The World Affairs Council of Charleston hosts several expert speaker events each year. These evening events feature distinguished presenters from the U.S. government, nongovernmental organizations, the military, academia, think tanks and the business community. The next event is:
Rotary in the World
Monday, December 8, 2025
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Speaker is John Hewko, CEO of Rotary International.
Venue is Capers Hall at the Citadel, 1 Lee Ave., Charleston, SC.
With government spending on social needs and services declining across the globe, the need for civil society is more important than ever.
John Hewko, general secretary and CEO of Rotary International and the Rotary Foundation, will discuss the increasingly important role of global organizations such as Rotary in filling the gap, promoting peace and people-to-people multilateralism, and addressing social needs at the local, regional, and international levels.
John Hewko is the general secretary and CEO of Rotary International, one of the world’s largest service and humanitarian organizations with 46,000 clubs and 1.2 million members throughout the world, and of its foundation, The Rotary Foundation. He oversees both entities and manages a combined operating budget of over $500 million and assets of more than $2 billion. Hewko also manages Rotary’s relationship with strategic partners and governments and leads a staff of almost 800 at Rotary’s world headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, and in 7 offices outside the United States.
From 2004 to 2009, he was vice president for operations and compact development for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. government agency established in 2004 to deliver foreign assistance to the world’s poorest countries. At MCC, he was the principal U.S. negotiator for foreign assistance agreements to 26 countries in Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. During his tenure, he completed the negotiation of assistance agreements totaling $6.3 billion to 18 countries for infrastructure, agriculture, water and sanitation, health and education projects. Prior to joining MCC, Hewko was an international partner with the law firm Baker & McKenzie, specializing in international corporate transactions in emerging markets. He helped establish the firm’s Moscow office and was the managing partner of its offices in Kyiv and Prague.
Hewko holds a law degree from Harvard University, a master’s in modern history from Oxford University (where he studied as a Marshall Scholar) and a bachelor’s in government and Soviet studies from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He speaks four languages besides English: Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Ukrainian. He is a member emeritus of the board of trustees of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine and a trustee of Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Registration is required for this event. For more information click here.
The World Affairs Council of Charleston (WACC), formerly the Charleston Foreign Affairs Forum, was founded in the early 1980s as a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.
–Tidelines Editors
(Image credit: World Affairs Council)