CHRISTOPHER J. MAKINS
(1942-2006)

Christopher J. Makins was president of the Atlantic Council of the United States from September 1999 to October 2005. He also served as an adviser to corporations and nonprofit organizations in the United States and Europe.

Mr. Makins spent almost all his professional life in the practice of international relations in the government, corporate and nonprofit sectors. He served as a senior adviser to the German Marshall Fund of the United States in 1997-99 and again in 2005-06. From 1989 to 1997 he was vice president and then executive vice president of the Aspen Institute, responsible for the oversight of the Institute's Policy Programs and for the development of the Institute's international network of partner institutions and programs in Europe and Asia. Before joining the Aspen Institute, Mr. Makins, a U.S. and British dual national, served for 11 years as a member of Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, working in London, Paris and Washington on European, Middle Eastern and transatlantic issues, including U.S.-European cooperation in high technology. After leaving the Diplomatic Service, Mr. Makins worked as deputy director of the Trilateral Commission (1975-6), at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. (1977-9), as a division manager and assistant vice president at Science Applications International Corporation (1979-89), and at the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies (1984-8).

From 1981 to 1994 Mr. Makins, in partnership with former deputy secretary of defense Robert Ellsworth, published a newsletter on U.S. foreign economic and defense policy and domestic politics. He served on several corporate and nonprofit boards and published widely on issues related to transatlantic relations and East-West negotiations.

Mr. Makins was born in Southampton, NY on July 23, 1942. He earned first class honors in Modern History in 1963 at New College, Oxford,, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford in 1963. He died from cancer on January 28, 2006, aged 63.