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CIP Board Members

Lowell Blankfort

President of Blankfort Unlimited Inc., a firm specializing in media consulting, article and column writing. In addition Lowell has done special articles, mostly on foreign countries, from in-depth series on political hot spots like Afganistan, Iraq and Cuba to colorful travel articles on primitive backwaters like Benin, Outer Mongolia and Papua New Guinea. Lowell has interviewed many heads of state and of governments, including Fidel Castro in Cuba, Kim Dae Jung in Korea, Li Peng and Li Xiannian in China, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Keith Mitchell in Granada, Joaquin Balaguer in the Dominican Republic, Rodrigo Carazo in Costa Rica, in addition to two Nobel Peace Prize winners – Kim Dae Jung and Shirin Ebadi, in Iran. He has won a series of awards including the Best Editorial in the United States from the National Newspaper Association, Civic Recognition Award, City of Chula Vista, for outstanding service to the community and Headliner of the Year San Diego Press Club, for nationwide recognition for editorial writing among others.

Thomas Cooper

Thomas Cooper, founder and CEO of Gulfstream International Airlines, has been significantly involved for numerous years in the airline industry, specifically in the development of charter air service between Cuba and the United States. A graduate of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Management, Mr. Cooper has an Airline Transport rating, Flight Engineer License, and a Flight Instructor’s License. In 1976, he established Air Florida Commuter, which focused on connecting passengers from Miami with various locations in the Caribbean, and in 1989 founded Gulfstream International, an airline that today operates a fleet of 32 jet-prop aircraft. Gulfstream currently operates two daily flights between Miami and Havana. Mr. Cooper is also the CEO of the Gulfstream Training Academy, one of the nation’s leading professional pilot training companies.

Jeffery Horowitz

Mr. Horowitz founded Urbanists International in September of a non-profit organization offering urban design, planning, and economic development assistance to developing countries. As an architectural designer, he has directed a wide variety of large-scale urban projects with the firms of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and Kaplan, McLaughlin & Diaz. His projects include commercial centers and high-rise office towers across the U.S. and in Paris, Barcelona, Brussels, Milan, Jakarta, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Mr. Horowitz received his Master of Architecture degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he founded The Harvard Architecture Review. At the time, Mr. Horowitz was also appointed a Harvard teaching fellow, a Graham Foundation Scholar, and was the recipient of Harvard’s Appleton Award for architectural scholarship. From 1991-1996 he served as chairman of the Planning Commission of Berkeley, California. Mr. Horowitz currently serves as chairman of the board of trustees for the Head-Royce School in Oakland, California. Mr. Horowitz directs the Rosengarten/Horowitz Fund, a non-profit family foundation focused on local and international humanitarian causes.

 

Conrad Martin

Conrad Martin served in the Peace Corps from 1981 to 1983 as a Forage Agronomist on the island of Barbados and currently is the executive director of the Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust. He is also executive director of the Fund for Constitutional Government, a tax-exempt publicly supported foundation created to eliminate corruption in government. The Fund sponsors the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), the Government Accountability Project (GAP), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), as well as an Investigation Journalism Project. Additionally, Mr. Martin chairs the Board of Directors of HALT, Americans for Legal Reform and the Government Accountability Project, and also serves on the boards of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the Peace and National Security Funders Group, PeacePAC and the Interhemispheric Resource Center.