Jim Gerstein serves as a senior adviser to Middle East Progress and has extensive experience in strategic consulting, progressive American politics, and Middle East peace efforts. As a founding partner of Gerstein | Agne Strategic Communications, a Washington-based firm providing strategic planning, communications, project management, and research services to a wide range of non-profit organizations, companies, and political candidates, Gerstein also serves as Executive Director of the progressive research and strategy organization Democracy Corps.

Prior to his work with Democracy Corps, Gerstein was Executive Director of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation from 1997-2001. During the 1999 Israeli Prime Ministerial campaign, Gerstein took a leave of absence from the Center to join Ehud Barak’s American consulting team, where he served as the team’s person on the ground and oversaw the polling, paid media, and message development for the Barak campaign. In the following year, Gerstein established a non-profit counterpart for the Center, called the Institute for Peace and Security which provided financial, organizational, and strategic support for various Arab-Israeli projects, including meetings between retired generals from Israel and Arab countries, peace initiatives with Israeli business leaders, and dialogues between Jewish and Arab municipal leaders in Israel. Gerstein received an M.A. in Middle East History at Tel Aviv University and a B.A. in philosophy at Colgate University.