Dr. Hans-Jürgen Hoyer
Hans J. Hoyer is the Secretary General of the International Federation for Engineering Education Societies (IFEES), Executive Secretary of the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC), and Resident Scholar in Global Engineering at Marquette University. Former Director of International Programs and Strategy for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and co-founder of the Indo-US Collaborative for Engineering Education (IUCEE). Prior to 2006, Hans J. Hoyer was CEO of World Links, a spin-off of the World Bank. In this capacity, he worked globally on issues related to secondary education, teachers’ education, and on-line collaborative learning focusing on science and social studies among high school students across the globe.
Dr. Hoyer has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Studies at MIT, a Fellow at Harvard’s School of Education and Visitor at the Kennedy School of Government. He was dean of the graduate program at the School for International Training, World Learning and Executive Director of the Executive Training Program for global governmental and NGO leaders in Brattleboro, Vermont. Prior to this, he taught cultural anthropology and Latin American Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. and Montgomery College, Takoma Park, MD. He earned his Ph.D. at American University in Washington, D.C. and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Organization of American States, carrying out research in the Rio de la Plata region of South America. He is Honorary Professor in universities in India, Hungary, Peru and Kazakhstan. He started his career as a Peace Corps Volunteer and high school teacher in Linares and Talca, Chile and has lived in over twenty countries including India, Sri Lanka, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, Mexico, South Asia, Belgium, and Sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya and Zimbabwe). Over his extensive career he has visited more than 136 countries, is fluent in four languages and conversant in an additional five languages.
Dr. Hoyer has led several international development programs, including CARE, Plan International, and Heifer International. In these latter roles, he held executive leadership positions such as Senior Vice-President/Chief Operating Officer, and Regional Executive and was responsible, among others, for raising large financial resources from a multitude of donors including government agencies, the World Bank, IAB, several foundations, corporations and private donors. He also represented the largest U.S. farming membership association as a spokesperson at the European Union and European Parliament in Brussels and also represented them in Mexico and Central America. He has served on the board of directors with Nelson Mandela of El Taller, a global civil society network headquartered in Tunisia as well as on several social-action community groups. He was also on the staff of the Inter American Foundation, created by the U.S. Congress to support socio-economic development throughout Latin America/Caribbean. He was on the advisory board of Hewlett Packard’s e-Inclusion Global Advisory Board related to their work in South Africa and Founding member of the Board of the Engineering for the Americas (EftA) initiative under the umbrella of the OAS. He serves on the Editorial Committee of the Argentinean Journal of Engineering Education, Sciene and Technology. He has written and published on a broad range of subjects related to international development, politics, health, education, and engineering education. Born in Berlin, Germany, he immigrated to the US as a teenager. His wife is Canadian and he has four children who were born in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico and Belgium.
