Michael Shafer

Dr. D. Michael Shafer, Founder, Warm Heart Worldwide, Professor (Emeritus) International Political Economy, Rutgers University (BA Yale, PhD Harvard, Council on Foreign Relations, 21st Century Trust Fellow), manages the Warm Heart Foundation, a grassroots community development organization serving northern Thailand. Dr. Shafer is an award-winning teacher, who has published widely and consults globally. Dr. Shafer’s articles have appeared in such journals as Comparative Politics, Foreign Policy, and International Organization and his books have been published by Cornell, Princeton and Beacon. Prior to retiring from Rutgers in 2008 to found Warm Heart, Dr. Shafer worked to transform universities throughout the newly democratic world with funds from foundations, the European Union, USAID, and the US State Department. He also created Global PACT, a citizenship, civic engagement and democratic capacity building training program run in both a post-war reconciliation mode (in the Balkans) and a poverty-reduction mode (Brazil, Cambodia, Mongolia, South Africa and Thailand). Today Dr. Shafer focuses on Warm Heart, climate change mitigation and poverty reduction through education and entrepreneurship. His most recent climate change work has been supported by the Government of Canada and the United States Department of State. Recent publications have appeared in the Council on Foreign Relations Development Blog and The Nation (Thailand).