Steven Koltai

Early Life and Education

Koltai was born in Budapest, Hungary, fleeing to the United States as a small child with his family following the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. He was raised in Los Angeles, California and Kansas City, Missouri.

Koltai received a B.A. in Modern European History from Tufts University in 1976. As a Fulbright Scholar in Belgium, he received a Licence from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in 1977. While in Brussels, Steven was also a stagiaire at the Commission of the European Union. Koltai earned an M.A. in International Economics from Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1978. He recently won the 2013 Distinguished Service Award from Tufts University.

Career

Koltai’s first work experience after graduate school was in the international trade area, first with Export-Import Bank of the US, followed by five years in international corporate and project finance at Bankers Trust Company (now part of Deutsche Bank) and Salomon Bros in New York City, London, and Singapore. Koltai also spent time as an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where his research related to regulatory battles surrounding entrepreneurship. In addition, Koltai worked at McKinsey & Company (New York and London offices), where he focused on entertainment and media practice.

SES-Astra

In 1983, along with Clay T. Whitehead, Koltai co-founded Coronet S.A., the precursor company of Europe’s first private television satellite venture, SES-Astra. Today, Astra is the second largest satellite communications company in the world, with 52 satellites carrying over 6,200 channels of TV, audio and digital transmissions to over 2 billion million viewers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and with a market capitalization in excess of $11 billion.

Warner Bros

From 1987 to 1993, Koltai served as Vice President and Corporate Senior Vice President for Strategic Planning and Development at Warner Bros., participating in a variety of corporate issues including the acquisition of Lorimar/Telepictures, the launch of the WB Studio Stores and the WB Television Network and the creation of Warner Bros.’s film archive and preservation facility. Koltai also worked in investor relations and international new business and operating management of the Studio. In 1993, he helped create and oversee the implementation of Warner Bros.’ new interactive division, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, which included Warner Bros. video game licensing business and WB Online.

Event411, Inc

In 1996, Koltai founded and managed Event411, Inc., an online event registration and management company based in Marina del Rey, California. Between 1996 and 2002, he managed a staff of six hundred and delivered the company’s services to clients such as Philip Morris, Verizon Wireless, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Allianz, News Corp, Shangri-La Hotels, Nortel, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the California Department of Education and the Anderson School of Business at UCLA. Event411 was also responsible for managing events related to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles in 2000. The firm was acquired in the summer of 2002 by Passkey, Inc. a private, Boston-based software company owned by Lazard Technology Ventures, Sabre Holdings, Galileo/Cendant Corporation, McCord Travel and Worldspan.

Global Entrepreneurship Program

As the Senior Advisor for Entrepreneurship at the United States Department of State from August 2009 to September 2011, Koltai helped launch the Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Growing out of President Obama’s June 2009 speech at Cairo University, GEP focused on entrepreneurship development in Muslim majority countries. GEP is a partner-based program that catalyzes, convenes and coordinates over 100 US and international NGOs (such as Endeavor, SEAF, Grassroots Business Fund, TechnoServe, and On the Frontier), universities (such as MIT, Babson College, Santa Clara University, American University in Cairo, and Nile University), foundations, corporations (such as Cisco, Ernst & Young, and Google), investors, and US Government agencies, including USAID, OPIC, SBA and the Department of Commerce. GEP’s full programs, headed by entrepreneurs-in-residence, operate in Egypt, Indonesia, and Turkey. Additional GEP programs have been launched in Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco.

Koltai & Company

In 2011, Koltai left the State Department to launch a consulting firm, Koltai & Company. The firm works in four main areas: Entrepreneurship ecosystem building, corporate (including start-up) consulting, non-profit management, and research and writing on public policy issues related to entrepreneurship and international economic development.

Board Memberships

Currently, Koltai is a Board Member of Babson College’s Babson Global, Advancing Girl’s Education (AGE) Africa, and the Maine Center for Entrepreneurship Development (MCED). He also serves as a mentor or advisory board member to several startups in the U.S. and abroad including: Lumia Capital (a San Francisco-based growth stage emerging market venture fund), Envoys (a Boston-based international educational travel and exchange company), Black Lobster (a Maine-based online digital arts course offering company), and Garaj (an Ankara, Turkey-based business incubator). Koltai remains active in the Tufts community, serving on the boards of Tufts’ Tisch College of Active Citizenship and Entrepreneurial Leadership Studies Program. He was previously on Tufts’ Board of Overseers of the College of Arts and Sciences as well as the Center for Media Studies board.

Previously, Koltai was a Founding Board Member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a Founding Member of the Literacy Awards Program at the Library of Congress, Founding Chairman of the Entertainment Technology Center at the USC School of Film and Television, and a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was also Chairman of the Literacy Network of Greater Los Angeles and a Board Member of the Camden, Maine-based futurist conference PopTech.