Jaak Treiman

Jaak Treiman became a refugee during World War II when he was three months old and his family escaped to Sweden from German occupied Estonia, even as Russian troops prepared to replace the Germans as occupiers. Sweden threatened to forcibly return Estonians to Soviet occupied Estonian, and actually did return some. Jaak’s family sought new refuge in Australia, where they lived for 4 ½ years. When they had an opportunity to immigrate to America, they did so, arriving on a cargo ship at the Port of Los Angeles on Thanksgiving Day 1951. Jaak earned his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Southern California and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago. He was appointed honorary consul for Estonia while Estonia was still occupied by the Soviet Union. He has served in that position ever since. Jaak was the past Board Chair of the U.S.-Baltic Foundation when USBF administered a 3 million dollar “Democracy Network” grant from the United States Agency for International Development. The purpose of the grant was to further grassroots democracy in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Jaak helped co-found a nonprofit organization, Innovation Democracy, that taught entrepreneurship to graduating seniors from Kabul University in Afghanistan. He has also been to Somaliland, where Innovation Democracy carried out two programs. He has written a number of magazine articles and Op-ed pieces including some that have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal - European edition and the Los Angeles Times.