Our Team
Reza Fakhari
President/CEO
Prior to assuming this position, Reza served as the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Global Citizenship Alliance for 8 years. He was elected to the Amnesty International USA Board of Directors in 2014 and served as Vice Chair and then Chair of the Board. He served as Chair of the Board of Student World Assembly which aimed to engage students from all over the world in critical reflection and new thinking about pressing global issues. He served as Vice President for Internationalization and a professor of international politics at St. Francis College in New York City where he led the comprehensive internationalization of the College and continues as a member of the teaching faculty. Prior to St. Francis, he served for 30 years in progressively responsible roles at LaGuardia Community College and Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York (CUNY) as professor, director, dean, associate provost, and vice president. He has also taught at Fordham University, Vassar College, Rutgers University, and International Pacific College in New Zealand. He holds a Ph.D., with Honors, in International Relations from the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Jochen Fried
Senior Advisor
Jochen was the founding President/CEO of the Global Citizenship Alliance. Prior to assuming this position, he was Director of Education at Salzburg Global Seminar, where he was responsible for developing and maintaining programs that highlight the pivotal role of education in building resilient and equitable societies, including the Global Citizenship Program and the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change. He also held the positions of Head of Programs at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, and of senior officer at the secretariat of the German Higher Education and Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat). After earning a doctorate in German literature at Düsseldorf University, Germany, he was a lecturer at Cambridge University and Ljubljana University, and a visiting scholar at various universities and colleges in the United States including Smith College in Northampton, MA, San José State University, CA, Bronx Community College, NY, and Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. He has worked in more than twenty countries on behalf of national and international organizations and has published widely on various topics related to higher education policy and global civil society.
The GCA is indebted to a special group of colleagues and friends who volunteer their time or provide expertise on demand to take care of specific aspects of the program and who provide invaluable help.
Alice Seeger
Independent Contractor, General Counsel, Assistant Secretary
Alice is an attorney who focuses her practice on representing small businesses and nonprofit organizations on a wide variety of issues, and businesses and individuals on succession and estate planning issues. She earned her B.B.A. (with honors) from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 1984. After graduation, she worked for IBM for a few years before heading to the University of Texas, School of Law in Austin. Alice was awarded her Juris Doctorate (with honors) in 1989, and inducted into the Order of the Coif. She has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Community Transitional School (CTS) since 2010. CTS is a nonprofit private school in Portland for children pre-kindergarten through 8th grade whose families are either homeless or in transitional housing. Since 2012, Alice has held the office of Secretary of the CTS Board of Directors and has been an active member of its Executive Committee.
Adam Beeson
Community and Outreach Coordinator
Based in Costa Rica, Adam is responsible for connecting GCA alumni across the global network while supporting program activities and development. He is an alumnus of the Global Citizenship Alliance and previously served in a number of roles for the Salzburg Global Seminar. Adam has more than a decade of international school teaching and leadership experience in Europe and the Americas. He is currently DEIB Coordinator and a language and literature teacher at Pan-American School, Costa Rica’s first International Baccalaureate (IB) continuum school. Adam is actively involved in the wider field of international school education, adding his insight as a presenter at the IB Global Conference of the Americas, serving as a member of the International School Anti-Discrimination Taskforce and contributing to various publications, including the International Schools Network, School Management Plus and the Wellbeing in International Schools Magazine. He received his M.A. in International Education from the University of Bath (United Kingdom), a B.A. in English from Brevard College (USA) and an International Teacher Certificate from the European Council of International Schools.