in February 1999, Mr. Livingston established a successful lobbying firm known as The Livingston Group in both Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, Louisiana. Mr. Livingston serves on a number of non-profit and corporate boards. Before his almost 22 years in Congress, Mr. Livingston practiced law in both public and private fields for nine years. He earned a Bachelor’s degree and a J.D. from Tulane University and graduated from the Loyola University Institute of Politics. In 1981, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Our Lady of Holy Cross College in New Orleans, Louisiana, and in 1990, an Honorary Order of the Coif from Tulane Law School.

Phebe Marr

Phebe Marr is a prominent historian of modern Iraq. A retired professor, she was research professor at the National Defense University and a professor of history at the University of Tennessee and at Stanislaus State University in California. From October 2004 to July 2006, Dr. Marr was a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. In 1999 and 2000, Dr. Marr was a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She frequently contributes to media discussions about Iraq, is the author of the seminal volume The Modern History of Iraq, as well as numerous articles on Iraq, and has testified before many congressional committees in recent years. She served as an expert advisor to the Iraq Study Group. Dr. Marr received a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History from Harvard University and a Master’s degree in Middle East Studies from Radcliffe College.

Harold Saunders

Harold "Hal" Saunders is a veteran high-ranking U.S. diplomat who participated in the 1978 Camp David Peace Accords involving U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and later co-chaired the Dartmouth Conference Regional Conflicts Task Force. Currently, he is President of the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue, which conducts dialogues designed to make constructive social change possible in international and domestic conflicts. The topics discussed range from the "Inter-Tajik Dialogue," addressing the Tajikistan civil war, to racial conflicts on U.S. college campuses.

The Honorable Stephen J. Solarz

For 24 years, Stephen Solarz served in public office both in the New York State Assembly and in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was elected as a Democrat from Brooklyn’s 13th Congressional District to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974 and re-elected eight times. He served in the New York State Assembly for six years prior to his election to Congress. Mr. Solarz served for 18 years on the U.S. House of Representatives International Affairs Committee, serving as chairman of the subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs and the subcommittee on Africa. He was also a member of the Budget Committee, the Intelligence Committee, the Joint Economic Committee, the Education and Labor Committee and the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. He played a major role in Congressional efforts to restore democracy to the Philippines, abolish apartheid in South Africa, and bring peace to Cambodia in 1993. Since 1993, Mr. Solarz has served as a visiting professor of international relations at The George Washington University and a distinguished consultant at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In 1995, together with former U.S. Senator George Mitchell and Ambassador Morton Abramowitz, Mr. Solarz founded the International Crisis Group.