The Leifur Eiriksson Foundation

Board of Trustees

Founding Board

Current Board

Thrainn Eggertsson
Thrainn Eggertsson is Professor of Economics at the University of Iceland and Distinguished Global Professor of Politics at New York University. His work focuses on the politics and economics of property rights in the context of history, economic development, and modern technological change. His papers have appeared in a wide range of scholarly books and journals. His books include Economic Behavior and Institutions (1990) and Imperfect Institutions. Possibilities and Limits of Reform(2005). A native of Iceland, Eggertsson was educated in England and in the United States. He has been a visiting professor and scholar at several American Universities, including Washington University, Indiana University, Stanford University, and Columbia University. He has been a senior fellow with the Max Planck Society in Germany, and a visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong. In recent years, he coedited (with Randy Calvert) the Cambridge University Press series Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions.

John T. Casteen III (Chair)
John Casteen became president of the University of Virginia in August 1990. After teaching English at the University of California (Berkeley) and the University of Virginia, Mr. Casteen became the Commonwealth of Virginia's secretary of education in 1982. He served until 1985. From 1985 to 1990, he was president of the University of Connecticut.

Mr. Casteen has been a director of the American Council on Education and has served on many other education-related boards. Mr. Casteen was named the Outstanding Virginian of 1993. He is a recipient of a number of honors and awards including the state conference of the American Association of University Professors' (AAUP) Jackson Davis Award (1993); the doctor honoris causa from the University of Athens in Greece (1996); the University of Virginia's outstanding alumnus of the year (1998); and the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Social Sciences (1998). Mr. Casteen writes short fiction as well as essays and papers in medieval literature, bibliography, and public policy. A collection of his short stories received the 1987 Mishima Award for fiction.

Mr. Casteen holds three degrees in English from the University of Virginia (B.A. with high honors in 1965, M.A. in 1966, and Ph.D. in 1970). He served as UVA's dean of admissions from 1975 to 1982.

Don Fry
Don Fry, an independent writing coach, works with writers, editors, and managers. Mr. Fry has had two careers, first as an English professor at the University of Virginia and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He specialized in Anglo-Saxon literature, publishing three books on Beowulf: The Beowulf Poet (1968), Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburh: A Bibliography (1969), and Finnsburh Fragment and Episode (1974). He also studied early Scandinavia, editing Norse Sagas Translated Into English (1980) and co-editing Medieval Scandinavia, an Encyclopedia (1993). In 1984, Mr. Fry changed fields to journalism, heading the writing and ethics faculties at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he edited the annual series Best Newpaper Writing. He published Believing the News (1986), Color In American Newspapers, with Mario Garcia, and Coaching Writers with Roy Peter Clark (2nd edition 2003). As an independent writing coach since 1994, he has spread the idea of coaching throughout the world, especially in Singapore, South Africa, and Scandinavia. He has served as a founding trustee of the Leifur Eiriksson Foundation since 2000.

Halla Tomasdottir
Halla Tomasdottir is executive chairman and co-founder of AUÐUR CAPITAL. Halla left her position as the Managing Director of the Iceland Chamber of Commerce to start AUÐUR CAPITAL. She spent 6 years at Reykjavik University and was a key member of the foundation of the University as a founder and director for executive education and women entrepreneurship as well as an assistant professor. She now serves on the Board of Reykjavik University. Halla studied and worked in the USA for 10 years. She holds a BSC in Business Administration with an emphasis on Human Resource Management and an MBA in International Management. She started her career in the USA with M&M/Mars and later she joined Pepsi Cola's Human Resources team. Halla has been a teacher and consultant for many companies, and for students of all ages. Her interests are in the areas of Organizational Behavior and Entrepreneurship. She has been a non executive board director of a number of organizations including the Icelandic Stock Exchange, Sjova, Iceland's largest insurance company, Vistor, Iceland's main pharmaceutical importer and Calidris, an airline software solutions provider. She is currently a deputy director of the Central Bank of Iceland. Halla has two children, Tomas Bjartur and Audur Ina.

Richard S. Williams, Jr.
Richard Williams has B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University, all in geology. His research as a geologist/glaciologist is directed at using airborne and satellite remote sensing technology to carry out investigations of dynamic geological and glaciological processes. Iceland is of special interest, where he and his Icelandic colleagues have studied changes associated with volcanic and geothermal activity and glacier fluctuations since the mid-1960s. Mr. Williams’ work history includes: Atlantic-Richfield Co., Raytheon, HRB-Singer, U.S. Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories (1st Lt., USAF), and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Mr. Williams is Vice Chairman Emeritus, Committee for Research and Exploration, National Geographic Society, Emeritus Senior Research Geologist, USGS, and Adjunct Senior Scientist, Woods Hole Research Center. He is a member of the Cosmos Club; Fellow, Explorers Club; Foreign Fellow, Iceland Science Society; Fellow, Geological Society of America, and Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Mr. Williams has authored more than 300 publications. He is senior editor of the 11-volume USGS Professional Paper 1386-A-K, Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World. He is coauthor on a series of Coastal-Change and Glaciological Maps of Antarctica. In 2004, he and Oddur Sigurðsson published Icelandic Ice Mountains, an annotated English translation of Sveinn Pálsson’s 1795 glacier treatise (Jöklaritið) through The Icelandic Literary Society/Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag. In 2008, they published Geographic Names of Iceland’s Glaciers: Historic and Modern, and currently are writing a synthesis volume on the Glaciers of Iceland.

Officers