Jenik Radon

Jenik Radon is Adjunct Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, Columbia University, where he teaches in the area of sustainable natural resource development with a focus on risk and strategic management, sovereignty and human rights, especially environment, minority rights (including social license) and anti-corruption.  In the fall of 2016, Radon will be co-teaching an inaugural and timely class at Columbia titled “Panama Papers.”

He is the founder and director of the Eesti and Eurasian Public Service Fellowship, which has provided students from Columbia, Stanford Law School and other institutions the opportunity to intern with government officials and civil society in emerging nations across the global, including Bhutan, Cambodia, Estonia, Georgia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nepal, Philippines, Tanzania and Uganda.  Radon is a recipient of SIPA''s "Top Five" teaching award for the spring 2010 and 2013 semesters; and his 2012 Capstone class won the Dr. Susan Aurelia Gitelson Award for Human Values in International Affairs for the report “Oil: Uganda’s Opportunity for Prosperity.” He has also supervised Capstone classes examining the resource curse, and its impact, in Colombia, Mozambique, Namibia, Peru and Tanzania.  Radon was selected as a Fulbright Specialist (2012) at the Law School of Makerere University, Uganda, in the field of extractive industry and serves as a member of the Board of Advisors of Stevens Business School. 

Prior to joining Columbia, Radon was a lecturer at Stanford University’s law and business schools, where he taught access to medicine, international human rights, privatization and international investment management. He was a visiting professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research in Mumbai, India, where he taught a new class, "Dynamics of Corruption," which explored the sociological, psychological and legal roots of corruption.  Radon was the Ashton J. and Virginia Graham O’Donnell Visiting Professor/Educator at Whitman College.  Radon has also taught at Monterrey Tech, Queretaro, Mexico, which named him Distinguished University Professor, and at Externado University in Bogota, Colombia, focusing on the extractive sector.

Radon participated in the constitutional peace process of Nepal and served as a drafter of the interim (2006) peace constitution, which, among other things, granted citizenship to millions of stateless people in the Terai region. In that regard he published several op-eds to educate the public about the constitutional process and citizen’s rights: “The Constituent Assembly, a place of and for all voices,” and the “Constitution – A Living Instrument,” (Kantipur Online).  He has served on the UN Global Compact Academic Initiative taskforce which seeks to have business schools incorporate the Compact''s 10 human rights principles into their curriculum. He has supported the Zawadi Africa Education Fund, Kenya, in educating the next generation of Africa’s women leaders.

In the early 1980s, Radon founded Radon Law Offices, a boutique international law firm representing international companies in corporate matters and, with respect of the extractive industry (energy and mining), exclusively representing foreign governments and public sector entities. He also advises, on a pro bono basis, civil society organizations around the world. From 1999 to 2007, Radon was one of the executors/trustees of Vetter Pharma, a major privately-held pharmaceutical company and one of Germany’s hidden champions, the world leader in the development and production of aseptic pre-filled syringes and other injectables. He also serves on the board or committees of Indian focused biotech and hi-tech venture capital funds.

In 1980, Radon co-founded the Afghanistan Relief Committee that sought freedom for Afghanistan and supported refugees displaced during the Afghan-Soviet war. Serving as an advisor during Estonia''s independence struggle, Radon co-authored the country''s foreign investment, mortgage/pledge, privatization and corporate laws and was an architect of Estonia''s privatization.  Radon is proud that he was the first to officially raise the U.S. flag in Soviet-occupied Estonia since the 1940 Soviet invasion when he, with the support of the Estonians, reclaimed the premises of the US Embassy. He was awarded the Medal of Distinction of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Estonia’s Order of the Cross Terra Mariana, which was personally awarded by the President of Estonia.

Radon served as Georgia''s key foreign advisor and negotiator of the multi-billion dollar and multi-nation oil and gas pipelines from Azerbaijan to Georgia to Turkey (the BTC), featured in the James Bond movie, _The World is Not Enough. _For his engaged representation of Georgia, Radon was awarded the country''s highest civilian award, the Order of Honor. Radon presently advises public authorities and civil society in a number of developing and emerging nations around the world, including Estonia, Georgia, Namibia, Nepal, and Peru. His expertise is the negotiation of extractive industry agreements, especially oil and gas and sustainable natural resource development contracts, as well as the drafting of necessary legislation. In that regard, Radon counsels Afghanistan, among other things, in respect of the prospective multi-billion dollar TAPI gas pipeline from Turkmenistan in Central Asia to Afghanistan to Pakistan to India. Radon gave an address at the conference hosted by the Energy Charter Secretariat, the Ministry of Energy and Industry of Albania and the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean where he challenged accepted wisdom on the rights and obligations of such transit nations as Albania.

Radon has lectured and worked in over 60 (and visited over 100) nations, including Afghanistan, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, Laos, Mexico, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, South Sudan, Uganda and UK.  Radon was honored by being invited as a non-African expert to give an address on Asset Recovery and Natural Resources, with a focus on the lack of transparency in beneficial ownership of extractive asset ownership, to the annual meeting of the Southern African Forum Against Corruption (SAFAC) of the Southern African Development Community.  He was further honored by Namibia and asked to address the annual meeting of the Anti-Corruption Commission of Namibia.

He has written numerous articles and reports, including Natural Resource Revenue Loss: How to Plug Leakages and Prevent the Resource Curse to be published by the Anti-Corruption Commission of the Republic of Namibia; Resolving conflicts of interest in state-owned enterprises, International Social Science Journal (UNESCO); Staatsfonds vor den Toren (Sovereign Wealth Funds Before the [Trojan] Gates), Wirtschaft (Economy) section, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ); Getting Human Rights Right, Stanford Social Innovation Journal; How To Negotiate Your Oil Agreement, in Escaping the Resource Curse, ed. Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey Sachs and Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University Press); Ethics in Business (MBA) Education - A New Must, International Management Development Research Yearbook, Technology, Structure, Environment, And Strategy Interfaces In A Changing Global Business Arena; Sleepless, Clueless, Dangerous, in Ergo-Med; The New Mantra: Bribers Beware! The Journal for Transnational Management; Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil Spells Complicity, (UN) Compact Quarterly, published by the (United Nations) Global Compact; Negotiating and Financing Joint Venture Abroad" in Joint Venturing Abroad, ed. N. Lacasse and L. Perret (Wilson & Lafleur Itee).

Radon obtained his B.A. from Columbia University, M.C.P. from the University of California, Berkeley, and J.D. from Stanford Law School. 

Education

• JD, Stanford Law School
• MCP, University of California, Berkeley
• BA, Columbia University

Honors & Awards

• Dr. Susan Aurelia Gitelson Award for Human Values in International Affairs