Speakers IACC 2022
Disha Ravi
Fridays for Future India founder
The former president of Transparency International’s chapter in Argentina, Poder Ciudadano, Delia Matilde Ferreira Rubio has served as chief advisor for several representatives and senators at the Argentine National Congress and has advised the Constitutional Committee of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the National Accounting Office. Currently she works as an independent consultant, and has consulted on anti-corruption related issues with international organisations and NGOs, mainly in Latin America. Delia has a PhD in law from Madrid’s Complutense University and is the author of numerous publications on democratic culture and political institutions, comparative politics, and public and parliamentary ethics. She was elected to TI’s board in 2008 and 2011 and then again as chair in 2017.
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Twitter: @DeliaFerreira
Samantha Power was sworn into office as the 19th Administrator of USAID on May 3, 2021.
In leading the world’s premier international development agency and its global staff of over 10,000 people, Power will focus on helping the United States respond to four interconnected challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic and the development gains it has imperiled; climate change; conflict and humanitarian crises; and democratic backsliding. Power will also ensure that USAID enhances its longstanding leadership in areas including food security, education, women’s empowerment, and global health. Additionally, Power is the first USAID Administrator to be a member of the National Security Council, where she will ensure that development plays a critical role in America’s responses to a range of economic, humanitarian, and geopolitical issues.
Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Power was the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the William D. Zabel Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School. From 2013 to 2017, Power served in the Obama-Biden Administration as the 28th US Permanent Representative to the United Nations. During her time at the UN, Power rallied countries to combat the Ebola epidemic, ratify the Paris climate agreement, and develop new international law to cripple ISIS’s financial networks. She worked to negotiate and implement the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals, helped catalyze bold international commitments to care for refugees, and advocated to secure the release of political prisoners, defend civil society from growing repression, and protect the rights of women and girls.
From 2009 to 2013, Power served on the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. At the NSC, she advised the Obama-Biden Administration on issues such as democracy promotion, UN reform, LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, atrocity prevention, and the fights against human trafficking and global corruption.
An immigrant from Ireland, Power began her career as a war correspondent in Bosnia, and went on to report from places including Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and has been recognized as one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People,” one of Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and by Forbes as one of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” Power is an author and editor of multiple books, and the recipient of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.
Power earned a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Carolina Jiménez Sandoval is the President of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). She brings to WOLA over 20 years of experience in research and advocacy for human rights in the Americas and throughout the world. As a leader in the field who has worked extensively throughout the region and in Washington, she is poised to guide WOLA’s team to a new era of strategic impact for social justice and human rights.
She comes to WOLA from Amnesty International where she was Deputy Research Director for the Americas in Mexico City. In her almost seven years there, she led a team of researchers documenting human rights violations and designing advocacy strategies to guarantee respect for human rights. Her work included a wide variety of themes and countries, from addressing grave crimes under international law in Venezuela and Nicaragua to promoting the rights of migrants and refugees in Central America, Mexico and the United States. Prior to that, she was program officer for the Open Society Foundations’ Latin America Program and International Migration Initiative where she led the creation of CAMMINA (the Central America and Mexico Migration Alliance), a donor collaborative funded by OSF, AVINA and the Ford Foundation to support migrants’ rights organizations in the region.
Earlier in her career, she was a program manager in the Democracy, Governance and Human Rights unit at the Trust for the Americas, a non-profit affiliated with the Organization of American States, where she led a regional initiative to promote the rights of migrants in Central America and the Caribbean. From 2008-2010, she was country director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in Venezuela and on the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
She also brings extensive experience in the international arena. She was project and research assistant at the United Nations University in Japan and worked in Argentina with the Gender and Public Policy Unit of the Latin American Faculty of Social Science, and as a research assistant for the International Gender and Trade Network.
She has a PhD in international studies from Waseda University, Japan, and did a postdoctoral program in human rights and ethics at the Central University of Venezuela. She holds a master’s degree in international law and Asian studies from Chuo University, Japan, and a master’s of philosophy in international relations from the University of Cambridge, England. She graduated from the Universidad Central de Venezuela with a BA in international relations.
She is a frequent contributor to media outlets and publications across Latin America and the US, especially on the human rights situation in Venezuela, refugees and asylum seekers’ rights and other issues. She is a national of Venezuela and Mexico.
Lysa John has worked on issues of governance accountability and social justice since 1998. She most recently worked with Save the Children International as their global Campaigns and Advocacy Strategy Director, and previously served as Head of Outreach for the UN High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda (i.e. the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals). Born in India, Lysa John spent the early part of her career working on grassroots-led advocacy and campaigns linked to urban poverty, governance and housing rights. During this time, she served as the National Coordinator at ‘Wada Na Todo Abhiyan’ (Don’t Break the Promise Campaign). Lysa has authored several reports, including assessments on the role and influence of emerging powers such as BRICS in international development. She has also contributed to publications such as Earthscan, Outlook India and the Guardian. She holds a Master’s degree from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Lysa previously served on CIVICUS’ board of directors and is currently based between Nairobi and Johannesburg.
Huguette Labelle is the former Chair of the Board of Transparency International, member of the Board of the UN Global Compact, member of the Group of External Advisors on the World Bank Governance and Anti-corruption Strategy, member of the Advisory Group to the Asian Development Bank on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, member of the Executive Board of the Africa Capacity Building Foundation, member of the Board of the Global Centre for Pluralism, member of the Advisory Council of the Order of Ontario and Vice Chair of the Senior Advisory Board of the International Anti-Corruption Academy. A former Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, she also serves on additional national and international boards. She provides advisory services to national and international organisations. Labelle served for 19 years as Deputy Minister of different Canadian Government departments.
Huguette Labelle holds a Doctor of Philosophy, Education, degree from the University of Ottawa, and has received honorary degrees from Brock University, the University of Saskatchewan, Carleton University, the University of Ottawa, York University, Mount Saint Vincent University, the University of Windsor, University of Manitoba, Saint Paul University, St Francis Xavier University, Moncton University and l’Université de Montréal. She is a Companion of the Order of Canada. She has received the Vanier Medal of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, the Outstanding Achievement Award of the Public Service of Canada, the McGill University Management Achievement Award and l’Ordre de la Pléiade.
Anastasiia Lapatina is a national reporter at the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked in the same role at the Kyiv Post and has focused on politics and human rights, publishing stories about Crimea, Donbas, and Ukrainians in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Gaza. She says her biggest achievement so far is having a large platform through social media and journalism to speak about Ukraine.
She is currently finishing a BA in Political Science at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Anastasiia has also amassing a large Twitter following of more than 600,000 users and written op-eds for The Guardian and The New York Times, including a piece about the refugee crisis on the Poland-Ukraine.
Peter Maurer was born in Thun, Switzerland, in 1956. He studied history and international law in Bern, where he was awarded a doctorate. In 1987 he entered the Swiss diplomatic service, where he held various positions in Bern and Pretoria before being transferred to New York in 1996 as deputy permanent observer at the Swiss mission to the United Nations. In 2000 he was appointed ambassador and head of the human security division in the political directorate of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs in Bern.
In 2004 Mr Maurer was appointed ambassador and permanent representative of Switzerland to the United Nations in New York. In this position, he worked to integrate Switzerland, which had only recently joined the United Nations, into multilateral networks. In June 2009, the UN General Assembly elected Mr Maurer chairman of the Fifth Committee, in charge of administrative and budgetary affairs. In addition, he was elected chairman of the Burundi configuration of the UN Peacebuilding Commission. In January 2010 Mr Maurer was appointed secretary of State for foreign affairs in Bern and took over the reins of the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs, with its five directorates and some 150 Swiss diplomatic missions around the world. He succeeded Jakob Kellenberger as ICRC president on 1 July 2012.
Under his leadership, the ICRC carries out humanitarian work in over 80 countries. Mr Maurer’s priorities for his presidency include strengthening humanitarian diplomacy, engaging States and other actors for the respect of international humanitarian law, and improving the humanitarian response through innovation and new partnerships.
Since taking over the presidency of the ICRC, Mr Maurer has led the organization through a historic budget increase, from 1.1bn CHF in 2011 to over 1.8bn CHF in 2016.
Often described as “Africa’s Optimist-in-Chief”, African Development Bank Group President Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina (1960) is widely lauded for his visionary leadership and passion for Africa’s transformation.
Formerly the Nigerian Agriculture Minister, Dr Adesina was first elected President of the African Development Bank Group on 28 May 2015. He was unanimously re-elected for a second five-year term on 27 August 2020. Dr Adesina graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics (First Class Honours) from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Nigeria, in 1981. Dr Adesina holds a master’s degree (1985) and a PhD in Agricultural Economics (1988) from Purdue University, United States of America, where he won the Outstanding Ph.D. thesis award for that year. Dr Adesina won the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Fellowship in 1988, which launched him into his international career.
A bold reformer, as Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria from 2011 to 2015 Dr Adesina turned the agriculture sector of Nigeria around within four years. Under his tenure, Nigeria ended 40 years of corruption in the fertilizer sector by developing and implementing an innovative electronic wallet system, which directly provides farmers with subsidized farm inputs at scale using their mobile phones. Within the first four years of its launch, this electronic wallet system reached 15 million farmers, dramatically transforming their lives.
With Dr Adesina at the helm, the African Development Bank Group achieved the highest capital increase since its establishment in 1964 when on 31 October 2019, shareholders from 80 member countries raised the general capital from $93 billion to a historic $208 billion. The African Development Bank Group responded boldly and swiftly to the Covid-19 pandemic. On 3 April 2020, the premier development finance institution launched a landmark $3 billion Covid-19 Social Bond followed by a Crisis Response Facility of $10 billion.
Dr Adesina has been recognized with numerous awards. On 19 October 2017, the President was conferred with the World Food Prize, also known as the “Nobel Prize for Agriculture”. On 29 February 2020, he was named African of the Year 2019 by one million readers of the African Leadership Magazine. On 14 December 2020, the Academy of Public Health, the flagship body of the West African Institute of Public Health, announced Dr Adesina as one of the winners of its 2020 Distinguished Fellowship Award for his successful efforts in helping Africa to curb the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
On 2 February 2022, the President was conferred an Honorary Doctorate by the Federal University of Technology in Nigeria in recognition of his global leadership in agriculture, food security, development finance, and good governance.
Patrick co-founded Global Witness in 1995. Since then Global Witness has become a global leader in its field, described by Aryeh Neier, former President of the Open Society Foundations, thus: “Global Witness brings together the issues of human rights, corruption, the trade in natural resources, the role of banks, the arms trade, conflict. It is the only organisation that does this. Period.”
Patrick has taken part in over fifty field investigations in South East Asia, Africa and Europe and in subsequent advocacy activities. Patrick conceived several of Global Witness’ campaigns and focuses on corruption, conflict resources, forests and land, and environmental defenders. He is a board director of Global Witness and is involved in the organisation’s strategic leadership.
Alongside his two co-founders, Patrick received the 2014 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
Patrick is also a trustee of the OpenCorporates Trust Limited.
David R. Malpass, 13th President of the World Bank Group
David R. Malpass was selected as 13th President of the World Bank Group by its Board of Executive Directors on April 5, 2019. His five-year term began on April 9.
Mr. Malpass previously served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs for the United States. Mr. Malpass represented the United States in international settings, including the G-7 and G-20 Deputy Finance Ministerial, World Bank–IMF Spring and Annual Meetings, and meetings of the Financial Stability Board, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
In 2018, Mr. Malpass advocated for the capital increase for the IBRD and IFC as part of a reform agenda featuring sustainable lending practices, more efficient use of capital, and a focus on raising living standards in poor countries. He was also instrumental in advancing the Debt Transparency Initiative, adopted by the Bank Group and the IMF, to increase public disclosure of debt and thereby reduce the frequency and severity of debt crises.
Before joining the U.S. Treasury, Mr. Malpass was an international economist and founder of a macroeconomics research firm based in New York City. He served as chief economist of Bear Stearns and conducted financial analyses of countries around the world.
Previously, Mr. Malpass served as the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Developing Nations and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Economic Affairs. He focused on an array of foreign policy and development issues, including U.S. involvement in multilateral institutions; the Bank Group’s 1988 capital increase, which supported the creation of the Bank’s environment division; the Enterprise for the America’s Initiative; and Brady bonds to address the Latin American debt crisis. He also served as Senior Analyst for Taxes and Trade at the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and as Staff Director of the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.
Mr. Malpass has served on the boards of the Council of the Americas, Economic Club of New York, National Committee on U.S.–China Relations, Manhattan Institute, and Gary Klinsky Children’s Centers, as well as various for-profit entities. He is the author of numerous articles on economic development.
Mr. Malpass earned his bachelor’s degree from Colorado College and his MBA from the University of Denver. He was a CPA and undertook advanced graduate work in international economics at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and has studied Spanish, Russian, and French.
Mr. Malpass and wife Adele Malpass, a journalist, live in Washington, D.C. They have four children and share a strong family interest in development issues.
Doctor Claudia Escobar Mejía is a Guatemalan lawyer and a former magistrate of the Court of Appeals. Due to threats and intimidation, Escobar relocated to the United States in 2015. She is a distinguished visiting professor Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government in the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TRACCC) at George Mason University. She is also the Executive Director of Be Just, an organization that promotes the rule of law by strengthening the institutions of the justice sector, supports anti-corruption initiatives, and respects for human rights.
Claudia Escobar received the “Democracy Award” in 2017 for her commitment to fighting impunity and corruption. Lately, she was honored by the Harvard Women’s Law Association and Harvard Law in the exhibition “Women inspiring change” organized on the School’s 6th Annual International Women’s Day Celebration.
Claudia Escobar is among a select group of academics in the Centennial Fellows Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. In 2015-16, while a fellow at Harvard University, she became the first Central American to be awarded a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her fellowship responsibilities at both institutions included lecturing, mentoring and research. Likewise, she was selected by the National Endowment for Democracy to join the Reagan-Fascell Fellows Program (2016-2017), where she promoted the importance of judicial independence as a tool to fight corruption.
In Guatemala, Escobar served as Judge of the First Instance. Later she was designated as a magistrate in the Court of Appeals. When running for a second term in, the head of the Guatemalan Congress conditioned her election upon an exchange for a judgment that would favor the political party and the Vice President. For this reason, she resigned her position and denounced interference against judicial independence on the part of the legislative and executive powers. Consequently, the congressman received a thirteen years prison sentence for bribery and influence peddling. Escobar was elected as commissioner for the International Experts Commission against Corruption in Ecuador by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the Government of Ecuador.
She regularly contributes time and efforts to various civil society organizations in the defense of human rights and the promotion of the Rule of Law. She is affiliated to Transparency International (TI), as a member of the International Council; Integrity Initiatives International (Triple III), Board of Directors; Integrity Sanctuary Fellowship, founding member, and Board of Directors. Univeristat Autónoma Barcelona, Ethics Committee of Manuel Ballbé Cátedra.
Claudia Escobar has a bachelor in Political Science from Louisiana State University. She obtained her law degree at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala and her Ph.D. and master’s degree in Pluralistic Law at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain.
Doctor Escobar is an active member of the Anti-Corruption Advocacy Network (ACAN) in Washington DC and the Academia Against Corruption in the Americas (Mexico). She lives in Mc.Lean, Virginia with her husband and four of her six children.
Former Vice-President of the Republic of Panama and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Isabel Saint Malo, has extensive international experience with emphasis in Latin America. Expertise in government, multilateral and public affairs. Highly regarded for institution-building abilities and implementing public policy and advocacy. Following her election in 2014 as Vice-President and her appointment as Foreign Minister, she became the first woman elected to the Vice Presidency as well as the first woman appointed as Foreign Minister in the history of her country.
Ms. Saint Malo started her diplomatic career occupying different posts between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Panama and the United Nations Permanent Mission in New York (1990-1992), where she served as an Alternate Permanent Representative. She also worked for 15 years with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Panama.
From UNDP, she led the team that designed and executed the Agreements Panama 2000 where the framework for the legislation of the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) was created with the support and agreement of the government, political parties, private and labor sectors as well as civil society. The ACP was to administer the waterway once it reverted to Panamanian hands. She participated
as a facilitator of over a dozen dialogue and consensus-building processes around development issues in several countries in Latin America, acquiring strong skills in bringing together diverse views and constructing a common agenda with the participation of different sectors.
For her contributions to building national consensus over two decades, she received the Woman of the Year award (2012), from the Panamanian Business Executives Association (APEDE), and was also distinguished by the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace of the Hebrew University of Israel and the Council of the Americas with the Bravo Awards 2018.
The former Vice-President has been a member of different boards of directors including Banco BBVA and Fundación Democracia y Libertad, was a founding member of the Women Corporate Directors Association of Panama, and is a fellow of the Central American Leadership Initiative(“CALI”) and the Aspen Institute (2008). Founder of the Global Shapers hub of Panama City, an initiative of the World Economic Forum to develop the potential of young leaders, and was appointed as an expert to the Global Agenda Council on Transparency (2014) by the same organization.
In her capacity as Vice-President, she chaired the Social Cabinet and led the National Council for Development, from where the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been promoted, including the presentation at the United Nations of the country´s volunteer SDG report of progress. From these platforms, she also promoted social policies, as “Zero Poverty” around the strategic objective of eradicating poverty and social inequality and endorsed a national consensus on education and health.
Ms. Saint Malo is a champion in sponsoring issues related to transparency, the fight against corruption and gender equality. As the Latin American and Caribbean Champion for the UN Women-ILO-OECD initiative “Equal Pay International Coalition,” and the leader of the IDB-WEF Panama´s Gender Parity Taskforce, she was instrumental in promoting the implementation of policies to ensure gender equality for Panama and internationally.
As Minister of Foreign Affairs, successfully implemented the modernization and institutional strengthening of the Ministry, with the objective to encourage the professionalism of Panamanian diplomacy. Responsible for establishing and signing diplomatic relations with the People´s Republic of China and designing a 12 points bilateral agenda.
She has been a guest speaker at prestigious Universities including London School of Economics, Harvard University, Columbia University, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Georgetown University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Saint Joseph´s University and SAIS at John´s Hopkins among others.
Ms. Saint Malo has been interviewed and cited by the most prestigious television and newspapers globally, including CNN International, BBC International and its UK and Singapur´s editions, NBC, CCTV, AL Jazeera; the most well-known agencies including Reuters, AP, Agence France-Presse, Xinhua, EFE, Yonhap News Agency; as well as newspapers in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East including Jordan Times, China Daily, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Economist, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Forbes, and others.
Upon the end of her mandate as Vice President, she was invited for the Fall semester of 2019 as a Resident Fellow of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, where she led a study group on foreign policy and the global development agenda. She is currently at Harvard as an Advance Leadership Fellow for two semesters in 2022.
Currently, she works as an independent consultant as a Senior Advisor to Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator, and has advised Un Women Regional Office for LAC on Innovative Finance with Gender Lens. Headed the Organization of American States (OAS) Observer Mission to the Presidential Elections of Ecuador 2021 and the Observer Mission to the Presidential Elections in Costa Rica 2022.
Member of GWL Voices for Change and Inclusion; of the Advisory Board of Women Political Leaders, of the Editorial Board of Americas Quarterly, and the Regional Board of Fundación Flor.
Holds a Degree in International Relations from Saint Joseph´s University and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Nova Southeastern University. She is married to Omar Alvarado, they have 3 children and reside in Panama.
Raymond Baker is the Founding President of Global Financial Integrity and the author of Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-Market System, published by John Wiley & Sons and cited by the Financial Times as one of the “best business books of 2005.” He has for many years been an internationally respected authority on corruption, money laundering, growth, and foreign policy issues, particularly as they concern emerging market and developing countries and impact western economic and foreign interests. He has written and spoken extensively, testified often before legislative committees in the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, been quoted worldwide, and has commented frequently on television and radio in the the United States, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia on legislative matters and policy questions, including appearances on ABC News’ Nightline, Al Jazeera, BBC, Bloomberg TV, the CBS Evening News, CNN, NPR, PBS, and Four Corners (ABC1 in Australia), among others.
Mr. Baker founded Global Financial Integrity in 2006, and the GFI team has produced more than 25 economic analyses of resource transfers affecting countries, regions, and the world. GFI has led in securing the terminology and the reality of illicit financial flows onto the global political-economy agenda. He also serves on the Policy Advisory Board of Transparency International-USA and on the Advisory Board of the Ethical Research Institute.
In 1996 he received a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for a project entitled, “Flight Capital, Poverty and Free-Market Economics.” He serves on the World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on the Illicit Economy. He traveled to 23 countries to interview 335 central bankers, commercial bankers, government officials, economists, lawyers, tax collectors, security officers, and sociologists on the relationships between bribery, commercial tax evasion, money laundering, and economic growth. From 1985 to 1996 Mr. Baker provided confidential economic advisory services at the presidential level for developing country governments. Activities focused principally on issues surrounding anti-corruption strategies, international terms of trade, and developing country debt. Research was conducted with 550 business owners and managers in eleven countries, concerning import and export mispricing and movement of tax-evading capital, and money laundering.
From 1976 to 1985 Mr. Baker conducted extensive trading activities throughout Latin America and in ten Asian countries including the People’s Republic of China. An affiliated company in London handled transactions in Europe. From 1961 to 1976 he lived in Nigeria and established and managed an investment company which set up and acquired manufacturing and financing ventures, the subject of two Harvard Business School case studies. Educated at Harvard Business School and Georgia Institute of Technology, Mr. Baker is the author of “The Biggest Loophole in the Free-Market System,” “Illegal Flight Capital; Dangers for Global Stability,” “How Dirty Money Binds the Poor,” and other works published in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
A life-long social justice campaigner from South Africa, Kumi Naidoo was the International Executive Director of Greenpeace International (2009-16) and Secretary General of Amnesty International (2018-20).
Expelled from his Durban school at 15 for his anti-apartheid activism, Kumi’s campaigning led to him being arrested and forced into exile in the UK, where he earned a PhD in political sociology at Oxford University.
After the fall of the apartheid regime, Kumi worked for the new government on adult literacy and voter education. He has subsequently served as the Secretary General of Civicus, a founding chairperson of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, and the Launch Coordinator of Africans Rising for Justice Peace and Dignity.
Mouhamadou Diagne serves as the Vice President of Integrity (INT) at the World Bank Group. In this role, Diagne oversees the independent unit responsible for conducting investigations of fraud and corruption allegations involving projects and activities financed by the World Bank Group, as well as World Bank Group staff and corporate vendors; pursuing and litigating sanctions for credible allegations; introducing best practices in preventing fraud and corruption into World Bank Group operations; and helping to raise compliance standards among private sector entities.
Diagne has more than 25 years of experience managing teams in the fight against fraud and corruption. Prior to this appointment, he served as the Inspector General of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, one of the world’s largest international health financing mechanisms. In this capacity, Diagne led both the Investigations and the Audit functions of the organization and oversaw investigations of alleged fraud, corruption, misappropriation, and other forms of abuse in Global Fund financed programs as well as in corporate operations.
Before joining the Global Fund, he was the Director of Strategy and Operations for Internal Audit at the World Bank Group, where he led the strategic shift from compliance-audits to more strategic risk-based audits. Prior to joining the World Bank Group, Diagne was the Director of Internal Audit at Fannie Mae, one of the largest financial institutions in the US and the largest provider of mortgage financing in North America, and also worked in managerial positions in international public accounting firms, among other positions.
T. Raja Kumar began a two-year term as President of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on 1 July 2022. He succeeded Dr. Marcus Pleyer.
Mr. Raja Kumar has rich leadership and operational experience, having held a wide range of senior leadership roles in the Ministry of Home Affairs in Singapore and the Singapore Police Force for over 35 years. He currently serves as the Senior Advisor (International) in the Ministry of Home Affairs, advising on international policy development, partnerships and engagement. Prior to this, he was Deputy Secretary (International) at the Ministry from January 2015 to July 2021 and was concurrently the Chief Executive of the Home Team Academy between 2014 to 2018. As Deputy Secretary (International), Mr. Raja Kumar forged stronger collaborative relationships with key counterparts in the safety and security arena, including with strategic partners such as INTERPOL and the UN.
Previously, Mr. Raja Kumar also served as Deputy Commissioner of Police (Policy), Director of the Police Intelligence Department, and Senior Deputy Director of the Commercial Affairs Department. He served as the pioneer Chief Executive of the Casino Regulatory Authority and put in place a robust regulatory framework for the new casinos in Singapore, including for anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT), benchmarked against top-tiered jurisdictions.
Mr. Raja Kumar is a passionate advocate for the FATF and firmly believes in FATF’s mission and ability to make a global difference. He has led Singapore’s delegation at the FATF since 2015 and is the co-lead for Singapore’s national Inter-Agency Committee on AML/CFT. He co-led Singapore’s efforts for its Mutual Evaluation in 2015-2016 and has driven Singapore’s high level of involvement at FATF, including serving as a FATF Steering Group member for the last four years.
Mr. Raja Kumar holds a LLB (Hons.) degree from the National University of Singapore, and a Masters of Philosophy (Criminology & Law) from Cambridge University. He attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University in 2006.
Mr. Raja Kumar was awarded Singapore’s prestigious National Public Administration Gold medal in 2021, the Public Administration Silver medal in 2007, and the Public Administration Bronze medal in 1996 for his strong leadership and contributions. He was conferred the National Order of Merit by the Government of France in 2017, carrying the rank of Chevalier (Knight). In recognition of his contributions to the casino regulatory community, he was made a Lifetime Trustee of the International Association of Gaming Regulators in 2011.
Mr. Raja Kumar is a Board Member of the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities and Behavioural Sciences at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.
Ambassador Derek Mitchell became President of the National Democratic Institute in September 2018,bringing decades of distinguished experience in international diplomacy and foreign policy. From 2012 to 2016, Ambassador Mitchell served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (Burma), America’s first ambassador to the country in 22 years.
Previously, Ambassador Mitchell was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Asian and Pacific Security Affairs (APSA) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense––including six months as Acting Assistant Secretary––where he was responsible for overseeing the Defense Department’s security policy in Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia. For his service, he received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Distinguished Public Service in August 2011.
Prior to the Obama Administration, Ambassador Mitchell was Senior Fellow and Director of the Asia Division of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). From 1997 to 2001, he served as Special Assistant for Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he was the principal author of the Department of Defense’s 1998 East Asia Strategy Report.
Ambassador Mitchell first joined NDI as Senior Program Officer for Asia and the former Soviet Union from 1993-7. He began his Washington career as a foreign policy assistant in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) from 1986-88.
Ambassador Mitchell has authored numerous books, articles, policy reports, and opinion pieces on international affairs. He received a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Virginia, and was a visiting scholar at Peking University in 2007.
Musa is currently founder and senior partner at Messrs Mwenye & Mwitwa – Advocates. He also Chairperson of the board of directors of the Zambian Anti Corruption Commission, Chairperson of the Engineering Institute of Zambia Disciplinary Committee and member of the PACT Global Board of directors.
Musa is past Attorney General of the Republic of Zambia by virtue of which he was ex officio member of the Zambian Cabinet, principal legal advisor to the Government and leader of the Zambian bar. Musa is also past Solicitor General having served as Solicitor General of the Republic of Zambia from the 29th of December, 2011 to the 26th of June, 2014 when he was ratified as Attorney General by the Zambian Parliament.
Musa obtained his LL.b degree from the University of Zambia and is a member of the Zambian inner Bar (Silk). He is also admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England & Wales. He is a Commissioner of oaths and has in the past held judicial office as a Commissioner of the Small Claims Court of the Republic of Zambia. Musa is a Notary Public in Zambia and was at one time President of the Law Association of Zambia and has at several times also chaired several committees of the Law Association of Zambia including the Disciplinary committee. He has also been Chairperson of the Zambia Institute of Advanced Legal Education (the only institution mandated to administer Bar Exams in Zambia), Chairperson of the Medical Council of Zambia Disciplinary committee and Chairman of the Anti-Money Laundering Authority of Zambia.
Musa has at various times been involved in international election observation work. In November, 2016 he was one of 16 eminent persons appointed by the Secretary General of the Common wealth to be part of the Commonwealth election observer mission to the Ghanaian elections held in December, 2016 which was lead by His Excellency President Thabo Mbeki former President of the Republic of South Africa. Musa was also one of 18 eminent persons who constituted the Commonwealth election observer mission to the Nigerian elections held in February, 2019. In October 2019 he was appointed acting Chair of the Commonwealth observer mission to the Mozambican elections and In November 2019, Musa chaired the Commonwealth observer mission to the Namibian elections.
Daniel Eriksson is the CEO of Transparency International’s Secretariat in Berlin. Daniel joined the Secretariat in January 2019 as Head of Technology and oversaw Transparency International’s work on the role of emerging technologies in corruption. Prior to his appointment as CEO in April 2021, Daniel served as an Interim Managing Director of Transparency International Secretariat for a year.
Daniel brings with him a wealth of leadership experience in both the private and not-for-profit sectors, developing and implementing strategy for multi-country teams in a variety of sectors. Daniel has been an employee with the Swedish government, the United Nations, the European Commission, civil society organisations and, in recent years, in leadership roles of publicly listed corporations. Notably, he was the country manager for a multinational corporate security services firm in India which provided services, including investigations into suspected corruption.
Having started his career as a military peacekeeper in the conflict in former Yugoslavia, Daniel was inspired to work in the humanitarian sector. Subsequent work in sustainable development in Africa, Asia and the Middle East redirected his focus towards corruption as an obstacle to human development. He is a passionate anti-corruption advocate and a big believer of the role of technology in global efforts to end the injustice of corruption.
Daniel is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and has a BSc in Information Systems Analysis from Linköping University, Sweden, and a PhD from Coventry University, United Kingdom.
Frederik Obermaier is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and bestselling book author living in Munich (Germany). He co-founded paper trail media.
Obermaier’s work focuses largely on tax-havens, corruption, extremism and intelligence services worldwide. He has taken part in numerous award-winning investigations, among others by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, the Forbidden-Stories-project.
In 2019, Obermaier was part of an investigative team which revealed the existence of a video showing the head of Austria’s far-right party FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, promising government contracts to a women claiming to be a Russian millionaire. The reporting led to the resignation of Austria’s vice chancellor.
Together with his colleague Bastian Obermayer (with whom he is not related) Frederik Obermaier initiated and coordinated the “Panama Papers“-revelations after an anonymous source provided 2,6 terabytes of internal data from the dubious Panamanian lawfirm Mossack Fonseca to them. Obermaier co-authored an international bestseller about the project.
“The biggest leak in the history of data journalism” (Edward Snowden)
“With precision and purpose, The Panama Papers is what „Follow the Money” means.” (Bob Woodward)
“… a tale of fearless and careful reporting… How to follow the money – the lesson of the Watergate investigation a generation ago – has been given a reboot for the age of globalisation.” (Financial Times)
Obermaier was part already of the international team of journalists, who revealed the “Offshore-Leaks“, “Luxemburg-Leaks”, “Swiss-Leaks”, the “China Cables” and the “Pegasus-Project“. After the Panama Papers, he and his colleague Bastian Obermayer also received the “Paradise Papers”-documents, which were published in November 2017.
“The Paradise Papers make clear that we need, in the United States and throughout the world, a tax system which is fair, progressive and transparent.” (Bernie Sanders)
“Absolutely breathtaking and so important.” (Joseph Stiglitz, former Worldbank-chief-economist)
“What the Paradise Papers show is how dishonesty is being promoted on a mass scale and how corruption is being institutionalized.” (David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer prize-winning Trump-biographer)
In February 2022, Obermaier co-coordinated the “Suisse Secrets” – a revelation about the dubious clients of Credit Suisse.
Obermaier has received numerous honors for his work, among others the CNN-Award, the Otto-Brenner-Preis, the renowned Wächterpreis, the Journalistenpreis Informatik, the Helmut-Schmidt-Journalistenpreis and together with his colleagues the Scripps Howard Awards, the George Polk Award for Business Reporting, the Barlett&Steele-Award as well as the Investigative Reporters and Editors-Award (IRE-Award).
For the Panama-Papers-revelations he was together with Bastian Obermayer and Vanessa Wormer elected Germany’s “journalist of the year 2016”. As part of the Panama-Papers-team he won the Pulitzer Prize 2017 in the category “Explanatory Reporting”. He was also part of the FinCENfiles-team, which was named Pulitzer Prize-finalist in June 2021.
In 2017, Obermaier was awarded the Murrey Marder-Fellowship in Watchdog Journalism at Nieman-Foundation at Harvard University. In 2019 Obermaier was “journalist in residence” at Hong Kong Baptist University.
In 2020, Obermaier was a member of the jury of Reporter Without Borders‘ Press Freedom Awards.
Frederik Obermaier is co-founder of the Anti-Corruption Data Collective and paper trail media GmbH. He is member of Netzwerk Recherche, of the Forbidden Stories-Network and of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
Jodie Ginsberg is the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists. A journalist by profession, Ginsberg joined CPJ in 2022 from Internews Europe, where she was the chief executive officer. Ginsberg began her career as a graduate trainee with Reuters news agency, working as a commodities reporter before taking up a posting as a foreign correspondent in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she focused on the region’s financial sector. She subsequently worked as Reuters’ chief correspondent in Ireland, based in Dublin, and then bureau chief for the UK and Ireland. As bureau chief, Ginsberg managed coverage of the 2008 financial crisis, UK riots and 2010 general election, as well as overseeing the merger of the Thomson and Reuters UK newsrooms. In 2014, Ginsberg was appointed chief executive of London-based freedom of expression group Index on Censorship, which she led until 2020. An internationally respected campaigner on issues of media freedom and freedom of expression, Ginsberg is a regular speaker on journalist safety and issues involving access to information. From 2020 to 2022, she was chief executive of Internews Europe, a media development non-profit, and has served on the boards of the Global Network Initiative and The Trust for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and as a Council member of IFEX, the international network for freedom of expression organizations. Ginsberg has a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and a postgraduate diploma in newspaper journalism from City, University of London.
Maria Pevchikh is the head of the investigation department at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a Russian non-profit organisation founded by opposition politician Alexei Navalny to investigate and expose the cases of corruption among the Russian elites. During her eleven years of work, she authored over a hundred investigations, most famously of Vladimir Putin’s private palace on the Black Sea which has gained over 120 million views on YouTube. The investigations of the Anti-Corruption Foundation have led to freezing of assets of Russian officials and oligarchs in excess of 1 billion euros, including the seizure of Vladimir Putin’s private yacht in Italy.
Pevchikh is also the editor-in-chief and a presenter of Popular Politics Youtube channel, an independent Russian-language news channel with a monthly audience of over 10 million viewers, and the executive producer of the award-winning CNN/HBO documentary Navalny.
Sanjay Pradhan joined the Open Government Partnership in May 2016 as Chief Executive Officer. Sanjay supports the countries, local governments and thousands of civil society organizations working to make governments more open, participatory and less corrupt. He leads OGP’s policy dialogue with Heads of States, senior ministers and civil society organizations across the partnership, and serves as OGP’s global spokesperson.
Bringing a wealth of open government and innovation experience to the role, he previously served in three senior positions at the World Bank: as the Vice President for Leadership, Learning and Innovation, the Vice President of the World Bank Institute, and the Director for Governance. While at the World Bank, Mr. Pradhan tirelessly promoted open development. He led the World Bank’s Governance and Anticorruption Strategy, launched the Global Partnership for Social Accountability, incubated ICT-mediated citizen feedback to improve governance, initiated Open Contracting with Partners, and rolled out a flagship Collaborative Leadership for Development program to help government and civil society leaders undertake collaborative actions. During his tenure at the World Bank, Sanjay gained extensive experience working in Africa, South Asia, Europe and Central Asia.
Twitter: @SPradhanOGP
Paul Radu (@IDashboard) is a director and co-founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project www.occrp.org a co-creator of the Investigative Dashboard concept id.occrp.org, of Visual investigative Scenarios visualization software vis.occrp.org and a co-founder of RISE Project www.riseproject.ro a platform for investigative reporters and hackers in Romania. He is specialized in exposing organized crime and corruption through large international journalistic cooperations. He has held a number of fellowships, including the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship in 2001, the Milena Jesenska Press Fellowship in 2002, the Rosalyn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism in 2007, the 2008 Knight International Journalism fellowship with the International Center for Journalists as well as a 2009-2010 Stanford Knight Journalism Fellowship. He is the recipient of numerous awards including in 2004, the Knight International Journalism Award and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, in 2007, the Global Shining Light Award, the Tom Renner Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the 2011 the Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting and a 2015 European Press Prize. Paul is an Ashoka Global fellow and a board member with the Global Investigative Journalism Network gijn.org and other organizations. Paul was working the Panama Papers and the Russian, Azerbaijani and the Troika Laundromat.
Paul Cristian Radu
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Mr. Türk has since 2019, served as Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Coordination in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. Prior to this appointment, he was Assistant High Commissioner for Protection in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva (2015-2019), with particular responsibilities for the development of the Global Compact on Refugees.
He served in key UNHCR headquarter positions, including as Director of the Division of International Protection (2009-2015), Director of Organizational Development and Management (2008-2009); and Chief of Section, Protection Policy and Legal Advice (2000-2004). Mr. Türk also occupied various positions with UNHCR around the world, including as Representative in Malaysia, Assistant Chief of Mission in Kosovo and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, respectively; Regional Protection Co-ordinator in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and in Kuwait.
Mr. Türk holds a doctorate in international law from the University of Vienna and a Master of Laws degree from the University of Linz, Austria. He is fluent in English and French and has working knowledge of Spanish.
The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin served as Chief Justice of Canada from 2000 to mid-December 2017. In the summer of 2018, Ms. McLachlin became a Member Arbitrator at Arbitration Place.
Ms. McLachlin works as an arbitrator and mediator in Canada and internationally. She brings to those forms of dispute resolution her broad and deep experience for over 35 years in deciding a wide range of business law and public law disputes, in both common law and civil law; her ability to work in both English and French; and her experience and skill in leading and consensus-building for many years as the head of a diverse nine-member court.
Ms. McLachlin also sits as a Justice of Singapore’s International Commercial Court and the Hong Kong Final Court of Appeal.
Her judicial career began in 1981 in the province of British Columbia, Canada. She was appointed to the Supreme Court of British Columbia (a court of first instance) later that year and was elevated to the British Columbia Court of Appeal in 1985. She was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 1988 and seven months later, she was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Ms. McLachlin is the first and only woman to be Chief Justice of Canada and she is Canada’s longest serving Chief Justice.
The former Chief Justice chaired the Canadian Judicial Council, the Advisory Council of the Order of Canada and the Board of Governors of the National Judicial Institute.
In June 2018 she was appointed to the Order of Canada as a recipient of its highest accolade, Companion of the Order of Canada. She has received over 35 honorary degrees from universities in Canada and abroad, and numerous other honours and awards.
Ms. McLachlin is an Honorary Bencher of The Hon. Society of Gray’s Inn, The Hon. Society of Lincoln’s Inn and The Middle Temple; Vice-President of The Law Society, University College Dublin; and an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, the American College of Construction Lawyers, and the International Academy of Construction Lawyers.
Throughout her judicial career, Ms. McLachlin has been involved with countless areas of the Canadian legal system, both common law and civil law, and both private and public law, in English and French. In addition to working in those languages, she has limited fluency in German.
Ms. McLachlin is the author of numerous legal articles and publications, as well as a mystery novel, Full Disclosure, published in 2018.
The 2,094 Supreme Court of Canada judgments in which she participated – of which she wrote 442 – and her legal writings and speaking, include a wide range of subjects in corporate, construction, financial services, taxation, contract, tort, other areas of business law, as well as arbitration and mediation. Her legal texts include, as lead co-author, the first and second editions (1987 and 1994) of The Canadian Law of Architecture and Engineering. It is generally recognized that the judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada during her tenure have affirmed Canada as a jurisdiction that is very supportive of arbitration.
The former Chief Justice received a B.A. (Honours) in Philosophy in 1965 and both an M.A. in Philosophy and an LL.B in 1968 from the University of Alberta. She was called to the Alberta Bar in 1969 and to the British Columbia Bar in 1971. She practised law in Alberta and British Columbia. Commencing in 1974, she taught for seven years in the Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia as a tenured Associate Professor.
Mark Moody-Stuart was Chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group from 1998 to 2001 and of Anglo American plc from 2002 to 2009. After a doctorate in geology in 1966 at Cambridge, he worked for Shell starting as an exploration geologist, living in Holland, Spain, Oman, Brunei, Australia, Nigeria, Turkey and Malaysia, and UK. A director of Saudi Aramco 2007- , Accenture (2001-2015) and of HSBC (2001-10). Chairman of the Innovative Vector Control Consortium. (2008-) and of the FTSE ESG Advisory Committee. Vice Chairman of the United Nations Global Compact Board and Chairman of the Global Compact Foundation 2006-. Honorary Co-Chairman of the International Tax and Investment Center 2011-, Member of the International Council for Integrated Reporting, Chairman of the of the Global Business Coalition for HIV/AIDS 2002-2011, board member Global Reporting Initiative 2002-7 and the International Institute for Sustainable Development 2002-2011. Author of Responsible Leadership. Lessons from the front line of sustainability and ethics. Married to Judy with four children.
Tom Devine is Government Accountability Project’s Legal Director, and has worked at the organization since 1979. Since that time, Tom has formally or informally assisted over 7,000 whistleblowers in defending themselves against retaliation and in making real differences on behalf of the public – such as shuttering accident-prone nuclear power plants, rebuffing industry ploys to deregulate government meat inspection, blocking the next generation of the bloated and porous “Star Wars” missile defense systems, instituting a national commercial milk testing program for illegal animal drugs; and sparking the withdrawal of dangerous prescription drugs such as Vioxx. He has not lost a case since 2006, and has prevailed in advocacy at numerous U.S. courts of appeals as well as the Supreme Court. He also is an adjunct professor at the DC School of Law, where he supervises a whistleblower rights clinic that has trained over 500 law students in free speech rights.
Tom has been a leader in the campaigns to pass or defend 37 national or international whistleblower laws, including nearly all in the U.S. federal enacted over the last two decades. These include: the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 for federal employees; thirteen breakthrough laws since 2002 creating the right to jury trials for corporate whistleblowers; the new European Union Whistleblower Directive creating free speech rights for all 28 member nations; as well as United Nations, Organization of American States, World Bank, and African Development Bank policies legalizing public freedom of expression for their own whistleblowers; and even national laws in nations such as Serbia. Tom has traveled to 36 countries for whistleblower rights advocacy, including numerous speaking tours for the U.S. State Department that sparked its staff informally naming him the “Ambassador of Whistleblowing.” In that capacity, he has served as a technical expert for drafting or advocacy of 14 more whistleblower laws or polices in nations ranging from Liberia and Tunisia, to Great Britain and Italy.
Tom has authored or co-authored numerous books, including 2011’s The Corporate Whistleblowers Survival Guide: A Handbook for Committing the Truth, which won the 2012 International Business Book of the Year Award at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Other publications include Courage Without Martyrdom: The Whistleblower’s Survival Guide; Caught Between conscience and Career: Expose Abuse Without Exposing Your Identity; chapters in numerous books, law review articles, magazine articles and newspaper op-eds; and is a frequent expert commentator on television and radio talk shows. Tom is the recipient of the “Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award” and the “Defender of the Constitution Award” bestowed by the Fund for Constitutional Government. In 2006 he was inducted into the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame. Since 2012 he has been recognized annually by Washingtonian magazine as one of Washington DC’s top employment lawyers. He serves on the Board of Whistleblowing International Network, the global coalition which he helped to found.
Tom is a Phi Beta Kappa honors graduate of Georgetown University where he was an All American debater and captained the team that set a still-standing national record for tournament championships. He earned his J.D. from the Antioch School of Law, and sits on the board of the Disaster Accountability Project, as well as Whistleblowers International Network WIN) which he helped found.
GAP’s website is www.whistleblower.org
Government Accountability Project’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.
When he retired from the High Court of Australia on 2 February 2009, Michael Kirby was Australia’s longest serving judge. He was first appointed in 1975 as a Deputy President of the Australian Conciliation & Arbitration Commission. Soon after, he became inaugural Chairman of the Australian Law Reform Commission (1975-84). Later, he was appointed a Judge of the Federal Court of Australia, then President of the New South Wales Court of Appeal (1984-96) and, concurrently, President of the Court of Appeal of Solomon Islands (1995-6). His appointment to the High Court of Australia followed in 1996 and he served thirteen years. In later years, he was Acting Chief Justice of Australia twice.
In addition to his judicial duties, Michael Kirby has served on three university governing bodies being elected Chancellor of Macquarie University in Sydney (1984-93). He also served on many national and international bodies. Amongst the latter have been service as a member of the World Health Organisation’s Global Commission on AIDS (1988-92); as President of the International Commission of Jurists, Geneva (1995-8); as UN Special Representative for Human Rights in Cambodia (1993-96); as a member of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee (1995-05); as a member of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Judicial Reference Group (2007- 09) and as a member of the UNAIDS Reference Group on HIV and Human Rights(2004- 2019).
Following his judicial retirement, Michael Kirby was elected President of the Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia from 2009-2010. He served as a Board Member of the Australian Centre for International Commercial Arbitration (2009-14). He has been appointed Honorary Visiting Professor by twelve universities. And he participates regularly in many local and international conferences and meetings. He has been awarded a number of honorary doctorates at home and abroad. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Laws of Australia (2009 – ) and Chair of the Board of the Criminal Law Journal (1979-).
He served 2011-12 as a member of the Eminent Persons Group on the future of the Commonwealth of Nations. He was a Commissioner of the UNDP Global Commission of HIV and the Law 2011-2012. He was appointed to the Advisory Council of Transparency International, based in Berlin in 2012. In 2013- 2014, he was appointed Chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights Violations in North Korea. He a Commissioner of the UNAIDS Lancet Commission on AIDS to the Right to Health (2013-2014); the Global Fund’s Equitable Access Panel (2015-16); the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Access to Essential Medicines (2015-16); and UNAIDS/OHCHR’s panel on overreach of criminal law (2017); and Co-Chair of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (2018 – ).
He was awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal in 1991, the Gruber Justice Prize in 2010 and has been Patron of the Kirby Institute on Blood Borne Diseases in UNSW Sydney, Australia since 2011. In May 2017, he was invested by Japan with the insignia of the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star in Tokyo, with an audience with the Emperor of Japan. In 2018 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales (Est. 1866). He was also named for the 2018 United Nations Honour by the United Nations Association of Australia. In 2019 he was appointed a Distinguished Fellow of Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). He was also named winner of the Global 100 Firm of the Year – Arbitration – Australia and Bali International Arbitration and Mediation Centre named him one of the 2019 BIAMC top 10 arbitrators in Asia/Pacific. In 2019 Macquarie University conferred on him the honorary title of Chancellor Emeritus “as a public recognition of [his] exceptional and distinguished service to the University, and in perpetuity”. In 2020 Trinity College Dublin presented Praeses Elit Award to him.
As Secretary-General of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since 2006, Angel Gurría has firmly established the Organisation as a pillar of the global economic governance architecture including the G7, G20 and APEC, and a reference point in the design and implementation of better policies for better lives. He has broadened OECD’s membership with the accession of Chile, Estonia, Israel, Latvia and Slovenia, and has made the Organisation more inclusive by strengthening its links with key emerging economies. Under his watch, the OECD is leading the effort to reform the international tax system, and to improve governance frameworks in anti-corruption and other fields. He has also heralded a new growth narrative that promotes the well-being of people, including women, gender and youth, and has scaled up the OECD contribution to the global agenda, including the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Born on May 8th, 1950, in Tampico, Mexico, Mr. Gurría came to the OECD following a distinguished career in public service in his country, including positions as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance and Public Credit in the 1990s. For the first time in a generation, he steered Mexico’s economy through a change of Administration without a recurrence of the financial crises that had previously dogged such changes.
Mr. Gurría holds a B.A. degree in Economics from UNAM (Mexico) and a M.A. degree in Economics from Leeds University (United Kingdom). He has received Honorary Degrees from the Universidad de Valle de México, Rey Juan Carlos University, European University of Madrid, and the Universities of Leeds, Haifa and Bratislava.
Twitter: @A_Gurria
Barbara Trionfi is Executive Director at the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), a global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists dedicated to safeguarding and fostering media freedom and promoting quality, independent journalism.
Barbara joined IPI in 2000, as a press freedom adviser for the Asia-Pacific region, where she had previously studied and worked for over four years, carrying out research in the field of human rights and freedom of expression. Later, as press freedom manager, she oversaw IPI’s global press freedom monitoring and coordinated IPI’s global advocacy.
With an academic background in international relations and human rights, Barbara has taught courses at Webster University, Vienna in Media Ethics, Media Literacy and Cultural Diversity and the Media.
Her field of expertise covers different areas related to press freedom and freedom of expression, including self-regulatory media accountability systems, safety of journalists, and international mechanisms to protect press freedom.
Twitter: @barbara_trionfi
LinkedIn
Børge Brende is President of the World Economic Forum. He previously served as the Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Trade and Industry and Minister of the Environment. He also served as Deputy Chairman of the Norwegian Conservative Party and as a member of the Norwegian Parliament for more than ten years. Alongside parliamentary roles, he held the roles of Chairman of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development and Secretary- General of the Norwegian Red Cross.
LinkedIn
Twitter: @borgebrende
Mari Pangestu is the World Bank Managing Director of Development Policy and Partnerships. In this role, which she assumed on March 1, 2020, Ms. Pangestu provides leadership and oversees the research and data group of the World Bank (DEC), the work program of the World Bank’s Global Practice Groups, and the External and Corporate Relations function.
Ms. Pangestu joins the Bank with exceptional policy and management expertise, having served as Indonesia’s Minister of Trade from 2004 to 2011 and as Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy from 2011 to 2014.
She has had vast experience of over 30 years in academia, second track processes, international organizations and government working in areas related to international trade, investment and development in multilateral, regional and national settings.
Most recently, Ms. Pangestu was a Senior Fellow at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, as well as Professor of International Economics at the University of Indonesia, adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University and a Board Member of Indonesia Bureau of Economic Research (IBER), as well as Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta.
Ms. Pangestu is highly regarded as an international expert on a range of global issues. She served as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C and as advisor to the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation of International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in Abu Dhabi. Her record of board and task force service includes the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), co-chair of the expert group for the High-Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, the panel of the WHO health initiative, the Equal Access Initiative, commissioner for the Low Carbon Development Initiative of Indonesia and executive board member of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). She has also served on the board of a number of private sector companies.
Twitter: @Mari_Pangestu
Marina Walker Guevara, United States, is Executive Editor at the Pulitzer Center. Prior to that, she was ICIJ’s director of strategic initiatives and network.
She managed the two largest collaborations of reporters in journalism history: the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, which involved hundreds of journalists using technology to unravel stories of public interest from terabytes of leaked financial data. Walker Guevara has been instrumental in developing the science behind ICIJ’s model of large-scale media collaboration, persuading reporters who used to compete with one another instead to work together, share resources and amplify their reach and impact.
Her work as a journalist started in her native Argentina, where she received the Perfil Freedom of Expression Prize in 2016. Her stories on topics ranging from environmental degradation by multinational companies to the global offshore economy have appeared in leading international media, including The Washington Post, The Miami Herald, Mother Jones, Le Monde and the BBC.
She has won or shared more than 50 national and international awards, including the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and honors from Long Island University’s George Polk Awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors, Overseas Press Club, Bartlett and Steele Awards, Columbia University’s Maria Moors Cabot Award for distinguished Latin American reporting (special citation) and the inaugural Susan Talalay Award for Outstanding Journalism.
In 2018-2019, Walker Guevara was a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford University where she studied the use of artificial intelligence in big data investigations. That same year, she received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service from her alma mater, the Missouri School of Journalism.
Walker Guevara sits on the board of directors of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) and is a co-founder of the Latin American Center for Investigative Reporting (CLIP).
Twitter: @MarinaWalkerG
Medium
Juliana’ Fanjul is a Mexican documentary film-maker’ living in Switzerland. “When we shot the film, the social and political climate in Mexico was very tense — to say the least — and we could feel it on a personal level. It was a known fact that Carmen was under surveillance through a malware called Pegasus, and being close to her automatically meant that we became a target, too. The crew and I couldn’t shake off a feeling of unease. We had never felt so paranoid as we did during those months spent near her. Speaking in codes and taking all kinds of security measures became the norm for us.”
Photojournalist-turned-activist-turned-politician Boniface Mwangi has been described as Kenya’s most popular leader in the fight against government corruption and injustice.
Alexander von Bismarck (@ajbismarck) is Executive Director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, U.S. He has been working on governance, trade and the environment issues around the globe for two decades, including field investigations into illegal logging and associated trade in over twenty countries throughout the world, illustrating how wood illegally logged from the world’s most valuable remaining forests ends up on retail shelves in the United States and other consuming countries. Von Bismarck’s investigations contributed to the passage of the first law to ban trade illegally sourced wood, the amended U.S. Lacey Act, and some of the most high profile prosecutions under the law. Other campaigns at EIA include tracking illegal trade in wildlife and climate “super pollutants” like HFCs. His work is featured in the film “Wood: Undercover Agents of Change” being shown at this conference. The film captures the origin of a major new campaign at EIA to innovate and advocate for tangible transparency mechanisms to fight corruption and aid in effective and just natural resource governance.
Masatsugu Asakawa is the President of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Chairperson of ADB’s Board of Directors. He was elected President by ADB’s Board of Governors and assumed office on 17 January 2020. In August 2021, he was reelected for a 5-year term starting on 24 November 2021.
Under Mr. Asakawa’s leadership, ADB made significant contributions to the region’s COVID-19 pandemic response and recovery planning with a $20 billion comprehensive response package and $9 billion Asia Pacific Vaccine Access Facility. He also played a key role in rolling out a series of new and innovative financing initiatives—including an Energy Transition Mechanism — to spur the region’s low-carbon development and elevated ADB’s 2030 cumulative climate financing ambition to $100 billion as ADB continues to focus on the battle against climate change.
Prior to joining ADB, he served as Special Advisor to Japan’s Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, and has a close-to-four decades’ career at the Ministry of Finance with diverse professional experience that cuts across both domestic and international fronts.
In the immediate aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, Mr. Asakawa, in his capacity as Executive Assistant to Prime Minister Taro Aso, took part in the first G20 Leaders’ Summit Meeting in November 2008. He was instrumental in orchestrating a globally coordinated financial package to abate the financial crisis, including a $100 billion loan from Japan to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Then in 2016, in his capacity as Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs, he took on a leading role for the G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ meeting in Sendai under the Japanese presidency, where a sustainable and inclusive development agenda was extensively discussed.
Most recently, he served as Finance Deputy for the G20 meetings under the Japanese presidency, playing a pivotal role for the success of the G20 Osaka Summit as well as the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ meeting in Fukuoka. Some of his outstanding achievements in Osaka include the endorsement by the G20 Leaders of the “G20 Principles for Quality Infrastructure Investment” and the “G20 Shared Understanding on the Importance of UHC Financing in Developing Countries”. Before these, he had occupied various prominent positions within the Finance Ministry, including director positions in charge of development policy issues, foreign exchange markets, and international tax policy.
Mr. Asakawa’s professional experience extends beyond the realms of the Japanese government. Most notably, he served as Chief Advisor to ADB President Kimimasa Tarumizu between 1989 and 1992, during which time he spearheaded the creation of a new office focused on strategic planning. Also, he had frequent engagement with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in such positions as Chair for Committee on Fiscal Affairs (2011–2016). Furthermore, he was a senior staff at the Fiscal Affairs Department of the IMF (1996–2000). In the meantime, he gave lectures as Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Economic Science, Saitama University (2006–2009), and at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo (2012–2015).
Mr. Asakawa obtained his BA from University of Tokyo (Economics Faculty) in 1981, and MPA from Princeton University, USA, in 1985.
Rueben Lifuka is an architect and an environmental consultant and managing partner with Riverine Zambia Limited. He is the founder and a director of the consultancy firm Dialogue Africa and chair of the National Governing Council of the Africa Peer Review Mechanism process in Zambia. He serves on the boards of several organisations including Build IT International – Zambia and the International Anti-Corruption conference. Between 2011-2013 he served on a technical committee appointed by the President of the Republic of Zambia to draft a new national constitution. He was president of TI Zambia from 2007 to 2012 and was re-elected to this position in 2017. He was elected to the TI International Board of Directors (TI Board) in 2008 and again in 2011. In 2017 he was elected Vice-Chair of the TI Board, reconfirmed in November 2020.
Paul Polman is Co-founder and Chair of IMAGINE, a social venture which mobilises business leaders around tackling climate change and global inequality. Paul is the Honorary Chair of the International Chamber of Commerce, Chair of The B Team and Saïd Business School and Vice-Chair of the UN Global Compact. A leading proponent that business should be a force for good, he has been described by the Financial Times as “a standout CEO of the past decade”. As CEO of Unilever (2009-2019), he demonstrated that a long-term, multi-stakeholder model goes hand-in-hand with excellent financial performance. Paul was a member of the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel which developed the Sustainable Development Goals, and as an active SDG Advocate he continues to work with global organisations and across industry to push the 2030 development agenda.
María Teresa Ronderos is a Colombian journalist, director and co-founder of the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (CLIP), which conducts cross-border collaborative investigations with media partners in this continent. She is also board member of Fundación Gabo, the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Media Development Investment Fund.
Carin Jämtin is the Director-General of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) since May 2017. Ms. Jämtin has a long political career within the Social Democratic Party at both national and local level. In 2003 Ms. Jämtin was appointed Minister of International Development Cooperation. In 2006 she served as Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and was appointed to the World Bank’s Commission on Growth and Development. Furthermore, she has served as the Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party and Vice Chair of the Stockholm City Council.
Mr. Wahba has had many years of distinguished service at the United Nations and UNDP. Most recently, he served as UNDP’s Regional Director for Arab States (2017-2019) and as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Resident Coordinator, Humanitarian Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Haiti (2015-2017). Prior to this, he served as UNDP Deputy Regional Director for Arab States (2013-2015); Director of UNDP Security Office (2009-2013); UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative (2006-2009) in Morocco; Director of United Nations Affairs, UNDP New York (2001-2006); and Deputy Resident Representative in Guyana (1999-2001). Mr. Wahba began his career with the United Nations in 1993, as a Senior Officer in the Office of the Secretary-General. Before joining the UN, Mr. Wahba was an Associate Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo, and a Visiting Lecturer on International Political Economy at the Institute for Diplomatic Studies, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Egypt (1987-1993).
