Michael Kott, Vice President and Director
mkott@aed.org

Mr. Kott, Vice President and Director of the Center for Civil Society and Governance with the Academy for Educational Development, has been overseeing AED's democracy work since 1999 and has managed the Center's operation and programs since its establishment in 2003. He has over 15 years of international program development experience in grant , training, and civic education program design; institutional development; public relations; and monitoring and evaluation.

As AED's Country Director in Poland, Mr. Kott had overall responsibility for a three-year USAID-funded program of technical assistance and grants aimed at strengthening Poland's nonprofit sector from 1994 to 1998. At the same time, he also served as Associate Producer and Director on the Pew Charitable Trust-funded Decisions Project, overseeing the development of a 10 part television series promoting democracy and the free market to the country's youth.

As Country Director of AED's NGO Development Project in Croatia from 1998-99, Mr. Kott developed a national NGO training of trainers program and managed a diverse grant portfolio to build the advocacty capacity of Croatian non-profits. In 1997, Mr. Kott evaluated the training component of USAID's Democracy Network Programs in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia; in 1999 he led an evaluation of the Soros civil society programs in Hungary.

Mr. Kott co-authored the Poland Lessons in Transition report for USAID's ENI Bureau and managed the Durable Partnership research project producing a manual for USAID staff on how to promote effective and sustainable partnerships. In 2000, he also directed a Kettering Foundation project to develop a deliberative manual "Choicework" to help interested citizens participate more effectively in framing policy issues. As writer and translator, his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Review of Books, among other publications.