Who We Are

Continuous Progress Strategic Services is David Devlin-Foltz, Tarek Rizk and Josh Weissburg.

David Devlin-Foltz
David Devlin-Foltz directs the Global Interdependence Initiative (GII), a policy program of the Aspen Institute in Washington, DC. The GII promotes the US public’s engagement in shaping this country’s role in addressing global issues like poverty and environmental deterioration. Since 1999, Devlin-Foltz has directed GII’s efforts to strengthen advocacy on global issues by commissioning and helping organizations to apply tools for effective message framing, planning and evaluation. Continuous Progress Strategic Services builds on GII’s Evaluation Learning Group and its consultations with foreign policy advocates, foundations, and strategic communications specialists. Devlin-Foltz brings to GII and CPSS some twenty years of experience in funding, managing and evaluating public education, international exchange, and constituency building efforts in southern Africa and the United States.

Before coming to the Aspen Institute in 1993, he worked for the Institute of International Education, the School for International Training and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Devlin-Foltz was responsible for Carnegie’s South African human rights grantmaking from 1984 to 1988, and continued to evaluate projects and proposals for Carnegie for several years thereafter. Devlin-Foltz also devised Carnegie’s strategy for building public understanding in the US of international development issues.

A Peace Corps volunteer at the National University of Rwanda from 1979 to 1981, Devlin-Foltz has also taught or managed programs in France, Spain, and Zimbabwe. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale College and holds graduate degrees from the Sorbonne and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He took his hyphenated name on marrying the former Betsy Devlin; they are the proud but occasionally perplexed parents of two fine young men.

Tarek Rizk
Tarek Rizk is the Deputy Director of the Global Interdependence Initiative at the Aspen Institute. His career has taken him from traditional communications work to strategic development of new media tools for advocacy, public information and outreach. Tarek oversees the GII’s Exchange website and managed the creation of the Continuous Progress online guides for advocacy and evaluation and our planning tool the Advocacy Progress Planner. With his broad range of communications experience, Tarek offers clients of the GII’s consulting practice a partner in identifying novel ways of connecting Americans with our nation’s foreign policy.

Tarek joined the GII in 2004 after two years as a senior communications manager at People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation, specializing in civil liberties issues. Prior to joining People For, Tarek was associate communications director at Physicians for Social Responsibility, working cross-programmatically on global peace and nuclear disarmament, public health and the environment and gun violence prevention issues there. Tarek’s experience stretches back to the then-all-postcard action alert organization 20/20 Vision, and forward to overseeing custom-built, database-driven activism and education websites. He graduated from the American University in 1995 with a degree in international studies, focusing on peace and conflict resolution. He and his wife Katrena Henderson are the proud parents of two wonderful children.

Joshua Weissburg
Joshua Weissburg is the Project Associate for the Global Interdependence Initiative at The Aspen Institute. He provides fresh ideas, research, planning, and other support and coordination for the Initiative’s programs, which look for innovative ways to communicate global issues to the American public. Weissburg writes for the Initiative’s Exchange, an online group comprised of 800 CEOs, communication directors and advocates from the development, security, business, and environmental communities. His accomplishments at the GII range from planning and facilitating high-level dialogues aimed at specific global challenges to consulting on strategic evaluation and planning projects. In November, 2005 Weissburg facilitated Uncommon Leadership for Common Values: A Bipartisan Approach to Human Rights, a series of discussions - chaired by Senator Sam Brownback and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with contributions from Senator Clinton and others - aimed at highlighting opportunities for bipartisan cooperation on a range of human rights issues. That work continues into 2007 as the GII helps the Save Darfur Divestment Campaign think through its preliminary strategic plan.

Before coming to The Aspen Institute in the fall of 2003, Weissburg spent several months at Qorvis Communications, a public relations firm representing governments around the world. Weissburg graduated with high honors in May of 2003 from Wheaton College in Illinois with a degree in international relations and a specialization in economics. He has a strong interest in the relationship between trade, aid, business, and the democratic process in a globalizing world. While a student, Weissburg worked as a legal assistant and a political campaign aide, helped preside over the activities of the Model United Nations club, and volunteered with various programs in his church. In May of 2006, Joshua Weissburg married Rebecca Miller, his best achievement by far.