June 2021

Ambassador Nina Hachigian was appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to be the first Deputy Mayor of International Affairs in 2017. Her office seeks to expand Los Angeles' global ties to help bring jobs, culture, visitors to the city and to share L.A.'s values and experience. Prior to this, she served as the U.S. Representative to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. She was a Senior Fellow and a Senior Vice President at the Center for American Progress and the director of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy. She served on the staff of the National Security Council in the Clinton White House from 1998-1999.

Friedhelm Marx studied linguistics and litrature and catholic theology in Tübingen, Bonn and at the University of Virginia. In 1994, he received his doctorate in Bonn with a thesis on Goethe and Wieland; in 2000 he habilitated at the University of Wuppertal with a thesis on Christ Figurations in the Work of Thomas Mann. Since 2004, Friedhelm Marx has held the Chair of Modern German Literature at the Otto-Friedrich-University Bamberg. He is a 2021 Thomas Mann Fellow.

Michael Zürn is a political scientist. His research particularly focuses on the emergence and functioning of international and supranational institutions and their effects on the global political order. Prof. Zürn is Director of the Department of Global Governance at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) and Professor of International Relations at Freie Universität Berlin. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the Academia Europaea since 2014. He is a 2021 Thomas Mann Fellow.

The conversation will be moderated by Kimberly Marteau Emerson. Emerson is a lawyer, civic leader and human rights advocate who serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, the Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee, the Berlin and Los Angeles (co-chair emerita) City Committees, and many more.

George Packer is an award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic. His previous books include The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award), The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (winner of the Hitchens Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography). He is also the author of two novels and a play, and the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of George Orwell. His essays and articles have appeared in Boston Review, The Nation, World Affairs, Harper's, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among other publications. Packer was a columnist for Mother Jones and was a staff writer for The New Yorker from 2003 to 2018.

Thomas Aujero Small is founder and CEO of the nonprofit Culver City Forward, a public-private partnership to bring together leaders from the Culver City business, government, educational, philanthropic, and community groups to provide a non-partisan and fact-based platform to strengthen Culver City’s economy, support the local workforce, and meet the diverse needs of the business, civic, and community stakeholders. Small formerly served on the City Council of Culver City, California, from April 2016-December 2020, including his rotation as Mayor of Culver City from 2018 to 2019. Small was elected unanimously as Mayor by his colleagues on the City Council in 2018. Prior to his election to City Council, he served as Commissioner of Cultural Affairs.