Dr. Sam Potolicchio is Director of Global and Custom Education at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University; Distinguished University Professor, Department Chairman, and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Political Science at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA); and President of the Preparing Global Leaders Forum. He also serves as Academic Dean of the dual degree program on Global Governance and Leadership between Europe’s oldest university (Bologna) and its largest (RANEPA). He is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Bologna (Italy) and Mannheim Business School (Germany). He has been a visiting professor at New York University.

Potolicchio was named one of “America’s Best Professors” by the Princeton Review, the only one in his field, a Future Leader of American Higher Education by the Association of Colleges and Universities, and winner of the 2017 OZY Educator Award as one of the six outstanding American educators.

He also serves as Distinguished Global Scholar at the Canterbury School of Fort Myers, Florida, and the official lecturer on US politics at the Library of Congress for OWLC, an international leadership program of the United States Congress. Dr. Potolicchio also writes a bimonthly column on U.S. politics for Newsweek Japan.

He is an adviser to prominent business, non-profit and government leaders. He created and designed the first undergraduate degree in Global Governance and Leadership in English in the Russian Federation where he serves as Academic Director.


Potolicchio has delivered lectures in over 85 countries, including at Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, London School of Economics, Sorbonne, Bologna, and Warwick, Iraq's Komar University, and Donetsk State University, Russia. He regularly lectures around the world for the U.S. State Department, and has spoken in some 20 countries under U.S. Embassy auspices.