Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright was an American diplomat and political scientist who was the first woman to serve as the U.S. Secretary of State, a post she held in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001.
Aleksander Kwaśniewski is a Polish politician and journalist. He served as the president of Poland from 1995 to 2005. His tenure as President was marked by modernization of Poland, rapid economic growth, the drafting of a new Polish Constitution (1997), and the accession of Poland to NATO (1999) and the European Union (2004). In 2004, he brokered a pro-democratic agreement during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Jan Karski was a Polish soldier, resistance-fighter, and diplomat during World War II. He is known for having acted as a courier in 1940–1943 to the Polish government-in-exile and to Poland's Western Allies about the situation in German-occupied Poland. He reported about the state of Poland, its many competing resistance factions, and also about Germany's destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and its operation of extermination camps on Polish soil that were murdering Jews, Poles, and others.
Charles Timothy Hagel is an American military veteran and former politician who served as the 24th United States secretary of defense from 2013 to 2015 in the administration of Barack Obama. He previously served as chairman of the president's Intelligence Advisory Board from 2009 to 2013 and as a United States senator representing Nebraska from 1997 to 2009.
The Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) is the school of international relations at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. It grants degrees at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. From its founding in 1962 until 1987, it was an affiliate of Georgetown University, initially named the Center for Strategic and International Studies of Georgetown University. The center conducts policy studies and strategic analyses of political, economic and security issues throughout the world, with a focus on issues concerning international relations, trade, technology, finance, energy and geostrategy.
Enrico Letta is an Italian politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy from April 2013 to February 2014, leading a grand coalition of centre-left and centre-right parties. He was the leader of the Democratic Party (PD) from March 2021 to March 2023.
Richard Nathan Haass is an American diplomat. He was president of the Council on Foreign Relations from July 2003 to June 2023, prior to which he was director of policy planning for the United States Department of State and a close advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration. In October 2022, Haass announced he would be departing from his position at CFR in June 2023. He was succeeded by former U.S. trade representative Michael Froman.
Andrzej Marian Olechowski is a Polish politician. He was one of the co-founders of liberal conservative party Civic Platform in 2001 with Maciej Płażyński and Donald Tusk. He served as Minister of Finance (1992) in the Jan Olszewski's Government and Minister of Foreign Affairs (1993–1995) in the Waldemar Pawlak's Government.
Meghan L. O'Sullivan is a former deputy national security adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan. She is Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School and a board member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Kennedy School. She is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Raytheon, and the North American chair of the Trilateral Commission.
The International Centre for Democratic Transition (ICDT) is a non-profit organization founded in 2005 based in Budapest, Hungary which collects the experiences of recent democratic transitions and shares them with those who are determined to follow that same path.
Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor of Jewish Civilization at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has doctorates in Ancient Near Eastern languages and literature and theoretical sociology. He has published ten books on a wide variety of scholarly subjects with special attention to secularism, secular aesthetics, Jewish-American literature, African-American and Jewish-American relations and biblical literature. Berlinerblau has also written about professors and their discontents in Campus Confidential: How College Works, Or Doesn't, For Professors, Students, and Parents and in numerous articles about the Humanities for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Richard Rahul Verma is an American diplomat, who serves as the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, a position he has held since April 5, 2023. He served as the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs from 2009 to 2011, and as the U.S. ambassador to India from 2014 to 2017. He served as the chief legal officer and head of global public policy at Mastercard, from 2020 to 2023, and as the vice chair of the Asia Group from 2017 to 2020, where he oversaw the firm's South Asia practice. He also practiced law for many years at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington DC, and served as a Senior Counselor and Lead of the India and South Asia practice at Albright Stonebridge Group.
John Hutchinson is a British academic. He is a reader in nationalism at the London School of Economics (LSE), in the Department of Government.
The Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) is a graduate school of Sciences Po (also referred to as the Institut d'études politiques de Paris) based in Paris, France, and is one of the most prestigious graduate schools for international relations. Located in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, the school has an international student population of 70%, with 1200 students coming from over 110 countries.
The Georgetown Leadership Seminar (GLS) is an annual gathering of selected rising leaders from around the world for a week of intensive discussion on major international issues. The program was established in 1982 by Georgetown University in order to promote dialogue among individuals who would shape the futures of their countries. GLS attracts individuals from government, corporations, law firms, financial institutions, the military, international organizations, NGOs, the media, universities, think tanks, and elsewhere who occupy positions of influence and have the potential to move up to greater leadership roles. The selected participants are then exposed to the major global issues and the Washington foreign policy-making process through direct contact with top level policy makers and experts. The program is derived from Harvard’s “international seminar” conducted by Henry Kissinger in the 1950s and 1960s. The GLS is now administered by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. Original committee members included Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger, and Peter F. Krogh.
Global Relations Forum is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think-tank and association founded on May 11, 2009, in Istanbul, Turkey with the committed support of 40 Turkish men and women who have assumed prominent roles in international fora and have received international recognition for their efforts throughout their careers. The founding members include former secretaries of state, university presidents, central bank governors, ECHR justice and retired ambassadors as well as leading business leaders, scholars, artists, and journalists. GRF is a platform designed to engage, inform, and stimulate its members and all interested individuals on matters related to international affairs and global issues. GRF advocates a global order of shared influence and accountability and seeks a constructive role for Turkey in that order.
The International Forum on Energy Security for the Future: New Sources, Responsibility, Sustainability (ESF) is an initiative on energy security focused on popularization of alternative energy sources in Europe and worldwide. Founded by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Aleksander Kwaśniewski's Foundation "Amicus Europae" and Ukraine's leading private oil & gas producer Burisma in 2016. The founders of the Forum are Prince Albert II of Monaco, Nikolay Zlochevskyi and Aleksander Kwaśniewski. The Head of the Organizing Committee of the Forum is Vadym Pozharskyi from Burisma. The Forum offers an exclusive discussion platform to address energy security matters and supports an equal and open dialogue between states, governments, business people, expert community and civil society about the transition to a green economy and renewable energy sources.
Peter Paul Strzok II is a former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent. He was the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Previously, he had been the chief of the division's Counterespionage Section and led the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server.
