Friday, June 25, 2010
The Duquesne Club
11:45 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
$60/person I Company Tables of 8 to 10 Available

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Under the supervision of PMEI’s Georges Montillet, a Ph.D candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at Yale University with years of experience in the Middle East, students will receive Arabic language instruction at Cairo’s renowned International Language Institute (ILI), team up with a selected group of Egyptian students for cultural programs and visits to Egypt’s historic sites, and engage in special community service projects. Scholarship monies to cover most expenses will be offered to eligible students.

Download Program Application and Other Information:

• PMEI_Egypt_Language_Summer_Program_2010.pdf
• ILI_Information_Packet.pdf
• PMEI_Application_Form_and_Waiver.doc
• PMEI_Egypt_2010_Safety_Sheet.pdf

Pittsburgh, PA – Former Secretary of State of the United States, Madeleine K. Albright, will speak at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland on Wednesday, November 10th at 8:00 PM. Albright’s lecture will be the closing event of the day-long Third Annual Conference of the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute.

“As we have done the past two years, we are committed to bring in speakers who are writers and thinkers and can inform audiences about the ideas that drive the mission of the Institute,” said Simin Curtis, President of the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute.

Albright is Chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, and Chair of Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets. She is the author of four New York Times best-sellers. Her autobiography, Madam Secretary: A Memoir, was published in 2003, and her latest book, Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box was published in 2009.

Albright was the 64th Secretary of State of the United States. In 1997, she was named the first female Secretary of State and became, at that time, the highest ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government. From 1993 to 1997, Albright served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and as a member of the President’s Cabinet. She is a professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. She chairs both the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the Pew Global Attitudes Project and serves as president of the Truman Scholarship Foundation. Albright serves on the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Board of Trustees for the Aspen Institute. In 2009, Albright was asked by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen to chair a group of experts on NATO’s New Strategic Concept.

For more information, please contact the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute at info@pittsburghmideastinstitute.org.

The Pittsburgh Middle East Institute (PMEI) is an independent, non-profit consortium of prominent civic institutions and corporations in Pittsburgh dedicated to promoting business, educational, and cultural ties between Pittsburgh and the countries of the Middle East. We launched our Institute in September 2008 with NY Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman and a conference on how to do business in the Middle East. PMEI seeks to brand Pittsburgh in the Middle East and foster a greater understanding between our cultures and advance a new generation of forward-thinking global leaders and visionary business partners.

Visit the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute website: www.pittsburghmideastinstitute.org
Contact us: info@pittsburghmideastinstitute.org

If his appearance on the stage of the Carnegie Music Hall was forecasted during the financial meltdown a year ago, Fareed Zakaria, listening to the talk of the day, might have thought he’d be standing in a world much different than the one he spoke about Tuesday evening.

“Everybody kept saying everything will change,” said the host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” international affairs program. He quoted Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s promise during his confirmation hearing in January that capitalism would never be the same.

“Looking at the world today, it doesn’t seem the way it was supposed to be a year ago,” he said at the kickoff lecture of the Pittsburgh Middle East Institute’s second annual business conference. The conference continues Wednesday.

The reason for that is widespread stability, Zakaria explained.

“We are living in some ways in a more stable world than we realize,” he said.

He described a gradual movement after World War II to condition the world to support the way the U.S. operates. Organizations such as NATO and the International Monetary Fund serve as a cushion for that paradigm, he said.

Now, counties such as China, India, Brazil and Turkey are moving closer and closer to this model.

“There is no opting out” of the kind of capitalist system the U.S. and the West operate in, he said. When most countries pick themselves up after a crisis, “they rejoin the system.”

There is another type of stability, Zakaria said, that exists between world’s major economies, which for the first time are not in direct geopolitical conflict with each other.

“The rising powers of the world are not seeking to overturn the existing order,” he said. Instead, they’re looking to get rich within it.

Nevertheless, Zakaria said that managing the relationship with China is the U.S.’s “greatest strategic challenge.”

“In this march of societies, the only part of the world that has not moved significantly along is the Middle East,” he said. But that’s beginning to change.

“What you’re seeing is nothing less than a New Middle East,” he announced.

It isn’t the once powerful giants such as Egypt and Syria leading this charge, Zakaria said.

“The energy, the vitality and modernity is being led in the Gulf States.”

Those countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Qatar, are reconciling Islam with the modern world and commerce the way the merchant class has always done in Arab countries, Zakaria said.

For example, Islamic finance — financial institutions that allot funding in concert with the principles of the Koran — is “a booming industry.”

Moving towards a more political and economic relationship with in the Middle East may be as obvious as understanding that a million people live in the Islamic world and allowing that to have the same zing as the promise of populated Asian markets.

“Don’t confuse the veil with the suicide belt,” he urged.

alitvak@bizjournals.com | (412) 208-3824

The Pittsburgh Middle East Institute’s Second Annual Conference will feature Fareed Zakaria, CNN commentator and editor of Newsweek International, on Tuesday, October 13, 2009, at the Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland at 8 p.m.

Zakaria, a leading authority and scholar on the global economy, geopolitics and international relations, will discuss “The Real Solution to the Middle East Crisis.”

Zakaria is host of CNN’s international affairs program, “Fareed Zakaria GPS” which airs on Sundays worldwide. He writes a regular column for the U.S. edition of Newsweek and the Washington Post and is the author of several books, including “The Future of Freedom,” and his recent best seller, “The Post-American World.”

In 1999, Zakaria was named “one of the 21 most important people of the 21st Century” by Esquire magazine. In 2007, his name was included among the 100 leading public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy, where he had once served as managing editor. He has received a host of awards and honorary degrees, most recently at Brown University where he was the 2009 commencement speaker. He serves on the board of Yale University, The Council on Foreign Relations, and The Trilateral Commission. He received a B.A. from Yale and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard.

[10.14.09 | Duquesne Club]

The conference will continue with a Wednesday, October 14, business symposium at the Duquesne Club, providing an interactive discussion on energy sustainability and emerging technologies. The event will provide a practical approach to business investment in the Middle East.

Details»

2009 General Conference Information

• Overview
• Speakers
• Sponsors

Watch the Nov 11, 2009 Event: “Egypt in the 21st Century”

2008 Conference Recap

#1 The Economist Magazine (June 2009) ranked Pittsburgh as #1 Most Livable City in the United States

#2 Foreign Direct Investment Magazine named Pittsburgh one of the Top Ten Major Cities of the Future.

#3 President Obama selected Pittsburgh to host the G-20 Summit September 24-25, 2009, because Pittsburgh symbolizes economic renewal and has transformed itself into an economy that embraces new and green technologies.

#4 Pittsburgh is recognized worldwide as a leading center of high technology and life sciences. The Pittsburgh Technology Council has 1,400 member firms.

#5 Leading industries include energy, software engineering, computer science and information technology, healthcare delivery, advanced manufacturing, medical device technology, robotics, and green innovation.

#6 Pittsburgh’s great research universities include Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

#7 The Allegheny Conference on Community Development, which represents more than 300 major companies, has identified Pittsburgh’s energy economy, including sustainable energy, as a key strength of the region.

#8 Centers specializing in sustainability include the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (University of Pittsburgh), the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education & Research (Carnegie Mellon University), Sustainable Pittsburgh, the Rachel Carson Foundation, and the nationally recognized Green Building Alliance.

#9 Energy-related and green companies include: Flabeg (solar thermal technology); Veolia (low energy desalination); PPG (wind energy, and energy efficient window coatings); Serious Materials (High R value windows); Tegrant (High R value insulated concrete building components); BPL Global (smart power grid technology)

#10 Pittsburgh has been a leader in the energy industry since oil was first discovered in 1859 near Pittsburgh. The Mellon family then organized Gulf Oil Corp. The region was built on fossil fuels: oil, coal, and huge deposits of natural gas.

#11 There are 700 energy companies in the region, including leading corporations such as: Westinghouse (nuclear energy), Consol (coal), and Equitable Gas. The National Energy Technology Laboratory is located in Pittsburgh.

And it just happened the two-year-old nonprofit organization, begun by three Iranian women to breach the cultural and economic divide between Pittsburgh and the Middle East, was focusing on green energy during its three-day event in October.

“The whole thing about capitalizing around the G-20 is that you have everybody thinking about this city that has sort of this international aura now,” said the institute’s founder and president, Simin Yazdgerdi Curtis. “We’re not isolated. Pittsburgh is out there, and our conference is a demonstration of that.”

In fact, institute Vice President Massy Paul has begun referring to the event as the mini G-20 summit. But the buzz around the group has been building since it burst on the scene with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman headlining its first conference last year, which drew around 2,500 people.

This year, it’s Newsweek columnist and CNN analyst Fareed Zakaria headlining the event.

Also present will be a delegation from Oman, which gave the institute a list of companies with which they’d like to meet during a three-day visit, including Acquatech, CONSOL Energy and CMU, among others.

“For an organization our size, for them to send 15 people, including the secretary general of the ministry of foreign affairs,” Paul said, pausing with near disbelief. “It’s mind boggling how people have been receptive.”

For Paul, the high rank of both the international political officials and American business leaders interested in the institute’s mission speaks to the hunger for developing new economic markets in the Middle East.

Those business relationships will heal the damaged perceptions each culture may harbor against the other, Yazdgerdi Curtis said, drawing on the idea of “smart power” pioneered by Harvard professor Joseph Nye.

The high-minded mission comes with a hefty price tag. The organization raised $200,000 last year and is hoping to surpass that this year, Paul said. But that’s just enough to fund the infancy of its mission.

“Our goal is to build an institute. We’re not really going to be happy with having one or two lectures a year,” Paul said. “We need endowment. We’re not talking about a few thousand dollars. We’re talking about building an institute.”

The institute counts 62 local companies among its sponsors, supporting firms and partners for the conference. Among them are Pittsburgh giants such as Westinghouse Electric Co., Burt Hill, Comcast and Bombardier, and smaller companies and media outlets, including this one.

The institute’s sponsorship package for the upcoming event ranges from the platinum $100,000 spot to the $25,000 silver label. The presenting sponsor is UPMC, which operates emergency medicine systems in some Qatar hospitals and is pursuing other opportunities in the country.

CONSOL Energy kicked in a few thousand, said Tom Hoffman, vice president. The coal giant doesn’t have any dealings in the Middle East, nor is it looking to branch out there, Hoffman said.

“It was really an intellectual interest in seeing if these two very different cultures have anything in common in how we handle energy,” he said.

Michael Mullen, vice president of corporate and government affairs for the H.J. Heinz Co., said in an e-mail that Heinz is a sponsor because it has a growing business in the Middle East and wants to support efforts that build a better understanding of the region and its business environment.

“Heinz sees the Middle East as a potentially dynamic market with a growing economy and over 200 million consumers,” Mullen said. “In Egypt, for example, Heinz has achieved an 80 percent share of that nation’s ketchup market.”

In five years, the institute’s founders hope to be the premier organization for business and cultural exchanges with the Middle East.

The Wednesday morning business symposium “Building the Green City: Pittsburgh & the Middle East — Energy and Green Technologies,” will provide an interactive discussion on energy sustainability and emerging technologies. The event will provide a practical approach to business investment in the Middle East.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS:

The Keynote Address will be delivered by His Excellencey Sayyid Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood Al Busaidi, Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Sultanate of Oman, with an introduction by Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh Mark Nordenberg.

PRESENTATIONS:

US-QATAR BUSINESS COUNCIL

The Honorable Ambassador Patrick N. Theros, President, US-Qatar Business Council, Washington, D.C., and former Ambassador from the United States to Qatar – Introduced by Dr. Jared Cohon, President of Carnegie Mellon University.

MASDAR CITY: THE WORLD’S FIRST CARBON NEUTRAL, ZERO WASTE CITY

Mr. Khaled Awad, Property Development Director, Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company-Masdar. Mr. Awad, who oversees development of Masdar City, will discuss the opportunities and challenges in building the first carbon neutral, zero waste city in the world. Includes video presentation and Q&A.

PANEL DISCUSSION:

The seminar will conclude with a panel discussion led by Dennis Yablonsky, Chief Executive Officer, Allegheny Conference on Community Development and former Secretary of Commerce for the State of Pennsylvania. The topic is Pittsburgh’s energy economy and the region’s innovations in green technology.

Panelists include:

• Nick Diluliis, President, CONSOL
• Lauren Flannery, Managing Principal—Forms+Surfaces
• David L. Porges, President and Chief Operating Officer, EQT Corporation
• Sean Rollman, Chief Financial Officer—Plextronics
• Keith Schaefer, President & Chief Executive Officer, BPL Global
• Venkee Sharma, President and Chief Executive Officer—Aquatech International
• Antonio Torres, Vice President—NOVA Chemicals
• Jerry Whitaker, President—Eaton Electric

2009 BUSINESS SYMPOSIUM PRESENTING SPONSOR

Pittsburgh Middle East Institute is pleased to announce that UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center) is the presenting sponsor for this year’s business seminar. This year, UPMC unveiled the new, 10-acre, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh campus in Lawrenceville. The facility’s careful stewardship of energy, water, materials, and land resources have made it an international model for green innovation.

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