We are a group of people who are affiliated with the Center for Citizen Initiatives (please check the History section). Fortunately, we have a wide range of contributors - experts on Russia, professors, Congress members, foreign analysts working in Russia, American CEOs living and working in Russia, former diplomats, tens of thousands of Russians at all levels of society and 30,000 American business and civic leaders who have trained the thousands of Russians brought to the US for training.
The blog is run by:
Sharon Tennison, founder and president of CCI
Maria (Masha) Maslova
Gordon Hahn, PhD, Russia specialist
Sharon Tennison has worked for 25 years in Russia and the CIS, creating numerous multi-year, multi-million dollar TA programs to provide training for Soviet and Russian citizens to gain independence and skills designed for self governance. She is founder and President of the Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI) in San Francisco. She lives and travels extensively part of the year in Russia.
Maria Maslova, a native of Tiraspol, Transnistria/ Moldavia of the former Soviet Union, graduated from San Francisco State University with the Master's Degree in International Relations. Her work bridges the two most influential nations in post-Cold war period, the US and Russia, and aims to facilitate a better understanding of social, political and cultural issues. She is author of academic work: Paradoxes of Recognition of Statehood and Self-determination in Post-Communist South Eastern Europe, SF State University, 2005
Gordon M. Hahn is Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; Senior Associate, Russia and Eurasia Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.; Senior Researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program; Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies; and Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group. Dr Hahn is author of two well-received books, Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002) and Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choice magazine. He has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics and publishes the Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report (IIPER) at CSIS at http://csis.org/program/russia-and-eurasia-program.
