Wendy W. Luers is the founder and President of The Foundation for a Civil Society (FCS), a democratization and non-profit organization founded in 1990 with offices in Prague and Bratislava. In 1998, FCS established two sustainable NGO successors: VIA Foundation in the Czech Republic and Pontis Foundation in Slovakia, which are its affiliates today.

     She is also co-founder and Co-Chair of The Project on Justice in Times of Transition (PJTT), an independent conflict resolution project working in collaboration with the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University.  The highly successful Project on Justice in Times of Transition assists leaders of states emerging from repression or conflict to engage in dialogue across national, ethnic, religious and ideological boundaries with the intention of preventing political, legal and moral legacies of the past from jeopardizing their progress towards democracy and peace.

     Mrs. Luers was also an International Relations consultant for NYC 2012, the New York City bid for the 2012 Summer Games.  She has been a journalist with Time, a commentator for KQED-TV, edited San Francisco Magazine, a former contributing editor of Vanity Fair and a free-lance writer and lecturer.  She also was the director of special projects for Amnesty International (1975-1979) and Human Rights Watch (1987-1989).

     She was a presidential appointee of President  Reagan  to the National Council of the Arts (NEA) (1988-1994); designated by President  Clinton as the Chair of the NY White House Fellows Selection Committee; and founder and President Emerita of the Foundation of Art and Preservation in Embassies. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Women’s Foreign Policy Group; and serves on the Boards of The Freeman-Spogli Institute of International Studies at Stanford University (FSI), The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (USC) and the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University.  She is also on the American Board of Advisers of Ditchley (UK) and the World Childhood Foundation founded by H.M. Queen Silvia of Sweden, the Middle East Children’s Institute as well as numerous boards dealing with Central Europe.

     Mrs. Luers has been decorated by the Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic and the President of Slovakia for the Foundation’s contribution to civil society and representation abroad of their respective countries.  Mrs. Luers is a graduate of Stanford University with a degree in Political Science. She is married to William H. Luers, President of the United Nations Association of the United States of America, former President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and former United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia (1983-1986) and Venezuela (1978-1982).  They have six children and nine grandchildren.