IEA Leadership

Van McCormick

Founding Director
International Economic Alliance
+1 617 418 1981
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Mr. McCormick is Founding Director of IEA. Before IEA, he was Director of Investment Symposia and Harvard-Kommersant Program lecturer both at Harvard’s Belfer Center. Before that, he was Principal Lecturer for the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH).

Before Harvard, Mr. McCormick had a notable Business career.  He was involved in start-up and private equity ventures including Qeyton Systems that was sold to Cisco, President of IIHC, an acquisition company backed by First Data (FDC) and Stonington Partners and Managing Director at US Digital. He started at Hubbard Broadcasting’s KOB-TV (NBC) and led new media, ran Cityline Inc., and worked on USSB that merged into DIRECTV. Mr. McCormick served on the Bush/Quayle Presidential Council and the US Department of Commerce committee on high technology in 1992.

Mr. McCormick's other charitable works include member of the Lecture Committee of the Harvard Club of Boston, religious and educational institutions, and he is an advisory board member of the  Hermitage Museum Foundation. He received his BA at the University of New Mexico and an AMP from Harvard Business School.

Lena Sene

Senior Advisor Business/Government Relations
International Economic Alliance
+1 617 418 1978

Ms. Sene is Senior Advisor of Business/Government Relations and works with IEA’s Heads of State, Ministers, CEOs and institutional investors on year-round investment symposia in the US and abroad.

In addition to her non-profit work with IEA, Ms. Sene is Managing Director, Deer Isle Capital LLC –Lena is responsible for overall business development and for the firm’s Africa investment strategy. Prior to Deer Isle, Lena was at Impact Capital Partners, an international alternative investment advisory firm focused on emerging and frontier markets where she co-advised USAID on the placement of a $100 million climate change private equity fund mandate to invest in SMEs in frontier markets. While at Impact Capital, Lena was appointed Special Advisor to the Ambassador of Malawi to the United Nations.

In 2012, Lena was selected by former Prime Minister of Senegal, Idrissa Seck, to serve as his Campaign Manager during the Senegalese presidentialelections and manage a team of forty six individuals.

Prior to Impact Capital, Lena was a Banker in the Investment Management division of Lehman Brothers where was responsible for advising institutional and high net worth clients on a full range of investment strategies in the traditional and alternative assets space. Prior to Lehman, she was a Banker at JPMorgan Private Bank where she worked within a team of six Private Bankers advising more than 200 high net worth families with total assets under management of over $4.5 billion. While at JP Morgan, she was selected as the sole recipient of the annual JPMorgan Rising Star Award for the Annual Women's Bond Club Merit Award in 2003.

In 2006, Lena was appointed by President George Bush to the White House Fellowship, a forty-seven year old non-partisan leadership program, along with 13 other nationally selected Americans. She obtained Top Secret Security Clearance from the FBI. Lena was also selected 1 of 120 global scholar-leaders inducted into the Academy of Achievement Class of 2007.

Lena is a published author on SME investing in Africa, a conference speaker on African investing and was a source for the latest Dalberg April 2011 report on Impact Investing in West Africa. In addition, she participated in the U.S. State Department’s Impact Investing Study focused on the mobilization of private capital to generate both financial and social returns in emerging markets.  

Lena has a B.A. in Economics from Bates College, an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she was selected a Mort Zuckerman Fellow. Lena has FINRA Series 7 and 63 registrations.

Lena was born in the U.S. and was raised in Senegal, Russia and Ukraine. She is fluent in English, French, Russian and Wolof.  She serves on the Board of Trustees of Bates College and was an elected Board Member of the United Nations Association of New York. She is a member of The Economic Club of New York.

Kiril Stefan Alexandrov

Mr. Alexandrov was a Co-Founder of the International Economic Alliance and is the Senior Advisor in charge of content. Mr. Alexandrov has been an active advocate for the growth of global entrepreneurship for over a decade and was co-founder of EyeGen (renamed Genigma Corporation), as well as winner of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

As a serial entrepreneur, Mr. Alexandrov founded the Boston Book Review, the Big Skinny Corporation, and he co-founded the District of Columbia Arts Center. He has also won the Stanford Global Entrepreneur Challenge. His entrepreneurial expertise was a key element and significantly helped in establishing the International Economic Alliance from its conception at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and its founding roots of Harvard's Russian Investment Symposium. Mr. Alexandrov holds a Masters Degree from Harvard University.

David Lerner

Managing Director 
International Economic Alliance
+1 617 418 1131
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Mr. Lerner is the Managing Director of International Corporate Relations at the IEA, prior to his recent promotion, David was a Corporate Fellow at the IEA and assisted in the success of the 2011 Global Investment Symposium.  Previously, David was a consultant to Oxford Analytica, a geopolitical and macro-economic information and consulting firm. David acted in the capacity of VP of Business Development for North America worked on sales, marketing strategy and emedia product development. Previously his work history was concentrated in emedia and technology start-ups including Unisfair, a virtual events technology company to the Media industry that was acquired by Sequoia.

Mabel Jong

Senior Media Liaison for the International Economic Alliance
MJC Communications, LLC
+1617 838 8850
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Ms. Jong is the Senior Media Liaison for the International Economic Alliance.  An award winning broadcast journalist, Ms. Jong is the owner of MJC Communications, LLC, a full service media consulting firm.  

Ms. Jong has over two decades of experience working in business news and network television production in the United States, Asia and most recently Europe, where she wrote and produced a weekly show out of London for CNBC Europe. In addition to her extensive production work, she has worked as an anchor and correspondent for CNBC, NBC News, and ABC News.

Other professional assignments have posted her in different cities throughout the U.S. and overseas in Asia, where she reported stories during a pivotal time in the region's history.

Ms. Jong holds a BA from the University of California Los Angeles and has extended her journalism studies through fellowships awarded by the Knight Foundation.

Peter Muzila

Managing Director of Technology
International Economic Alliance
+1 617 418 1981
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 Mr. Muzila is an Honorary Consul of the Slovak Republic in for the six states of New England. His unique combination of business success, diplomatic experience and technical knowledge are a great value to IEA and our corporate and country members. 

Mr. Muzila is also a private investor, conducting research and analysis of seed investment opportunities in the high tech field, and then funding promising firms.  His business career started shortly after he finished university studies in 1996 when he co-founded Allaire Corp., a publicly traded high tech company in Newton, MA. In 2001, Allaire merged with Macromedia, Inc. who then merged with Adobe Corporation.  

Mr. Muzila is involved with a number of non-profit organizations.  He is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Czech and Slovak Association in Boston and the Board of Directors of the Friends of Slovakia in Washington, DC. He has a strong interest in Slovak art and organized a number of exhibits in the Boston area.

Peter received his education in Bratislava, Ilmenau and Vienna, obtaining a Master of Engineering in Information Systems from the Slovak Technical University. He did further studies in business information systems, management and marketing at the Economics University in Bratislava and at two Austrian universities, including the University of Vienna.  He and his wife, Alyson, are busy raising their three sons, Lukas, Alexander and Samuel and planning of the healthy arrival of their 4th child.  

Bodo Liesenfeld 

Senior Fellow

Mr. Liesenfeld is a Senior Fellow at IEA. He works closely with the IEA team to engage global CEOs and Heads of State/Ministers to advance economic relations, with a focus in Europe and Latin America.

In addition to his work with IEA, Mr. Liesenfeld runs Liesenfeld International, a family office investment group. Originally from Hamburg, Germany, for nearly 30 years he was the CEO and Chairman of a privately held global transportation and logistics enterprise with offices in over 25 countries.

Mr. Liesenfeld is a Fellow at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, in residence 2009/2010. While living in Boston, he became involved in transatlantic relations by helping form relationships between Massachusetts, Boston, and the City State of Hamburg in the fields of Urban Development and Energy Efficiency.

Mr. Liesenfeld has also been appointed the HamburgAmbassador, representing Hamburg in the Northeast region of the US. In addition to his work, he has also travelled and worked in Latin America for over 40 years, and was recently named President of the German Latin America Association in 2006. As President of the Association, he is a representative of the German business sector towards all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Business School of Universidad Austral in Buenos Aires, as well as a member of the curatorship of the German Association of Christian Entrepreneurs.