President: Michael A. Wright
Michael A. Wright, J.D.

Michael A. Wright is a semi-retired Attorney. He was employed for over twenty-five years with the Office of the Kentucky Attorney General, where he was a litigator, litigation manager, and as Criminal Deputy, where he oversaw the operations of the five criminal divisions of that Office. Before leaving government, the Governor appointed him an Inspector General and later Executive Director of the Governor’s Office of Claims and Appeals. During his career Michael often spoke to prosecutors’ and defense conferences, to judiciary colleges and to law enforcement conferences, both in and out of state. He has served on the Kentucky Supreme Court as a Special Justice from the Thirtieth Judicial District.

Being involved in the local community has always been important to Michael. He has recorded readings for the Blind at the Louisville School for the Blind, and for the Blind in Lexington, Kentucky. He served as Senior Warden at two local Episcopal Churches and served on the Diocesan Department of Youth and Young Adults. Michael served on a jury selecting the winner of the 2025 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He currently serves the community by sitting on a Committee of the Home of the Innocents. Before being elected President of the LCFR, he previously served on the Board of Directors where he was the Event Coordinator.

Michael graduated from the University of Kentucky with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, and from the University of Louisville with a Juris Doctor.

Executive Director: Dr. Charles E. Ziegler
University of Louisville, Dept. of Political Science

Charles E. Ziegler is Professor of Political Science and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of Louisville. A specialist on the domestic, foreign and security policies of Russia and Eurasia, Ziegler is co-editor (with Judith Thornton) of The Russian Far East: A Region at Risk (University of Washington Press, 2002), and author of The History of Russia (2nd edition, Greenwood Press, 2009), Foreign Policy and East Asia (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and Environmental Policy in the USSR (University of Massachusetts Press, 1987). His latest edited book, Civil Society and Politics in Central Asia, was published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2015. Ziegler was also Guest Editor for a Special Issue of the journal International Relations, “Critical Perspectives on the Responsibility to Protect: BRICS and Beyond” (2016). He is currently working on a book on the great powers in Asia.

Dr. Ziegler has published over eighty book chapters and articles for such professional journals as International Studies Perspectives, International Relations, Comparative Politics, Political Science Quarterly, British Journal of Political Science, Problems of Post-Communism, International Politics, Democratization, Asian Survey, and Strategic Studies Quarterly, and has presented over 90 papers at national and international conferences. Ziegler first joined the University of Louisville in 1980, and was Chair of the Department of Political Science from 1998 to 2007.

Ziegler has held an International Research and Exchanges Board Advanced Individual Research Opportunity grant, a Senior Fulbright Fellowship to Korea, an International Affairs Fellowship of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Hoover Institution National Fellowship. In 1989 he was a visiting scholar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and served as Legislative Assistant for Defense and Foreign Policy to Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND). Ziegler is founder and Senior Scholar of the Center for Asian Democracy. He has served as Executive Director of the Louisville Committee on Foreign Relations since 1990, and is currently Faculty Director of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. He was Project Director for a State Department funded program on building civil society in Kazakhstan, and was consultant to the PhD program at Eurasian National University in Astana. Ziegler received the BA from Purdue University, and the AM and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is married to Janna Tajibaeva and has a son, Alan.

Vice President: Mike McLaughlin

Treasurer: Bradley R. Hume

Chair of the Membership Committee: Marilyn Schorin: mschorin@gmail.com

Immediate Past Presidents:

  • Jan Scholtz
  • R. Brayton Bowen
  • Al Welsh

Members At Large:

  • Tricia Gray
  • Noel Hall
  • Kevin Lynch
  • Susan Zepeda
  • Frederick Ott