The Board of Trustees of the Brookings Institution has elected two new members. Richard W. Fisher, the former deputy U.S. Trade Representative and the managing partner of Fisher Family Fund L.P., and Daniel Yergin, co-founder and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, were elected at the Board’s Nov. 5 meeting.
“It is an honor to welcome these new trustees,” said James A. Johnson, the chairman of the Board. “Their expertise and experience will help us ensure the future of the Brookings Institution.”
Brookings President Michael H. Armacost added, “Richard Fisher and Dan Yergin will bring to the board’s deliberations welcome expertise and experience in the fields of trade and energy policy that are high on the nation’s agenda and will be increasingly central to our research.”
Dr. Yergin, an authority on energy policy and international politics and economics, is the Pulitzer Prize winner in general nonfiction for his book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, and the 1997 winner of the United States Energy Award for lifetime achievement. He is also the author, with Joseph A. Stanislaw, of The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World. As with The Prize, The Commanding Heights will be made into a television series that will air on PBS.
Yergin earned his B.A. from Yale University and his Ph.D. from Cambridge University in England, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and holds honorary degrees from the University of Houston and the University of Missouri. He is a member of several organizations, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Petroleum Council, and the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board.
Richard W. Fisher was, until January 2001, the deputy U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), with primary responsibility for Latin America, Canada, and Asia. While at USTR, Ambassador Fisher was vice chairman of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and a member of the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council.
Before joining USTR, Fisher held various positions in financial management, academics, and politics. He was a managing partner of Value Partners Ltd. and Fisher Capital, a senior manager at Brown Brothers Harriman and Co., an adjunct professor at the University of Texas, and in 1994, was the Democratic nominee in Texas for the U.S. Senate.
Fisher earned his B.A. from Harvard, attended Oxford University, and received an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He has served on the board of directors of numerous organizations, and is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the Texas Philosophical Society.
The Brookings Institution is an 85-year-old nonpartisan, independent organization that conducts research and disseminates its analyses and recommendations on important public policy issues. The Board of Trustees is responsible for the overall supervision of the Institution, and approves proposed research projects.