Lunch Seminar - Peace through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Start-up Culture for Security and Development

Date: 

Friday, March 3, 2017, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Perkins Room (R-415), 4th Floor Rubenstein, HKS

Speaker: Steven Koltai, Managing Director of Koltai & Company, and Brookings Guest Scholar, Governance Studies

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.”Steven Koltai

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.