Robert Berg

Robert J. Berg co-chairs the Fundraising Committee of the Academy’s Board of Trustees. He is Chairman of the Board of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, an association of 106 organizations in the US and around the world working on conflict prevention and conflict resolution. He is also Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington DC concerned with security and environment issues. He has served as senior advisor to a number of parts of the UN, including the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa, the World Education Forum and the World Summit for Children. He proposed and co-authored the UN’s first system-wide substantive initiative, the second being the Millennium Development Goals. Currently he is on a UN expert group concerned with the economic and governance implications of climate change. For many years he led the International Development Conference, the largest forum on international development issues in the US. Prior to that he was senior fellow at the Overseas Development Council, a think tank, and founded the evaluation work of USAID and the OECD/DAC. He serves on non-profit boards in higher education and international development, focusing on peace, community development and health. He currently works with graduate students from number of universities studying UN reform issues.

  

Michael McManus

Michael McManus is a partner in Drinker Biddle & Reath’s Commercial Litigation Practice Group, and the former regional partner in charge of the Washington, DC office. He has been handling complex commercial litigation cases for more than 32 years. Michael’s experience is primarily concentrated in False Claims Act, products liability, construction and intellectual property, although he has handled a number of cases in other areas of general commercial litigation, as well as complex insurance cases. Michael has handled cases in more than 30 different states, in both state and federal court.