$50 million new Wachenheim family gift backs new center for peace and security

The Council on Foreign Relations has announced a landmark $50 million commitment from the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim Foundation to establish and endow the Wachenheim Center for Peace and Security, a move that will consolidate and expand the Council’s work on conflict prevention and resolution at a time of mounting global instability.

CFR president Michael Froman has called the gift a defining moment in the organization’s second century, positioning the new center as the focal point for efforts to address armed conflicts, great power rivalry, and emerging security threats driven by rapid technological change, while building on the Council’s mission of informing U.S. engagement with the world since its founding after World War I. The center will immediately bring together CFR’s existing conflict-related initiatives under a single, more visible umbrella, including the Center for Preventive Action, the Wachenheim Program on Peace and Security, the annual Preventive Priorities Survey, the Global Conflict Tracker, and the special initiative on securing Ukraine’s future, with a dedicated director and core team of fellows and staff charged with producing forward-looking analysis, high-level convenings, and broad outreach aimed at preventing, mitigating, and ending conflict.Behind this effort on the donor side is Edgar “Ed” Wachenheim III, founder, CEO, and chairman of the value-investing firm Greenhaven Associates and the driving force of the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim Foundation, who has described the center as a direct response to the human toll of war he witnessed during a 2024 visit to a center serving Ukrainian refugees in Eastern Europe, where he heard first-hand accounts of profound loss and displacement.

That experience, he has said, intensified his long-standing interest in reducing both the likelihood and severity of armed conflict and convinced him that CFR was uniquely positioned to lead a sustained, high-impact effort on peace and security.

While the foundation bears the names of Sue and Edgar Wachenheim, its leadership today is very much a family affair: recent governance records show Ed serving as president and CEO, Sue as vice president, their son Lance R. Wachenheim as treasurer, their daughter Kim W. Wagman as secretary, and another son, Chris A. Wachenheim, as a director.

This trustee structure means the Wachenheim children are not passive heirs but active co-stewards of the foundation’s strategy, helping shape major commitments like the CFR endowment as part of a broader portfolio that includes education, health, media, and cultural institutions.

At CFR, the partnership is anchored by Froman, who is stewarding the relationship at the institutional level, and conflict-prevention expert Paul B. Stares, who has been appointed the inaugural director of the Wachenheim Center for Peace and Security after years leading the Center for Preventive Action. Stares will be responsible for integrating legacy projects into a coherent, forward-looking program under the Wachenheim banner, overseeing research on emerging risks, scenario planning, and policy recommendations, as well as convening diplomats, scholars, and practitioners to explore practical pathways to de-escalation and long-term stability.

Taken together, the gift and the new center reflect a quiet but powerful evolution in the Wachenheim family’s philanthropy: after decades of relatively low-profile giving to education, hospitals, public media, and New York’s cultural institutions, the family’s current generation of trustees is now attaching its name to a global initiative with ambitious aims—to turn rigorous analysis and convening power into concrete ideas, dialogues, and solutions that can, over time, reduce the human costs of conflict and help lay the groundwork for a more just and secure peace.