 NEPI also conducted several working groups on policy implication of highly technical but policy-significant issues of Bioavailability and Sediments.While heading NEPI, Ritter, with Philip Smith, a foreign policy adviser and Afghanistan specialist in Ritter's Congressional office, assisting, founded the Afghanistan Foundation in Washington, D.C., which Ritter chaired in 1996.Smith served as Executive Director of the Afghanistan Foundation, prior to Ritter's departure from the Afghanistan Foundation in 2000.