Stephen Salyer

Salyer was elected president and chief executive officer of the Salzburg Global Seminar in September 2005. Founded in 1947 by a young Austrian studying at Harvard University who wanted to create a "Marshall Plan of the Mind," Salzburg facilitates cross-sector development of strategic solutions, conducts international leadership development programs for rising stars in government, business, NGOs and academe, and offers model curricula and content to policy and education networks worldwide. Though an American organization, Salzburg's program is centered at the historic Schloss Leopoldskron on the southern outskirts of Salzburg.

Prior to assuming the Salzburg presidency, Salyer served as president and chief executive officer of Public Radio International (PRI). Under his leadership PRI became a leading developer and distributor of programs with a global perspective, and a leader in using digital technology to reach younger audiences. His vision defined PRI's mission: to help Americans understand their diverse, interdependent world. Salyer played a leadership role in designing and launching such ground-breaking programs as: Marketplace, the business program with the largest audience in U.S. radio or television; PRI's The World, the only daily international news hour produced for the American market; and Studio 360, the pre-eminent arts and culture magazine on public radio. He brought global news to American listeners by forging an expansive partnership with the BBC World Service to make its 24-hour news channel available to PRI's 800+ stations nationwide. Salyer also co-founded Public Interactive, LLC, the leading force in public broadcasting enabling on-line community and audience interaction, and chaired its Board from 1999 to 2005. PRI recently reached agreement with NPR to extend Public Interactive's tools and services to all public stations in the United States.

Salyer also served for nine years as a vice president and then as senior vice president at WNET/Thirteen in New York City, the flagship PBS producer, where he led departments responsible for national program development, international co-production, education, and communications. As head of the station's Education Division, he formed in 1983 an experimental design department, the WNET Learning Lab, which pioneered early computer-based, interactive media instruction. Before joining public broadcasting, Salyer directed the Population Council's Public Issues Program, and was the youngest person ever appointed to a presidential commission (age 19), serving while still an undergraduate at Davidson College as a member of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future.

Salyer's recent board service includes Internews US and EU Boards, Salzburg Global Seminar, Lloyd N. Cutler Center for the Rule of Law Advisory Board, Guidestar USA, Inc., Davidson College, MacPhail Center for Music, Public Interactive, LLC and Public Radio International.

After joining the Salzburg Global Seminar in September 2005, Salyer initiated a strategic review of the institution's mission, goals, strategy, measures of success, financial sustainability and governance. The resulting strategic plan guided Salzburg's emergence as a reinvigorated institution – encouraging a cross-cutting focus on issues and outcomes, attracting new financial support, and creating a platform on which its 25,000 Fellows in 160 countries can engage and collaborate.

Programs launched and personally led by Salyer include multi-year initiatives on "Strengthening Independent Media" and "Optimizing Institutional Philanthropy", supported respectively by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and by the Heron and Kellogg Foundations. Both initiatives brought together leading donors and thought leaders from all parts of the world to accelerate innovation in areas of particular promise.

Salyer proposed and co-founded with his wife, Susan Moeller, Professor at the Merrill School of Journalism at the University of Maryland, the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change. Since 2007, each summer, the Salzburg Academy has brought together students and faculty from five continents with leading journalists and media entrepreneurs. During their residency in Salzburg, the participants analyze media practices on a comparative basis, create case studies and curricular modules, conduct research, and test new media concepts. Recent journalists in residence at the Academy have included Pulitzer Prize-winner Dana Priest of the Washington Post, Charles Sennott of the 'Global Post', Will Dobson of National Public Radio, Lucio Mesquite of BBC Monitoring and Robin Wright of The New Yorker.

With Salyer's encouragement, a "Writer in Residence" program was established with the world-renowned Salzburg Festival, bringing leading novelists and essayists to Schloss Leopoldskron for readings, lectures and discussions in August of each year. Participants have included Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk and Pulitzer Prize Winners Richard Ford and Jeffrey Eugenides.

In 2012, Salyer organized an annual program on private and public international law and public service - the Salzburg Cutler Fellows Program - for faculty and students from eleven of the top U.S. law schools (Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, NYU, Penn, Stanford, UVA, Yale). Held at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, 55 Cutler Fellows produce papers on topics at the leading edge of international law. Their ideas are presented to and critiqued by a panel of leading judges, academic experts and practitioners and selected Cutler Fellows are invited to participate subsequently in Salzburg Global seminars corresponding to their fields of interest.

The Cutler Fellows and an annual Cutler Lecture at the US Supreme Court are part of an expanding Lloyd N. Cutler Center for the Rule of Law, founded in 2007 at the Salzburg Global Seminar by Salyer and B. Thomas Mansbach, who chairs the Cutler Center Advisory Board. Cutler Lecturers have included Richard Goldstone, Harold Koh, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Helena Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Eric Schmidt, John Bellinger Alberto Ibarguen and James Thornton.

From 2018-2020, Salzburg Global Seminar in partnership with the Salzburg Festival have together organized exhibits and symposia to mark the 100th Anniversary of theatre impresario Max Reinhardt's purchase of historic Schloss Leopoldskron in 1918. To celebrate the Centennial of Reinhardt's co-founding in 1920 of the Salzburg Festspiele, Salzburg Global plans an international seminar on the future of festivals across the world.

Salyer has received numerous awards and fellowships, including Distinguished Service Award from Davidson College (1997); U.S.-Japan Leadership Fellow (1996); British-American Fellow (1990); Root-Tilden Scholar, New York University School of Law (1976–79); Administrative Fellow, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (1974–75); Salzburg Fellow (1974); Thomas J. Watson Fellow (1974); Dana Scholar, Davidson College (1970–72); North Carolina Leadership Fellow (1969–72). He is a graduate of Davidson College from which he was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree in 2003, and of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

• Salzburg Global Seminar
• Schloss Leopoldskron
• Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change