Eleni tsakopoulos kounalakis and markos kounalakis

Markos Kounalakis, Ph.D. is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and is a presidentially appointed member of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.  Kounalakis is a senior fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary and president and publisher emeritus of the Washington Monthly. His current book is on the geopolitics of global news networks.

Kounalakis is a print and network broadcast journalist and author who covered wars and revolutions, both civil and technological.

He reported the overthrow of communism for Newsweek in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria and the outbreak of ethnic strife and war in Yugoslavia. He was based in Rome and Vienna and ran the magazine’s Prague bureau.

After Newsweek, he worked as the NBC Radio and Mutual News Moscow correspondent covering the fall of the Soviet Union as well as the war in Afghanistan. Kounalakis has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, the International Herald-Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, The Miami Herald, and many other regional and international newspapers and magazines.  He is currently a foreign affairs columnist for the The Sacramento Bee and McClatchy-Tribune News.

He has written four books, Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton (Beyond Words Publishing, 1993); Beyond Spin: The Power of Strategic Corporate Journalism (coauthor, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999); Hope is a Tattered Flag: Voices of Reason and Change for the Post-Bush Era (PoliPointPress, 2008); and Spin Wars & Spy Games: Global Media and Intelligence Gathering (Hoover Institution Press, 2018).

He was born to Greek refugees in San Francisco in 1956 and received a public education, including his undergraduate years at University of California, Berkeley (1978, Political Science). He earned his MSc in Journalism from Columbia University (1988), was

American politician (born 1966)

Eleni Kounalakis (née Tsakopoulos; born March 3, 1966) is an American politician, businesswoman, and diplomat serving as the 50th lieutenant governor of California since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first woman and the first Greek American elected to the office.

Kounalakis graduated from Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts degree before attending University of California, Berkeley, where she obtained a Master of Business Administration. After graduation, she worked for AKT Development Corporation, a Sacramento-based real estate company founded by her father, Angelo Tsakopoulos, eventually serving as president of the company until 2010.

Kounalakis was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the United States Ambassador to Hungary from 2010 to 2013. She was elected lieutenant governor of California in 2018, and reelected in 2022. As lieutenant governor, she attempted to disqualify Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential election following the Colorado Supreme Court's ruling in Anderson v. Griswold. She was subsequently doxxed and swatted, part of a pattern of criminal intimidation nationwide.

On April 24, 2023, Kounalakis announced her candidacy for governor of California in the 2026 California gubernatorial election.

Early life

Eleni Kounalakis is the daughter of Angelo Tsakopoulos, a Sacramento developer. Kounalakis is of Greek descent and grew up a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Kounalakis received her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Career

Private career

Before 2009, Kounalakis was President of AKT Development Corporation, a family-owned real estate, farming, ranching, water, minerals, building, land developm

"Prime Minister Mitsotakis and his family have set a high standard of public service, excellence and dedication to community that is noted throughout the world," said Kyriakos Tsakopoulos. "This chair at one of the world's premier universities is intended to highlight the ideals of service, excellence and community which Greeks, ancient and modem, have espoused."

Professor Richard P. Martin, chairman of the Stanford Department of Classics and chief architect in the design of the chair, said, "For the contemporary West, the Greeks have been more influential than any other culture in history. What they first discovered, in terms of abstract thought and also practical applications, continues in hundreds of ways to shape our daily lives.

"Today's students, unfortunately, have never had the chance to learn in detail about their absolutely fundamental contributions" he said. "Through the generosity of the Tsakopoulos family, Stanford will now be able to lead the way nationally in offering a sequence of intensive courses to give our students, throughout the university, a thorough grounding in the Greek roots of politics, economics, philosophy, the arts, medicine, law, and much more. We're hoping for nothing less than a renaissance of interest in Classics, sparked by this wonderful endowment."

Ms. Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis noted the wide-reaching relevance of the Stanford programs supported by the new Mitsotakis chair. "We wanted to get to the broadest possible spectrum of students, from engineering to religion, biology to literature, and to show them how Greek thought is a key to all the fields in which they might spend their lives," she said. "Beyond that,

As the proud daughter of Greek immigrants and a native Californian, Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis has a deep-rooted love for her home state that began when her father immigrated to the United States from Greece.

Like many immigrants, her family had humble beginnings and understood the value and opportunity this country offers. Her father worked in the fields and later as a waiter in California’s Governor’s mansion. Little did young Eleni know, that just one generation later, she would be serving as the first woman elected Lieutenant Governor at the same place her father began his American dream.

Eleni is a proud daughter of California and credits her and her family’s success to the opportunities California gave them. As governor, Eleni will work day in and day out to make sure every Californian has the opportunities her family had.

Her gratitude for her home state and passion for ensuring every family has the same shot at a brighter future are what led her to a career in public service. In 2010, she was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Hungary by President Barack Obama where she worked to promote democracy and America’s interests abroad for three and a half years. When she came home, she ran for public office becoming the first woman Lieutenant Governor of California. If elected Governor, she’ll make history once again as the first woman to lead California.

As Lieutenant Governor, Eleni has a record of getting things done. She has helped Californians by making college more accessible to working families, building more affordable student housing, fighting tuition increases, and making it easier to transfer to a 4-year university from a community college. She has been a proud leader in California’s fight against climate change and has showcased California’s progress and leadership on a global level. Eleni is a champion for women and gender equality, fighting for laws to protect women from sexual assault an