Thomas W. Skladony is a Friends of Slovakia founding member and has served continuously on the FOS board since 2001. He is a public-policy professional with more than 40 years of Washington, D.C. experience. He served in senior research and management positions at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and National Endowment for Democracy. Between 1996-1997 he was a public-relations advisor in the office of Slovak President Michal Kováč. In 1997-1998 Skladony helped launch the Institute for Public Affairs (IVO), a leading Slovak think tank. He was co-editor with Martin Bútora of Slovakia 1996-1997: A Global Report on the State of Society, and edited other IVO publications in subsequent years. More recently, he worked for an international development firm assisting in the reconstruction of postwar Afghanistan (work that unfortunately stopped after the return of the Taliban in 2021). Skladony is a fourth-generation Slovak-American and travels frequently to Slovakia. He is fluent in Slovak, and also speaks and reads German. Tom earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science from the University of Pennsylvania, summa cum laude, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.