Christopher Medalis is an international education expert based in New York City. Since March 2019, he has been serving as special advisor to the president of SIT for student affairs. He has 25 years of experience leading strategic initiatives, advancing university internationalization, conducting training, and managing scholarship programs and academic exchanges on behalf of governments, foundations, universities, and corporations. He has designed and conducted trainings for university staff, government officials, higher education professionals, academics, researchers, and students.

His career in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East has included representing the Institute of International Education (IIE), a U.S. nongovernmental organization, and the U.S. State Department’s EducationUSA network as regional director for Europe, where he was responsible for professional training for over 60 educational advisors. He was director of Global Scholarship Programs at IIE in New York and directed IIE’s Europe Office in Budapest from 1998-2007.

He holds a PhD in History from Columbia University, where his dissertation focused on the role of the Fulbright Program in higher education transformation in Central and Eastern Europe.