George Koumal- founder
(in Memoriam 1942 - 2022)
George Koumal is a retired tunnel and mining engineer. Born and educated in Czechoslovakia, Mr. Koumal immigrated to the USA in 1969. He worked as a mining and tunnelling engineer on large-scale mining projects throughout the US, Europe and Africa. In 1992, Mr. Koumal founded the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel and Railroad Group (IBSTRG) together with his Russian partner Dr. Victor Razbegin to explore the possibilities of connecting North America and Asia via a railroad tunnel beneath the Bering Strait – a vision which dates back to the 1860s.
Joseph R. Henri - Co-founder
Joseph R. Henri’s residence in Alaska began before the Territory became the 49th State. He has been a member of the Alaska Bar for over five decades, and has occupied important municipal and state offices over the years. He has led several civic organizations whose main objective has been the development of Alaska’s resources, and international trade in those products. He has always taken part in Alaskan education either as a teacher, or as a governing official. Besides the law, he has continually engaged in a number of varied small business enterprises, including railroad development and expansion.
victor razbegin - Co-founder
Victor Razbegin is one of the leading rail industry consultants in the Russian Federation. During the early 1990s, Mr. Razbegin co-founded the Interhemispheric Bering Strait Tunnel & Railroad Group (IBSTRG) together with George M. Koumal. While heading SOPS, Russia's Council for the Study of Productive Forces, a joint institution of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, Mr. Razbegin and his colleagues completed a two-volume feasibility study about the InterContinental Railway – the most comprehensive study to date. Since the mid-2010s, Mr. Razbegin's work has shifted increasingly toward joint Russian-Chinese railroad projects.
Scott R. Spencer - chief project advisor
Scott Spencer is a rail industry consultant with diversified management and consulting experience in service and start-up planning, operations, business development, strategic planning, management, government relations, marketing and service quality. His career has included service development and operations for freight railroads, high speed rail, commuter rail, metros, and light rail transit in the United States and internationally on such projects as the Philadelphia Airport Line, the Cairo Metro and Taiwan High Speed Rail.
Craig Fleener - State of alaska advisor
Craig Fleener is a Gwich’in native from Ft. Yukon, Alaska. Mr. Fleener is a Lt. Colonel in the Alaska Air National Guard, and has occupied a variety of public offices in Alaska. Currently he is the Deputy Advisor for Arctic Security Affairs at the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies in Anchorage, Alaska. Mr. Fleener has long advocated making Alaska the center of a global transportation hub linking North America and Asia, and has been lobbying for the InterContinental Railway at the state and federal level as well as internationally since 2015.