The Palm Beach Daily News reported:
Now (age) 25 and 23 respectively, Matthew Swift and Nicholas Logothetis have founded The Concordia Summit Group with a list of high-profile names on its advisory board. Among them: Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush; former president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski; U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte; and Thailand’s Minister of Justice Suwat Liptapanlop.The Concordia Summit was founded in February 2011. How did two young entrepreneurs assemble a who's who list of world leaders in seven short months?
The goal of the group is to address pressing global issues through private/public partnerships.
Their inaugural summit in New York City ( held September 20) tackles global extremism and has drawn more attention than they initially envisioned by landing President George W. Bush as their keynote speaker.The pair promoted themselves, "not as experts in counter terrorism or counter extremism, but as people who are able to get.., to organize, facilitate and get the right group of people into the room to make this happen." Concordia's inaugural annual forum followed a Davos, Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) type forum. The event was held the same time as CGI, which ran from September 20-22. New York City hosted both CGI and the Concordia Summit.
Concordia hoped to establish a "Concordia Index" on terrorism to rate countries globally. In addition they aimed to offer the "Concordia Audit," which would assess the impact of extremism interventions.
Noble aims for sure, but it's hard seeing two young entrepreneurs as "expert facilitators." Bolstering my doubt, the pair graduated from college in May 2010 after working part time. How many college grads can pull off such a goal?
Founded by Nicholas Logothetis and Matthew Swift in February 2011, Concordia will convene world leaders, former heads of state, security officials, and leaders of global corporations to analyze and discuss the respective roles of the private sector and government in tackling extremism..
These boys either have hudspah or the right political connections and family lineage. Furthering understanding, the basis of Concordia's name, I explored the pair's corporate connections. The begin with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and various subsidiaries, which employed Swift and Logothetis through college.
The Concordia Summit's partners include The Libra Group and SyntheticsWorld. Three Libra Group Board members made the speaker list, John Negroponte, Nicholas Logothetis, and George Logothetis, Chairman and CEO of The Libra Group.
The Libra Group was formed in 2003 and its subsidiary list looks PEU, like a private equity underwriter. It has offices in New York, London and Beijing, big money centers.
Libra's has more affiliates, thirty one, than either Concordia founder has years of life experience. When one doesn't know the sins of the past, which this duo freely admitted, those sins can and will be repeated.
Watch them "facilitate ways to help people around the world combat" extremism and terrorism issues. I'm sure any facilitating will be done by SyntheticsWorld and not this pair. The question is how much business will The Libra Group get as a result of Concordia activities?
Libra owns:
US Hotels operates a marina and a conference and banqueting centre at the exclusive Kennebunkport resort.
Concordia targets governments and corporations as potential buyers of their products. Sharing information with the general public sounded limited, a small byproduct of this nonprofit's aim. Understanding Concordia will likely take time, but they're off to a PEU start.
Update 10-10-11: Heritage Foundation showed up at the boys' event. They shot a video with Fran Townsend and Tom Kean.
Update 10-16-11: Chris Wayne Associates produced the event. CWA holds out the Clinton Global Initiative as a client. Founder Chris Wayne worked in the Clinton administration, before joining a major PR firm. CWA helped CGI become #1 event for CEOs. Will Concordia Summit put a dent in GCI's CEO numbers? Time will tell...
