In June 2022, Salzburg Global Seminar will celebrate its 75th Anniversary. It will also mark the conclusion of Stephen L. Salyer’s 17-year tenure as President and Chief Executive Officer. Salzburg Global has now opened the search for Salyer’s successor. Details on how to apply can be found here.
Over Salyer’s presidency, the organization has increased its global reputation as an enabler of rising leaders and as a place known for building networks to tackle the world’s toughest challenges. Himself a poster child of a young leader whose career trajectory accelerated after he attended the program, The Global Impact of Mass Communications in 1974, Salzburg Global’s longest-serving president described the impact of that first exposure to Salzburg Global:
“The people I met became my mentors and made me a believer in the power of individuals to start movements for change.”
Thirty years on, when he received a call asking if he was interested in leading the organization, he could not refuse, becoming the first Fellow to serve as President since its founding in 1947. Since his appointment in 2005, the organization has become synonymous with global problem-solving – as reflected in its change in name in 2006, when it became Salzburg Global Seminar with a revamped mission: “to challenge current and future leaders to solve issues of global concern.”
The global expansion of Salzburg Global Seminar saw the strengthening of partnerships in Asia, particularly through the Salyer-led Japan Advisory Council and with support from the Korea and Nippon Foundations. A move of the US office to Washington DC and the forging of a partnership with the London-based 21st Century Trust, saw Salzburg Global establish annual events in the two capital cities. The alumni groups of the two organizations were combined in 2007 to establish the Salzburg Global Fellowship with events held the world over.
With prior professional experience in media and philanthropy and an education in law and public administration, Salyer established initiatives to strengthen independent media, optimize institutional philanthropy, and seed a next generation of publicly minded journalists, lawyers and policymakers.
As part of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation-funded Salzburg Media Initiative, together with his wife, journalism professor Susan Moeller, Salyer founded in 2007 the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change. The three-week summer program has since assembled in Salzburg over 1000 students and faculty from university partners on five continents alongside media innovators and journalists to shape the future of media literacy and of evidence-based journalism.
In 2010, Salyer initiated the Cutler Center for the Rule of Law in honor Salzburg Global’s long-serving director and board chairman, Lloyd N. Cutler, well-known for convening leading judges and rising practitioners in Salzburg. In addition to an annual lecture given at the US Supreme Court, the Center spawned the Cutler Fellows Program in 2012. The now-annual program selects outstanding students from top US law schools to explore public and private international law and public service and is being expanded to incorporate European counterparts.
In recent years, Salzburg Global’s programming has expanded to incorporate Holocaust education and genocide prevention, LGBT* rights, healthcare innovation, education equity and the future of work, pandemic preparedness, cultural innovation and entrepreneurship, good corporate and financial governance, public sector strategy, and criminal justice reform.
* LGBT: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. We are using this term as it is currently widely used in human rights conversations on sexual orientation and gender identity in many parts of the world, and we would wish it to be read as inclusive of other cultural concepts, contemporary or historical, to express sexuality and gender, intersex and gender non-conforming identities.
Salyer’s leadership of the organization saw it weather not only the 2008 global financial crisis but also the COVID pandemic, which severely hampered the convening of international programs at Schloss Leopoldskron and associated fundraising. A strong pivot towards online programming has enabled the organization to not only survive but thrive, with many new program partnerships established, most recently with the Walt Disney Company on Public Policy New Voices Europe.
Salyer’s tenure has also overseen the diversification and greater global representation in all levels of the organization, from a renowned internship program to the Board of Directors. He has also overseen new educational opportunities and development opportunities for staff, most notably in the creation of the Davidson Impact Fellowship though his alma mater, Davidson College in North Carolina, USA, helping to seed the pipeline of future professionals and leaders in the nonprofit sector.
The home of Salzburg Global Seminar, Schloss Leopoldskron has also undergone transformation during the last 16 years. Multi-million-dollar renovations of the Meierhof, Schloss suites and state rooms and of the adjoining Schloss Park have made the rococo palace a revenue-enhancing boutique hotel, a prime wedding and conference venue and a sought-after location for film shoots to fashion shows. Revenue from these enterprise opportunities have improved the sustainability and enabled stewardship of this national historical monument.
Salyer leaves the organization in a position of strength and growth, aided particularly by the three-year-long $18 million Inspiring Leadership Campaign, he has led, and which will conclude in 2022.
While the Salzburg Global presidency is the capstone of his career, the organization also had an immense impact on the earlier decades of Salyer’s working life.
He credits his participation in that 1974 Salzburg Seminar session as having completely changed his career trajectory.
“I heard one speaker say, ‘We need non-profit entrepreneurs to invent new forms of media, to fill gaps in what commercial media supply.’ I carried that challenge home with me, and it led to a 25-year career in public television and radio.”
Before his career in public media, Salyer was deeply involved in the field of population policy. He was confirmed by the Senate at age 19 as a member of the Presidential Commission on Population Growth and the American Future (1970-1972) – the then-youngest person ever to receive a presidential appointment. Following President Nixon’s dismissal of the Commission’s report over its recommendations on universal sex education, expanded family planning services and adoption of a model state abortion statute that predated Roe v. Wade, Salyer helped found the Citizen’s Committee on Population and the American Future to advocate the Commission’s recommendations, served as editorial consultant for a documentary on the report aired nationwide on PBS, and traveled the country doing public speaking and media appearances. He subsequently served as the first director of the Population Council’s Public Issues Program, helped found the program in human sexual development at the Harvard Education School, and served as speechwriter for philanthropist John D. Rockefeller 3rd who gave the keynote address at the 1974 World Population Conference Forum in Bucharest, Romania.
It was in this Rockefeller role that Salyer came to Schloss Leopoldskron. “As one of only three Americans at the program, I realized how little most Americans understand about the wider world.”
After studying at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Salyer worked at PBS flagship station WNET/Thirteen as an assistant to the president for 18 months. He left to attend NYU Law School, then returned to WNET in 1979 to become the youngest vice president in the history of the New York station. Over the next nine years, he led production of primetime series, children’s programming, video-based telecourses, and computer-assisted learning. He saw the potential for linking television productions with related book, video and computer interactivity to create powerful learning experiences. Among the projects he helped develop while at WNET/New York were Academy on Computers (1983), WNET Learning Lab (1984), Heritage Civilization and the Jews (1984), Behind the Scenes (1984), The Constitution That Delicate Balance (1984), Rock School (1986), The Brain (1986), The Mind (1988), and Shining Time Station (1988-).
In 1988, Salyer accepted the presidency of American Public Radio, later renamed PRI, Public Radio International in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Through the 1990s, he turned the fledgling radio network into a fierce competitor to the better known National Public Radio (NPR), championing programs developed by independent producers and local stations seeking national outlets for their content. For several years, PRI surpassed NPR in the number of affiliated stations and in the share of nationally produced program hours they scheduled, including a partnership that made BBC World Service programs available to American listeners on FM radio rather than shortwave.
PRI also became an award-winning producer, co-producer and distributor of leading programs and podcasts, many of which remain Public Radio staples to this day, including Marketplace (1989-), The World (1996-), This American Life (1997-) and Studio 360 (2000-2018). Salyer was an industry leader in embracing new technologies for program distribution and audience engagement, and in creating novel business models to support diverse content.
In 1999, he co-founded Public Interactive, LLC, initially a for-profit company providing web services to public radio and television stations, 15 of which were investors in the company as well as consumers of its tools and content. He also created a partnership with leading station producers to operate channels on both Sirius and XM, the two leading US commercial satellite radio services. He served as PI’s chairman until his departure from PRI in 2005 to head the then-named Salzburg Seminar.
In his final months with Salzburg Global Seminar, Salyer is leading the Inspiring Leadership Campaign, seeking funds to increase the organization’s impact. The Campaign is supporting investments in groundbreaking programs, in renovating and enhancing Schloss Leopoldskron, in state-of-the-art technology to make our programs more inclusive, and in scholarships to empower a new generation of Fellows who will shape tomorrow’s world.
Salzburg Global will celebrate its 75th Anniversary in 2022, including the opening of renovated guest and meeting rooms, improvements to adjacent gardens and park land used for outdoor programming, an arts festival featuring the work of Salzburg Fellows and honoring the legacy of theatre impresario Max Reinhardt, co-founder of the Salzburg Festival and pre-war owner of Schloss Leopoldskron. If all goes as planned, Salyer will welcome and introduce his successor next summer, the search for whom is now underway.