Gedmin served for nearly six years as director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin, a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose mission is "to foster 'enlightened' leadership and open-minded dialogue." From 1996 to 2001, Gedmin was a resident scholar and executive director of the American Enterprise Institute’s New Atlantic Initiative, a coalition of international institutes, politicians, leading journalists, and business executives seeking to revitalize and expand the Atlantic community of democracies. Leading supporters and participants included Václav Havel, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, and US Senators Jesse Helms and Joseph Biden.