William M. Drozdiak, President
Before taking the helm of the ACG in February 2005, Mr. Drozdiak was Executive Director of the Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. The center, which was created in 2001 to serve as the first independent American policy institute in Brussels devoted to U.S.-European relations, serves as a base of operations for distinguished American scholars, policy analysts, and journalists conducting research on the Atlantic partnership; organizes conferences, seminars, and exchange visits; and helps supervise GMF grantmaking in Europe.
Mr. Drozdiak worked for two decades as an editor and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. As Chief European Correspondent until 2001, he was primarily responsible for covering major political, economic, and security issues across Europe, with special emphasis on NATO and the European Union. He also has covered globalization issues including energy, the environment, and new technologies. From 1990 to 2000, he served as the Post’s Bureau Chief in Paris and Berlin. During that time, he wrote and reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification, the leadership eras of Helmut Kohl and François Mitterand, and the Balkan Wars. For his coverage of NATO’s air war on Kosovo, he was part of a Washington Post team selected as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for international affairs in 1999.
From 1986 to 1990, Mr. Drozdiak served as the Post’s Foreign Editor and supervised its award-winning coverage of the Middle East and the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Before joining the Post, Mr. Drozdiak worked as State Department Correspondent for Time magazine and later covered the Middle East while based in Cairo and Beirut for Time and The Washington Star. He reported on the first peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, the fall of the Shah of Iran, the assassination of Anwar Sadat, and the war between Iran and Iraq from both sides of the conflict.
Prior to becoming a journalist, Mr. Drozdiak played professional basketball in the United States and Europe from 1971 to 1978. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1971 with bachelor’s degrees in political science and economics. He also earned a master’s degree at the College of Europe in Bruges and studied at the Institute of European Studies at the University of Brussels.
He is married to Renilde Loeckx, a Belgian diplomat who is currently serving as Ambassador to the Czech Republic. They have three children: Nicholas, Karen, and Natalia. |
