Charles Heck became a Senior Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations in 2012.  Mr. Heck brings a wealth of experience in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific region.  The primary framework for this experience has been the Trilateral Commission, a high-level, policy-oriented, non-governmental, non-partisan group launched in 1973 initially drawing together distinguished citizens from European Union countries, Japan, and the United States and Canada – the three main industrialized democratic areas of the world at that time. Charles Heck joined the Trilateral Commission staff in 1974 as Assistant to the Commission’s founding Director, Zbigniew Brzezinski.  In 1982, he began almost twenty years as North American Director, serving alongside a European Director in Paris and a Japanese (now Pacific Asian) Director in Tokyo.  After stepping down as North American Director, Mr. Heck continues to serve the Commission as Senior Adviser.

Mr. Heck was educated at Oberlin College (A.B., magna cum laude with High Honors in History) and Yale University (M.A. in International Relations, M.Phil. in Political Science).  In the years before joining the Trilateral staff, he worked for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and as a Teaching Fellow at Yale.  Among Mr. Heck’s activities since stepping down as the Trilateral Commission’s North American Director was service as Visiting Professor of Political Science and then Associate Professor of Global Perspectives and History at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois (2005-09).  Currently he is also Counselor at Washington Policy & Analysis, a small Washington-based consulting company focused on energy issues and Japan.  Mr. Heck is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, American Council on Germany, and Japan Society.