President Emeritus of Eurasia Foundation
Horton Beebe-Center is the former president of Eurasia Foundation and chairman of Gazelle Finance. Mr. Beebe-Center joined Eurasia Foundation in 1993 and served as the first field officer, establishing offices throughout the Eurasia region and running the Moscow regional office for two years. He returned to the United States in 1995 to serve as vice president for projects and development, then as executive vice president. He was appointed president in 2006.
Under Mr. Beebe-Center’s leadership, Eurasia Foundation’s small business lending program in Armenia and Ukraine disbursed and collected more than $17 million in loans, helping hundreds of entrepreneurs grow their businesses and creating more than 3,000 new jobs. Over the ten-year life of the program, loan losses were less than two percent of disbursals in Armenia and less than one percent of disbursals in Ukraine.
Mr. Beebe-Center was also directly involved in the design and launch of the Foundation’s five locally chartered institutions in Russia, Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Ukraine and Moldova.
Prior to joining Eurasia Foundation, Mr. Beebe-Center worked for several years on U.S.-Soviet projects ranging from intergovernmental technical exchanges to commercial joint ventures.
Fluent in Russian, Mr. Beebe-Center holds a B.A. in Soviet studies from Brown University and an M.A. in Russian studies from Harvard University.