Jenik Radon

Jenik Radon is Adjunct Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, Columbia University, where he teaches in the areas of sustainable natural resource development, small state development and governance, and corporate responsibility. In particular, he focuses on risk and strategic management, regulatory compliance, sovereignty and human rights, especially environment, minority rights, transparency and anticorruption.

Radon is the founder and director of the Eesti and Eurasian Public Service Fellowship and associated programs, which provide students from Columbia, Stanford Law School and other institutions the opportunity to intern with public authorities and civil society in emerging nations across the globe.

Students have interned in Cambodia, Ecuador, Estonia, French Polynesia, Georgia, India, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Philippines, Tanzania and Uganda. Radon is a past recipient of SIPA's "Top Five" teaching award; and his 2012 Capstone class won the “Dr. Susan Aurelia Gitelson Award for Human Values in International Affairs.” His undergraduate teams have, since 2023, twice placed second in the competitive Schuman Challenge sponsored by the EU. Radon has also supervised Capstones examining the challenges of resource development in Colombia, French Polynesia, Mozambique, Namibia, Peru and Tanzania and Capstones analyzing the potential of small states, specifically Estonia, French Polynesia, Kosovo, Mauritius and Namibia.

Radon was awarded a Fulbright to Makerere University Law School in Uganda. He serves as a director/advisor of academic institutions and medical relief, wildlife preservation and other civil society groups, including Stevens Business School, Direct Relief, DD Foundation in Estonia, e-Governance Academy in Estonia, the Harriman Institute, and Soldiers for Wildlife. He serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American University in Bulgaria; and he is an advisor to the Ambedkar International Mission and inspired the establishment of Universal Equality Day.

Radon is presently a visiting professor at Prishtina Law School in Kosova teaching in its inaugural program on human rights. He was a lecturer at Stanford University’s law and business schools, where he taught access to medicine, international human rights, privatization and international investment management. He was a visiting professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research in Mumbai, India, where he taught "Dynamics of Corruption," which explored the sociological, psychological and legal roots of corruption. Radon was the Ashton J. and Virginia Graham O’Donnell Visiting Educator at Whitman College. Radon has also taught at Tartu University Law School in Estonia; Monterrey Tech, Queretaro, and Instituto Mexicano del Petróleo, in Mexico; Externado University in Bogota, Colombia; and Makerere University in Uganda.

Radon participated in the constitutional peace process of Nepal and served as the key drafter of the interim/peace (2006) constitution, which, among other things, granted citizenship to millions of stateless people in the Terai region. He has served on the UN Global Compact Academic Initiative taskforce which sought to have business schools incorporate the Compact's 10 human rights principles into their curriculum.

In the early 1980s, Radon founded Radon Law Offices, a boutique international law firm representing international companies in corporate matters, and with respect to the extractive industry (energy and mining), only advising public authorities, including state owned enterprises. From 1999 to 2007, Radon was one of the executors/trustees of Vetter Pharma, a major privately-held pharmaceutical company in Germany, a world leader in the production of aseptic pre-filled syringes. He also serves on the boards and committees of international biotech and hi-tech venture capital funds.

Radon co-founded the Afghanistan Relief Committee in 1980 that sought freedom for Afghanistan and supported refugees displaced during the Afghan-Soviet war. Radon served as an advisor during Estonia's independence struggle and, after the restoration of its independence, co-authored the country's foreign investment, mortgage/pledge, and company laws and was one of the architects of Estonia's privatization. Radon is proud that he was the first to officially raise the U.S. flag in Soviet-occupied Estonia since the 1940 Soviet invasion when he, with the support of Estonians, reclaimed the former US Embassy. He was awarded the Medal of Distinction of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce, the Order of the Cross Terra Mariana and the Cross of Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia.

Radon served as Georgia's key foreign advisor and negotiator of the multi-billion dollar and multi-nation oil and gas pipelines, from Azerbaijan to Georgia to Turkey (the BTC). For his engaged representation of Georgia, Radon was awarded the country's highest civilian award, the Order of Honor, by President Eduard Shevardnadze. Radon has counseled Afghanistan in respect of the prospective TAPI gas pipeline from Turkmenistan in Central Asia to Afghanistan to Pakistan to India. Radon gave an address at the conference hosted by the Energy Charter Secretariat, the Ministry of Energy and Industry of Albania and the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean where he challenged accepted wisdom on the rights and obligations of transit nations such as Albania.

Radon has lectured and worked in over 70 (and visited over 100) countries, including Afghanistan, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Estonia, French Polynesia, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, Kosova, Laos, Mexico, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Peru, PNG, Poland, South Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine and Viet Nam. Radon was honored by being invited as a non-African expert to give an address on Asset Recovery and Natural Resources, with a focus on the lack of transparency and disclosure in the beneficial ownership of companies engaged in the extractive industry, to the annual meeting of the Southern African Forum Against Corruption (SAFAC) of the Southern African Development Community.

Radon has co-produced a speakers series with leaders of the world’s small states, including St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Suriname, Estonia, Kosovo, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, and Vanuatu; was the faculty advisor for the documentary “Trade-Offs in a Green Economy – Deep Sea Mining in French Polynesia”; and has co-produced a documentary on Greenland’s 2025 election titled “Under the world’s microscope: The local Greenland perspective rings loudly for the world to hear,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0T_1EwcJQLE), which won the Berlin Indie Short Festival for best short documentary as well as receiving other international film awards.

He has authored numerous articles and reports, including his anthology “Walk Tall!, A Beautiful Tomorrow For Emerging Nations, An Anthology of Inclusive Principles For National Growth and Prosperity: Equity, Rule of Law and Sustainable Natural Resource Development,” which was published in conjunction with the 2018 APEC conference in Papua New Guinea; “Climate Action: What Does it Take? Legal Teeth, Not Just Corporate Words”, “Civil Society: the Pulsating Heart of a Country, its Safety Valve,” and “Beneficial Ownership Disclosures: The Cure for the Panama Paper Ills,” Journal of International Affairs (Columbia University); Resolving conflicts of interest in state-owned enterprises, International Social Science Journal (UNESCO); Staatsfonds vor den Toren (Sovereign Wealth Funds Before the [Trojan] Gates), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ); Getting Human Rights Right, Stanford Social Innovation Journal; How To Negotiate Your Oil Agreement, in Escaping the Resource Curse, ed. Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey Sachs and Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University Press); Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, See No Evil Spells Complicity, Compact Quarterly, published by the (United Nations) Global Compact; Negotiating and Financing Joint Venture Abroad" in Joint Venturing Abroad, ed. N. Lacasse and L. Perret (Wilson & Lafleur Itee).
 

Radon obtained his B.A. from Columbia University, M.C.P. from the University of California, Berkeley, and J.D. from Stanford Law School.

• Order of Honor of the republic of Georgia
• Dr. Susan Aurelia Gitelson Award for Human Values in International Affairs