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MACHA LEVINSON
PhD 1974
Entering the Graduate Institute, then still the HEI, in 1968
was as daunting as it is today. The standards were high.
American academic achievement did not impress Geneva’s
professors and it was only because I already had a Master’s
degree from New York’s Columbia University and its Russian
(later Harriman) Institute and had served as a US Foreign
Service Officer on the disarmament delegation in Geneva,
that I was admitted to the doctoral programme. Still, two
years of courses were required before I was allowed to
write a thesis and get my degree.
It was a stimulating and challenging period. The Institute
was buzzing with intellectual discourse. Although, with
three little children at home, I had to forego most extracurricular
activities, it was easy to run down the avenue de la
Paix to hear the outstanding guest lecturers that the Institute
attracted.
Armed with a new doctorate, I became a consultant to
Iran’s disarmament delegation and to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute. Then I jumped over
the wall and became strategic affairs editor for the Geneva
based International Defense Review, writing on armaments
and military strategy. My big break came when I joined the
World Economic Forum in 1987. The Berlin wall came down
two years later, splintering the communist camp and opening
up Eastern Europe. The secret world we, students of
the Soviet Union, had tried to study and penetrate suddenly
became accessible. We invited the new leaders of Russia
and Eastern Europe to Davos and heard of the historic
events they had witnessed. We were all caught up in the
fervor and excitement of the moment.
Macha Levinson.
political and new business leaders of the region. We held
meetings in Moscow (almost annually), St Petersburg, the
Baltics, Kazakhstan, Warsaw, Budapest, Prague and for
seven years we held an annual Central and Eastern European
Economic Summit which brought up to 800 politicians and
executives from all these countries together in Salzburg,
Austria. Over the 20 years spent at the Forum, I also headed
the Energy sector and coordinated the Global Competitiveness
Report.
The years at the Institute had given me the international
orientation which made all this possible and there can be
no better preparation for a career in a global world than
that offered by the Graduate Institute.
As director for Eastern and Central Europe, I organised
innumerable conferences and round tables bringing heads
of Western business and government together with the
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