ABOUT

Adrienne has an extensive track record in media development. In 1993 she was one of the founders of Press Now and has held senior positions at the OSI Network Media Program, IWPR, the OSCE, USAID and BBC Media Action across a range of projects. Adrienne has worked in the former Yugoslavia, Serbia, Kosovo, Hungary and Russia, and for the past eight years on west Asia. Her varied experience includes roles as director of development for the underground radio station B92 during the Balkan Wars, managing a special assistance program for independent media in Russia and founding Jadid Media, a multimedia journalism development organisation.

Christina is an award-winning journalist and currently Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Sunday Times. After graduating from Oxford, she reported on the mujaheddin war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan and went on to cover wars from Iraq to the Siachen Glacier, interviewed dictators like General Pinochet and heroes like Nelson Mandela. In 2006, she narrowly escaped with her life when the Taleban ambushed British troops in Helmand, and in 2007 she was on Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto's bus when it was bombed. As well as the Sunday Times, Christina’s work has appeared in the Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph, New York Times, New Statesman, Spectator and Time magazine. She has also written many books including The Africa House; House of Stone (on Zimbabwe), Waiting For Allah – Pakistan's Struggle for Democracy; The Sewing Circles of Herat, My Afghan Years, and Small Wars Permitting: Dispatches from Foreign Lands.

Clarissa is chief international correspondent for CNN. With a career spanning nearly two decades, she has reported from conflict zones including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and Ukraine. For her reporting, Clarissa has won nine Emmy Awards, two George Foster Peabody Awards, three Alfred I duPont-Columbia Awards, two Edward R. Murrow Awards and a George Polk Award. She is the author of the memoir On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist. Her investigative work has been instrumental in shedding light on global events, including her coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and her Emmy-winning 2019 investigation into Russia's use of mercenaries.

Consuelo is a Chilean journalist based in London. She hosts a daily live show on Radio Duna providing news analysis and economic and political commentary on Chilean and Latin American affairs. A 25 year-veteran of prime-time newscasts, she has also produced documentaries and investigatiions for the Chilean Public Broadcast Corporation throughout Latin America. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard and a Poynter Fellow at Yale university, she has twice received the Excellence in Journalism award from Universidad Alberto Hurtado.

Formerly CEO then Chair of the Financial Times and a Director of the Pearson Group. Sir David is currently Co-Chair of The Foundation for FutureLondon; Chair of Coram; The Talent Foundry;  Rare Recruitment; Bath Mozartfest; The Chapel Street Community Schools Trust, a senior independent Director on the Cambridge Press & Assessment Board and a Trustee of Cornerstone Property Assets.  Other former appointments include: Non Executive Director, The Economist; Chair of Crisis, The London Transport Museum, University of Roehampton, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, The Millennium Bridge Trust, The Media Trust, a Trustee of the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation and an Assessor to the Leveson Enquiry.  David was knighted in 2004 for services to industry, the arts and charity.  Educated at the University of Cambridge and the University of Pennsylvania, David began his career as a journalist with the Financial Times, serving as Washington correspondent and managing editor and launching the international edition of the FT.

Eileen O’Connor joined the Rockefeller Foundation in 2019 as Senior Vice President for Communications, Policy, and Advocacy, a member of the President’s Executive Team, overseeing strategic communications and policy for all programs. Previously, Eileen led Garnet Group Public Affairs, specializing in crisis management, and served as Vice President for Communications at Yale University. She served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, living in Kabul in 2011-12 and managing $400 million in public diplomacy programs. Early in her career, O’Connor was a journalist at ABC News and CNN, serving as a national and White House correspondent and based in London, Tokyo, and Moscow.  O’Connor was awarded the Peabody, DuPont, multiple Overseas Press Club awards and numerous other awards for political, investigative and war zone work. She holds a J.D. and B.A. from Georgetown and a post-graduate diploma in world politics from the London School of Economics.

Gillian Tett is US managing editor of the Financial Times, and a weekly columnist. In 2014, she was named Columnist of the Year in the British Press Awards and was the first recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute Marsh Award. Her other honors include a SABEW Award for best feature article (2012), Journalist of the Year (2009) and Business Journalist of the Year (2008) by the British Press Awards. Her book Fool’s Gold won Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spear’s Book Awards (2009). She has also reported for the FT from Tokyo, Russia and Brussels.

A veteran business executive, Highet serves as managing partner of Court Square Capital Partners, an investment firm headquartered in New York City that manages over six billion US dollars in capital.

Prior to joining Court Square, Highet held the post of vice-president of corporate development of K-III Communications Corporation, now known as PRIMEDIA. He has also served on the boards of Fibertech Networks, CompuCom Systems, Auto Europe Group, Worldspan Technologies, Express Messenger Service, F&W Publications and NAC International.

Highet also supports the Henry Street Settlement, a non-profit assisting economically disadvantaged residents of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Jay is a principal in Douglass Winthrop Advisors, LLC. Previously, Jay was a Vice President in the Mergers and Acquisitions group at JP Morgan Chase, where he provided financial and strategic advice to companies in a range of industries. Jay also worked at Hambrecht & Quist LLC, helping early stage companies raise capital in private and public markets. Jay is active in environmental and economic policy.  He was chairman of the Conservation Fund until August 2022 and is a past chairman of American Farmland Trust.  Jay served on the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy (ACIEP) from 2014 through 2016. Jay received an AB from Harvard College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

John Ridding is the chief executive officer of The Financial Times and FT.com. Having overseen the FT’s acquisition by Nikkei in 2015, he serves as a special executive director on the Nikkei board. John was formerly editor and publisher of The Financial Times, Asia, as well as chairman of Pearson in Asia. John led the launch of the Asia edition of the FT in 2003. It won the award for the best newspaper from the Society of Publishers in Asia in its launch year and received top awards for business reporting, scoops and newspaper design in 2006. He graduated from Oxford University with a first-class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

John-Allan is a Kenyan investigative journalist and co-founder of Africa Uncensored. A journalist for 17 years, he is based in Nairobi and reports on national and regional affairs focusing on politics and investigative journalism. John-Allan was the 2015 and 2017 joint journalist of the year in the Annual Journalism Excellence Awards, a 2019 Global Shining light award winner, a 2019 Trace International Prize on investigative journalism winner, and the 2009 CNN African Journalist of the Year. He was a 2009 CNN fellow and a 2017 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow. He is married and lives in Nairobi with his wife and four children.

Michael Immordino is a lawyer with significant experience in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions and private equity. His practice is based in London and Milan. He is frequently called upon to work with companies and investment banks, especially in connection with complex, international M&A and securities transactions.

Niva Yau is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. Her research work focuses on China-Central Asia relations and China’s new overseas security management infrastructure and initiatives including foreign bases and stations, the politics of foreign infrastructure, private security companies, intelligence network, in-China security training programs, governance export, information operations, and others. Between 2018 and 2023, Niva was based at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Academy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where she worked on commissioned research on China’s foreign policy, trade, and security in its western neighborhood, covering Central Asia and Afghanistan. 

Niva commentary and analysis have been featured in BBC, the Independent, Nikkei Asia, the Economist, Vice, Le Monde, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera and others. In May 2022, Niva testified in Washington, DC, for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Originally from Hong Kong, she graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a degree in political science and is a native speaker of Cantonese, Mandarin, and English and is learning Russian. 

Ole Johan Bjørnøy worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway for more than 25 years, holding numerous senior roles with a focus on Eurasia and Southeast Europe. This included serving as long-standing Norwegian Ambassador to Central Asia, covering Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. He also served as Chargé d’affairs to Albania and North Macedonia (then FYROM), and other roles in Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia and Denmark, as well as senior advisor at the Foreign Ministry in Oslo. Ole retired from the Norwegian MFA in 2020.

Ralph is founder and Managing Director of GH Venture Partners LLC, (GHVP), a New York private merchant bank formed in 1998. Before joining GHVP, Ralph worked as a consultant to corporate management with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and with Strategic Planning Associates (Mercer Consulting acquiree). Ralph was formerly a Fellow with the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the SALT II treaty hearings. He also served on the staff of Congressman James W. Symington of St. Louis, Missouri and Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts.

Ramsey works at Goldman Sachs where he and his team advise a select number of entrepreneurs, private equity partners, families and institutions on all aspects of asset and wealth management. Prior to joining Goldman, Ramsey worked as founder/CEO of two companies in the Technology & Media (TMT) industry. Ramsey received his BA with honours from Yale University and his MBA from Harvard Business School. He is co-author of Profit Plan Decisions, a case study published by and taught at Harvard Business School.

Richard Caplan is professor of international relations in the department of politics and International relations at the University of Oxford. He has been editor of World Policy Journal, a specialist advisor to the select committee on foreign affairs in the UK's House of Commons, a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and New York director of IWPR. He has also served as a consultant to the United Nations and to various governments, and as a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Fragile States. He has been a visiting professor at the European University Institute (EUI), SciencesPo, Princeton University, and the University of Konstanz. He is the author and editor of several books, including Europe's New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict (Oxford University Press), Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia (Cambridge University Press),International Governance of War-torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction (Oxford University Press), Exit Strategies and State Building (Oxford University Press), and The Measure of Peace (forthcoming). 

Scott Malcomson has worked as an author, reporter, civil-society executive and government official in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North and South America. He is a senior fellow for international security at the New America Foundation and director of special projects at the Strategic Insight Group. As a journalist and the author of five books, he has focused on the real-world fortunes of civilizational organising ideas such as globalisation, the Muslim ummah, international civil society, race, nationalism and cyberspace. Malcomson was foreign editor of the New York Times Magazine and has contributed to the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Guardian, The World Post and many other publications. He has been an executive at two global NGOs and was a senior official at the United Nations and the US State Department. His fifth book, Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce Are Fragmenting the World Wide Web, was published in 2016.

Simon is a senior investment banking executive with extensive general management, project finance, venture capital and real estate expertise. He has worked in various senior banking and corporate roles, creating and managing businesses across the UK, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. He is a long-standing senior consultant at Value Retail, PLC, the global luxury retail outlet, and also serves as chair of Rivercourt Homes, Ltd, a residential property management firm. He has previously held long-standing positions as regional managing director for real estate finance at Royal Bank of Scotland, global banking and markets division, and assistant director at N.M. Rothschild & Sons, Ltd. 

Sonya is the Chief Financial Officer at the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC). Before joining ISTC in November 2014, she worked at the International Republican Institute (IRI) for 18 years in senior positions. As a part of diverse teams Sonya managed multi-million dollar budgets across international offices in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. She also worked at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) as a Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer.

Stephen Jukes is Professor of Journalism in the Faculty of Media & Communication at Bournemouth University. He worked in Europe, the Middle East and the Americas as a foreign correspondent, regional editor and Global Head of News for Reuters before moving into the academic world. His research focuses on areas of objectivity and emotion in news with an emphasis on conflict journalism and trauma. He is a trustee of the Dart Centre for Journalism & Trauma in Europe and Vice President of the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund, a charity which supports local journalists, freelancers and fixers worldwide.

Vijay is the global energy and climate innovation editor of The Economist as well as the author of three well-received books.

Vaitheeswaran joined The Economist in 1992 as its London-based Latin America correspondent, and opened its first regional bureau in Mexico City in 1994. From 1998 to 2006, he covered politics, economics, business and the technology of energy and the environment. He opened the magazine’s first Shanghai bureau in 2012, and served as its China business editor until 2017 before going on to become the New York-based US business editor. 

Vijay is a life member at America’s Council on Foreign Relations and a Visiting Lecturer at Northwestern University. Previously, he created and taught the first interdisciplinary class on energy and environment offered at NYU Stern School of Business. He has also served as an advisor on sustainability and innovation to the World Economic Forum/Davos.