Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa is an independent author and political scientist currently working as senior fellow, department of War Studies, King’s College, London from where she obtained her Ph.D as well. Earlier she was a research associate at the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS.
Dr. Siddiqa was also a fellow at St Antony’s college, Oxford, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a Ford Fellow. She has taught at University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University and has written two books: (a) Pakistan’s Arms Procurement and Military Buildup, 1979-99, and (b) Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy.
She was also a civil servant and served as Director Naval Research at the Naval Headquarters. Her work focuses on military culture and organization, and civil-military relations.
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Professor Augustin Loada obtained his academic qualifications in Burkina Faso and France, and has served as Professor of Public Law and Political Science in Burkina Faso since 1995. Complementing his academic pursuits, he has also practised law since 2016. Professor Loada was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Boston University, United States, and has been a member of the American Political Science Association (APSA) since 2000.
He is the founder and was the inaugural Executive Director (2000–2014) of the Centre for Democratic Governance (CGD), a research institution in Burkina Faso focused on studies in governance and democratization. Additionally, Professor Loada established and directed the Institute for Governance and Development (IGD), which, in collaboration with APSA, organised a workshop entitled “Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective” in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2013.
In November 2014, Professor Loada was appointed Minister of Civil Service, Labour, and Social Protection in the Transitional Government of Burkina Faso. Since 2016, he has undertaken regular missions to New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific, where he joined the United Nations Group of Electoral Experts and led this group from 2018 to 2025. While in Burkina Faso, Professor Loada continues to lecture at the university and oversee the operations of his law firm.
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Colonel Auguste Denise Barry is a senior defense and security expert from Burkina Faso with over four decades of distinguished service in the national armed forces and the Burkinabè government. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Strategic Studies in Defense and Security (CESDS) and is currently completing his PhD at the Institute for International Relations of Cameroon (IRIC), University of Yaoundé II-Soa.
Colonel Barry retired from the armed forces in August 2025 after a career spanning high-level command, strategic planning, and public leadership. His expertise covers defense and security governance, higher education, strategic foresight, geopolitics, mediation, peacebuilding, and conflict management and resolution.
In parallel with his military career, Colonel Barry has built a strong academic and policy profile as a consultant to national governments, regional and international organisations, and international NGOs and think tanks such as Search for Common Ground and the Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF). He is also a widely respected university lecturer across West and Central Africa. In his home country, he has served as Minister of Security (2011) and as Minister of Territorial Administration, Decentralization and Security (2014-2015), and has advised the Presidency and Ministry of Defense in multiple senior roles. Internationally, he has contributed to numerous initiatives, including military advisor to the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in CAR and most recently as coordinator of the security pillar for the AU–UN High-Level Independent Panel on Security and Development in the Sahel.
A recipient of numerous national and international honors, including Burkina Faso’s rank of Commander of the Order of Étalon, he is also an active author and speaker on peace, security sector reform, and prevention of conflict and violent extremism, contributing to policy dialogue at regional and global levels. Colonel Barry is a graduate of Cameroon’s International War College of Youndé, holds a Master’s degree in Strategy, Defense and Security by the University of Youndé II-Soa, and has earned numerous additional military and civilian qualifications.
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General Alberto José Mejía Ferrero (Ret.) is the former Commander of the Colombian National Army and the Colombian Military Forces. With a military career spanning more than four decades, he led Colombia’s armed forces between 2015 and 2018 during a pivotal period marked by peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC, supporting the process that resulted in the group’s disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration, while upholding democratic civil–military relations.
During his tenure, General Mejía spearheaded a comprehensive institutional transformation to modernise Colombia’s military forces, strengthening operational effectiveness, professional standards, transparency, international cooperation, and compliance with human rights and international humanitarian law, including the implementation of the Plan Damasco doctrine, and the creation of key transparency and international cooperation bodies. He played a vital role in Colombia’s inclusion as a NATO Global Security Partner.
Following his retirement, he served as Colombia’s Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand (2019–2021), promoting bilateral relations and regional cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. He also worked as a consultant to the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) on military transformation and security sector reform and held academic and research positions in Australia and the United States. Currently, he is the honorary president of the Australia-Colombia Business Council in Bogotá and a visiting professor at the University of Los Andes’ School of Government and at the Nueva Granada Military University in leadership and national security.
General Mejía holds advanced degrees in Military Sciences, International Security, Strategic Studies, and National Security, and has received numerous national decorations, including Colombia’s highest honour Cruz de Boyacá, and the Colombian National Congress’s Order of Democracy. He has also been awarded the US Legion of Merit and has received the US Command and General Staff College and the US Army War College Hall of Fame distinctions.
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Dr. Van Schaack is a Distinguished Fellow with Stanford University’s Center for Human Rights & International Justice. Previously, she served as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. State Department office, where she once served as Deputy. GCJ advises the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Prior to returning to public service, Dr. Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a policy lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic.
Earlier in her career, she was a practicing lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, LLP; the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Dr. Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale (JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities.
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Thomas Biersteker is an internationally recognised expert on global governance, multilateral sanctions, and international policymaking. He is the Gasteyger Professor of International Security Honoraire at the Geneva Graduate Institute, where he previously served as Director for Policy Research and of the precursor to its Global Governance Centre. He is also a Senior Fellow with the Centre for Policy Research of the UN University, based in Geneva.
Professor Biersteker has served as a sanctions expert for the United Nations Security Council and has led several influential research initiatives on the impacts and effectiveness of UN targeted sanctions, the role of international institutions, and the politics of multilateralism. He is the principal developer of UNSanctionsApp and annually conducts UN sanctions training courses in partnership with the UN Secretariat in New York. He has held prior academic appointments at Brown University, Yale University, and the University of Southern California, and has advised a wide range of international organisations and governments on issues related to conflict prevention, global regulation, and sanctions design.
His publications include Targeted Sanctions: The Impacts and Effectiveness of United Nations Action (Cambridge University Press 2016), Informal Governance in World Politics (Cambridge University Press 2024), and numerous scholarly articles and policy reports on global governance and international relations.
He holds a PhD and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a BA in Public Affairs from the University of Chicago.
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Rachel Ziemba is a geo-economic and country risk expert. She runs Ziemba Insights, an advisory firm supports clients in their macroeconomic scenario analysis and policy due diligence. She tracks how governments use their balance sheets to meet economic and political goals and the ways resource wealth is managed. This includes sanctions, export controls as well as sovereign investment and industrial policy.
A broad expert in energy policy, Rachel writes regularly about dynamics across the fossil fuel industry, renewable energy and the development of critical mineral supply chains. She is an expert in how sanctions reshape energy markets and the macro economy of target and sending nations, including the unintended consequences on development.
She is also Senior Advisor, Sanctions at Horizon Engage, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and a non-resident fellow at the Gulf International Forum. She teaches International Political Economy at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. As part of her commitment to supporting the next generation she serves on the advisory board of the Harriman Foreign Service Fellows, which supports state department interns.
Before founding Ziemba Insights, Rachel served as the head of emerging markets research at Roubini Global Economics, a global macro strategy and country risk firm. In that capacity she co-led the research team, oversaw the emerging market and commodity research including, the firm’s quarterly global economic outlook and scenario production and implementing many of its customized research projects and due diligence exercises for private equity firms.
Rachel regularly serves as an expert commentator in key media outlets including CNBC, Bloomberg, New York Times, Financial Times, and her research has been cited by a range of international institutions including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and European Central Bank as well as many Academic Institutions. She is the co-author of “Scenarios for Risk Management and Global Investment Strategies” and “Investing in the Modern Age” both with Professor William Ziemba, her late father.
Rachel started her career in international development, working for the Canadian International Development Agency in Egypt, and the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa on development economic issues. She was also a US State Department intern at the Embassy in Paris and the US Consulate in Toronto.
She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago with honors, and a Master of Philosophy degree in international relations with a specialization in international political economy from St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (with distinction). She holds the Sustainability and Climate Risk certificate from GARP.
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Prof. Andrew Boraine is an independent partnering and systems change practitioner with over five decades of experience working in South Africa’s political, local government, urban, economic, and sustainability transformations.
Andrew established and led three collaborative intermediary organisations: the South African Cities Network (SACN), the Cape Town Partnership (CTP), and the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership (EDP).
Andrew has hands-on experience with over 100 multi-stakeholder partnering processes, covering a wide range of issues and sectors, such as water, waste, energy, just transition, mobility and transport, inclusionary housing, food and nutrition, public safety and violence reduction, agriculture and rural development, local economic development, youth employment, homelessness, urban management and place-making, tourism, open data, wetlands conservation, and collective memory work.
Andrew advises a diverse spectrum of local and international partners in government, civil society, community organisations, business, and research and knowledge institutions on how to achieve collaborative impact. Andrew is an adjunct professor at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities (ACC) and a research fellow at Stellenbosch University’s Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST).
Andrew was previously Deputy Director General (Local Government) in the Department of Constitutional Development in the mid-1990s. In this capacity, he assisted with the drafting of the local government chapter in the SA Constitution and initiated the first Local Government White Paper process in 1997. Andrew was City Manager of Cape Town from 1997 to 2001.
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Martin completed his PhD at the Clinton Institute (University College Dublin), where his research focused on the role of the Irish diaspora in the Northern Ireland Peace Process examining areas such as diaspora media, diaspora philanthropy, and diaspora politics. He is the founder of Global Diaspora Insights (GDI).
GDI provides advisory, research, policy, and training services on diaspora engagement through its in-house expertise and network of global experts. In collaboration with partners, GDI has contributed to diaspora engagement in over 50 countries for a variety of public, private, and third sector clients.
Martin currently sits on the Advisory Board of Ireland Reaching Out, which is a volunteer-based, non-profit initiative that connects people of Irish heritage with their place of origin in Ireland and he is an advisor at The Networking Institute. Previously, he was a visiting fellow at the United Nations University in Maastricht (UNU-MERIT) and served a full-term on the Executive Advisory Council of the African Diaspora Network based in Silicon Valley.
Martin has a strong and varied publication record on diaspora engagement including work supported by several governments as well as the African Development Bank Group, African Union, European Union, United Nations, and others. His most recent academic publication was ‘Diaspora Philanthropy: Unlocking New Portals for Diplomacy and Development’ in the first edition of the Routledge International Handbook of Diaspora Diplomacy. He has also participated in or co-chaired organising committees for several flagship global convenings on diaspora engagement including the inaugural Global Diaspora Summit co-hosted by the Government of Ireland and U.N. Agency for Migration in 2022.
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Professor Gibril Faal is a multi-disciplinary business and development executive. He is the co-founder and director of GK Partners, which specialises in socially responsible business models, sustainable development and programme implementation. He is also a visiting professor in practice at the London School of Economics (LSE) and at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA); a council member of Carnegie African Diaspora Program; a board member of Giving Tuesday Philanthropy and the African Research Excellence Fund (AREF); and Lead Consultant to the African Union Commission on innovative, development and diaspora finance.
In the early 2000s, Professor Faal was part of the small team of experts that worked on a Department of Trade and Industry project to develop the UK’s social enterprise business support, legal and financing structures. In 2003, he founded RemitAid™ as a mechanism to transform remittances into a sustainable form of development finance. In 2017, he initiated the Migration and Sustainable Development in The Gambia project (MSDG) in partnership with the governments of Switzerland and The Gambia.
Professor Faal has previously served as vice chair of Bond, the network of UK NGOs working on international development; chairman of AFFORD-UK, the pioneering diaspora-development charity; founding director of the Africa-Europe Diaspora Development Platform (ADEPT); and as a magistrate in Her Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service. He has worked as a technical expert with the United Nations, World Bank, European Union, University of Oxford, and many development institutions and governments across the world. In 2017, he served as overarching expert for the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), and has addressed the UN General Assembly several times. In the past 25 years, he has been appointed to various strategic, development and management boards and panels across the world. In the UK, he has been appointed to several public function roles by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary of State for International Development, Home Secretary, and the Lord Chancellor. In 2014, Professor Faal was appointed an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to international development.