National Advisory Council: 2016
Alan Unger has over 40 years of experience working with public and private sector organizations – both domestic and international – managing projects and providing strategic planning and guidance in the areas of public policy, marketing and communications. He worked with a number of California public affairs and governmental organizations including the Canadian Foreign Ministry’s San Francisco Consulate, managing the political-economic, media, and academic relations activities for six western states. For four years, he directed internationally recognized civil society – public education and information programs in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Moldova, and Russia. He has worked on a number of presidential political campaigns and in Congress as well as state and local efforts. Together with his wife Ruby Unger, they established Unger Educational Media that has produced eight award-winning educational films over the past 20 years.
Currently, he is engaged in several international projects with universities and governments both domestic and international as well as directing the activities of the Unger Family Foundation. At U.C. Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies he helped establish a North American Futures symposium series, coordinating a 2010 conference on the Berkeley campus, in 2012 with partners at the University of British Columbia, and a potential third in 2015. He also coordinated an effort to examine international democracy transitions, organizing a major conference titled Democracy Rising, an effort with six-campus co-sponsors lead by IGS as part of an ongoing symposium examining democratic transitions. After successfully establishing university based public management and civil society programs in Croatia through the Unger Foundation, he is guiding a revision of the foundation’s activities and those with Cleveland State University’s Levin College and in California. At home in Mill Valley he recently retired as a board member at The Redwoods, a model retirement community, and continues to devote time as an active Redwoods volunteer as well as with other organizations.
