John Edwin Mroz is the Founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the EastWest Institute, an international not-for-profit, non-partisan "think and do" tank established in 1980. Mroz was born on May 1, 1948 in Westfield, Massachusetts. He completed his BA at the University of Notre Dame followed by an MA at Northeastern University and MALD at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.[1]
In 1980, Mroz and Ira D. Wallach set out to address areas of political dispute across the Iron Curtain by forming the Institute for East West Security Studies (later renamed the EastWest Institute), an international not-for-profit, non-partisan "think and do" tank focusing on international conflict resolution through a variety of means, including track 2 diplomacy and track 1.5 diplomacy (conducted with the direct involvement of official actors), hosting international conferences, and authoring publications on international security issues.[2] In 1981 the State Department under the Reagan Administration took the diplomatic initiative and established a secret contact with the PLO through Mroz.[3]
Mroz has served as an advisor to more than twenty governments including the United States, Germany, Turkey, Ukraine, Poland and the Russian Federation, as well as the G-8, the European Commission, the African Union, NATO, and the Council of Europe. He has received numerous international awards including Das Verdienstkreuz 1. Klasse (Officer’s Cross), Germany's highest award to a non-citizen in recognition of the role he and his Institute played in facilitating German reunification.[4]
Mroz is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has appeared frequently on BBC, CNN, ABC and other news programs around the world. He speaks regularly before business and professional groups including Institutional Investor, Fortune Global Forum, the Young Presidents' Organization, WPO, CEO, the Russell 20-20, the International Chamber of Commerce World Congress, the Eurasia Media Forum, Davos, and the World Future Society.
He writes regularly in the international press on global change and international security affairs. Mroz has contributed to Foreign Affairs, as well as to journals and books on leadership and management including chapters in the Peter Drucker Foundation’s Organization of the Future (Jossey-Bass, 1997) and Leaders of the Future (Jossey-Bass, 2006). His work as a global change agent has been described in numerous volumes including Leaders Who Make a Difference (Jossey-Bass, 1999).[5]
Mroz is also the author of a landmark book on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Beyond Security: Private Perceptions Among Arabs and Israelis.