WASHINGTON, DC, Sept. 15, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace announced today that Penny Pritzker, former U.S. secretary of commerce, will be stepping down as chair of its Board of Trustees to serve as U.S. special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery, and announces that Catherine James Paglia has been elected as chair to complete Pritzker’s term. 

Pritzker stated, “The Carnegie Endowment is among the world’s leading sources of independent research and ideas to help policymakers reduce conflict and build a more prosperous world. It has been an honor to serve this dynamic organization, which has achieved so many great things in its first 110 years and is well-positioned to take on the key global challenges of the next century and beyond.”

A prominent business leader, entrepreneur, public servant, and philanthropist, Pritzker is the founder and chairman of the investment firm PSP Partners and Pritzker Realty Group. Previously, Pritzker served as the secretary of commerce from 2013 to 2017 under then president Barack Obama. She was a key member of Obama’s economic team and led the administration’s trade and investment promotion efforts. President Joe Biden announced Pritzker’s appointment yesterday. 

A year after joining Carnegie’s board, Pritzker was elected in 2018 to serve as chair. During her tenure, she has been instrumental in reaching numerous milestones at Carnegie—including launching a successful $80 million capital campaign, the first in the organization’s history, to secure Carnegie’s financial footing well into its next century. Pritzker played a critical role in establishing new leadership for Carnegie; she led the cultivation of a strong and diverse international board and, in 2021, welcomed Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar as Carnegie’s tenth president. Under her steady guidance, Carnegie also created several new streams of policy research, including the Africa Program and the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program. Most recently, Pritzker oversaw the launch of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. 

“Penny’s astute insights, deep knowledge, and innovative leadership have been invaluable to Carnegie at a time when our mission is enormously important to the world,” said Cuéllar. “We look forward to working with her in her new capacity. Her generosity, wisdom, and dedication to Carnegie will leave a lasting legacy—and I am grateful that our long-term board member Cathy Paglia will build on these achievements by completing Penny’s term as chair at a critical time.”

Steven A. Denning, vice chair of Carnegie’s board and chairman emeritus of General Atlantic, is managing the board transition and said, “It has been an honor to work alongside Penny. She has been a visionary leader for Carnegie, and we as an institution have benefited from her wisdom and guidance. Her expertise and dedication to public service, economic growth, and foreign affairs make her the ideal person to take on the new role of special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery. We are fortunate to have a deep bench of expertise on the Carnegie board, and I am delighted to welcome Cathy Paglia into the role of chair.” 

Paglia has an extensive Wall Street background, combined with operating experience as chief financial officer of two publicly held companies and investment experience as a principal in a successful buyout firm. Paglia currently is a director of Enterprise Asset Management, Inc., a privately held real estate and asset management company, where she is responsible for investments in real estate, oil and gas, and public and private equities. She is also responsible for the operation of the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, a family charitable foundation. 

Paglia’s Wall Street career spanned fourteen years, including eight years at Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc., where she was the first female managing director in the firm’s fifty-three-year history. She has a wide variety of transactional experience, including mergers and acquisitions, project finance and leasing, and general corporate finance. She cofounded Morgan Stanley’s Insurance Group and built it into one of the largest in the industry. 

At Interlaken Capital, Inc., a principal investment firm located in Greenwich, Connecticut, Paglia was a managing director for ten years, with responsibilities including initiating transactions and overseeing portfolio investments in a wide variety of service businesses. 

Paglia serves on the Board of Trustees of Columbia Funds, a large mutual fund company, and is the lead director on the Board of Directors of Valmont Industries, Inc. She is on the Board of Trustees of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. She also serves as an appointee to the Investment Advisory Committee to the New York State Common Retirement Fund. She has a BA from Carleton College and an MBA from Harvard University.  

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a nonpartisan global think tank with operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. In a complex, changing, and increasingly contested world, the Carnegie Endowment generates strategic ideas and independent analysis, supports diplomacy, and trains the next generation of international scholar-practitioners to help countries and institutions take on the most difficult global problems and advance international peace.

Miriam Magdieli
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
+1 240 899 2998
miriam.magdieli@ceip.org

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