Reminder | 1pm Today | Talk to the Author – Peace Through Entrepreneurship – Teleconference

You’re Invited – TODAY

The World Affairs Councils of America provides a monthly special program called “Cover to Cover” that features interactive phone conferencing with authors of global affairs related books. We thank them for their support and we are pleased to share this information with you here as a benefit of your affiliation with the Tennessee World Affairs Council.

TALK TO THE AUTHOR | “PEACE THROUGH ENTREPRENEURSHIP” BY STEVEN KOLTAI

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Joblessness is the root cause of the global unrest threatening American security. Fostering entrepreneurship is the remedy.

The combined weight of American diplomacy and military power cannot end unrest and extremism in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world, Steven Koltai argues. Could an alternative approach work? Koltai says yes: by investing in entrepreneurship, and reaping the benefits of the jobs created through entrepreneurial startups.

From 9/11 and the Arab Spring to the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate, instability and terror breed where young men cannot find jobs. Koltai marshals evidence to show that joblessness — not religious or cultural conflict — is the root cause of the unrest that vexes American foreign policy and threatens international security.

Drawing on Koltai’s stint as Senior Adviser for Entrepreneurship in Secretary Hillary Clinton’s State Department, and his thirty-year career as a successful entrepreneur and business executive, Peace through Entrepreneurship argues for the significant elevation of entrepreneurship in the service of foreign policy. This entrepreneurship is not rural microfinance or mercantile trading. It is the scalable stuff of Silicon Valley and Sam Walton, generating the vast majority of new jobs in economies large and small.

Peace through Entrepreneurship offers a nonmilitary, long-term solution at a time of disillusionment with Washington’s “big development” approach to unstable and underdeveloped parts of the world — and when the new normal is fear of terrorist attacks against Western targets, beheadings in Syria, and jihad. Extremism will not be resolved by a war on terror. The answer, Koltai shows, is stimulating economic opportunities for the virtually limitless supply of desperate, unemployed young men and women leading lives of endless economic frustration. Those opportunities will come through entrepreneurship.

Steven Koltai is an expert on international entrepreneurship ecosystem development. He is currently Managing Director of Koltai & Company, an entrepreneurship program development consultancy. At Brookings, Koltai is pursuing a project and book provisionally titled: “World Peace through Entrepreneurship.”

Most recently, he was Senior Advisor for Entrepreneurship at the US Department of State where he created and managed the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP), focused primarily in job creation via entrepreneurship in Muslim majority countries. Previously, Steven has 30 years of business experience as an investment banker (Salomon Brothers), management consultant (McKinsey & Company), media industry (Warner Bros and Lifetime Television), and as a multiple company successful entrepreneur and angel investor. He is a long time member of the Council on Foreign Relations where he was an International Affairs Fellow. Koltai serves on numerous for profit and not-for-profit Boards, including the Tisch College of Active Citizenship at Tufts University (his alma mater), Babson Global at Babson College, the Library of Congress’ David Rubenstein Literacy Awards Committee, the Museum of Hungarian-speaking Jewry in Safed, Israel, and Advancing Girls Education (AGE) Africa in Malawi.

Koltai was born in Budapest, Hungary, fleeing to the U.S. as a small child with his family following the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. He was raised in Los Angeles, California and Kansas City, Missouri. He has two sons and lives in Maine and Washington, D.C.