Sonja Licht

Sonja Licht is President of the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence in Belgrade, Serbia. In 2007 she became a member of the newly-established Foreign Affairs Council of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as joining the Council for EU Integration of the Government of the Republic of Serbia. In Serbia, she was Chair of the BOD of “Politika” Newspapers, and is a member of the Executive Boards of the Women’s Fund “Reconstruction,” and the Jefferson Institute in both Washington D.C. and Belgrade. She is currently Chair of the Executive Committee of the International Centre for Democratic Transition, a board member of the Council of the European Cultural Foundation, and a member of the Advisory Boards of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. From 1991 to 2003 she was first Executive Director and then President of the Fund for an Open Society (Soros Foundation) in Yugoslavia (later Serbia), a major donor of a vigorous civil society. During that period she was a board member of many reputable international institutions. Between 1991 and 1995 Sonja Licht was the co-chair of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, a broad coalition of various civic organisations and movements from all European and North American countries. She was part of the Yugoslav dissident movement from the late sixties, and in the mid-eighties she founded numerous local and international non-governmental organisations, including a number of women’s organizations.