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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…
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Alejandro Pacheco
Alejandro Pacheco is currently the Deputy Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Colombia. Previously, he served as Strategic Adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean, after having led the poverty and inequality area of UNDP Haiti and managed the Government's flagship early recovery and reconstruction program. Alejandro served as Private Sector Specialist for UNDP El Salvador and Belize, as well as Country Adviser for Argentina, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Venezuela for the same organization. He has supported the creation and implementation of public policies in developing countries with impact on thousands of micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises. Previously, Alejandro worked as a consultant for the Spanish…
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Finbarr O’Reilly
Finbarr O’Reilly is an author and photographer who has spent the past 15 years living and working mostly in Africa and the Middle East. He began his journalism career as a writer in Canada and was based in West and Central Africa for Reuters between 2001 and 2012, covering conflict and social issues across the continent. He turned to photography in 2005 and in 2006 was awarded the World Press Photo of the Year. Finbarr has since won numerous top industry awards for his multimedia work and photography, which has been exhibited internationally. In 2019, he was the Nobel Peace Prize for exhibition photographer. He has published long-term projects on…
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Fares Mabrouk
Fares Mabrouk is Country Director and Fund Manager for Yunus Social Business (YSB) in Tunisia. Founded and led by Professor Muhammad Yunus, YSB helps create social businesses around the world by setting up incubator funds and providing services to companies, governments, foundations, and NGOs. Previously, Fares founded a number of for-profit and nonprofit organizations in North Africa focused on mobile banking and oil logistics. He is a co-founder of and advisor to HuffingtonPost Maghreb, a French language edition of the Huffington Post covering Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Fares has degrees from Pierre and Marie Curie University, ENSAE Paris, and Havard's Kennedy School of Government.
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Christopher Lockyear
Christopher Lockyear is Secretary General of MĂ©decins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), where he directs MSF's offices around the globe. Before this he was Director of Operations for Action Against Hunger, the leader of the global movement to end life-threatening hunger. Previously, he was Operations Manager at MĂ©decins Sans Frontières (MSF) where he was responsible for the strategy and implementation of MSF’s humanitarian response and staff in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and South Sudan, managing around 3000 people. Chris started his humanitarian career in 2005 as a Water and Sanitation Engineer in Darfur, Sudan. Since then, he has lead operations across Africa and Asia including in Somalia, Pakistan, South Sudan, Chad,…
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Nikita Lalwani
Nikita Lalwani is a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. She previously served as a law clerk on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Â At Yale Law School, from which she graduated in 2020, she was the Yale Law Journal's Executive Editor for Articles & Essays and helped advocate for a fairer census as a team leader in the Peter Gruber Rule of Law Clinic. She was also the co-president of the Yale Law National Security Group, co-director of the Yale chapter of the International Refugee Assistance Project, and a Kerry Fellow at the Jackson…
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Gernot Laganda
Gernot Laganda is leading the Climate and Disaster Risk Reduction Programs at the United Nations' World Food Program (WFP). He supports WFP Country Offices and the governments they serve to understand the effects of climate change on food security, develop strategic measures to reduce climate risks in country programs, and make innovative climate finance instruments work for vulnerable communities. Gernot joined WFP from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), where he managed the world’s largest climate change adaptation program for smallholder farmers. A geoscientist by training, he spent the past 20 years working at the nexus between disasters and development – holding posts with NGOs supporting disaster relief and…
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Verena Knaus
Verena Knaus is the Global Lead on Migration and Displacement at UNICEF in Switzerland. She previously held a position of senior policy advisor at UNICEF in Brussels. Before this, Verena co-founded the European Stability Initiative (ESI), a policy-oriented think tank active in the Balkans, Turkey, and the Caucasus. There, she spearheaded empirical research and policy campaigns on issues ranging from women’s rights to visa liberalization, political Islam and post-war recovery. She helped develop ESI's unique methodology, combining labor-intensive data collection with real-time, policy-oriented advocacy. From 2008-2009 Verena advised the former prime minister and mayor of the divided city of Mitrovica, and in summer 2010 she joined Kosovo's Ministry for European…
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John Kingman
Sir John Kingman became Chair of Legal & General, a financial services company based in the UK, in 2016. He was previously Second Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury, where he was responsible for policy relating to business, financial services and infrastructure. He is also Chair of UK Research and Innovation, which oversees UK Government science and innovation spending of over ÂŁ7bn a year. At the Treasury John was closely involved in the UK response to the financial crisis, handling the resolution of Northern Rock and leading negotiations with RBS, Lloyds and HBOS on their ÂŁ37bn recapitalisation. He was the first Chief Executive of UK Financial Investments Ltd (UKFI). From 2010-12,…
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Raheela Khan
Raheela Khan is Director of Business Development and Strategy at R2 Business Advisory Consultants, a multidisciplinary consultancy. She facilitates value chains and the strategic implementation of DEI frameworks between Canada, Pakistan, and the Middle East, promoting effective, responsible funding for financial inclusion to bring about profitable social change. Currently based in Vancouver, Raheela has initiated and led community awareness programs on the importance of cultural confidence, integration, diversity and avoidance of self-exclusion. Her current initiatives are borne of her experiences of being a mother of two, which she uses to offer support to new mothers with postpartum depression as well as new immigrants and refugees. Canada's open border policies, offering…
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