Episode 150: Valuing Civil Society Organizations
Eric Langenbacher
Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Dr. Eric Langenbacher is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program at AGI.
Dr. Langenbacher studied in Canada before completing his PhD in Georgetown University’s Government Department in 2002. His research interests include collective memory, political culture, and electoral politics in Germany and Europe. Recent publications include Comparative Politics: Mapping Institutions, Power, and Legitimacy (2025), Shifting Paradigms in Contemporary German Politics and Policy (edited volume, 2024), The German Polity, 12th ed. (2021), and Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election (edited volume, 2019).
Dr. Langenbacher remains affiliated with Georgetown University as Teaching Professor and Director of the Honors Program in the Department of Government, as well as the Director of the Master in European Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service. He has also taught at George Washington University, Washington College, The University of Navarre, and the Universidad Nacional de General San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has given talks across the world. He was selected Faculty Member of the Year by the School of Foreign Service in 2009 and was awarded a Fulbright grant in 1999-2000 and the Hopper Memorial Fellowship at Georgetown in 2000-2001. Since 2005, he has also been Managing Editor of German Politics and Society, which is housed in Georgetown’s BMW Center for German and European Studies. Dr. Langenbacher has also planned and run dozens of short programs for groups from abroad, as well as for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense on a variety of topics pertaining to American and comparative politics, business, culture, and public policy.
Preston James Ross
Prince George’s County Council Chair Edward Burroughs III
Preston James Ross is a public servant and LGBTQ advocate whose career spans healthcare, Congress, nonprofits, and local government, with a focus on driving lasting community impact. He began his career as a licensed practical nurse, witnessing firsthand how systemic inequities shape people’s lives. He later served on Capitol Hill for then-U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris and U.S. Representatives Kweisi Mfume and Suzanne Bonamici, where he worked on constituent services, office operations, and legislative priorities. Today, he serves as Chief of Staff and Policy Advisor to the Prince George’s County Council Chair Edward Burroughs III, overseeing major initiatives that support youth employment, senior services, local economic development, and the County budget.
Preston also chairs the Young Nonprofit Professional Network of DC, where he fosters leadership pipelines for emerging nonprofit professionals across the DMV region. An advocate for inclusive policymaking, Preston brings a deep commitment to building stronger, more equitable communities through every role he holds.
Sebastian Thiele
State Administration Office of Saxony-Anhalt
Sebastian Thiele is a legal professional with over 13 years of experience in voluntary work for the queer community in Leipzig. He began as the leader of a gay and bisexual youth group when he was 18 years old and has made it his mission to fight for equality and against hate. He currently serves as a board member of the “CSD Leipzig e.V.” and is co-organizer of the Leipzig Pride, which regularly receives about 20,000 visitors from Leipzig and many other parts of Germany. Professionally, Sebastian works as a lawyer for the State Administration Office of Saxony-Anhalt (Landesverwaltungsamt) and specializes in administrative law. He trains legal trainees and is an honorary judge at the labor court of Halle. In 2019, the city of Leipzig awarded him with their Golden Honorary Pin for his voluntary work for the LGBTIQ+ community.
Civil society organizations are funded differently in the United States and Germany, and LGBTQ+ organizations must take different approaches when seeking financial support from the public and private sector. Preston James Ross and Sebastian Thiele join The Zeitgeist to discuss what different funding models signal about a society’s values, how different models benefit some organizational structures over others, and how changes in the political climate can impact nonprofit funding.
Guest Host
Dr. Eric Langenbacher, AGI Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Guests
Preston James Ross, Chief of Staff and Policy Advisor, Prince George’s County Council Chair Edward Burroughs III
Sebastian Thiele, Lawyer, State Administration Office of Saxony-Anhalt
This podcast is part of the project “Building LGBTQ+ Communities in Germany and the United States: Past, Present, and Future” and is generously funded by the Transatlantik-Programm der Bundesrepublik Deutschland aus Mitteln des European Recovery Program (ERP) des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Energie (BMWE) (Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany with Funds through the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE)).
