Brief bio

Born into an economically struggling refugee family in Berlin, Germany, I was raised and schooled there from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, the cold war era during which I experienced the building of the infamous Berlin Wall and the four-powers occupation of the city. Citizens of Berlin were, technically, stateless, not receiving proper citizenship papers until after Germany's reunification in 1990, a point that has always weighed on me. I take it that this early-life exposure to relative poverty and the threat of war colored my outlook on life, eventually influencing my writings on nonviolence, peace, and development. In 2024, I also became a U.S. citizen.

After completing vocational school in Germany's public health insurance scheme and my initial university education (business & economics, Free University of Berlin, 1979), I spent some years in southern Africa where I managed the financial affairs and human and economic development projects of an ecumenical organization. Thereafter, I moved to the United States to attend graduate school (Ph.D., economics, University of Notre Dame, 1989). Following that, my professional home became the business school at Augusta University (Georgia, USA). I interrupted my stay there from time to time to take up visiting professorships and think-tank fellowships across the world (Australia, Colombia, South Africa, Spain, Thailand, and in the U.S. in Colorado). Along the way, I also ran two businesses. We live at Misty Mountain in the western Carolinas in the USA.