Class: 2018
Dongyoun "Dana" Cho
As Director of Starburst Aerospace Accelerator, Korea, Dongyoun "Dana" Cho is driving the Starburst innovation footprint in South Korea and beyond, uniting early-stage technology innovators with private and governmental investment to accelerate innovation in the Aerospace & Defense industry. Before joining Starburst, Dana started her career as a military officer in the Republic of Korea Army where she was a researcher at the Korea Army Research Center for Future and Innovation under the Republic of Korea Army Headquarters. Having collaborated with congress, academia, and industries, Dana has over 16 years of experience in intelligence, military strategy, defense policy, and the A&D industry. Dana graduated from the Korea Military Academy and…
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Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is a United Arab Emirates-based columnist and researcher on social, political and cultural affairs in the Arab Gulf States. Sultan rose in prominence during the Arab Spring when his tweets became a major news source, rivaling news networks at the time, until TIME magazine listed him in the “140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2011.” In 2018 Sultan ranked 19th on the "Arabic Thought Leader Index" by Swiss think tank Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. Sultan was an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow from 2014-2016, and in the spring of 2017 he was a practitioner in residence at the Hagop Kevorkian Center of Near East Studies at New York…
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Fauziya Ali
Fauziya Ali is the Founder and President of Women in International Security (WIIS) Horn of Africa (HoA). She is an expert in governance, gender and human security. She is currently serving as the steering committee member for the inaugural Paris Peace forum under the leadership of President Emanuel Macron of France and an evaluating Judge for the Larsen Lam Iconiq impact awards under MacArthur Foundation. She also chairs a regional network of women peace builders in the Horn of Africa. She is currently working on a e-photo book dubbed “faces of resilience” as part of the 20th commemoration of women peace and security agenda. Prior to establishing WIIS-HoA, Fauziya served as…
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Thynn Thynn Hlaing
Thynn Thynn Hlaing is a development professional who has been working in humanitarian and long-term development programs for more than 15 years. Her primary focus is on women’s rights and women’s empowerment issues. Currently Thynn Thynn serves as Country Manager for Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) for their program in Papua New Guinea. She is leading the team and all the elements of CHAI's operations in Papua New Guinea for successful footprint to support PNG's government on their improvement of health financing and its outcomes for the most vulnerable. She previously worked as the Country Director of Oxfam International in Sierra Leone over 4 years from 2013 to 2018. She…
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Omar Mohammed
Omar Mohammed is a historian from Mosul, Iraq known until recently only as the anonymous blogger ‘Mosul Eye’. Through Mosul Eye, Omar set out to inform the world about life under the Islamic State in his city. His focus has now shifted to advocacy of social initiatives for the people of Mosul including the international effort to re-supply Central Library of the University of Mosul. At the intersection of media, academia and civil society, Omar is motivated to develop new networks of collaboration and innovations in humanitarian action. As a historian and lecturer at the University of Mosul, he focuses his scholarly work on conceptual history and research dealing with…
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Ibrahima Amadou Niang
Ibrahima "Ibou" Amadou Niang is the Team Manager for the Global Initiative for the Restitution of African Heritage at Open Society Foundations. He is also a creative activist, researcher, and published author. For over ten years he has been striving to advance democracy and human rights across Africa. A native of Senegal, he has worked on social justice issues as an NGO activist, a democracy and electoral assistance provider, a grantmaker, a political writer, and translated poet. As a creative activist, Ibou uses his power of words and imagery to move people from awareness to action. These messages are disseminated across the world to a diverse audience through his books…
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ElsaMarie D'Silva
ElsaMarie D’Silva is an Indian gender activist and is the Founder and CEO of Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) and is President of Red Dot Foundation Global. Safecity is a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces. This data gets aggregated as hot spots on a map indicating trends at a local level. Since Safecity started in December 2012, it has become the largest crowd map on the issue in India, Kenya, Cameroon and Nepal. ElsaMarie is listed as one of BBC Hindi’s 100 Women and has won the Vital Voices Global Leadership Award, Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Niti Aayog’s #WomenTransformingIndia award and…
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Josh Rubin
Josh Rubin is Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of State at the U.S. Department of State. A graduate of Yale Law School, he was a member of the Rule of Law Clinic and served as co-president of the National Security Group. Josh also co-taught an undergraduate seminar at Yale on speechwriting and foreign policy, and his writing has appeared in publications including The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Just Security. Before law school, Josh served as a special assistant in the Office of Secretary of State John Kerry. A recipient of the State Department Superior Honor Award, Josh staffed the Secretary of State on travel to over 25 countries, including during…
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Leonid Volkov
Leonid Volkov is a Russian politician of the Russia’s Future Party. Leonid was campaign manager and chief of staff for Alexei Navalny’s 2013 mayoral campaign for Moscow, as well as Alexei Navalny’s attempt to get registered for the 2018 presidential election. Currently, Leonid oversees all regional political operations of the Russia’s Future Party over Russia’s 11 time zones. He is a former deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Duma and the head of the central election committee of the Russian Opposition Coordination Council. Leonid has over 20 years of experience as an IT professional, running and consulting several of Russia’s largest software firms. Together with Fyodor Krasheninnikov he published three editions…
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Michael Kalisa
Michael Kalisa is a Rwandan lawyer and transitional justice expert. Over the last twenty years, Michael has worked to restore the rule of law in post-conflict countries across sub-Saharan Africa. Repatriating immediately after the Tutsi Genocide of 1994, Michael worked as a Special Assistant to the Prosecutor General of Rwanda, contributing to the rebuilding of criminal legal infrastructure and developing mechanisms to protect the rights of all citizens, including genocide victims and perpetrators. At the international level, Michael served five years on the prosecutorial team of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He is currently working as a Legal Specialist with the American Bar Association- Rule of Law…
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