Donald Blinken, U.S. Ambassador to Hungary from 1994 to 1998, is a native New Yorker. He graduated Harvard University Magna Cum Laude in Economics and co-founded the investment banking and venture capital firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus & Co. He was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York, President of the Mark Rothko Foundation, President of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and served on the Board of the New York Public Library. He is a former co-Chair of Columbia University’s European Institute and is a member of the Advisory Board of its School of Public and International Affairs. He also serves on the Boards of the New York Philharmonic, the Council of American Ambassadors, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, the Project on Ethnic Relations, and Central European University in Budapest, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ambassador Blinken resides in New York City with his wife, Vera. His son, Antony, is the Secretary of State of the US.
Vera Blinken was born in Budapest, and graduated from Vassar College with a degree in the History of Art. She practiced interior design, first at the architectural firm of Edward Durell Stone, and later founded Vera Evans Interiors. Mrs. Blinken has been a member of the Board of Directors of the International Rescue Committee since 1978, serving most recently as Secretary. She was Special Assistant for the Arts and Cultural Affairs to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and is currently Vice Chairman of FAPE—Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies. While living in Hungary as the wife of the Ambassador, in 1996 she founded PRIMAVERA, the first mobile breast cancer screening program in Central and Eastern Europe. In 2002, for services to the Hungarian people, she was awarded the Middle Cross of the Republic of Hungary. She lives in New York City with her husband, Donald Blinken.