Anthony Richter is associate director of the Open Society Foundations and director of the Middle East & North Africa Initiatives. He has overall responsibility for the Arab region as well as foundation work in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Richter joined the Open Society Foundations in 1988 and has established more than 20 of the Foundations’ offices and developed programs such as Revenue Watch, the Central Eurasia Project, and Eurasianet.
Richter is chairman of the governing board of the Revenue Watch Institute and serves on the board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and cochairs the Transparency and Accountability Initiative donor group.
He has written for the New York Times, the World Policy Journal, and other publications. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received a BA, with high honors, from Wesleyan University and an MA in Slavic languages and literatures from Columbia University. He speaks Russian, French, and Persian.