Kati Marton

Born in Hungary, Kati Marton has combined a career as a reporter and writer with human rights advocacy. She will present her latest book, the critically acclaimed memoir Enemies of the People: My Family's Journey to America, for the CLSC on July 15. Enemies of the People is the result of Marton's quest to discover who her journalist parents really were and how they survived the Nazis in Budapest and imprisonment by the Soviets during the Cold War. The New York Times called it "a powerful and absorbing narrative [with] all the magnetism and yes, the excitement of the very best spy fiction."

Since 1980, Marton has published seven books and contributed as a reporter to ABC News, Public Broadcasting Services, National Public Radio, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times of London, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and The New Republic. Her other books include Wallenberg, American Women, Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages that Shaped History and Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World. Marton has served as the host of the NPR international affairs program America and the World, as ABC's Germany bureau chief and as a reporter for NPR and WCAU-TV in Philadelphia.

From 2003 to 2008, Marton chaired the International Women's Health Coalition, a global leader in promoting and protecting the health and human rights of women and girls. She was chief advocate for the Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict at the United Nations and is currently a director and former chair of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Marton also serves on the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee, Human Rights Watch and the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, P.E.N. International and the Author?s Guild.

Marton has been honored many times for her writing, reporting and human rights advocacy, including a George Foster Peabody Award for a one-hour documentary on China. Most recently, the president of the Republic of Hungary awarded Marton the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary.

Marton attended Wells College in Aurora, N.Y., the Sorbonne, and the Institute des Etudes de Science Politiques in Paris. She earned a bachelor's degree in romance languages and a master's degree in international relations from the George Washington University. She has also received two honorary doctorates: one from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island in 2000 and another from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., in 2009.