Sir Evelyn de Rothschild's Kissinger Fellowship Endowment Continues to Shape Global Leadership

When the McCain Institute at Arizona State University named Belarusian democratic leader Maria Kalesnikava as its Kissinger Fellow for 2026–2027, the announcement drew attention across the transatlantic policy community. Fresh from a December 2025 prison release that freed her and 122 other political prisoners, Kalesnikava stepped into a role designed to cultivate seasoned voices in foreign policy and national security. Fewer observers recognized the quieter thread running through the appointment: the fellowship itself carries the imprint of a financier and philanthropist whose gifts helped bring it into being more than a decade ago.

That benefactor, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, was a British banker whose family foundation supported causes on both sides of the Atlantic. His decision to endow a fellowship honoring Henry Kissinger connected personal friendship, a belief in principled statecraft, and a long record of institutional generosity. The Kalesnikava appointment offers a fresh occasion to trace that connection.

The McCain Institute Kissinger Fellowship exists to support a senior leader in foreign policy and national security while honoring the career of the former U.S. Secretary of State. The program, as the institute describes it, seeks to identify and empower experienced leaders to engage deeply with strategic thought and the instruments of statecraft. It reflects values that Senator John McCain and Dr. Kissinger shared across a decades-long friendship that began in 1973.

The financial architecture behind the fellowship traces back to the ERANDA Rothschild Foundation. Foundation records show a 2015 grant of £65,660 dedicated to the establishment of an endowment for the new Kissinger Fellowship at the McCain Institute in Arizona. That gift sat within a broader relationship: the foundation directed more than £608,000 in total toward the McCain Institute for the Kissinger Fellowship and the McCain Global Leaders Programme. The institute publicly lists the ERANDA Rothschild Foundation among its supporters under Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and Lynn Forester de Rothschild.

The personal dimension gives the endowment particular resonance. Kissinger introduced Sir Evelyn to Lynn Forester at the 1998 Bilderberg conference in Scotland, and the couple married in 2000. Kissinger had served on Lynn Forester's corporate board before that meeting. The relationship, in other words, predated the philanthropy and helped shape it.

The McCain Institute Kissinger Fellowship honors the profound relationship between Senator John McCain and Dr. Henry Kissinger - a bond forged in 1973 when Kissinger, as National Security Advisor, insisted McCain receive no special treatment during his release from captivity in Vietnam, an act that John McCain claimed: “saved [his] honor.” Senator McCain relied on Dr. Kissinger’s strategic brilliance and wise counsel throughout his life, calling him “my friend and benefactor” who “made the world safer for his country’s interests, and by so doing safer for the ideals that are its pride and purpose.”

The Kissinger Fellowship develops the next generation of strategic thinkers versed in the instruments of statecraft by supporting a senior foreign policy and national security leader as they engage in deep strategic thought and advance meaningful projects in the field. The fellowship was founded by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, Lady Lynn de Rothschild, and the ERANDA Rothschild Foundation to honor Dr. Henry Kissinger’s lifetime of service and the friendship between Dr. Kissinger, Senator McCain, and Sir Evelyn.

Kalesnikava's path to the fellowship is remarkable by any measure. A classically trained flutist who earned degrees from the Belarusian State Academy of Music and a music university in Stuttgart, she co-founded the OK16 cultural space in Minsk before entering political life. In 2020, she emerged as a central figure in Belarus's pro-democracy movement following the disputed election that extended Alexander Lukashenko's rule.

Her resistance carried a steep price. Kidnapped in September 2020 and pressured to leave the country, she tore up her passport at the border to avoid forced expulsion. Amnesty International recognized her as a prisoner of conscience, and in 2021, a court sentenced her to eleven years in a penal colony. She was freed on December 13, 2025, in a prisoner release brokered between Washington and the Lukashenko regime.

According to the McCain Institute's account of her case, her detention was one of the inaugural priorities of the John McCain Freedom for Political Prisoners Initiative. As FPPI Director Pedro Pizano put it, her release “reflects extraordinary courage by her family, relentless advocacy by Belarusian civil society, and sustained, bipartisan engagement by partners in Congress and civil society.” As the institute's press release naming her a Kissinger Fellow explains, Kalesnikava will work on forming a unified transatlantic approach to Belarus that “combines pressure with pragmatic engagement and leaves channels open where they can yield results.”

Kalesnikava joins a line of accomplished figures. Japan's Kono Taro, a former foreign minister and defense minister, held the honorary Kissinger Fellowship for 2023–2024 and used the platform to advance Data Free Flow with Trust, an international framework for secure data sharing among democracies. His work concluded with a published report on global data governance.

The program's consistency underscores what the original endowment made possible. Each fellow brings real-world experience to bear on a defined policy challenge, mentored within an institution built on the premise of character-driven leadership. The framework has proven durable enough to attract cabinet-level officials and, now, a democracy activist whose credibility was forged under authoritarian pressure. That durability speaks to the value of patient institutional investment over one-off gestures.

The Kissinger endowment was one strand in a wide-ranging giving history. Founded in 1967, the ERANDA Rothschild Foundation supported medical research, health and welfare, education, and the arts. Over one recent decade, the foundation made 32 donations exceeding £100,000 each. Its largest commitments included £1.7 million to Evelina London Children's Hospital and substantial multi-year support for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where the family funded junior fellowships and inequality research.

Education featured prominently. The foundation established the Sir Evelyn de Rothschild Scholarship in War Studies at King's College London, committing £500,000 to support 25 students over five years. As chronicled in his Irish Times obituary, the Rothschild banker built a career that spanned the chairmanship of N M Rothschild & Sons, leadership of the Economist Group, and service on the boards of De Beers and IBM UK. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1989 for services to banking and finance.

His engagement with the world of ideas extended well beyond writing checks. The Peterson Institute noted in its tribute to the financier and philanthropist that he joined three institute-sponsored trips to China, meeting top officials and scholars, drawing on his own decades as an investor there. His interest in fostering opportunity for young people shaped the fellowship programs his foundation backed on both continents.

The Kalesnikava appointment illustrates how a single philanthropic decision can echo across years and borders. The banker who helped endow the Kissinger Fellowship died in November 2022, yet the structure he funded continues to place capable leaders where they can influence policy. A Belarusian activist recently freed from prison now holds a position that a British financier helped create to honor an American statesman he called a friend.

Viewed against his full record, the fellowship endowment fits a consistent pattern. Whether funding hospital equipment, scholarships, or a platform for foreign-policy leadership, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild favored gifts that would outlast the moment of giving. The Kissinger Fellowship, now carried forward by a new generation of fellows confronting fresh challenges to democracy, stands as one measure of how that instinct translated into lasting effect. His name appears quietly in the institute's donor records, but the work it enabled continues to speak on a global stage.