Prof. Dr. Istvan Gyarmati, Cornerstone Holdings Chairman

After earning his MBA at the Budapest University of Economics in 1974, Dr. Gyarmati worked the Association of Hungarian Journalists, and then the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He served as the Alternate Permanent Representative of Hungary to the IAEA from 1981 to 1986.

He participated in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, he was the deputy head and then head of the Hungarian delegation at the negotiations on conventional armed forces in Vienna in 1987-90, and he participated in the negotiations surrounding the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. He founded and then led the SCSE Mission to Georgia.

In 1992 he led the Hungarian delegation to the expert meetings of the Helsinki Summit, and then the Hungarian expert delegation to the London Conference on Yugoslavia. From 1992 he became head of the Department for Security Policy and Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was the head of the Hungarian expert delegation to and the Executive

Secretary of the Budapest CSCE Summit. He was the head of the task force of the OSCE Chairmanship in 1995, negotiated, among others, the establishment of the OSCE Mission in Chechnya.

In 1996 he became Deputy Secretary of State for Integration at the Ministry of Defense in 1996 then Undersecretary for Policy in 1998. He held top leadership positions at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapon, the EastWest Institute, he was head of the OSCE/ODIHR Election Monitoring Mission in Moldova.

2012-13 he served as a member of the Advisory Board of the UNSG on Disarmament matters and then as its Chairman in 2014-15.

He was President and CEO of the ICDT since 2005 and became President of the Centre for Democracy Public Foundation in 2011-2013. He is again President of ICDT since 2013.

Amb. Gyarmati holds an MBA, a doctorate in Political Science and a Ph.D. of Strategic Studies. He is professor at the Zrinyi Miklos National Defense University, the ELTE University and the Eszterhazy Karoly University. He is author of numerous publications on security policy, European security, conflict management and Hungarian defense policy.

He speaks English, German and Russian. Dr. Gyarmati is married and has two children.