September 4, 2023

The International Churchill Society proudly announces its new leadership team.

Mitchell Reiss

The Board of Directors of the International Churchill Society in August unanimously elected Mitchell Reiss as its new chairman. He succeeds retiring chairman Laurence Geller CBE. Reiss is a leading international affairs advisor and strategic planning expert with extensive experience in government, the private sector, academia, and the philanthropic community. Most recently he was a partner and co-led Brunswick Group’s geopolitical practice.

Left to Right: Mitchell Reiss, Philip J. Boeckman and Stephen D. Poss

Mitchell’s government experience includes serving as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department and as President George W. Bush’s Special Envoy to the Northern Ireland Peace Process with the rank of Ambassador. For his work with the British and Irish governments to help end the “Troubles,” he earned the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Award for “exceptionally distinguished service.” In spring 2023 he was awarded an honorary degree from Queen’s University Belfast.

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Previously, Reiss was CEO and president of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, where he engineered the organization’s financial turnaround, and increased its fund raising, visitation, and social relevance. He has served as a Distinguished Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and as President of Washington College. He has also advised foreign governments on water security, historic preservation, and ending paramilitary activities, and spent four years negotiating with North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program.

Mitchell earned his J.D. at Columbia University and D.Phil. in International Relations from Oxford University. He has testified frequently before Congress, has written numerous articles and books on international security and American foreign policy, and is author of Negotiating with Evil: When to Talk to Terrorists.

In October 2022, the International Churchill Society (US) Board of Directors unanimously chose Philip J. Boeckman and Stephen Poss to serve as co-vice chairmen.

Philip J. Boeckman

Philip J. Boeckman is Managing Partner of the London office of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP and Co-Head of the firm’s Capital Markets Practice for EMEA. He has been based in Cravath’s London office since 2000, when he relocated to London from the firm’s New York office. Philip’s general corporate practice covers capital markets, including IPOs, rights issuances and other equity offerings, US listings and highyield bridge, bond, and other leveraged financings, as well as mergers and acquisitions. He has represented many of Cravath’s European corporate clients, the major investment banks in the US and Europe, and several private equity firms. Philip has been repeatedly recognized as one of the leading practitioners in capital markets by Chambers, The Legal 500, IFLR and other publications. He was ranked as the top corporate lawyer for EMEA in 2019 in Legal Week magazine and been named to The Legal 500 UK Hall of Fame in the HighYield Bond category. Philip serves on the Board of Trustees of Westminster College, is the Senior Fellow of America’s National Churchill Museum, and chairs the International Council of the International Churchill Society (US). He received a B.A. from Westminster College in 1988 and a J.D. from the University of Missouri in 1991, where he was a Notes Editor of the Law Review. Philip joined Cravath in 1991 and was elected a partner in 1998.

Stephen D. Poss

Stephen Poss is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Chicago Law School and has been collecting books by and about Winston Churchill for more than thirty years. Before retiring in 2018, he enjoyed a thirty-seven-year career at two of America’s leading law firms, first at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and later at Goodwin Procter LLP, where, as a Senior Partner, he helped to build Goodwin’s Securities Litigation and SEC Enforcement Practice and served as the practice group’s Chair. Steve is a former co-chair of the Securities Litigation Subcommittee of the American Bar Association Section of Business Law and has lectured extensively across the United States, as well as in France and the UK, on securities, corporate governance, and transactional issues for organizations such as the American Bar Association, NASDAQ, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), The SEC Institute, Inc., and The Law Society of England and Wales. Steve and his wife, Jane F. Poss, a former business reporter for the Boston Globe, are creators and sponsors of the International Churchill Society’s Stephen and Jane Poss Distinguished Churchill Lecture Series, which began in 2021. Steve and Jane now live in the Cascade Mountains of Central Oregon.