Focus: Military/Security
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…
More Information
Robert Piper
Robert Piper is Assistant Secretary-General for Development Coordination for the United Nations. He was previously the Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and the UN Coordinator for development and humanitarian activities in the occupied Palestinian territory. Robert has dedicated most of his working life to understanding and addressing the development dimensions of conflict-prevention and peace-building. He started his development career in 1989 with the Australian aid agency, AusAid, administering projects in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. He joined the United Nations in 1990, and has served with the United Nations in various field and Headquarters roles since, including in Thailand, Cambodia, Fiji, Kosovo, and Nepal. Following…
More Information
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…
More Information
Felix Maradiaga
Felix Maradiaga is an academic, political activist, and former presidential candidate. In June 2021 he was arrested and held in solitary confinement in Nicaragua by Ortega’s regime, sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for the alleged crime of “conspiracy to undermine national integrity." In February 2023, Felix was released from captivity and flown to the U.S., along with 221 other political prisoners from Nicaragua, where he was reunited with his family. After serving as the youngest-ever Secretary General of the Ministry of Defense, Felix has dedicated himself to strengthening peace, democracy, and the rule of law in Nicaragua. A recognized international expert in civil society and leadership development, he seeks to…
More Information
Azeem Ibrahim
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College and a Director at the Centre for Global Policy in Washington DC. Over the years, Azeem has advised numerous world leaders on strategy and policy development with his most recent role being the Strategic Policy Advisor to the Chairman of Pakistan’s PTI party, Prime Minister Imran Khan. Azeem is also the author of the seminal books, Rohingya: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide (Hurst: 2016) Radical Origins: Why we are losing the battle against Islamic extremism (Pegasus: 2017). Outside academia, Azeem has been a reservist in the IV Battalion Parachute Regiment (UK’s elite airborne infantry reserve) and…
More Information
Kamal Amakrane
Kamal currently leads the Global Centre for Climate Mobility, advancing various regional initiatives, including the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative, a joint undertaking by the AU, UN and the World Bank to address climate-forced migration & displacement in the continent. He also spearheads the Rising Nations Initiative, a UN Member States-led initiative focused on protecting the statehood & sovereignty of Pacific atoll island countries facing existential threat from rising sea level. Kamal has been a faculty member of Columbia University since 2018, where he co-chairs the University’s Climate Mobility Network and works on advancing efforts to address climate forced migration. In 2018, he directed the Migration Consensus Initiative at the Columbia University Global Policy Initiative. During the intergovernmental negotiations for the Global Compact for Migration (GCM),…
More Information
Onur Burçak Belli
Onur "Burçak" Belli is a Syrian-Turkish journalist. For most of her career, Burçak has focused on conflicts in Turkey, where she has been based for the past five years, working for Die Zeit, a German weekly newspaper, covering conflicts and crises in Turkey and the broader region. With 13 years of experience writing for international media outlets, her reporting is often through a lens of comprehensive rights and freedoms, writing in feature, long-form, or non-fiction storytelling styles. In 2010, Burçak was based in Damascus covering Syria’s reform plans and the Sunni-Alawite divergences amongst the ruling elite. She then moved London, working for the BBC as a broadcast journalist, before returning…
More Information
Garentina "Tina" Kraja
Garentina "Tina" Kraja is an independent researcher and consultant on issues ranging from transitional justice to violent extremism and malign influence. She advised Kosovo’s President Atifete Jahjaga (2011-2016) on foreign policy and security issues and lectured at R.I.T. Kosovo on religion and globalization, international relations, and politics. She started her career as a journalist covering the war in Kosovo, initially for Koha Ditore, Kosovo’s first independent newspaper, and later as a correspondent for The Associated Press for nearly a decade. Tina was one of the first journalists to report on the emergence of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army and extensively documented war crimes during the war. As the war intensified,…
More Information
Will Wright
Will Wright is a graduate of Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, where he was a General Wayne A. Downing Scholar and founder of the Yale Special Operations/Interagency Symposium. He is an active duty Major in the US Army Special Forces. Awarded the Harold W. Rosenthal Fellowship in International Relations, he most recently worked in the Deputy Directorate for Special Operations/Counterterrorism on the US Department of Defense’s Joint Staff. An Honor Graduate of the US military’s Command & General Staff College, he commissioned as a Distinguished Military Graduate from Duke University where he received his BA in English in 2006. Prior to matriculation at Yale, he conducted combat deployments to…
More Information
Alexander Evans
Alexander Evans is a Professor in Practice of Public Policy at the London School of Economics. A career diplomat, he has worked as an advisor to the Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street, Strategy Director in the Cabinet Office, and Director Cyber in the Foreign Office. He has served as British Deputy and Acting High Commissioner to India and (briefly) Pakistan, led the United Nations Security Council expert group on Daesh, Al Qaida and the Taliban, and was a senior advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in the U.S. Department of State. He has also been the Henry Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, a Senior Fellow at Yale, and…
More Information