He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in music from American University and also studied musicology for a year at the University of Salzburg in Austria. He earned his master's degree in German Area Studies (Literature concentration) from American University. He received his PhD from Georgetown University in German Area Studies and Linguistics. He is fluent in German.
Career
Gedmin served for nearly six years as director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin, a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose mission is "to foster 'enlightened' leadership and open-minded dialogue." From 1996 to 2001, Gedmin was a resident scholar and executive director of the American Enterprise Institute’s New Atlantic Initiative, a coalition of international institutes, politicians, leading journalists, and business executives seeking to revitalize and expand the Atlantic community of democracies. Leading supporters and participants included Václav Havel, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, and US Senators Jesse Helms and Joseph Biden.
Gedmin left the Legatum Institute in early 2014. He is currently a Research Council Member at the National Endowment for Democracy, senior fellow at Georgetown University and at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.[6]
