with that, i will hand it over to ellen, i would just like to find, if i can, jessica manzi, are you in this room? jessica helped a great deal to put together this program and i really appreciated all of her help and time over the last few weeks. so with that, ellen. >> thanks, doug. i want to make sure everyone can hear me. i have a love-hate relationship with microphones. i want to thank you all for coming today. this is really a wonderful turnout for us. the german marshall fund, for those of you who don't what the fund is, wire a 501 c public charity that was funded as a gift from the german people. we were set up as an american institution to work on a broad mandate of tackling the changes that are faced by advanced industrialized societies. that is a broad mandate. we work with europe and the united states and we work on how europe and the united states can work together on the major world challenges like climate change and economic trade and development, just a number of issues the program i run goes back to the early days in the first 20 years when we were primarily a grantmak