Werner Fornos, winner of the 2003 United Nations Population Award and the 2005 Rotary Service Above Self Award, formerly served as president of the Population Institute from 1982 until late 2005. He has been in the forefront of the struggle to balance the world’s population with the world’s resources for more than 20 Years.
            Mr. Fornos’s dedication to the issue of population stabilization has made him an internationally recognized leader in the field. He is among the 50 persons named to the Earth Times Hall of Fame for his distinguished contributions to the environment and development in the last decade. He was also named a Rotary Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary International and Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association.
            As head of The Population Institute, Mr. Fornos devoted his time both to convincing leaders of developing countries that they must balance their populations with their resources and to encouraging leaders of industrialized countries to help poorer countries achieve their demographic objectives. Mr. Fornos believes so strongly in the message that he has taken it to virtually every major forum involving global population problems and their solutions since 1974 when he spoke at the World Population Conference in Bucharest, Romania.
            The many prestigious gatherings in which Mr. Fornos has participated include the Asian and Pacific conference on Population in Colombo, Sri Lanka; the Economic Commission for Europe in Sofia, Bulgaria; the Economic Commission for Western Asia in Amman, Jordan; the Second African Population Conference in Arusha, Tanzania; the 1984 International Conference on Population in Mexico City; the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo (ICPD); the Social Summit in Copenhagen; the 1996 Food Summit in Rome; and the 2004 European Population Forum in Geneva.
            He delivered the first of the 1992 Earth Summit lectures preceding the ICPD. In 1995, Mr. Fornos addressed a plenary session of the Fourth International United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing.

Unstinting in his efforts to curb the tragic consequences of overpopulation, Mr. Fornos regularly appears before many civic and service organizations around the world. He lectures at numerous college campuses throughout the United States; makes frequent national television and radio appearances; and contributes newspaper and magazine articles to such publications as The Washington Post, The New York Times Magazine, The International Herald-Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Houston Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Minneapolis Star Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Miami Herald.
            Mr. Fornos joined The Population Institute in 1978 and became its president in 1982. Prior to his affiliation with the Institute Mr. Fornos was an assistant professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he headed the university’s global Population Information Program.
            Mr. Fornos also served as a management consultant on family planning programs for Tunisia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Mexico, the Philippines, Indonesia, China, Sri Lanka and Kenya.
            A Maryland state legislator from 1966 to 1970, Mr. Fornos has held administrative posts in state and national government. On the state level, he served as Maryland’s Manpower Administrator and as Assistant Secretary of Human Resources. His federal positions included Special Assistant to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor for labor-management relations and Deputy Assistant Manpower Administrator.
            Mr. Fornos is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in government and politics, and was named the Alumnus of the Year recently. He served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1958.
            In 1991 Fornos received the Order of Merit from Germany, the highest distinction granted to a non-German citizen in recognition of humanitarian efforts.
            He is an honorary professor of international relations at Sichuan University in China. He is also a member of the board of directors of the United Nations Association of the United States, and an elected member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.
           Werner is a lifetime honorary member of the Rotary Club of Washington, DC
and an active member of the Woodstock, Virginia Rotary Club.  He received
Rotary International's prestigious "Service Above Self Award," at the 100th
Anniversary Celebration in Chicago, Illinois in 2005.
            Mr. Fornos is author of “Gaining People, Losing Ground,” and the internationally released report, “1997 World Population Overview.”