President and CEO, Cordillera Applications Group David Kilcullen is a leading expert on guerrilla and unconventional warfare, and counterterrorism, with a 25-year career with the Australian and US governments as an Army officer, intelligence analyst and diplomat. He served in Iraq as counterinsurgency advisor to US General David Petraeus, as senior advisor to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and has served in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and Colombia. He is the author of five prize-winning books on terrorism, insurgency, urbanization and future warfare. Today, he advises world institutions, governments, businesses, NGOs and local communities across the globe, in working on complex humanitarian and security challenges, and is lead researcher for NATO’s ongoing Urbanization Program. Dr. Kilcullen is Professor of International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and CEO of the research firm Cordillera Applications Group.
Nonresident Scholar, Carnegie Middle East Center, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Ahmed Nagi (@a7nagi) is a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where his research centers on Yemen. Mr. Nagi is also research manager at the Institute of Citizenship and Diversity Management at Adyan Foundation, Lebanon, and a country coordinator on Yemen at Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem), Sweden. Nagi holds a Master’s degree in public governance from the University of Granada, Spain. His research focuses on religious and tribal identities, citizenship, state building, civil society, conflict dynamics, and Yemen’s relations with its neighboring countries.
Senior Operations Officer, Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group, The World Bank Spyridon Demetriou joined the World Bank’s Fragility, Conflict and Violence Group in April 2020 as a Senior Operations officer, with a focus supporting its analytic and strategic work. Prior, Mr. Demetriou was a senior advisor to the World Bank on FCV issues, and worked in the FCV Group supporting country teams in the Middle East, West and Central Africa and Ukraine. Mr. Demetriou has also held senior management and advisory positions in the UN, leading peacebuilding, stabilization and post-conflict recovery initiatives and working at the forefront of international efforts to integrate peacebuilding, humanitarian and development interventions in a number of fragile and conflict-affected countries. These included Lebanon, where he headed the UN Coordination Office at the forefront of the Syrian refugee response; Democratic Republic of Congo, where he managed an integrated and multi-sectoral program bringing together UN peacekeeping, humanitarian and development assets to stabilize the conflict affected eastern regions; and Haiti, where he piloted approaches to reduce armed violence through development approaches in the urban slum areas of the capital. Mr. Demetriou has sectoral expertise in economic recovery, security sector reform and transitional governance, and an academic and research background in state-building and transitional governance, with a focus on processes of state formation and conflict in the former Soviet Union. He holds a BA in Economics and History from Brown University, and a Master’s Degree in International Studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
Founder and Executive Director, Women Peace Network Wai Wai Nu (@waiwainu) leads Women Peace Network, a platform to build peace between Myanmar’s different ethnicities, and to empower and advocate for the rights of marginalized women across Myanmar and in Rakhine State in particular. A political prisoner for seven years under the Burmese military government, she was released 2012 under a presidential amnesty. Ms. Nu has since worked to reduce discrimination and hatred among Buddhist and Muslim communities in Myanmar and to improve the human rights situation of the Rohingya people, including through organizing peacebuilding activities and pro-bono legal consultation. Among other recognitions, she has received the Hillary Clinton Award (2018) and been listed among the Financial Times Women of the Year (2017). Ms. Nu holds a Master of Laws degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Lead Evaluation Officer, The Independent Evaluation Group Lauren Kelly (@LAKelly01) oversees the thematic evaluations for the Sustainable Development and Infrastructure Global Practices of the World Bank. With over twenty years of international evaluation experience, Ms. Kelly has led multiple influential evaluations and managed several Board level engagements that have deepened development impact and contributed to evidence based decision and policy making within the World Bank Group. She is currently leading IEG’s evaluations of the World Bank’s Engagement in Situations of Conflict. With a background in conflict management, she has also made significant contributions in the field of natural resources and land use, worked extensively on pastoral and farmer relations in Africa, and helped to shape the One UN Policy with the United Nations Development Group (UNDG).