Wendy W. Luers

Wendy W. Luers "is the founder and President of the Foundation for a Civil Society (formerly the Charter 77 Foundation — New York) and co-founder in 1992 of The Project on Justice in Times of Transition.

"Mrs. Luers had a Presidential appointment as a member of the National Council of the Arts, the board of the National Endowment for the Arts, from 1988-1996. She is founder and President of the Friends of Art and Preservation in Embassies and serves on numerous other nonprofit boards: The Independent Journalism Foundation, the Civic Education Project, the Fund for Arts and Culture in East and Central Europe, the Fund for Free Expression, Helsinki Watch, the Olga Havel Foundation and the Vaclav Havel Foundation as well as many others that are particularly concerned with the Czech and Slovak Republics. Today, she is on a Team of External Advisors to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia.

"In 1993 President Clinton appointed Mrs. Luers as Chair of the White House Fellows New York Regional Selection Panel on which she had served in 1994 and 1995. She was a United States Delegate to the CSCE (now OSCE) Review Conference in Budapest, Hungary in November 1994.

"Mrs. Luers is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Woman’s Foreign Policy Group, and The American Ditchley Foundation Program Committee. She is a Director of the Municipal Advantage Fund, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange as well as TV3 television network in Prague. She is a member of the Board of Councilors for the Annenberg School for Communication, and serves on the Leadership Council on Children in Armed Conflict of the International Rescue Committee, and The World Childhood Foundation founded by H.M. Queen Silvia of Sweden. She is on the Advisory Committee of the ExxonMobil Pegasus Prize for Literature. Mrs. Luers was a member of the Presidential Delegation to observe the September 1996 Bosnian election, which was led by Hon. Richard Holbrooke.

"In September of 1997 the Czech Foreign Ministry presented Mrs. Luers with the first Gratias Agit award for the promotion of the Czech Republic abroad. In January of 1998, President Kovac of Slovakia decorated Mrs. Luers with the State Order of the Dual White Cross. She is the first woman to receive this honor.

"Mrs. Luers was a former contributing editor of Vanity Fair and a free-lance writer and lecturer. She has lectured widely at many museums and organizations across the country including eight speeches for IBM in 1991. Her articles have been published in the Washington Post, House and Garden, Town and Country and Foreign Affairs.

"Mrs. Luers previously served as Director of Special Projects at Human Rights Watch (1987-1989); Cultural Correspondent for Venevision Television in Venezuela; Director of Special Projects, Amnesty International, USA (1975-1979); Commentator/Fundraiser, KQED-TV San Francisco; Assistant Editor of San Francisco Magazine and consultant to the NBC White Paper Series on the "Urban Crisis".

"Mrs. Luers is a graduate of Stanford University with a degree in Political Science. She also studied and lived in Spain for three years. Mrs. Luers is married to William H. Luers, President and Chairman of the United Nations Association of the United States of America. Mr. Luers is also the former President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and former United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1983-1986) and Venezuela (1978-1982). They have six children." 


 * Advisory Board, Freeman-Spogli Institute