Charles Davidson
Charles Davidson is Publisher & CEO of The American Interest, a magazine founded in early 2005 with Francis Fukuyama, Eliot Cohen, Josef Joffe, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Adam Garfinkle. The magazine seeks to be a non-ideological, international and independent platform for political thought that covers both domestic and foreign policy (half the board members are non-US citizens).
Mr. Davidson also chairs the Advisory Board of Global Financial Integrity, a research & advocacy group led by Raymond Baker, devoted to elucidating the challenges posed by illicit offshore financial systems and the maladies they enable in the fields of development and governance.
Mr. Davidson is also a partner in Lafayette Development, LLC, a venture capital partnership, and was a board member of start-up companies in the Information Technology industry, including Virtools (acquired by Dassault Systèmes), Sofrelog (acquired by EADS), Uni-Medecine (acquired by ATOS), Chapitre.com (acquired by Bertelsmann). In 1997 he organized a major conference between the US and France concerning the development of venture capital in France and mutual opportunities for both countries in this field. Sponsors included Advent International, Alex Brown/Bankers Trust, Testa Hurwitz & Thibeault, major French governmental institutions and most of the French venture capital community.
Before going into venture capital, Mr. Davidson held various positions in the Information Technology Industry, most recently as Director of Information Systems for Causse Walon, SA, a logistics company that was the leading preparer and transporter of automobiles/vehicles in Europe. During this time he participated on a board for EDI standardization in the vehicle transport industry. Prior to that, Mr. Davidson worked for Cullinet Software, and as a programmer and programming instructor.
Mr. Davidson holds an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and graduated from Bowdoin College where he majored in history and economics. He has four children, and divides his time between Lexington Massachusetts and Washington DC.
