Our Leadership

Board

Adeolu Adewumi-Zer

Board Member

Laila Bokhari

Board Member

Rachel Briggs

Board Member

Victoria Holt

Board Member

Edward Levy

Treasurer

Tess McEnery

Board Member

David McGowan

Chair

Bishakha Mukherjee

Board Member

Andrew Silverman

Board Member

Jacqueline Oburu

Board Member

Angela Vigil

Secretary

Howie Wachtel

Board Member

Meredith Wilson

Board Member

Advisory Council


Richard Barrett CMG OBE is Director of The Global Strategy Network, a group of practitioners and policymakers promoting social cohesion and community resilience to violent extremism. Following a 30-year career with the British Government, mainly in the Foreign Office, Richard spent nine years at the United Nations in New York as the Coordinator of the Al Qaida/Taliban Monitoring Team. While there, he helped set up the Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force, a multi-agency coordinating body that led to the creation of the UN Office of Counter Terrorism.

Ambassador Daniel Benjamin is the president of the American Academy in Berlin. Prior to this appointment, he was theNorman E. McCulloch Jr. Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth University. He previously served as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Department of State from 2008–2012. Before that, Benjamin served on National Security Council as a foreign policy speechwriter for the President of the United States and director for transnational threats. He has co-written two best-selling books on counterterrorism: The Age of Sacred Terror (2002) and The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right (2005).

Betty Bigombe is a Ugandan peacebuilder and Senior Advisor to the South Sudan Peace Process. Until recently, she was Senior Director, Fragility, Conflict and Violence at the World Bank. She has played a key role in conflict resolution in Africa. She led the peace and humanitarian efforts in northern Uganda, first in the 1990s as Minister of State for Northern Uganda and again as chief mediator to the conflict in the mid-2000s.

Judge David O. Carter is a U.S. District Court Judge for the Central District of California. Judge Carter is a decorated war veteran who served previously as District Attorney in Orange County and as a judge on the Orange County Superior Court. Judge Carter lectures widely and works frequently with judges internationally, including in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central and South Asia.

Sarah Cliffe is Director of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation. Prior, she was the Special Representative for the World Bank’s World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development, and the Special Adviser and Assistant Secretary-General of Civilian Capacities to the United Nations.

Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is a Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, was formerly Foreign Minister of Bangladesh (Caretaker Government , 2007-2009), and also Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York (2001- 2007), and Geneva (1996-2001). He has authored a number of books and published numerous articles while in his current position in the academia Singapore, which he has held since 2009. He has an MA and PhD in International Relations from the Australian National University, Canberra.

Dr. Carolina Hernandez is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of the Philippines, and Founding President and Vice Chair of the Institute for Strategic and Development Studies (ISDS Philippines). Her research interests include regionalism, regional security and foreign relations, military in politics and governance, democracy and development, and Philippine domestic politics and foreign policy.

Dr. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat is a Fellow at the Wilson Center and Member of the Board of Directors of Women In International Security (WIIS), where she previously served as President from 2013-2021. She has held senior positions at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations, the Carnegie Endowment, and the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR).

Steve Killelea is a philanthropist focused on peace and sustainable development, with an extensive background in international business. A technology industry entrepreneur, Steve built one of Australia’s leading publicly listed IT companies, Integrated Research. He established the Global Peace Index – the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness – and the independent think tank the Institute for Economics and Peace. Around 20 years ago, he founded The Charitable Foundation, now one of the largest private overseas aid organisations based in Australia.

Mary McCord serves as Legal Director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. She was the Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017 and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division from 2014 to 2016. Previously, McCord was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for nearly 20 years at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Marcus Peffers is the founder and CEO of M&C Saatchi World Services, a specialist communications agency that brings the best expertise from the M&C Saatchi global network to the development, defense and diplomatic sectors. Marcus oversees the delivery of social and behavior change campaigns around the world and has advised senior government officials and heads of state in the US, UK, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Dr. Fernando Reinares is Director of the Program on Global Terrorism at the Elcano Royal Institute for International and Strategic Studies and a professor of political science and security studies at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. He is a member of the Council on Global Terrorism in Washington, D.C.; the advisory committee of the Queen Sofía Center for the Study of Violence in Valencia; and the board of the terrorism studies program at the University of St. Andrews. He served as Senior Adviser on Antiterrorist Policy to the Minister of Interior in Spain between 2004 and 2006, when he became Chairman of the European Commission Expert Group on Violent Radicalization.

Ambassador Mike Smith is the former Executive Director of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate. In September 2014, he was appointed as Chair to the United Nations Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry on Eritrea. He served previously as Australia’s ambassador for counter-terrorism and Australian Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva, where he served as Ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament and Chairman of the UN Commission on Human Rights. His distinguished career as an Australian diplomat has included postings as chief of staff for the minister for foreign affairs and numerous overseas assignments, including as ambassador to Egypt and Sudan and ambassador to Algeria and Tunisia.

Ambassador Farooq Sobhan is a Distinguished Fellow and Board Member of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute (BEI), having previously served as President and CEO from BEI’s founding in 2000 until 2019. As President of BEI, Ambassador Sobhan helped develop national strategies to counter terrorism, violent extremism, and radicalization; he also strengthened corporate governance in Bangladesh. He previously served as Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh, Special Envoy of the Prime Minister, and as Ambassador to the United Nations, China, Malaysia, and India. His diplomatic career spans nearly four decades. He is currently a Member of the International Advisory Committee of the Asia Society in the U.S. and the Round Table in the U.K.