Lucas Welch

Overview

Lucas is the executive director of the Pluribus Project a special initiative with the Aspen Institute dedicated to empowering the many more effectively in American civic & political life. Previously Lucas founded and led Soliya an international nonprofit that pioneered virtual exchange programs among over 100 universities in Western and Muslim majority countries and led the exchange 2.0 campaign to promote increased availability of virtual exchange opportunities. The campaign played a central role in inspiring the recent establishment of the J. Christopher Stevens Virtual Exchange Initiative a multilateral public private endeavor designed to achieve the largest ever increase in people to people educational exchanges between the U.S. and the broader Middle East. Prior to founding Soliya Lucas was a producer working at ABC News with Peter Jennings. He conducted research on Howard Dean s presidential campaign at Harvard s Berkman Center for Internet & Society pursued graduate studies at what is now the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan and received a BA from Brown University. Lucas has been named an Echoing Green Fellow a TED Fellow and a Global Expert by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.