Aidan Eyakuze
Aidan Eyakuze is an economist, is a founding director of Serengeti Advisers Limited, a Tanzania-based regional advisory firm in economic and public policy, corporate finance and media analysis. He maintains a keen intellectual and professional interest in economic policy, financial markets and emerging trends in information and communications technologies and their impact on society. He is also the Associate Regional Director of the Society for International Development (SID) Eastern Africa office. Aidan is a scenario practitioner who has participated in national scenario-building projects in Kenya (2000 & 2010), Tanzania (2003), South Africa (2004), Nigeria (2007) and East Africa (2005-2008).
As Director of the SID’s Futures Programme since 2006, he leads the publication of the State of East Africa Reports and facilitates futures thinking for private sector, civil society and public organisations. Aidan is an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow and is a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN). He serves on the Governing Board of the Millennium Challenge Account (Tanzania), ICEALion General Insurance Company (Tanzania) and NIC Bank Tanzania Limited. Aidan’s Twitter handle is @aeyakuze.
Alioune Sall
Alioune Sall is the Founder and Executive Director of the African Futures Institute, a Pan-African think-tank established in 2004 and specialized in foresight exercises, research and capacity development. The Institute is headquartered in Pretoria (South Africa) and has provided technical support to more than 20 African countries engaged in long term perspectives studies or operationalisation thereof. The Institute has also consulted for the African Union Commission and its NEPAD agency, as well as several bilateral and multilateral development cooperation agencies. Prior to establishing the African Futures Institute, Alioune Sall has had a distinguished career in the United Nations Development Programme.
The positions he has held in the UNDP include: Regional Coordinator of the African Futures Program (1997-2003); Chief, Office of the UNDP Assistant Administrator for Africa,(1995-1997); Chief, UNDP Liaison Office in South Africa (1993-1995); Senior Adviser in the Bureau for Program Policy and Evaluation (1988-1993); Technical Adviser to CILSS on Human Resources Development (1979-1986). Before joining the UNDP, Alioune Sall has worked with the Dakar-based UN Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) and ENDA as researcher and lecturer from 1975 to 1979. In his personal capacity, Alioune Sall has recently served as special advisor to Her Excellency President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia in her capacity as co-Chair of the UN High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post- 2015 Development Agenda. Alioune Sall is Director of several international NGOs and member of editorial board of scholarly journals and policy-oriented publications, including the Paris-based foresight journal “Futuribles”. Alioune Sall’s research and teaching interests are in foresight studies, development planning and visioning, democratic transitions, governance, the politics of international economic relations, political economy of African countries. He is the author of several publications, including books and contributions to books, journal articles, book reviews, and consultancy reports. Prominent among them are; “Africa 2015: what possible futures for sub-saharan Africa?” and “The future competitiveness of African economies”. Alioune Sall holds advanced degrees in Philosophy, Development studies and a PhD in Sociology.
Anumita Raj
Anumita is a Senior Program Manager responsible for the Asia region. She leads the diverse team of the South Asia Security Unit, among other responsibilities in Asia. She has led the horizon scanning project of vital security, political, diplomatic and related issues pertaining to the South Asian region. Earlier Anumita was the Joint Coordinator of Horizon Scanning Unit (Asia).
As Joint Coordinator of the Horizon Scanning Unit (Asia), she co-led a team analysing emerging trends impacting poor populations in South and South East Asia covering a vast region from Indonesia to India. These insights were collated as monthly newsletters as part of the Searchlight initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation. Anumita has worked extensively on water security in Asia. She was the Project Co-ordinator of the 2013 project which produced the report ‘Rivers of Peace: Restructuring India Bangladesh Relations’. Previously, she was the Project Coordinator for the second phase of the Himalayan Water Security Initiative, focusing on issues pertaining to India, China, Bangladesh and Nepal. She was a principal researcher on SFG’s publication ‘The Himalayan Challenge: Water Security in Emerging Asia’. She was also the principal researcher on SFG’s publication ‘Himalayan Solutions: Co-operation and Security in River Basins’.
She has authored several articles deriving from her research at Strategic Foresight Group, many of which have appeared in various newspapers and magazines internationally. Anumita earned her MA in Diplomatic Studies from the Diplomatic Academy of London, at the University of Westminster. Anumita completed her Bachelors Degree in Mathematics from Stella Maris College, receiving her degree from the University of Madras.
Barbara Torggler
Barbara Torggler has been working as a Principal Evaluation Specialist in the Evaluation Section of UNESCO’s Internal Oversight Service since 2009, where she is in charge of managing and conducting evaluations of UNESCO’s policies and programmes and of related activities. Recent work includes several evaluations of the standard-setting work of UNESCO’s culture sector (culture conventions). Barbara has almost 20 years of work experience on issues related to international cooperation and development, including programme design, management and evaluation. She has had assignments and conducted missions all over the world and spent several years on UN assignments in developing countries.
Prior to joining UNESCO, Barbara worked for UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), a bilateral donor and NGOs. Barbara has a Master’s degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Vienna, and advanced University degrees in Romanistic studies and Economics. Barbara has been lecturing at the University of Vienna, she is a workshop facilitator and coach. She is fluent in English, French, Spanish and German.
C.D. Glin
C.D. Glin joined the Rockefeller Foundation in July 2011. As Associate Director based in the Africa Regional Office in Nairobi, Kenya, Glin supports and leads the development and execution of several initiatives. He serves as the regional champion for the Foundations initiatives in strengthening food security, agribusiness and the building of resilience to the devastating effects of climate change to enable real, sustainable and equitable economic growth. Prior to joining Rockefeller, Glin was a presidential appointee in the Obama Administration where he served as the first Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and Global Partnerships for the U.S. Peace Corps. In that capacity, he led inter-agency collaboration efforts and leveraged approximately $20 million dollars through agreements with public and private sector entities to enhance the developmental impact of almost 9,000 volunteers serving worldwide. Previously, Glin served as Vice President for Business Development at CDC Development Solutions (now PYXERA Global), an industry-leading global non-profit dedicated to private-sector led development and international corporate volunteering and as Director of the MBA Enterprise Corps and MBA Without Boarders programs. Glin worked for the State Department, USAID and the World Bank while living in Ghana and Nigeria and he served as volunteer in the first Peace Corps South Africa group during the Presidency of Nelson Mandela. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Howard University; a Master’s in Business Management from Tulane University and Postgraduate Diploma in Strategy and Innovation from Oxford University. Glin is term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and in 2011, he was designated by the White House as a “Champion of Change” for his commitment and contributions to international service and civic participation.
Claudia Juech
Claudia Juech is associate vice president and managing director for Strategic Research at The Rockefeller Foundation. She joined The Rockefeller Foundation in 2007 and currently leads the work to maximize insight—both internally and externally—from the various channels the Foundation uses to learn about new ideas. To do so, Ms. Juech manages a sub-portfolio of work including programming for the Foundation’s Bellagio Center and leading the Strategic Research team, a strategic function that aims to identify and assess the impact potential of intervention opportunities across all four of the Foundation’s thematic priority areas. She established and oversees the Foundation’s horizon scanning activities to inform foundation-level strategy and areas of programmatic work on an on-going basis, and created a global “Searchlight” network of trend monitoring grantees as input into the idea generation processes at the Foundation.
Prior to joining The Rockefeller Foundation, Ms. Juech was a vice president at DB Research, Deutsche Bank’s think tank for trends in business, society, and the financial markets. Reporting to Deutsche Bank Group’s chief economist, she provided decision-making support on a broad range of economic, political, and sector specific topics, as well as trends in the areas of education, demographics, health, and consumer behavior. Ms. Juech has a degree in Information Science from Cologne University of Applied Sciences and an International MBA from the University of Cologne. She resides in New York City.
Cristiano Caglin
Cristiano Cagnin (PhD) is an advisor at the Center for Strategic Studies and Management Science, Technology and Innovation (CGEE) who has previously worked at the EU Commission DG JRC-IPTS as a scientific officer. He is an industrial engineer who has been involved in research, international collaborative projects and consultancy in innovation, business strategy, environment management and cleaner production, and foresight. He is currently engaged in sustainability as well as RTDI and foresight research and practice. He is actively working on national and international projects related to sustainability across diverse thematic areas, RTDI and regional coordination and joint programming, and in supporting policy making through the early identification of weak signals of emerging issues and implications for policy design and implementation. Current research interests include a better understanding of alternative ways of increasing interactions and learning between different social stakeholders as a way to bridge the gap between RTDI and individuals in society, leading thus to more inclusive governance approaches as well as responsible and sustainable ways of innovating, producing, consuming and living.
Emanuele Cuccillato
Emanuele Cuccillato is Policy Analyst at the Foresight and Behavioural Insights Unit of the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission since May 2014. Emanuele has a background in Forestry and Geographic Information Systems. His research interests include the design of collective intelligence processes, anticipatory systems, policy evaluation and interdisciplinary approaches. Before joining the JRC he worked on international development, climate change, strategic planning and evaluation for multilateral (World Bank, UNDP, FAO, WFP, WMO), bilateral (UK DFID, SDC, Italian Cooperation), and non-governmental (IUCN, IIED) organizations.
Emanuele has long term in-country experience in Asia and Africa. He participated in interdisciplinary initiatives such as the development of the evaluation frameworks of the national climate change strategies of Cambodia and Mozambique, policy research and modelling for climate change adaptation in China, and development of integrated action research and decision support tools for the sustainable management of Himalayan mountain ecosystems. He carried out evaluations of international programmes and projects; in the past two years he was involved in developing new methods for evaluating climate change policies and interventions in developing countries.
Ernst Ekkehard
Ekkehard Ernst is Chief of the Macro-economic Policy Unit at the International Labour Organization, where he is responsible for producing the new World Employment and Social Outlook, the ILO’s annual flagship publication on global and regional labour market projections. His unit also develops macro-economic models to analyse and understand policy options for countries to improve the employment record and decent work conditions. Previously, he was responsible for the Global Employment Trends Report as well as the bi-annual Key Indicators of the Labour Market publication, an internationally comparable collection of more than twenty main indicators pertaining to labour market developments. Before joining the ILO in 2008 he worked at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Central Bank.
He has published in the area of labour market reforms and on the interaction between financial and labour market dynamics, in particular regarding the role of financial frictions for unemployment developments and the impact of financial market reregulation on job creation in G20 countries.
Ekkehard Ernst has studied in Mannheim, Saarbrücken and Paris and holds a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He became an IZA Policy Fellow in July 2011.
Fabiana Scapolo
Fabiana Scapolo holds a PhD on Foresight methodologies and practices from the Manchester University (UK) and she has a degree on Political Sciences from the University of Milan (Italy). She is working at the European Commission Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Brussels in the Unit on Science Advice to Policy, where she is team-leader on Foresight and Horizon scanning activities of the JRC. Her main task is to set up of a JRC corporate intelligence function on Foresight and Horizon scanning. At the moment, she is leading a Foresight study on the future of standards and standardisation as a tool to facilitate innovation and competitiveness. She is also involved in Foresight studies on healthy food and diet; food security and the future of eco-industries. She has been working in the past in the advancement of the application of Foresight as an instrument for policy-making formulation, and she is still looking closely at these issues from her current job.
Faizal Karmali
Faizal Karmali is the Associate Director of Innovation and Networks at the Rockefeller Foundation. He has 15 years of international experience working on social and economic development investments. He spent nearly a decade working with the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) and its affiliates based in South and Central Asia, Europe and East Africa, including time working with the Department of Diplomatic Affairs at the Secretariat of His Highness the Aga Khan. In his time with the AKDN, Faizal was involved in assessing, supporting and implementing a wide diversity of investments that spanned sectors including energy, aviation, media, health and education.
Before joining the Rockefeller Foundation in 2013, Faizal led a growing solar energy company and also co-founded his own software enterprise in the energy sector in Canada. Faizal is always searching for ideas and innovation that make business sense and create a tangible positive impact on the quality of life of individuals and the environment.
Faizal has a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Engineering, a Masters in International Education and an MBA from INSEAD.
Fred Carden
Fred Carden is an experienced development professional who has built an international reputation for his work in evaluation. Fred Carden has lived, worked and managed complex projects in several parts of the world. His experience is global with extensive experience in South and Southeast Asia, and East Africa. In April 2013 he joined the Knowledge Sector Initiative in Indonesia where he supports the program as Lead Technical Advisor. While at International Development Research Centre (1993-2013), he was involved in evaluation and research on the knowledge to policy process and collaborated on the development of program design and assessment tools such as outcome mapping and organization assessment. He carries out research and has published widely, most recently on the use of research in the policy process.
Specialties: program design, evaluation methods, project and program management, team building, development research
Fred Dust
As a Partner at IDEO, Fred Dust works with leaders and change agents to unlock the potential of innovation networks in business, government, and society. During his tenure, Fred has taken Nike executives shopping, helped to guide the realization of a future-focused education center at Stanford University, and collaborated with patients and staff to build innovative service models for the Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente. He’s also collaborated with the American Red Cross to redesign its donation experience and done foundational work with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau establishing citizen-centered strategies and structures to implement them. Other clients include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller foundation, the University of Phoenix, the US Agency for International Development, the US Office of Personnel Management, and the US Social Security Administration. Fred is a frequently requested speaker, advisor, and lecturer. He currently serves on IDEO.org’s Board of Directors, the Board of Governors at Parsons The New School, and the Advisory Board for Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program. He lectures widely on various topics, including design methodology, future experience trends, and social innovation. He holds numerous guest professor positions, and has taught classes at California College of the Arts and at the University of California, Berkeley School of Environmental Design.
Prior to joining IDEO, Fred was a project architect at Fernau & Hartman, where he worked on retail and corporate projects, such as the Smith & Hawken headquarters and retail prototype and Oxygen Media. He also spent eight years working in the art world with major organizations (Hotwire Productions, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Galería de la Raza, and others) and independent artists, supervising the development of interactive art installations and assisting in the production of film video projects. Fred’s writing, published by various journals, appears in several books: Extra Spatial(Chronicle Books, 2003) discusses the design of spaces, and Eyes Open: New Yorkand Eyes Open: London (Chronicle Books, 2008) are city guides that view exceptional experiences through an urban lens.
Fred holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Reed College and a master’s in architecture from the School of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley.
Ivana Milojevic
Professor Ivana Milojević is a researcher, writer and educator with a professional background in the fields of sociology, education, gender, peace and futures studies. Born in the former-Yugoslavia, she is currently dual Australian and Serbian citizen. Dr Milojević splits her time between Sunshine Coast, Australia, where she is Adjunct Professor (University of the Sunshine Coast, Faculty of Arts and Business) and Novi Sad, Serbia where she has been Visiting Professor at the Association of Centres for Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies and Research since 2008. She is also co-director of Metafuture.org, educational think tank that explores alternative and preferred futures.
She is the author of over sixty journal articles and book chapters, as well as the author, co-author and/or co editor of: Causal Layered Analysis 2.0 (2014 forthcoming); Breathing: Violence In, Peace Out (2013); Ko se boji vuka još? [Who Is Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?], a peace education guidebook (2012); Uvod u rodne teorije [Introduction to Gender Theories] (2011); Alternative Educational Futures: Pedagogies for an Emergent World (2008); a special issue of Futures on Feminism/Gender (2008); Neohumanist Educational Futures: Liberating the Pedagogical Intellect (2006); Educational Futures: Dominant and Contesting Visions (2005, reprinted in 2011); and Moving Forward: Teachers and Students Against Racism (2001).
Jacques Plouin
Jacques PLOUIN currently works as a strategic foresight specialist in UNESCO for the Africa Department. Prior to this function, he has worked in the field of foresight in UNESCO on such areas as sustainable development, science policies, cultural development, education and risk management. He has contributed to a number of key foresight publications of UNESCO, including the UNESCO World Report Towards Knowledge Societies, published in 2005, and the reports of the 2011 and 2013 editions of the Leaders’ Forum, the highest segment for policy debate at UNESCO. Mr. Plouin’s fields of academic activity include social theory and the governance of globalization. He has taught in Aix-en-Provence, where he got his Doctorate, and in Sciences Po in Paris. He has also been a visiting scholar in the University of California at Berkeley. His most recent publication is The Virtuous Circle: Solidarity will Save globalization, co-authored in 2013 with Mr. Philippe Douste-Blazy, Under-Secretary-General of the UN for Innovative Finance.
Jennifer Rudkin
Jennifer Rudkin is an Independent Designer and Researcher currently developing a PhD thesis in the Design Department of the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, working on the convergences between Anticipation and Design disciplines, with particular attention to the methods and tools used to identify and manipulate signs of change in the front end of innovation. Background experiences include Research in the UNESCO Foresight section, Product Manager at My Fab an e-commerce product design company, Project Coordinator at the VIA(Paris) and Design Lecturer; at the Politecnico di Milano and at the School of Design of ECNU (Shanghai, China). Graduated from the Design department of the School of Art and Design (Saint-Etienne, France) and attended Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI, USA).
Jessica Bland
Principal Researcher, Futures, Nesta. Jessica leads Technology Futures research at the UK’s innovation foundation, Nesta. Through a combination of research papers, events and media work, her programme supports the responsible development of disruptive technology.
She organises Hot Topics events on emerging technologies. Jessica published a report on horizon scanning and foresight methods in 2013: Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow: a modest defence of futurology. Jessica is a member of the advisory committee for Cambridge University’s Centre for Science and Policy’s horizon scanning work. Her currently interests are in immersive, public futures and codifying the digital signals of an emerging technology community. She also blogs for The Guardian newspaper. Since joining she has held public conversations with Evgeny Morozov, Nate Silver and Stephen Emmott. She has been a guest speaker at the Future Now weekend at the Southbank Centre and at the Cheltenham Literary Festival.
Jessica was previously Senior Policy Adviser at the Royal Society, the UK’s National Academy of Science. She led their recent work on the effects of digital tools on the norms of science, producing the Science as an Open Enterprise report. Sometime ago, she studied Physics and Philosophy, but rarely talks about Feynman or Frege these days.
John H. Matthews
John H. Matthews is the Co-Chair for the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), which is hosted by the World Bank and the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) and supported by the US Army Corps of Engineers, SIWI, and Conservation International. His work integrates climate change adaptation policy and science into practical implementation for sustainable natural resource management, infrastructure operations, and economic development. John has worked on five continents and some twenty-five countries. He has authored or co-authored recent books, papers, and reports on decision-making frameworks for adapting water infrastructure and ecosystems to climate impacts, resilient approaches to environmental flows, integrating ecological and engineering approaches to robust water management, and using new economic tools to support long-term sustainable planning.
John has been asked by numerous NGOs, development banks, government ministries, companies, and aid agencies to provide advice and support on freshwater climate change and development issues. He has an ongoing research program on climate adaptation strategies for resource management in the North American Great Basin, funded by the US Geological Survey, as well as a US NSF grant to merge ecological and engineering approaches to long-term sustainable water management and water infrastructure. He is a Water Fellow at Colorado State University. Previously, John directed the global WWF freshwater climate adaptation program for four years and the Freshwater Climate Change program at Conservation International for four years. He has PhD in ecology from the University of Texas and held a postdoctoral research position in conservation biology with the US Geological Survey. His undergraduate degree is in cultural anthropology, and he worked as a book editor in the publishing industry for 12 years before entering a PhD program. He lives in Corvallis, Oregon, where he enjoys trail running, timber framing, and finding wild mushrooms.
John Sweeney
John A. Sweeney is Deputy Director of the Center for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies at East-West University in Chicago, IL (http://cppfs.eastwest.edu) and a Researcher at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies (http://www.futures.hawaii.edu). He is also a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa (UHM) where he has instructed undergraduate courses in Futures Studies, Political Science, and World Religions. In support of his research, John has co-taught graduate seminars in Global Politics, Governance Design, and Futures Studies and undergraduate courses in Political Design and Futuristics, Global Politics, and World Religions. John received his Master’s Degree in Religion from UHM in 2007 and a Bachelor’s Degree in History of Ideas (magna cum laude) from Kennesaw State University in 2005.
In support of his doctoral research, John has facilitated and designed strategic foresight and alternative futures workshops in conjunction with the the Hawai`i State Office of Planning, the East-West Center in Myanmar, the UNDP’s Global Centre for Public Service Excellence in Tonga, the Centre for Strategic Futures in Singapore, UNESCO, and other local and international organizations. John is a member of the World Futures Studies Federation, the World Future Society, and the Association of Professional Futurists. He has given talks and presentations at Harvard, Columbia University, and numerous other national and international colleges and universities. John’s work has been published in Futures, The Journal of Futures Studies, Ctheory, Continent, and other academic and media outlets. John is a Deputy Editor for East-West Affairs: A Quarterly Journal of North-South Relations in Postnormal Times. He tweets on trends, emerging issues, and all things postnormal at @aloha_futures.
Judith Aidoo
Judith Aidoo is Chief Executive of Caswell Capital Partners Limited (“Caswell”), an Accra based merchant bank. She has been a private investor and entrepreneur, as well as a financial advisor to international institutions and multinational corporations for over 25 years. Her current focus is private investment in financial services; commodities trading; real estate; and education.
Judith began her career as an investment banker in 1987 with Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York, where she specialized in structured finance. In 1991, she started her own firm to both advise and invest in public and private capital markets with a focus on financial services, particularly trade finance, as well as telecommunications; media; and real estate. Her clients have been diverse, including sovereign governments, multinational corporations and large institutional investors. For example, she advised the Government of Ghana, and authored the feasibility study for the establishment of the Ghana Stock Exchange (1989) and later served on its Governing Board (2003-2004); and for the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank (PTA Bank), she created and managed an innovative $500 million financing platform to fund the export of local commodities.
In 2003, she partnered with a leading New York hedge fund to launch and manage nearly $200 million in allocated capital with a focus on investing in licenses such as broadcast media, telecommunications, and financial services. For the next ten years, Judith managed a portfolio of radio stations and a national television broadcast network, becoming only one of less than 150 African American broadcasters in the entire United States. Last year, Judith was selected to serve as the African representative for Hess Energy Trading Corporation, an affiliate of Hess Oil. She also recently established a soft commodities trading and investment platform for the West African sub-region to be based in Cote d’Ivoire.
Ms. Aidoo graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with high honors from Rutgers College in 1984 and from Harvard Law School in 1987. She has been a member of several prestigious institutions, including President Clinton’s Transition Team; the 2001 class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute, which emphasizes values-based leadership in business; and the Sir Sam Jonah School of Business at the African University College of Communications in Accra, Ghana.
Katell Le Goulven
Katell Le Goulven is currently the Chief of Policy Planning at UNICEF where she was previously in charge of Multilateral Affairs. Her preceding assignment was with the United Nations Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability. She enjoys working at the interface between research and decision-making. She has over 15 years of professional experience in development and international cooperation, and has worked with NGOs, research institutes, governments and international organizations. Her work has covered many disciplines from agriculture and micro-credit to climate change, sustainable development and global public goods. She has co-published books and articles on global governance, co-written three reports of international commissions focusing on global public goods; climate change and development; and global sustainability. She holds a PhD in agricultural economics.
Kewulay Kamara
Kewulay Kamara, internationally renowned poet/ storyteller, multi-media artist, development pioneer and lecturer, has been the subject of three feature articles in The New York Times and has appeared on A&E Television, Public Television and other major media outlets. Kewulay has performed at The Cathedral of St John the Divine, The Kitchen, Symphony Space, Gerald Lynch Theater, City Center, The Museum of Natural History and Oxford University, and participated in The Peoples Poetry Gatherings, and the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry and Langston Hughes Festivals. He is the recipient of numerous grants from major foundations including the Ford Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, the National Geographic, and National Endowment for the Arts. His documentary of epic poetry and history is forthcoming. Kewulay received an MA in Economics at the Graduate Faculty New School for Social Research and presented a thesis for an MFA in Performance and Integrated Media Arts at Brooklyn College CUNY. He has lectured for 25 years at the City University of New York. Kewulay is founder and Executive Director of Badenya Inc., a non-profit cultural/educational organization that established Dankawalie Secondary School in Sierra Leone. Mr. Kamara serves on UNESCO’s Steering Committee on Foresight and Strategic Planning. In January 2014, Mr. Kamara conducted a two-day futures workshop on transition to adulthood in Sierra Leone. He spends his time between New York and Sierra Leone where he has led a variety of development and cultural preservation initiatives for more than twenty years.
Leyla Kjazim
Leila is a Project Assitant at UNESCO in the Social and Human Scineces department. She has a master’s degree in Business Engineering where she specialized in Operations Management at the University of Ghent in Belgium. She also obtained an advanced master in Conflict and Development from the same university for which she conducted research in Bangladesh and Istanbul.
Lydia Garrido
Social Anthropologist specialized in Social Change, Sustainable Development and Resilience. Research Professor in FLACSO Uy (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales). She is currently associate director of the Laboratorio de Futuros in FLACSO. As a practitioner of anthropology of anticipation she pays special attention to emergent processes in contemporary societies and how communities perceive and use the future, with the objective of generating knowledge to strengthen decision-making capacities. She is member of the Sectorial Councils of Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, and ICT in Uruguay, (Gabinete Productivo) coordinating between government, academia, workers and employers in the definition of public policies for the sector. She is also member of the Latinamerican Nanotechnology and Society Network/ RELANS and the Development Studies Network/RED. She is the articulator of the Uruguayan Node of The Millennium Project, Global Futures Research, and member of the Planning Committee of Millennium Project. She is also involved in the current UNESCO “Scoping Global/Local Anticipatory Capacities” Project as researcher and consultant.
Mario Bazan
Executive Director of FORO Nacional Internacional, a Peruvian Think-Link-Act Tank working in the fields of democratic governance, sustainable development, science, technology and innovation policies, strategic planning and financing for development.
Mario Bazán has worked as consultant and advisor to the ministries of Environment, Social Inclusion, Economics and Finance, and the National Science, Technology and Innovation Council. Has also advised private and international institutions, including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nation Development Program and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America; the Swiss, Swedish, Spanish and Canadian development cooperation agencies; and private firms Idom Consulting and International Policy Research.
He teaches at the Economic and Environment Management School of the University Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, and at the Masters Program on Policy and Management of Science, Technology and Innovation of Cayetano Heredia University. Mr. Bazán has been Director of the Professional Academic School of Economic and Environmental Management, University Antonio Ruiz de Montoya; member of the editorial committee of the newsletter Agenda: Suramérica and the economics blog Ophelimos; and was as co-producer the TV mini-series Abriendo Caminos: Hacia un Perú mejor.
Maya Van Leemput
Maya Van Leemput attained a Ph.D. from the University of Westminster, for her research on “Visions of the Future on Television.” in 02001. Since then she has nurtured a collection of images of the future. As a professional futurist she combines research and consultancy with a creative multi-media practice. Her activities gravitate towards the themes of media, culture, arts, (inter-cultural) communication, development, science and technology in society and urban environments. Her work is based in critical theory on alternative futures with experimental, creative and participatory approaches. Since 1999 she partners with visual artist Bram Goots on Agence Future (AF), a long-term independent project for exploring images of the future through conversation and intercultural experiment that started with a field journey in 25 countries on five continents. In 2005 Maya set up research at the Free University of Brussels (VUB) for the Prospective Research programme of the Brussels Capital Region with an analysis of the futures orientation of non-profit, private and institutional actors in Brussels. This led on to a broad range of commissioned work on different subjects: for the King Baudouin Foundation, for the Flemish parliament’s Society and Technology Institute and European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA), for the European Commission (DG CONNECT) and the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST). She counts many cultural and artistic organisations among her clients, a.o. the Museum of Contemporary Art of Antwerp (MhkA), Prospekta, CultuurNet, le Reseaux des Arts de Bruxelles. Meanwhile video-documents and exhibitions produced with AF treated historical images of the future, professional futures orientations in Belgium, media futures and images of the futures in disadvantaged communities. In 2011 Agence Future VZW was established as a non-profit association with a dozen active members. Currently Maya is completing the three-year project Maono looking at North-South relations and development futures in an intercultural exchange.
Michael Lesnick
Michael Lesnick is a founder and Senior Partner of Meridian Institute. He has more than 25 years of experience designing and facilitating collaborative processes and strategy assessment and planning activities. Dr. Lesnick has worked domestically and internationally across a range of issues, including: environmental quality, national and homeland security, international development, science and technology policy, agriculture, disaster resilience, natural resource management, energy, and climate change. His work with decision makers and stakeholders from government, corporations, civil society, international organizations, and scientific bodies has focused on bringing practical solutions to some of society’s most controversial and complex problems at the site-specific, national policy, and international policy levels, typically involving negotiations, dialogues, advisory committees, or problem-solving processes.
Dr. Lesnick also has extensive experience working with senior executives from the public and private sectors to develop strategic planning processes that anticipate emerging external issues and dynamics critical to the future success of an organization and to productively engage internal and external stakeholders in the strategic planning process.
Dr. Lesnick has authored a variety of publications on conflict management and collaborative problem solving. He has been a visiting Senior Fellow at the Vanderbilt University Institute for Public Policy Studies and a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School. He is currently serving on a National Academy of Science National Research Council committee on Private Public Collaboration to Enhance Community Disaster Resilience. He completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in Natural Resource Policy and Management and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Environmental Dispute Resolution at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources.
Mine Pabari
Mine is a Programme Manager in the field of sustainable development and natural resource management, with a specific focus on the eastern and southern Africa countries. As the Deputy Regional Director of IUCN’s eastern and southern Africa Programme, Mine has a leadership role in the region, working closely with the Regional Director in change management, including but not limited to, the coordination of strategic reviews and the implementation of recommendations, while having particular responsibility for leading a cohesive and integrated Programme of work.
Natalie Phaholyothin
As Associate Director at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Asia Office, Natalie Phaholyothin manages the Transforming Health Systems (THS) Initiative in Asia which includes two focus countries, Bangladesh and Vietnam. THS aims to support countries towards achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). She facilitated and guided the institutionalization process of a regional disease surveillance network – the Mekong Basin Disease Surveillance Network (MBDS) - into a legal entity, which is now the MBDS Foundation. She continues to provide guidance and support to the newly created organization, working closely with its Executive Board that consists of representatives of six Mekong-basin countries. She also provides key inputs to the Asia Office’s grant-making. In addition, Natalie collaborates closely with the Research team in overseeing the trend-monitoring work in Asia and in promoting the use of Scenario Planning and Foresight.
Prior to joining The Rockefeller Foundation, Natalie was Program Officer at Education Development Center (EDC) where she oversaw Asia Pacific CSR programs for Hewlett-Packard and Deutsche Bank. She has worked as a consultant in Lao PDR and Honduras at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Natalie graduated from Brown University and majored in Economics and International Relations. She has a MA in International Economics from the State University of New York (SUNY-Albany), and a MPhil from L’Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris (SciencesPo) in Political Economy.
Peter De Smedt
Peter has a research background in Ecological System Analyses (MSc. 1996, PhD candidate 1996-1999, KU Leuven BE). His professional challenge is to connect science, technology and society. Peter has more than 15 years of scientific experience in designing, managing and evaluating European and regional projects in Integrated Assessment, Foresight, Strategic Road Mapping and Horizon Scanning.
By working together with experts and stakeholders Peter drives forming an interdisciplinary understanding on non-sustainable trends to support policy-makers by delivering futures scenarios, visions and integrated solutions. He is also a regular guest lector in Foresight and Policy Innovation (UGent, European Commission). From 2005 to 2007, he was vice-chair of a European Science Foundation network on advancing Foresight Methodologies (COST Action A22) connecting more than 100 researchers from 22 countries. Currently, Peter works at the Joint Research Centre (EC, JRC) as a Foresight Analyst.
Rachel Bergenfield
Rachel Bergenfield is an Associate with the Strategic Research Department at The Rockefeller Foundation where she and her team work to identify and assess innovative, new opportunities to make transformative impacts on pressing global challenges. She served as the manager of the Knowledge Lab grant. Rachel joined the Foundation from the boutique, West Africa-focused investment advisory firm Serengeti Capital, where she was a Vice President. She has worked in strategy, advisory, and evaluation roles throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, in addition to Central Asia, India, and the US, with Innovations for Poverty Action, USAID, National Democratic Institute (NDI), ACTED, and her award-winning social enterprise start-up Collaborative Transitions Africa. Ms. Bergenfield holds a MA in International Relations from Yale University, where she was a Merit Scholar and served as Research Assistant to former World Bank President Mr. James Wolfensohn, and a BA with honors from Tufts University.
Richard Sandford
Richard Sandford is an education researcher with a focus on technology and the future. He works with schools, technologists, policy-makers and students to explore new ways of teaching and learning through design research, events and games. Based in Singapore, he has designed and facilitated foresight workshops on the future of work, education and innovation across Asia, the US and Europe, for government agencies, NGOs, and private companies.
As Research Fellow at the Institute for Adult Learning, Singapore, he developed strategic foresight capacity within the organisation through a futures programme of horizon scanning and scenario development. While Senior Researcher at Futurelab, a UK non-profit exploring innovation in education, he led the research and scenario development process for the ‘Beyond Current Horizons’ programme (http://www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/), a foresight initiative funded by the UK government to investigate possible educational futures and their implications for current policy and practice. Richard was part of the committee convening the 2010/2011 ESRC-funded seminar series ‘Educational Futures’ in the UK (http://edfuturesresearch.org/), which explored the ways in which a better understanding of the future can help education prepare for uncertainty and change.
Richard is a PhD candidate in the University of Bristol’s Graduate School of Education, where he is researching the relationships between discourses of the future in schools and in education policy. His published research addresses the use of games to support learning and the relationship between education and the future. He is a member of the World Futures Studies Federation and the Association of Professional Futurists.
Riel Miller
Riel Miller works at UNESCO in Paris. His primary expertise is in designing processes that use the imaginary future to understand the present. For three decades his work has concentrated on how to assess and direct the potential for socio-economic transformation in the private and public sectors. He has championed the development of the Discipline of Anticipation as a way to advance the capacity to use the future. Riel is widely published on topics ranging from the future of the financial sector and the internet to the future of schooling and social equity. He teaches around the world and for six years was a faculty member of the Masters in Public Affairs, Institut de Sciences Politique (Sciences-Po), Paris, France. Riel is a former board member of both the Association of Professional Futurists and the World Futures Studies Federation. He serves on numerous editorial boards and gives keynote speeches around the world.
Roumiana Gotseva
Roumiana Gotseva is Managing Director of the Center for Strategic Foresight, a think-tank and consulting group specializing in long-term thinking, futures research, horizon scanning, scenario planning, strategy and organizational consulting for corporate and public sector clients. Formerly with Foresight Alliance as founding partner, and Social Technologies, she has shifted her focus from ‘futures-as-destinations’ to futures as ongoing conversations in the ‘here & now’. Gotseva has broad global business experience working as consulting futurist, foresight practitioner, strategy and organizational consultant, project manager, workshop leader, group facilitator, trainer and CTI-certified coach for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies worldwide. She designs and leads strategic foresight projects, tailoring the engagement to the client’s unique organizational reality and culture to enhance innovation and strategic decision-making. Gotseva is member of the Association of Professional Futurists (former Board member); member of the World Futures Studies Federation; member of the World Future Society; and peer reviewer for the professional journal Futures. A Ron Brown Fellow, Gotseva holds an MBA from University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, a BA/MA in English Philology from Sofia University, and has completed the post-graduate program in Studies of the Future at the University of Houston. She is currently pursuing her professional doctorate in Organizational Change at Ashridge Business School.
Sara Farley
Sara Farley is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI). An internationally recognized science, technology and innovation strategist, Sara’s strategy work and analysis have been commissioned and published by preeminent innovation and development organizations worldwide, including the World Bank, the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development, the African Development Bank, the G8, and many others. Sought out for her skill in systems thinking and doing, facilitation, creative problem solving, and design, she has served national governments (Brazil, Canada, Slovenia, Uganda, Rwanda, and the UK) and international development and science-related affinity organizations, such as The Rockefeller Foundation and US Agency for International Development (USAID), to lead thinking, develop networks, and devise policies to strengthen developing countries’ science and technology capacity. In her present position, she has lead GKI from concept to scale, spearheading the organization’s emergence into one of “the top 100 global social innovators for the next century” (Rockefeller Foundation 2013) within four years of founding the organization. Prior to starting GKI, she served for a decade at the World Bank as a Science, Technology, and Innovation strategist. There, Sara successfully designed and managed innovation-related investments across Africa, Latin America, and Southeastern Europe. Beyond her work at the World Bank, she held an senior advisor position to the African Development Bank where she helped craft the institution’s Higher Education, Science, Technology, and Technical/Vocational Training Strategy. Her strategy-shaping work brought her to the United Nations as well where in 2007 and 2008, she worked with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to establish its first-ever policy position on innovation. Prior to her development work, Farley graduated with honors in Science, Technology, and Society from Stanford University’s School of Engineering where she also earned a Master’s degree in International Policy Studies. Following her time at Stanford and a stint working for a wireless start-up in Silicon Valley, she was a Rotary International Ambassadorial Fellow at the Universidad de Buenos Aires where she conducted post-graduate study in Technology Policy and Management.
Sohail Inayatullah
Professor Sohail Inayatullah is a political scientist at the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies, Tamkang University, Taiwan and adjunct professor at the Faculty of Arts and Business, the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is also an associate with Mt Eliza Executive Education, Melbourne Business School, where he co-teaches a bi-annual course titled, "Futures thinking and strategy development.” From 2010-2014, he was adjunct professor at the Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, Macquarie University, Sydney. In March 2011, he received an honorary doctorate from the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang.
In the past few years, he has presented to the Office of the Prime Minister, Public Service Division, Singapore; The Office of the Prime Minister, Public Service Division, Malaysia; The Office of the President, Science, Technology and Policy Division, South Korea; Oxfam, Bangkok; the Asia-Pacific International Baccalaureate Conference, Kuala Lumpur; the International Centre for Biosalinity Agriculture, Dubai; Statistics New Zealand; Cisco Australia; Samsung Press Foundation, Honolulu; BRAC Bangladesh; OIC Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Islamabad; the Bangladesh Government, Ministry of Health (in association with the Rockefeller Foundation); Pearl Fishers International Policing Executive Program (sponsored by the Australia Federal Police, and Europol); the Asia-Pacific Cities Summit; the Australian Government Department of Agriculture (workshops in Vietnam, Indonesia and Canberra) and Health Canada, Ottawa.
Dr. Inayatullah has authored/edited thirty books (with titles such as Questioning the Future; the University in Transformation; Youth Futures; Macrohistory and Macrohistorians; Alternative Educational Futures; Causal Layered Analysis), journal special issues and cdroms and over 350 journal articles and book chapters as well as contributed to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Peace, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Macmillan Encyclopedia of the Future and was a theme editor for the Unesco Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Forthcoming books include CLA 2.0 and What works: case studies of transformative foresight.
Susannah Fisher
Susannah Fisher is a Senior Researcher in the Climate Change Group at the International Institute for Environment and Development, a UK-based research and policy institute, where she works on action research projects to support national and sub-national governments to adapt to climate change in different contexts. Her areas of focus are the monitoring and evaluation of climate change adaptation including measuring vulnerability and resilience, and national and urban planning for climate change. At IIED, Susannah works specifically on the monitoring and evaluation of climate change adaptation and leads the initiative Tracking Adaptation Measuring Development (TAMD). This initiative seeks to build the evidence base on monitoring and evaluating adaptation through empirical work in six countries (Kenya, Mozambique, Pakistan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Cambodia) including developing vulnerability assessments and institutional indicators. She has been leading the testing of the Tracking Adaptation Measuring Development (TAMD) framework in Nepal, as well as conducting other research on topics around the M&E of adaptation. She also works on the political economy of climate resilient planning in the least developed countries, particularly on how synergies between adaptation and the low carbon development agenda might be best supported.
Previously, she worked with the adaptation and development research stream at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics (LSE) on water governance under future climate change in South Asia and Africa, the use of insurance for adaptation and the National Adaptation Programme for England. She has also worked as a policy advisor in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and in public sector consultancy. She holds a PhD from the Geography Department at the University of Cambridge on the politics and governance of climate change in cities and has published peer-reviewed articles and research papers on a range of topics around climate justice, planning and policy.
Tanja Hichert
Tanja Hichert is a South African futurist with specialised skills in scenario planning, facilitating strategic conversations and horizon scanning. She has business background, having spent 15 years mostly in the field of strategic planning, working for multi-national corporations. Her consultancy now supplies strategy futures services to South African and international clients in a wide range of industries. Her public sector work, in association with the SA Institute for International Affairs, (Africa’s top-rated think tank) includes projects on, amongst others, sub-Saharan trade agreement futures and the future of agriculture in Africa. Tanja also conducts workshops for government institutions. In addition to managing Hichert & Associates, Tanja is a senior research associate at the University of Stellenbosch’s Institute for Futures Research (IFR). Tanja lectures to M.Phil (Future Studies) students, MBA students, and conducts scanning and scenario planning training workshops for public and private sector members of the institute. She also serves as a director of the South African node of the Millennium Project and was instrumental in founding the Foresight for Development platform, which collects the work of, as well as connects, African futures and foresight practitioners. She also serves as a member of the board of the Association of Professional Futurists.
Trudi Lang
The Strategic Foresight Team at the World Economic Forum convenes and supports global stakeholders across sectors to better understand and address complex, long term issues. Projects Trudi has worked on include the future of Mongolia, Russia, health and gender parity. She is currently managing the creation of a new Global Strategic Foresight Community which will bring together 25 of the world’s forward-looking practitioners and thought leaders to explore emergent change. Trudi is also an Associate Fellow at the Said Business School, University of Oxford from where she also holds a PhD. Her dissertation explored the relationship between scenario planning and the building of new social capital to address environmental turbulence. Formerly, Trudi worked in Australia as the manager of the Scenario Planning and Research Unit, Curtin University; as co-director of Strategic Scan (an Australian environmental scanning start-up); and as a social worker and policy officer with the Government of Western Australia.
Vincent Defourny
Vincent Defourny is the Director of the Division of Cooperation with Extrabudgetary Funding sources, the responsible division for mobilizing voluntary contributions for UNESCO. UNESCO staff since 1997, he was first evaluation specialist for projects and programmes, then became the first editorial coordinator of UNESCO Web and the chief editor of The UNESCO Courier. From 2006 to 2011, he was UNESCO representative in Brazil where he managed a team of 150 professionals and a large portfolio of innovative projects developped in partnership with Brazilian authorities and several private companies. Before joining UNESCO, he worked as communication and management consultant.
He holds a PhD in Communication Studies from the University of Louvain (Belgium) where he served as assistant professor and visiting professor. At the very beginning of his career, he worked in Uganda as voluntary teacher in a secondary school. Vincent Defourny is Belgian and fluent in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Young-jin Choi
Young-jin joined 3M’s corporate venture capital team as an investment manager and technology scout back in 2010, with a focus on environmental technologies and advanced materials. Prior to joining 3M, he worked for several years as a strategy consultant at Monitor Group on strategic marketing, regional development and growth strategy projects in a variety of industries and regions. Young-jin holds master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering (RWTH Aachen), International Business Studies (University of Maastricht) and Politics, Philosophy and Economics (LMU Munich). He is a member of the international advisory council of Sustainia, which is part of Monday Morning Global Institute (Scandinavia’s leading independent think tank). In his spare time, Young-jin is passionate about futures studies, social entrepreneurship, impact investing and political philosophy.