Commissioner for International Partnerships.
Leader of Democratic Belarus and a human rights activist.
Prime Minister of Senegal (2013-2014) and Member of Club de Madrid.
Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency.
Writer, Journalist, and Vice President of Nicaragua (1985-1990).
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University).
Year after year growing evidence shows that in many countries democracy is wilting away. Too often our democratic systems struggle to rise through divisive populist discourses, new disruptive technologies, polarised political landscapes and governance styles that test the limits of their institutions. Yet democracies have also shown considerable resistance to their complete upheaval, indicating that citizens are not ready to give up on democratic rule.
All of this indicates that we need different and creative approaches to produce the citizen-centred, inclusive, responsive and transparent institutions needed to regain citizens’ trust in the system —we need to rethink democracy. And given the commitments of the new US administration and the unswaying support from the European Union, we now have a unique window of hope to rally the global community around a new push for democratic renewal.
Club de Madrid is in a unique position to mobilize a critical mass of support to spur this necessary change. Building on the political experience, agency and acumen of the former Presidents and Prime Ministers who make the organisations’ Membership —many of whom were instrumental in democratic consolidation processes —we will steer a global conversation that crafts a new vision for democracy. By bringing our Members together with senior experts from government, academia, business and civil society from around the globe, our flagship Annual Policy Dialogue will produce actionable policy recommendations to set the course of democratic renewal and further targeted advocacy in 2022.
It is common for people who live in a democratic society to take democracy for granted. It shouldn’t be the case, as democracy needs constant nurturing. Regrettably, there are many places in the world where leaders, institutions and citizens have been unable to protect democratic systems from decay.
The process of democratic backsliding, which raises our concern over the future of democracy, has been extensively measured and documented by analysts, organisations and political scientists alike, many of whom are partnering with us in this Policy Dialogue. Below you can observe how V-Dem, one of our working group members, measures the evolution of the quality of democracy for the past ten years and how Freedom House, also a working member of this Policy Dialogue, measures freedom between 2013 and 2021.
What can we do about it? Learn more about our strategy to Rethink Democracy by clicking on the accessing the Working Group’s
The three-day High-Level Dialogue is gathering democratic former Heads of State and Government along with representatives of international organizations and experts from government institutions, academia, civil society and the private sector.
Senior Controller, News Output & Commissioning, BBC News
Jamie Angus is BBC’s Senior Controller, News Output & Commissioning. He was appointed in March 2021 and is in charge of the commissioning and delivery of all daily news and current affairs output in English. This also includes responsibilities for the World News Channel and the World Service Radio news teams.
From 2018 to 2021, Jamie was Director, BBC World Service Group. He had previously been Deputy Director, BBC World Service Group, and Editorial Director, Global News Ltd. The BBC World Service Group reaches an audience of 438m per week globally in English and 41 other language services, on radio, TV and digital. The BBC World Service Group also includes BBC Monitoring and BBC Media Action.
From 2013 to 2016, Jamie was Editor of the flagship Today programme on BBC Radio 4. In his BBC career, Jamie has been Editor of the World at One, Editor of Newshour for WS Radio and the Acting Editor of Newsnight for BBC News.
Jamie joined the BBC in 1999 after working in politics at Westminster.
President of Slovenia (2007-2012)
President of Club de Madrid
Danilo Türk is a former President of Slovenia. He served for a 5-year term between 2007 and 2012 and is the current President of Club de Madrid.
Dr. Türk, after obtaining his PhD with a thesis on the principle of non-intervention in international law in 1982, the following year, in 1983, he became Director of the Institute on International Law at the University of Ljubljana. Additionally, he was a member of the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, a UN body of independent experts. In that capacity he served, between 1986 and 1992, as the UN Special Rapporteur on the realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In 1990-1991, Türk took part in the drafting of the Constitution of Slovenia by preparing the draft chapter related to human rights and fundamental freedoms. From 1992 to 2000, he became the first Slovene Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, and represented Slovenia on the UN Security Council in 1998 and 1999. In 2000, he was invited by Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General, to serve as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs (2000-2005). In 2005, he returned to Slovenia as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana. However, in June 2007, he accepted to run in the 2007 presidential election. As an Independent, he won the run-off on November by 68.2 % of the votes, becoming the third president since the country’s independence from Yugoslavia, in 1991.
After leaving office, Dr. Türk chaired, between 2015 and 2016, the Global High Level Panel on Water and Peace, which published the report “A Matter of Survival” (2017). In 2016, he was one of the candidates for the post of the Secretary-General of the UN. Since 2013, he is a Member of the Club de Madrid and, on October 2019, he was elected by the General Assembly as the organization’s President for the period 2020-2022.
Global Representative and Honorary Trustee of Bertelsmann Stiftung
Liz Mohn, following the death of her husband, Reinhard Mohn, represents the fifth generation of the Bertelsmann/Mohn family, owner of the Bertelsmann media group. She is vice-chair of the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Executive Board and its Board of Trustees, and the interim president of the Board of Directors of the Bertelsmann Foundation.
She is also chair of the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft Executive Board and a member of the Supervisory Board at Bertelsmann SE. She serves as president of the German Stroke Foundation, an organization she founded, and chairs the board of the Liz Mohn Foundation for Culture and Music. She also chairs the Board of Trustees of the Association of German Music Schools.
In 1999, she became the first female member of the Club of Rome from Germany. In 2000, she received Germany’s Cross of Merit, First Class, and in 2008 the organization Atlantik-Brücke selected her as the first woman to receive the Vernon A. Walters Award. In 2010 she was also honored with the Global Economy Prize by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. She received an ECHO Klassik award in 2002 and again in 2012. In 2013, she was named an officer of the French Legion of Honor.
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Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain
José Manuel Albares Bueno was named Minister of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation of the Kingdom of Spain on 10 July 2021. Before his appointment as Minister, he served as the Ambassador of Spain to the French Republic and the Principality of Monaco.
He has been Secretary-General for International, European Union, G20 and Global Security Affairs at the Office of the President of the Government. In this capacity, he was the President of the Government’s Sherpa for both the European Union and the G20.
Over the course of his career, Mr. Albares has been Spanish Consul in Colombia, Counsellor for Culture at the Spanish Embassy in Paris, and held a post at the Spanish Permanent Representation to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). During his posting at the OECD he was elected Vice-Chair of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC). At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union and Cooperation, he has held different management positions, both in Foreign Affairs and at the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).
In Spain, he was named a Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, and in Peru, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit for Distinguished Service.
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (2007-2010)
Member of Club de Madrid
Gordon Brown is a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education. He served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010 and is widely credited with preventing a second Great Depression through his stewardship of the 2009 London G20 summit. Mr Brown was one of the first leaders during the global crisis to initiate calls for global financial action, while introducing a range of rescue measures in the UK.
Previously, Gordon Brown served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Chancellor in modern history. His record on global justice includes his negotiation of debt cancellation for the world’s poorest nations and the tripling of the budget for life-saving aid. His time as Chancellor was also marked by major reform of Britain’s monetary and fiscal policy as well as the sustained investment in health, education and overseas aid. His role in government continued to shape his views on the importance of education as a fundamental right of every child in the world and the key to unlocking better health, greater social stability, more rights and opportunities for women and a higher standard of living. Mr Brown recently played a key role leading a group of 275 former world leaders, economists and educationalists calling for international action to prevent the global health crisis creating a “COVID generation” - tens of millions of children with no hope of an education.
Prime Minister Brown is a passionate advocate for global action to ensure education for all. In his role as UN Special Envoy for Global Education, he works closely with key partners to help galvanise support for global education investment and the use of innovative financing to reach the UN’s global goals. He is Chair of the High Level Steering Group for Education Cannot Wait, the fund for education in emergencies; Chair of the Inquiry on Protecting Children in Conflict; and Chair of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity.
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President of Mexico (1994-2000)
Member of Club de Madrid
Ernesto Zedillo is a former President of Mexico. He served for a 6-year term from 1994 to 2000.
Zedillo, seven years after joining the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), began a decade-long career at Mexico’s Central Bank, during which time he served as an economist, deputy manager of economic research, general director of a trust, and deputy director of the bank. Zedillo also taught macroeconomics and international economics at the Colegio de Mexico and the National Polytechnic Institute. In 1988, he was named Secretary of Programming and Budget, and was in charge of executing the austerity measures prescribed by the IMF. He was appointed Secretary of Education in 1992 and, the following year, he became director of Luis Donaldo Colosio’s presidential campaign. Following Colosio’s assassination, Zedillo was chosen to be the PRI’s candidate and was elected President in 1994 for a sole 6-year term. His term was characterized by a series of political and institutional reforms that helped democratize Mexico's political system, even at the expense of the electoral success of his own party.
Zedillo has received decorations from 32 national Governments and has been awarded honorary degrees from both Yale and Harvard universities, among various others. He is the recipient of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom from Fear Award, the Gold Insigne of the Council of the Americas, the Tribuna Americana Award of the Casa de America in Madrid, and the Berkeley Medal from UC-Berkeley. Zedillo also serves as a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and a Distinguished Practitioner of the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Procter and Gamble, Union Pacific, and ALCOA, as well as an adviser for Daimler-Chrysler and the Coca Cola Company. Since 2002, Zedillo is Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches International Relations, Economics, Politics, Environmental Studies, and Latin American affairs.
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President of Costa Rica (2010-2014)
Vice President of Club de Madrid
Laura Chinchilla was appointed Minister of Public Security of Costa Rica (1996–1998) while she also served as President of the National Immigration Board and the National Drug Council. Between 2002-2006 she was elected member of the National Congress. In 2006 she was elected Vice President of Costa Rica, while assuming office in the Ministry of Justice.
She was elected President of Costa Rica on Feb 7th 2010, being the first woman in the country to hold such office. She highlighted the promotion of citizen security, the reformation of the criminal procedure codes, laws against drug trafficking and organized crimes, and preventing violence. One of her most outstanding achievements was the steady decline in crime rates in Costa Rica. She also prompted measures on the promotion of women rights, protection of children and environmental sustainability. While in office, she earned two international awards: ‘’Excellence in National Management of the Ocean’’ (2011), and the ‘Award of the Shark Guardian of the year’’ (2013).
Mrs. Chinchilla has also worked as a consultant in Latin America and Africa with various international organizations. Relevant tasks include diagnostics on the justice sector for the Agency for International Development (USAID), coordination of studies and projects on judicial reform for the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP) and assessments and advice on police reform to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). She has headed several Organization of American State’s Observation Electoral Missions: México 2015, United States 2016, Paraguay 2018 and Brazil 2018.
President of Freedom House
Michael J. Abramowitz is president of Freedom House, a bipartisan organization dedicated to promoting democracy. Its work includes the authoritative Freedom in the World report, a yearly analysis of democratic institutional health in every country across the globe. Before joining Freedom House in February 2017, he was director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Levine Institute for Holocaust Education. He led the museum’s genocide prevention efforts and later oversaw its public education programs through exhibitions, training programs, and digital outreach.
He was previously National Editor and then White House correspondent for the Washington Post. He is a member of the Human Freedom Advisory Council at the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the Council on Foreign Relations and former fellow at the German Marshall Fund and the Hoover Institution. A graduate of Harvard College, Abramowitz is also a board member of the National Security Archive.
President of the Republic of Lithuania (2009-2019)
Member of Club de Madrid
Dalia Grybauskaitė is the former President of the Republic of Lithuania. She served as President from 2009 to 2019. She was the country’s first woman President and the only President in Lithuania’s post-Soviet history to have served two consecutive terms.
In 2009, Grybauskaitė left her EU post of Commissioner to run as an independent candidate in Lithuania’s presidential election. After taking office in July 2009, Grybauskaitė focused on lifting the country’s economic fortunes. In May 2014 she won reelection. During the second term, she emphasized Lithuanian military readiness and welcomed a NATO battle group in Lithuania. While serving as European Union Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budgets, she was elected Commissioner of the Year in 2005. She also served as Finance Minister for Lithuania from 2001 to 2004. Dalia Grybauskaitė served as Minister Plenipotentiary in the Lithuanian Mission to the European Union, Deputy Chief Negotiator for Lithuania’s Association Agreement with the European Union, and Minister Plenipotentiary in the Lithuanian Mission to the United States. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she was Director of the Economic Relations Department. She also was Chief Negotiator for Lithuania’s Free Trade Agreement with the European Union.
Dalia Grybauskaitė continues to speak widely on women’s leadership, gender equality, sustainable development, economic transparency and accountability. She serves on a number of advisory boards and commissions and she is Co-chair of the UN High-Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity (FACTI).
Principal Advisor in the Directorate General for Justice and Consumers, European Commission”
Paul NEMITZ is the Principal Advisor in the Directorate General for Justice and Consumers of the European Commission.
He was appointed in April 2017, following a 6-year appointment as Director for Fundamental Rights and Citizen’s Rights in the same Directorate General. As Director, Nemitz led the reform of Data Protection legislation in the EU, the negotiations of the EU – US Privacy Shield and the negotiations with major US Internet Companies of the EU Code of Conduct against incitement to violence and hate speech on the Internet.
He is a Member of Commission for Media and Internet Policy of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Berlin and a visiting Professor of Law at the College of Europe in Bruges. Nemitz is also a Member of the Board of the Verein Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie e.V., Berlin and a Trustee of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. He chairs the Board of Trustees of the Arthur Langerman Foundation, Berlin.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Leader of Democratic Belarus and a human rights activist
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is the leader of the Belarusian democratic forces who independent observers agree won the presidential election on August 9, 2020, against the autocratic President Aliaksandr Lukashenka. As the leader of the Belarusian democratic movement, she has visited 27 countries, gathering support and advocating for the release of 600+ political prisoners and a peaceful transition of power through free and fair elections. In meetings with Chancellor Merkel, President Macron, President von der Leyen, President Biden, and other world leaders, Tsikhanouskaya emphasized the need for a braver response to the actions of the Belarusian dictatorship.
In 2020–2021, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya became a symbol of the peaceful struggle for democracy and strong female leadership. Among dozens of distinctions, she is a recipient of the Sakharov Prize awarded by the European Parliament and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda and Members of the Norwegian Parliament.
Cuban Artist and Activist
Tania Bruguera is a Cuban performance artist and activist whose work often considers totalitarianism, immigration, and human rights.
In 2015 she founded the Institute of Artivism/Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR) in order to “foster civic literacy and policy change.” Her advocacy of free speech often ran afoul of the Cuban government. Her early practice involved body-based performance art. Other works engaged issues of Cuban struggle and self-censorship. After winning a Guggenheim fellowship (1998) and earning an M.F.A. (2001) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bruguera began staging interactive events. Bruguera, who intended to raise awareness and expand cultural inclusion, has defined her work as arte útil (“useful art”). She subsequently concentrated on global immigration, as seen in The Francis Effect (2014), in which she gathered signatures to urge the Vatican to grant citizenship status to immigrants.
In late 2018 Bruguera was once again detained by Cuban police, this time as she went to protest the internationally decried censorship law Decree 349, which required that artists, collectives, and performers in Cuba receive approval from the Ministry of Culture before delivering their work in public or private spaces. Her clashes with the government culminated in 2021, when she agreed to leave Cuba to assume the position of senior lecturer in media and performance at Harvard University in exchange for the release of 25 political prisoners.
Research Director of the Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation; Harvard Kennedy School, Boston Global Forum
Thomas E. Patterson is Research Director of The Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation. He is Professor of Government and the Press of Harvard Kennedy School and has served as the Acting Director of Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy since July 1, 2015.
His book, The Vanishing Voter, looks at the causes and consequences of electoral participation. His earlier book on the media’s political role, Out of Order, received the American Political Science Association’s Graber Award as the best book of the decade in political communication. His first book, The Unseeing Eye, was named by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the 50 most influential books on public opinion in the past half century.
He also is author of Mass Media Election and two general American government texts: The American Democracy and We the People. His articles have appeared in Political Communication, Journal of Communication, and other academic journals, as well as in the popular press. His research has been funded by the Ford, Markle, Smith-Richardson, Pew, Knight, Carnegie, and National Science foundation.
Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy
Peter Loewen is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. He is also the Associate Director, Global Engagement at the Munk School, Director of PEARL, a Research Lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute, a Senior Fellow at Massey College, and a Fellow with the Public Policy Forum. For 2020-2021, he is a Distinguished Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Tel Aviv University.
From 2016 to 2018, he was the Director of the School of Public Policy & Governance, which he led into a merger with the Munk School of Global Affairs to create the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. Loewen’s main research site is PEARL (Policy, Elections, and Representation Lab) at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.
His work has been published in American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Transactions of the Royal Society B, and Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and other journals. He has edited four books. He often contributes to the popular press.
Prime Minister of Belgium (2008, 2009-2011)
Member of Club de Madrid
Yves Leterme is a former Prime Minister of Belgium. He served as Prime Minister from 2008 and 2009 to 2011 and received the honorary title of Minister of State following his premiership.
Mr. Leterme currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Commission of Elections and Democracy on the Digital Age for the Kofi Annan Foundation, founded by 2001 Nobel Peace Prize Winner and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. He is also a member of the sustainability council for Volkswagen.
Mr. Leterme served as alderman of Ypres from 1995 to 2001 and was appointed Member of the Belgian Parliament in 1997. In 2003, he served as the chairman of the Christian People’s Party. The following year, he became the Minister-President of the Flemish government and implemented numerous economic and social welfare reforms such as a balanced government budget and improved childcare. Mr. Leterme was appointed to the position of Prime Minister for the first time in March 2008. His first term, however, ended after just 9 months when he tendered his resignation in December. He regained the premiership following a government reshuffle in July 2009. During his second term, Mr. Leterme held key bilateral talks with Lebanon regarding foreign relations and strengthened bilateral relations with Vietnam by improving trade relations between the two nations. He also attempted to pass a series of reforms aimed at reducing the language divide that separates French and Dutch speakers in Belgium. Following the end of his second term in 2011, he became the Deputy Secretary-General at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2012. In 2016, he took up the position of secretary-general of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA).
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Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (2002-2010)
Jan Peter Balkenende is a former Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 2002 to 2010 as representative of the Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA).
He worked at the Netherlands’ Universities Council, the Research Institute of the political party CDA and as professor at VU University. He was a member of the Amstelveen municipal council (1982-1998) and of the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament (1998-2002). He published a number of books and articles on a range of subjects, including innovation, development cooperation, European integration, social security, government finance, poverty, economic growth and responsibilities of the business sector. From 2002 to 2010, Balkenende was Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
During his tenure, distinctive national reforms were achieved, examples of which are to be found in fields of social security, pre-pension facilities and public health. He played as well a very active role internationally, both within Europe (presidency of the European Council in the second half of 2004), as in the G20 (although the Netherlands is not a formal member) and in the UN (with a special emphasis on issues like sustainable development, Millennium Development Goals and the WTO). After his term in the office, Balkenende became Professor of Governance, Institutions and Internationalisation at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2010. During the period of 2011-2016, Balkenende worked as Partner to EY, where he focused on corporate responsibility, international affairs and advisory activities for public-private issues.
Since 2016, Balkenende is External Senior and since 2017 he is a member of the Supervisory Board of ING Advisor. In his current capacity, Balkenende is also the chairman of the Dutch Sustainable Growth Coalition, the Major Alliance and the Noaber Foundation. Professor Balkenende, who has received ten Grand Crosses and five honorary doctorates from universities in Hungary, Japan, South Korea and the United States, continues to be an active voice in the global agenda, particularly since he became a Member of Club de Madrid in October 2019.
Head – Rule of Law, Security & Human Rights, UNDP Crisis Bureau
Katy Thompson is the Team Leader of UNDP’s Rule of Law, Security and Human Rights Team. She has extensive experience in rule of law, security and human rights programming in conflict affected contexts; criminal, international and human rights law; war crimes/transitional justice issues; legal system monitoring; trafficking in human beings and gender-based violence; peace- building. She has work experience in the UN and OSCE which followed several years of activism with NGOs and a three-year stint as a criminal defense lawyer in England. She also holds a BA Hons in Social and Political Science from Cambridge University and an LLM International Human Rights Law (Essex).
Secretary-General of International IDEA
Vice-Chair of the Global Commission on Democracy and Emergencies
Kevin Casas-Zamora has more than 25 years of experience in democratic governance as a researcher, analyst, educator, consultant and public official. He combines a distinguished academic career—strongly focused on electoral systems and democratic institutions—with practical experience as a high-level public official in his home country as well as multilateral organizations. Casas-Zamora is Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, DC-based policy research centre. Until recently, he was member of Costa Rica’s Presidential Commission for State Reform, and managing director at Analitica Consulting (Analitica Consultores).
Previously, he was Costa Rica’s Second Vice President and Minister of National Planning; Secretary for Political Affairs at the Organization of American States; Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and National Coordinator of the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report. He has taught at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and the University of Texas at Dallas, among many higher education institutions.
He has authored several studies on campaign finance, elections, democratization, citizen security and civil-military relations in Latin America. His doctoral thesis, entitled “Paying for Democracy in Latin America: Political Finance and State Subsidies for Parties in Costa Rica and Uruguay”, won the 2004 Jean Blondel PhD Prize of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and was published in 2005 by the ECPR. He was selected as Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2007. In 2013, he became a member of the Bretton Woods Committee.
Founder & Executive Chairman, Institute for Economics and Peace
Steve Killelea founded the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) in 2007, as an independent not-for-profit global research institute analysing the intertwined relationships between business, peace, and economic development. Steve’s funding and thought leadership behind the Institute has seen him recognised as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People on reducing the onset of armed violence. As one of the world’s most impactful think tanks, IEP's research is extensively used by multi-laterals, including the United Nations, World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and taught in thousands of university courses around the world.
He is also the founder of the Global Peace Index, the world’s leading quantitative measure of global peacefulness, ranking 163 countries and independent territories. Steve has always had a strong passion for sustainable development, working with the most impoverished communities of the world through his private family charity, The Charitable Foundation (TCF). TCF is today one of the larger private overseas aid organisations based in Australia, impacting the lives of an estimated 3.6 million people through its various projects. For his contribution to the global peace movement, Steve has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and was awarded the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2016. He is also the author of 'Peace in the Age of Chaos: The Best Solution for a Sustainable Future'.
Steve currently serves on the President\’s Circle for Club de Madrid, the largest forum of democratic former Presidents and Prime Ministers working to strengthen democracy.
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of Argentina (2015-2017) and Advisor of Club de Madrid
Susana Malcorra is Senior Advisor IE University and was previously Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship for the Republic of Argentina back in 2015. After her resignation in July 2017, she served as Minister Advisor to the President until December 2017. As such, she presided over the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference held in Buenos Aires.
She is currently a member of the External Advisors Group for the President of the General Assembly, Miroslav Lajčák. She is part of the executive councils of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, the Atlantic Council, the Inter-American Dialogue and the Aspen Ministers’ Forum.
Ms. Malcorra is a distinguished fellow for IE’s Transatlantic Relations Initiative in Madrid, and a member of the Democracy Cluster at EUI’s School of Transnational Governance in Florence. Ms. Malcorra began her corporate career as a systems engineer at IBM, eventually becoming the CEO of Telecom Argentina. She left Telecom in 2002, and in 2004 joined the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) where she became the chief operating officer. In May 2008, the United Nations Secretary-General appointed her Under-Secretary General of the recently created Department of Field Support. Becoming the chief of staff for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave her invaluable experience for both humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations. She has handled complex negotiations as a diplomat in various countries. She coordinated the mission to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons and the first ever Ebola emergency response in West Africa.
President of Spain (1996-2004)
Member of Club de Madrid
José María Aznar was President of the Spanish Government from 1996 to 2004. He began his political career as a member of Alianza Popular in 1979, holding positions as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Ávila, Regional President of AP in Castile and León and Head of the Castile and León Regional Government. In 1989, following the re-founding of the Partido Popular (PP), he was the PP candidate for President of the Spanish Government (Prime Minister). He headed the list of PP candidates in 1993, 1996 and the year 2000. Between 1989 and 1996 he was the leader of the Opposition. He became President of the Spanish Government in 1996 and held the presidency until the elections of 2004.
One of José María Aznar's main concerns is the battle against terrorism. He favors a firm policy without political concessions, as well as fostering close international cooperation among the democratic countries. He is a strong supporter of a close relationship with America and of the European Union's commitment to promoting greater freedom and economic reforms.
He is the President of FAES (Foundation for Social Studies and Analysis) and the Instituto Atlántico de Gobierno. He has been a Distinguished Scholar at Georgetown University and a Distinguished Fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Aznar has served as the Honorary Chairman of the Partido Popular, and has been Chairman of the International Centrist Democrat.
President of Bolivia (2001-2002) and Member of Club de Madrid
Jorge Quiroga is a former President of Bolivia. He held the position of Leader of Opposition in 2006-2010, Woodrow Wilson Scholar in 2002-2003, president of Bolivia in 2001-2002, vice president and president of Congress in 1997-2001, minister of finance in 1992 and Vice Minister of Planning for Public Investment and International Cooperation in 1990-1992. In the private sector, he has worked as vice president, board member and shareholder of a large private bank in La Paz (1993-1997); with Mintec in the mining sector in Bolivia (1989-1990); as a systems engineer with IBM in Texas (1981-1988); as a university calculus teaching assistant (1980-1981); and several others.
Jorge Fernando Quiroga Ramírez is the former President of Bolivia, having been previously elected Vice President in 1997, the youngest person to have ever held the office. Mr. Quiroga has also been Bolivian Minister of Finance and Under-Secretary of Public Investment and International Cooperation at the Ministry of Planning.
He is the recipient of the World Leader of Tomorrow Award from the World Economic Forum, and he has served as Governor for the World Bank, Andean Development Corporation, International Finance Corporation and the International Monetary Fund.
Prime Minister of Poland (1992-1993)
Member of Club de Madrid
Hanna Suchocka is a former Prime Minister of Poland, between 1992-1993. She was Poland’s first female Prime Minister.
Mrs. Suchocka entered politics in 1980 when she joined Solidarity and became a legal adviser to the Solidarity trade union. In 1980 she also joined the Sejm (Parliament) as a member of the Democratic Party, which was then affiliated with the Communist Party. In 1981, she opposed the imposition of martial law and in 1984, after voting against a law banning Solidarity, she was expelled from the Democratic Party. Following the fall of communism, she was elected again to Parliament in 1989 and 1991. In 1992, Mrs. Suchocka was elected Poland’s first female Prime Minister, serving until 1993. During her 15-months in office she helped guide post-Communist Poland towards democracy and a successful free-enterprise economy. While in Parliament, she was Member of the Committee for Foreign Affairs and the Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly (1991-1997), Member of the Polish Delegation for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe 1991-1992 and 1994-1997, and Member of the Venice Commission "Democracy through Law" 1990-present. She was re-elected Member of the Parliament of Poland and Union for Freedom Parliamentary Caucus in 1997. In 1997, she was also named Minister of Justice and Attorney General.
Hanna Suchocka holds a Masters in Constitutional Law from the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznan (1968), and PhD in Law (1975), and has been Lecturer in Law at the University of Poznan and at the Catholic University of Lublin. Mrs. Suckocka is currently Ambassador of Poland to the Holy See. In 1995 Hanna Suchocka was Member of the Board of Governors of the European Cultural Foundation in Amsterdam and from 1996 to 1997 she was Chair of the Polish-Ukrainian Forum. She is also a member of the Council of Women World Leaders.
Hungarian Politician
Zsuzsanna Szelényi is conducting research on polarization and autocratization as threat on democracy in the context of the future of the European Union.
Between 2014-2018 Ms Szelényi has been a liberal Member of Parliament in Hungary, opposing Viktor Orbán’s government as founding member of the ‘Together party’. She covered foreign policy, migration and constitutional affairs. Before rejoining to politics in 2012 Ms Szelényi served at the Council of Europe for fifteen years advising governments and NGOs on democracy and human rights affairs. Between 2010-2013 she worked as human development consultant in various Central European and North African countries. Ms. Szelényi started her political career as member of Fidesz, a youth party at the régime change in Hungary in 1988 and served as Member of Parliament until 1994.
Advocacy Coordinator, Action Committee for Democracy Development, Myanmar
Thinzar Shunlei Yi is a youth advocate and activist based in Yangon. Shunlei Yi is known for her tireless activism for peace and justice campaigning against the ongoing civil war in Myanmar.
From 2012 to 2016, she co-organised and led nationwide and regional youth forums in Myanmar, as well as the National Youth Development Policy process. The first woman coordinator of the National Youth Congress (NYC) and a two-term president of Yangon Youth Network, Shunlei Yi is currently an advocacy lead at Asian Youth Peace Network (AYPN). Locally, she works with the Action Committee for Democracy Development (ACDD), a political coalition of 12 networks across the country as an Advocacy Coordinator.
Shunlei Yi received the US State Department’s “Emerging Young Leaders Award” in 2016, and the "Women of the Future South East Asia" award in 2019. She also sits on advisory boards of Halcyon, Synergy, Women Voice and Leadership Program, Purple Feminists Group, and is one of the Obama Foundation’s inaugural selected #ObamaLeaders for Asia-Pacific. Shunlei Yi co-founded the "Under 30 Dialogue" TV show with Mizzima TV, and serves as the show’s weekly host, discussing political issues with prominent youth leaders.
Writer, Journalist, Nicaragua
Sergio Ramírez is a Nicaraguan writer. He served as Vice President of his country from 1985 to 1990, under the presidency of Daniel Ortega.
In Nicaragua, in 1977, he led the “Group of Twelve”, made up of intellectuals, businessmen, priests and civil leaders, in support of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the fight against the regime of Nicaraguan President Somoza. After being part of the government of Daniel Ortega, he retired from politics in 1996 to dedicate himself to literature, although his political experiences are reflected in his memoirs Goodbye Boys, published in 1999.
His work has been translated into more than 20 languages. In January 2000, he was awarded the first José María Arguedas Narrative Prize from the Casa de las Américas. He received the Carlos Fuentes Award for Literary Creation in 2014, and in 2017, Ramírez won the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in the Spanish-speaking world. He taught at the University of Maryland from 1999 to 2000 and again in 2001, and has been visiting professor at various major universities in the United States and Europe. He is also the President of Centroamérica Cuenta, the most important literary festival in the region.
Director of the Elcano Royal Institute
Charles Powell has been Director of the Elcano Royal Institute since 2012, and a Professor of Contemporary History at CEU San Pablo University since 2001.
While studying at Oxford, he was a lecturer at Corpus Christi College, a J. A. Pye Fellow at University College, and a Junior Research Fellow at St. Antony's College. He has also been a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Portugal and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. From 1997 to 2000, he was deputy director of the European Studies programme of the Ortega y Gasset University Institute, and was later appointed Deputy Director of the José Ortega y Gasset Foundation’s Spanish Centre for International Relations (CERI). In 2001 he joined the Elcano Royal Institute as Senior Analyst for Europe, and in 2004 he was appointed Deputy Director for Research and Analysis. In the course of his career, he has supervised eight doctoral theses and taught and lectured in more than 40 countries in Europe, Africa, America and Asia.
Charles Powell is an Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy (2015), a Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (2017), and a Commander of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Romania (2020). Throughout his academic life, he has mainly devoted himself to the study of the political history of contemporary Spain, both domestic and foreign.
President of Spain (1982-1996)
Member of Club de Madrid
Felipe González is a former President of Spain. He served for three consecutive terms between 1982 and 1996. His Presidency was characterized by the modernization of the education, healthcare and social security systems, and the entrance of Spain into the European Union.
In 1962, he entered politics by joining the underground group Socialist Youths of Seville. In 1964, he joined the clandestine Socialist Labor Party of Spain (PSOE), and became the Secretary General of the party in 1974 at its Congress in Suresnes, France. In the 1977 general election, he was elected to Parliament for the nation’s capital, Madrid. In 1978, he was also elected Vice-President of the Socialist International, a position he held until 1999. In 1982, the PSOE gained a solid majority in Parliament and González was elected President of the Government, where he served for three consecutive terms until 1996.
After the Presidency, González remains very active in the global arena and has written three books: El Socialismo (1997), El futuro no es lo que era (2001), and Memorias del futuro (2003). In 1998, he was Special Representative of the EU to Yugoslavia and chaired the World Progressive Commission of the Socialist International. As well, he helped as mediator in the peace negotiations between Colombia and the FARC guerilla. In 2013, he founded and became the Chairman of the Fundación Felipe González, an NGO to offer answers to the political and social challenges of the 21st century; introduce citizens to the importance of the Spanish democratic transition; and favor a greater knowledge of global politics. In 2001, González joined the World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid in its constituent meeting, becoming a founding Member of the organization.
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President of Chile (2000-2006)
Member of Club de Madrid
Ricardo Lagos is a former President of Chile. During the 80’s he played a predominant role in the process to recover the democracy in Chile. He led the Democratic Alliance and the Independent Committee for Free Elections. He was the founder and first president of the Party for the Democracy. Prior to becoming president, Mr. Lagos was Minister of Education under Patricio Aylwin’s term, (1990) and Minister of Public Works under Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle’s term (1994).
He has also received the Honoris Causa distinction from a large number of prestigious universities in the world, such as the Universidad Autónoma de México, Universidad de Salamanca, amongst many others. He was granted the “Berkeley Medal”, top distinction of the Berkeley University in California.
During 2008 and 2009 Former President Lagos held the position of President of the Club of Madrid, and was one of the United Nations’ Special Envoy on Climate Change. He currently is President of the Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo in Chile, created after he left the presidential term in 2006.
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Directo, Global Attitudes Research, Pew Research Center
Richard Wike is director of global attitudes research at Pew Research Center. He conducts research and writes about international public opinion on a variety of topics, such as America’s global image, the rise of China, democracy, and globalization. He is an author of numerous Pew Research Center reports and has written pieces for The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, the Guardian, Politico, Foreign Policy, CNN, BBC, CNBC, and other online and print publications. Wike has been interviewed by American news organisations such as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC, CNN, C-SPAN, and NPR, as well as numerous non-U.S. news organisations, including The Financial Times, The Guardian, El País, BBC, Deutsche Welle, France 24 and Al Jazeera. Wike gives talks and presentations to a variety of audiences, including government, think tanks, business groups, and academic conferences. Wike received a doctorate in political science from Emory University. Before joining Pew Research Center, he was a senior associate for international and corporate clients at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.
CEO, HateAid
Anna-Lena von Hodenberg is the founding executive director at HateAid. She is a trained television journalist and has worked in news reporting for RTL and NDR. In 2015, she moved to the citizens' movement Campact and was responsible for campaigns against right-wing populism and racism.
She was primarily concerned with orchestrated hate on the net and the strategies of the New Right. She is the mind behind the campaign "Hate Speech Stoppen" (Stop Hate Speech), which is primarily about more law enforcement and victim protection at the state level. Thanks in part to the campaign, Hesse was the first state in all of Germany to dedicate a separate package of measures in the coalition agreement to the fight against hate on the net. Since victims of online hate often find themselves alone and, above all, hardly receive any legal support, Campact founded the non-profit organisation HateAid together with Fearless Democracy in December 2018.
Founder and CEO, Beyond Conflict
Tim Phillips is the founder and CEO of Beyond Conflict, a non-profit organization that works with government, non-profit and community leaders to address conflict and promote reconciliation in the United States and abroad. Since 1992, Beyond Conflict has created powerful and innovative frameworks to open pathways for progress in peace talks, transitions to democracy, and national reconciliation in the aftermath of division and violence in over 75 countries. Tim led efforts to help catalyze the peace and reconciliation processes in several nations, including Northern Ireland, El Salvador, Kosovo and South Africa. He has also advised the United Nations, the U.S Department of State, and the Council of Europe.
In recent years, Tim has led Beyond Conflict’s efforts to explore the fields of brain and behavioral science and its application to conflict resolution and social change. The organization has become widely acknowledged as the champion in catalyzing the field of Neuroscience and Social Conflict, by promoting this research, developing policy recommendations for national and international leaders, and convening six global conferences for key scientists, policymakers, practitioners, journalists and the donor community. Tim also helped launch and serves on the Advisory Committee of the Club of Madrid, which was founded in 2001 and works with more than 100 former heads of state and government to promote the consolidation of democracy around the world. Early in his career, Mr. Phillips worked internationally in support of human rights and the environment. In the late 1980s, he organized a series of independent fact-finding missions to Central America for U.S. policymakers, news editors and congressional staff to introduce them to the key players across the political spectrum in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, and to support the work of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring to peace to Central America.
Tim serves of the board of directors, trustees and overseers of numerous international organizations and cultural and educational institutions, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Rose Art Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and the Frameworks Institute.
Provost, IE University; Dean, IE School of Global and Public Affairs
Manuel Muñiz is the Provost of IE University in Madrid and a Professor of Practice of International Relations, with a range of experience in academia. He is also the Dean of IE School of Global and Public Affairs, responsible for research and teaching in public policy and global affairs. His academic work has focused on the fields of innovation and disruption, political economy, and regional and global governance.
From January of 2020 to July of 2021, Muñiz served as State Secretary at the Spanish Foreign Ministry. In this role, he was responsible for leading the ministry’s Strategy and Foresight Unit, the Economic Diplomacy Team, and the Communications Department, including the Office for Diplomatic Information. He coordinated Spain’s 2021–2024 Foreign Policy Strategy, and led the work on the National Strategy on Technology and Global Order. During this time, he coordinated Spain’s OECD Ministerial Presidency of 2020 and was a member of the Prime Minister’s COVID-19 task force.
He has received an array of awards and recognitions including the Trilateral Commission’s David Rockefeller Fellowship, the Körber Foundation’s 2017 Munich Young Leader Fellowship, the Atlantic Council’s Millennium Fellowship, and the Eisenhower Fellowship. In 2016, Esglobal named him one of the 25 intellectuals having the greatest impact on our thinking about Iberoamerica.
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European Union Commissioner for International Partnerships
Jutta Urpilainen is the European Union Commissioner for International Partnerships, building inclusive and equitable partnerships to reduce global poverty and support sustainable development.
Urpilainen was the first woman to act as Finland's Minister of Finance and as party leader for the Social Democratic Party. After serving as a minister and as party leader, she was asked to take the position of Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but she decided to continue her work as a Member of Parliament in Finland. In Parliament, she has been a member of numerous committees, held the position of first Deputy Speaker, as well as that of the chair for the Finnish IPU group's executive committee.
Urpilainen has held an extensive list of positions of trust. She has been a member of the National Commission on Sustainable Development, has represented Finland at UN conferences concerning information society and has chaired the Finnish National Commission for UNESCO from 2015. She was the Executive Director of the UN Association of Finland from 2008 to 2009. In summer 2017, Minister for Foreign Affairs Timo Soini appointed Urpilainen his Special Representative on Mediation with a focus on strengthening the status of women and youths in Africa.
Prime Minister of Belgium (2008-2009)
President of the European Council (2009-2014)
Member of Club de Madrid
Herman Van Rompuy is a former Prime Minister of Belgium. He served as Prime Minister between 2008 and 2009 and as President of the European Council from 2009 to 2014.
A former economist at the National Bank of Belgium, Van Rompuy began his political career in 1973 as national vice-president of his party's youth council. He has held various responsibilities within his party and in the Belgian Parliament, serving in turn as Senator (1988-1995) and Member of Parliament (1995-2009).
Elected as the first full-time President of the European Council in November 2009, Herman Van Rompuy took office when the Lisbon Treaty came into force on 1 December 2009. In 2012, he was re-elected for a second term starting on 1 June 2012 and running until 30 November 2014. At the time of his first election, Herman Van Rompuy was Prime Minister of Belgium. Prior to that, he served in Belgium as Speaker of the House of Representatives (2007-2008) and in several government positions, including as Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Budget (1993-1999), Minister of State (2004) and Secretary of State for Finance and Small Businesses (1988).
President of Poland (1995-2005), Founder of Amicus Europae Foundation and Member of Club de Madrid
Aleksander Kwaśniewski is a former President of Poland. Mr. Kwaśniewski was a member of the PZPR Party (Polish United Workers' Party) and Minister in the Government of Poland from 1985 to 1990. He was President of the Polish Olympic Committee from 1988 to 1991. He was Co- founder and first chairman of the Social Democracy of Poland in 1990.
Member of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) from 1993 to 1995, he was Chairman of the Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly. Mr. Kwaśniewski is co-author of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, which was adopted in 1997. In 1995 he was appointed President of Poland (against Mr. Wałęsa) and was reelected in 2000. He is the only President who was reelected in 25 years of Polish democracy.
During his Presidency, he played a key role in the reconciliation between the Poles and the German, the Jewish and the Ukrainian people. He further inspired the international mediation efforts during the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, helping the young democracy to prevail. Finally, he also was a strong advocate of EU and NATO integration, and made Poland join both institutions during his tenure.
Secretary General, Commonwealth
The Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC is the 6th Commonwealth Secretary-General. She was born in Dominica and was their candidate for the post at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Malta in 2015. She is the 2nd Secretary-General from the Caribbean and the 1st woman to hold the post.
Scotland became the first black woman and the youngest woman (at 35) to be appointed a Queen’s Counsel (QC) in 1991. She was also the first black woman to be appointed Deputy High Court Judge, Recorder and Master of Middle Temple. She joined the House of Lords in 1997 as Baroness Scotland of Asthal going on to serve as a minister in the Foreign Office, Home Office and Lord Chancellor’s Department. Scotland undertook major reform of the criminal justice system, including the introduction of the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act. Also, she was appointed Attorney General in 2007 – the first women to hold the post since it was created in 1315
Scotland founded the Eliminate Domestic Violence Global Foundation in 2011, was appointed Prime Ministerial Trade Envoy to South Africa in 2012 and was elected as the Alderman of Bishopsgate in the City of London in 2014.
President of the National Democratic Institute
Derek Mitchell was appointed as NDI’s third president in the beginning of September 2018, returning to NDI just over two decades after he departed the Institute in 1997, at the conclusion of nearly four years as Senior Program Officer for Asia and the former Soviet Union.
Mitchell has had a distinguished career in and out of the U.S. government, in which he has witnessed the connection between democracy and international security. From 2012-2016, Mitchell served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar (Burma). He was America’s first ambassador to the country in 22 years. From 2011-12, he served as the U.S. Department of State’s first Special Representative and Policy Coordinator for Burma, with the rank of ambassador.
Prior to this appointment, Mitchell served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Asian and Pacific Security Affairs (APSA), in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. For his service, he received the Office of the Secretary of Defense Award for Distinguished Public Service in August 2011. Most recently, Mitchell has been a senior advisor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as a lecturer for the Stanford-in-Washington program.
President of the International Republican Institute
Daniel Twining joined IRI as president in 2017, where he leads the Institute’s mission to advance democracy and freedom around the world. IRI is a core institute of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Previously, Dr. Twining served as counselor to the president and director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. As counselor, he served on GMF’s executive leadership team; as director of the Asia Program, he worked on the rise of Asia and its implications for the West, with a particular focus on India, China, and Japan.
Dr. Twining’s government service encompasses three U.S. administrations and the U.S. Congress. From 2009-17, he served as an Associate of the National Intelligence Council focused on strategic forecasting in South and East Asia. He served during the George W. Bush administration, the Clinton administration and as the foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain. Dr. Twining has taught at Georgetown University and served as a military instructor associated with the Naval Postgraduate School. He serves on the Asia Advisory Board of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and on the Advisory Board of the Vandenberg Initiative.
President of the International Institute in Human Development
Emna Jeblaoui is the President of the International Institute in Human Development, which promotes multiparty dialogue and recently launched the Women for Peace and Security Project.
Since 1999, she has taught translation and Islamic studies at the University of Manouba. From 2013-2015, Emna served as a consultant and coordinator at the Training Center of the Tunisian Assembly managed by UNDP, where she advised on civil society and multiparty democratic dialogue and suggested different scenarios of mediation and confidence building.
Emna is a recognized expert on Tunisian civil society and human rights, sits on the advisory board of different NGOs and is a founding member of various organizations working on transition issues. She is a member of ANA HUNNA International Network e.V.
Senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford University. He also chairs the Hoover Institution Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and is the principal investigator of the Global Digital Policy Incubator, part of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center.
For more than six years, he directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where he now leads its Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. During 2017–18, he cochaired, with Orville Schell, a working group formed of researchers from Hoover and from the Asia Society Center on US-China Relations, culminating in the report China’s Influence and American Interests: Promoting Constructing Vigilance. He is the founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as senior consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Diamond’s research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy. Diamond is professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford University, where he teaches courses on democracy and American foreign policy. He is currently offering Comparative Democratic Development as a massive open online course (MOOC) on the edX platform.
Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2008)
Member of Club de Madrid
Helen Clark is a former Prime Minister of New Zealand. She served for three successive terms from 1999 to 2008. She was the first woman to become Prime Minister following a General Election in New Zealand and the second woman to serve as Prime Minister.
Throughout her tenure as Prime Minister and as a Member of Parliament over 27 years, Helen Clark engaged widely in policy development and advocacy across the international affairs, economic, social, environmental, and cultural spheres. She advocated strongly for a comprehensive programme on sustainability for New Zealand and for tackling the challenges of climate change. She was an active leader of her country’s foreign relations, engaging in a wide range of international issues. In April 2009, Helen Clark became Administrator of the UNDP. She was the first woman to lead the organisation, and served two terms there. At the same time, she was Chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee consisting of all UN funds, programmes, agencies, and departments working on development issues. As Administrator, she led UNDP to be ranked the most transparent global development organisation. She completed her tenure in April 2017.
Helen continues to speak widely on sustainable development, climate action, gender equality and women’s leadership, peace and justice, and action on non-communicable diseases and on HIV. She serves on a number of advisory boards and commissions, including in the capacity of Chair of the Advisory Board of UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report. In June 2019, she assumed the Chairpersonship of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
Prime Minister of Portugal (2002-2004); President of European Commission (2004-2014); Chair of GAVI; and Member of Club de Madrid
José Manuel Durão Barroso is former President of the European Commission (2004-2014) and served as Prime Minister of Portugal (2002 to 2004).
Barroso joined Portugal’s Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democrata; PSD) in 1980. He started his political career in government in 1985 under Aníbal Cavaco Silva and served as State Secretary for Home Affairs, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, and Minister for Foreign Affairs. He rose to be party president of the PSD in 1999. He was continually reelected—while simultaneously serving as vice president of the European People’s Party—until the 2002 parliamentary elections, which returned the PSD to power and made Barroso Prime Minister of Portugal. In 2004 Barroso resigned from the Portuguese government to accept the post of president of the European Commission, the main executive body of the European Union. In 2009 the European Parliament approved a second five-year term for Barroso.
His academic appointments included visiting professor of Georgetown University and visiting professor at Princeton University. He is currently a visiting professor at the Catholic University of Portugal and at the European University Institute, School of Transnational Governance, Florence. He is currently Chairman of Goldman Sachs International and Chairman of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
President and CEO, United States Institute of Peace
Lise Grande is the president and CEO of the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent, nonpartisan, federally funded institute charged with the mission to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict around the world. She has 25 years of continuous overseas experience leading, managing, and coordinating complex operations for the United Nations. Grande has held leadership positions in humanitarian, stabilization, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and development operations in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caucasus.
Prior to joining USIP, Grande served as the head of U.N. humanitarian and development operations in Yemen, where she coordinated one of the U.N.’s largest operations globally. Prior to her assignment in Yemen, Grande was responsible for the U.N.’s humanitarian, stabilization, and development operations, and she served as deputy head of the U.N.’s political mission in Iraq during the campaign against ISIS. She was instrumental in facilitating one of the largest managed evacuations of civilians from a war zone in recent history and led the U.N. team that helped stabilize more than 20 cities liberated from ISIS control.
Grande was responsible for the U.N.’s humanitarian and development work in South Sudan in the lead-up to independence and during the first year of statehood. She has headed U.N. operations in India and Armenia and served in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, East Timor, the Palestinian Territories, Tajikistan, Sudan and Haiti.
President of Human Capital Africa and Senior Economic Adviser at Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative
Obiageli Ezekwesili is an economic policy expert and daring advocate who’s led pioneering initiatives that challenge extremism, corruption and gender-based violence.
Born and raised in Nigeria, she is an economic expert, who pursued a distinguished career in the private sector and later became a public servant in Nigeria and internationally. She led Nigeria’s ministry of education and also served as vice president for Africa at the World Bank, using both positions to advocate for society’s most vulnerable. She is also a fierce pro-democracy activist and co-founder of Transparency International, the world’s foremost anti-corruption institution.
When Boko Haram abducted 300 Chibok girls in 2014, Ezekwesili was one of the first to speak out. She co-founded the Bring Back Our Girls campaign, taking to the streets and galvanizing global calls for action. She is unapologetic about her vision for Nigeria and her continent, Africa. She recently ran for president — as the only female candidate — and is currently working to transform broken systems of public leadership. She is mobilizing citizens to lead the change of political culture, build democratic values which will ensure equality of opportunity to everyone so that marginalized groups have a chance to thrive.
Executive Vice-Chair of the FutureWorld Foundation and Advisor of Club de Madrid
Sean Cleary is Executive Vice-Chair of the FutureWorld Foundation, an Advisory Council member of Club de Madrid, and EIT Climate-KIC; a Faculty Member of the Parmenides Foundation; a Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor of the Salzburg Global Seminar; Special Adviser to the Global Solutions Initiative, and a Director of Companies.
He saw diplomatic service in Iran, the USA, and Namibia en route to its independence in 1990, where he facilitated negotiations between Namibia’s political parties, the release of political prisoners, and the adoption of a pre-independence Bill of Rights. In South Africa, he served on the Facilitating Committee and Preparatory Committee of the National Peace Accord, where he chaired the Working Group on the Code of Conduct for Political Parties and Organizations; and on the NEPAD Business Steering Group.
He has served on the Boards of numerous non-profit organisations and as Strategic Adviser to the World Economic Forum, and its Arab Business Council. He has lectured on global corporate strategy at business schools, and the strategic challenges of globalisation, and conflict resolution, at defence colleges, universities and institutes around the world. Mr Cleary has received academic and public service awards, co-authored Resilience to Risk (2006) and Global Risks (2007) with Thierry Malleret, and published numerous journal articles and book chapters.
Prime Minister of Canada (1993)
Member of Club de Madrid
Kim Campbell is a former Prime Minister of Canada. She served in 1993, becoming the first woman to hold the office. Previously, she had served as Minister for Indian Affairs, Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Minister of National Defense, and Minister of Veterans’ Affairs.
After becoming leader of the Progressive Conservatives and Prime Minister, she implemented radical changes to the structure of the government. Additionally, Mrs. Campbell consolidated more services for the Canadian people by creating three new ministries: Health, Canadian Heritage, and Public Security. Throughout her career, Mrs. Campbell was deeply engaged in international issues including law reform and criminal justice, international trade (her signature appears on the NAFTA side deals) and security (both as Minister of Defense and Prime Minister; as Justice Minister she served on the War Cabinet during the First Gulf War).
After her tenure as Prime Minister, Mrs. Campbell was a fellow at the Institute of Politics (1994) and the Joan Shorenstein Center for the Study of Press and Politics (1994-1995), at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The following year, she was appointed the Canadian Consul General in Los Angeles (1996-2000), and then returned to Harvard to teach at the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School, between 2001 and 2004. In 2016, Mrs. Campbell was named Chairperson of the Independent Advisory Board for Supreme Court of Canada Judicial Appointments, a role that she reprised in the fall of 2017. Campbell designed and launched a ground-breaking leadership program for undergraduates at the University of Alberta called the Peter Lougheed Leadership College. She served as its Founding Principal from the spring of 2014 through June of 2018. She is a member of the International Women's Forum, the Council of Women World Leaders, a founding member of the World Leadership Alliance-Club of Madrid and a trustee of the International Center for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College.
Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency
Věra Jourová is currently Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency, which deals with democracy, rule of law, disinformation and media pluralism. From 2014 to 2019, she served as EU Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality.
In 2014, before arriving at the European Commission, Ms Jourová held the position of Minister for Regional Development in the Czech Republic. Previous to this, from 2006 to 2013, she worked in her own company, Primavera Consulting Ltd., as an international consultant on European Union funding, and was also involved from 2006 to 2011 in consultancy activities in the Western Balkans relating to the European Union Accession.
Prior to that, Jourová was Deputy Minister for Regional Development in the Czech Republic from 2003 to 2006, Head of the Department of Regional Development of the Vysočina Region (Czech Republic) from 2001 to 2003, and Secretary and Spokesperson of the Třebič Municipal Office (Czech Republic) from 1995 to 2000.
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Prime Minister of Finland (2014-2015)
Member of Club de Madrid
Alexander Stubb is a former Prime Minister of Finland. He served between 2014 and 2015. He is currently Director and Professor at the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence. He has a solid background in academia, civil service and politics. Mr Stubb is an avid pro-European with experience across all EU institutions from the European Council to the European Parliament, from the Commission to the Council of Ministers.
In the field of politics, Alexander Stubb has served as Prime Minister, Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, Trade and Europe Minister of Finland from 2008 to 2016. He was a Member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2008 and member of the national parliament from 2011 to 2017. He was the Chairman of the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) from 2014 to 2016 and Vice President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) from 2017 to 2020. He worked as an adviser at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Helsinki and in Brussels, and in President Romano Prodi’s team at the European Commission (1995-2004).
In the field of academia, he currently is the Director and Professor at the School of Transnational Governance of the European University Institute, and he was a visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges from 2000 to 2007. He has written a number books and academic articles on European affairs in addition to being a columnist in many newspapers, including the Financial Times.
Prime Minister of Senegal (2013-2014) and Member of Club de Madrid
Aminata Touré is a former Prime Minister of Senegal. She served for a term from 2013 to 2014. She was the first woman to serve as Prime Minister in Senegal.
Touré is a politician and Human Rights activist. Apart from Prime Minister, she held several governmental positions, including Minister of Justice (2012-2013), President’ Special Envoy for Internal and External Affairs (2015-2019), President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (2019-2020). Dr Touré worked for 24 years in the United Nations Organization where she held technical expert positions in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. She also headed the Gender and Human Rights Direction at the United Nations Population Fund Headquarters in New York.
At the early stages of her career, Dr Touré worked in the private sector and with the Senegalese branch of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Dr Touré directed more than 30 United Nations publications and authored in 2021 a book highlighting Africa's contribution to International Penal Law through the Extraordinary Judiciary Chambers that tried Hissein Habré, former President of Chad. From 2014 to 2020, Dr Touré led and co-led Presidential election observation missions on behalf of the African Union and The Carter Center in Mauritius, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Libéria and Guyana.
Assistant Secretary Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. US Department of State
Lisa Peterson joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1989. She joined the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in December 2020. On January 20, 2021, she began serving as the Acting Assistant Secretary for DRL. She served as the Senior Official for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (J) from January 20-July 14, 2021.
She served as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Eswatini (Swaziland) from 2016 to 2020. Prior to this current assignment, she served as Director for the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2012 to 2015. From 2009 until the summer of 2012, Lisa served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Yaounde, Cameroon. Prior to that, she served in political, public affairs and consular positions in Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Zaire/Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, and the Central African Republic.
Other Washington assignments have been in the Bureau of African Affairs, where she was Deputy Director in the Office of Central African Affairs, and in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, where she was an analyst for Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Her political work has included tracking democratic transitions, monitoring human rights issues, following refugee issues, and supporting peace negotiations in DRC, Sudan, and Somalia. As DCM in Cameroon, she coordinated the efforts of five agencies to initiate a PEPFAR county operational plan.
Secretary-General of CIVICUS
Lysa John Berna is the Secretary-General of CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. She has worked on issues of governance accountability and social justice since 1998. She began her career with YUVA (Mumbai, India) working on grassroots-led advocacy and campaigns linked to urban poverty, governance and housing rights. In 2006, she joined ‘Wada Na Todo Abhiyan’ (Don’t Break the Promise Campaign) as National Coordinator, helping create what is now one of India’s largest and most influential advocacy networks.
In 2009, she joined the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) as International Campaign Director working to connect and strengthen civil society-led efforts on poverty, inequality across 80+ countries. The 'The World We Want 2015' campaign, which eventually became the United Nation's platform for public and civil society engagement on the MDGs, was an outcome of this effort. In 2013, she served as Head of Outreach in the Secretariat of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda, following which she joined Save the Children International where she helped coordinate the planning and delivery of the 'Every Last Child' campaign in over 70 countries worldwide in the position of Campaign Director.
Berna has authored several reports, including assessments on the role and influence of emerging powers such as BRICS. She has 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.
Professor of Nanomaterials, University of Oxford
Professor Andrew Briggs is the inaugural holder of the Chair of Nanomaterials at the University of Oxford.
He directed the Quantum Information Processing Interdisciplinary Collaboration, which was followed by a UK investment of £270M in Quantum Technologies. He leads major programmes to investigate quantum effects in electronic nanodevices for low energy information and communication technologies, and uses hardware-in-the-loop simulations for testing quantum sub-components to accelerate their route to innovation. His patented method of forming nanogaps in graphene is being developed for genome sequencing.
His research interests focus on materials and techniques for quantum technologies and their incorporation into practical devices. Current hot topics include vibrational states of nanotubes and charge transport through single molecules in graphene nanogaps, and machine learning for measuring and tuning quantum devices. He has more than 600 publications, with over 26,000 citations.
Non-resident senior fellow at Brookings
Advisor of Club de Madrid
Ted Piccone is a recognized expert on global democracy and human rights policies, emerging powers, multilateral affairs, and U.S.-Latin American relations. He is currently the World Justice Project’s Chief Engagement Officer and serves as a nonresident Senior Fellow with the Brookings Institution specializing in international order and strategy and Latin America.
In 2017-18, he was the inaugural Brookings-Robert Bosch Stiftung Transatlantic Initiative fellow in Berlin. Previously, he served as the Foreign Policy program’s acting vice president and deputy director and held the Charles W. Robinson Chair. Piccone is the author or editor of multiple publications on international affairs, including books on Five Rising Democracies and the Fate of the International Liberal Order and Catalysts for Change: How the UN’s Independent Experts Promote Human Rights.
Piccone served eight years as a foreign policy advisor in the Clinton administration at the National Security Council, the State Department's Office of Policy Planning, and the Pentagon. He was also the Washington office director for the Club of Madrid and continues as an advisor. He has taught international human rights law at American University’s Washington College of Law.
Chief of Party, Information Access Fund, DT Institute
Vukasin Petrovic provides overall leadership, management, and general technical direction for the Information Access Fund, through which he supports civil society organizations and independent media that are confronting authoritarian malign influence efforts.
Petrovic has devoted his career to the promotion and protection of democracy, human rights, and freedom of media. Before joining DT Institute, he held several senior positions, including serving as the Director of Governance and Civic Engagement at Equal Access International and the Senior Director for Program Strategy at Freedom House.
At Freedom House, he was responsible for defining Freedom House’s thematic and regional program priorities, design and oversight of cutting-edge programs that focus on human rights freedom of expression, supporting human rights defenders in closing and closed environments, and civil society uses of emerging technologies.
Professor, Hertie School, UCLA
Helmut K. Anheier is Professor of Sociology at the Hertie School. He served as President of the Hertie School from 2009 to 2018. He is also a member of the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin School of Public Affairs and visiting professor at LSE Ideas, London School of Economics and Political Science. His research centres on indicator systems, governance, culture, non-profits and philanthropy and organisational studies. Anheier was the principal academic lead of the Hertie School's Governance Report and book series (Oxford University Press, 2013-2019). He held a Chair of Sociology at Heidelberg University´s Max Weber Institute and served as founding Academic Director of its Centre for Social Investment and Innovation. He was the Academic Co-Director of the Dahrendorf Forum, a joint initiative by the Hertie School and the London School of Economics and Political Science, funded by Stiftung Mercator (2011-2020). He was a senior researcher at the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Policy Studies, Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare at UCLA, and Centennial Professor at LSE, and Associate Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. Anheier is author of over 500 publications, many in leading journals and has received various national and international awards. Before embarking on an academic career, he served as Social Affairs Officer at the United Nations.
Senior Fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance, Carnegie Europe
Richard Youngs is a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, based at Carnegie Europe. He works on EU foreign policy and on issues of international democracy.
Youngs is also a professor of international relations at the University of Warwick. Prior to joining Carnegie in July 2013, he was the director of the European think tank FRIDE. He has held positions in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as an EU Marie Curie fellow. He was a senior fellow at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, DC, from 2012 to 2013.
Youngs has authored fourteen books. His most recent works are The European Union and Global Politics (Macmillan, 2021), Civic Activism Unleashed: New Hope or False Dawn for Democracy? (Oxford University Press, 2019) and Europe’s Eastern Crisis: The Geopolitics of Asymmetry (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Executive Director, Bertelsmann Foundation USA
Irene Braam joined the Bertelsmann Foundation as executive director in April 2016. She is also the first vice president and board director of the Bertelsmann Foundation Board of Directors.
Irene is an experienced lawyer and media expert, and worked for over ten years with the Bertelsmann company. She began as director of government relations of the Brussels Liaison Office in 2005 and became senior vice president of government relations in September 2011. Irene developed, among other things, a European platform for global discussion about the digital transformation of the media world. The series was held in Brussels, Berlin, Madrid and London. Not only did she represent and position Bertelsmann’s interests in the EU, she also promoted Bertelsmann in other cultural and social events in Brussels, such as UFA Film nights, previews of Fremantle Media’s productions, exhibitions and public panel discussions.
Braam began her professional career in 1998 in the music industry. Irene was head of international, legal and business affairs at Naïve Records in Paris, in charge of business development for Midbar Tech Ltd. in Tel Aviv, and served as both director of public policy and government affairs, and director of legal and business affairs at the Universal Music Group in London and Brussels.
Director of EsGlobal
Cristina Manzano is the director of EsGlobal, a leading digital publication on global affairs in Spanish and editorial coordinator of Pensamiento Iberoamericano, a magazine edited by the Iberoamerican General Secretariat (SEGIB). She is also an advisor to Diego Hidalgo, a Spanish philanthropist and co-founder of the World Leadership Alliance-Club of Madrid (WLA-CdM).
Manzano’s experience includes various roles in journalism, notably as a columnist for El País and El Periódico de Catalunya, and a regular commentator in Spain’s National Radio (RNE), Spanish Radio and Television Corporation (RTVE), and CNN+. Additionally, Manzano participates as speaker on topics related to international affairs, Spanish and EU foreign policy, globalization, and communication. Prior to this, she was editor and the US correspondent for economic issues of Ranking magazine; director of Reporter, a leading firm in corporate communications and branded content, for more than a decade; and deputy director of FRIDE, an independent think tank in Madrid working on EU foreign policy.
Today, Cristina Manzano also serves as member in the Scientific Council of the Elcano Royal Institute, the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), the Spanish Chapter of the Club of Rome, Education for Employment Europe, and the Alliance for Solidarity.
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President of the Republic of Costa Rica
President Carlos Alvarado is the 48th President of the Republic of Costa Rica. He was inaugurated into office on May 9, 2018. He was born in San José, Costa Rica on January 14, 1980, and is a professor, politician and author. He studied journalism at the University of Costa Rica, and holds a master’s degree in Political Science from the same university and has a master’s degree in Development Studies from the University of Sussex in England.
President Alvarado is an expert in communication, public policy and public-private partnerships with five years of experience in political communication and parliamentary advisory. He has taught communication at the School of Social Science at the University of Costa Rica and the Latina University of Costa Rica. He also served as an advisor to the Citizen Action Party's group in the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica from 2006 to 2010.
During the Solís Rivera administration, Alvarado served as Minister of Human Development and Social Inclusion and Executive President of the Joint Social Welfare Institute, institution charged with combating poverty and giving state aid to the population of scarce resources. Then in 2016, Alvarado was appointed Minister of Labor and Social Security.
European University Institute
I was born in Barcelona but raised in a small town 120 kilometres south of the Sagrada Familia. By going to school (both public and private), playing lots of sports (basketball is my favourite) and making new friends (from home and beyond), I began growing as a person there. Later on, I had the privilege to go back to the beautiful Barcelona to continue my studies in university. There I graduated from the first cohort of the bachelor in Global Studies at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in the spring of 2019. Such newly created program allowed me to pursue broad questions and visions for three years surrounded by a great environment. For the most part of the degree, I also volunteered (AIESEC), interned (Barcelona Global) and was part of the student board of my class. I even got to study, travel, and live in Iran for seven months thanks to an Erasmus + grant in the last year of my studies. After such intense times I settled on taking a gap year that included an unexpected three-month long home lockdown. Amid the pandemic, I heard about a new master programme in Transnational Governance taught at the European University Institute in Florence. I ended up applying there persuaded by the ethos, pathos, and logos posed by this new and ambitious project. Now as a second-year student of the master I am quite happy about that decision. Here I have been able to engage in a transnational reality in and outside the classroom from many angles (mainly democracy, technology, and culture). For example, this summer I conducted a research internship tutored by Professor Daniel Innerarity in the Globernance Institute in the Basque Country. Or also as an active member of the Young Democracy Forum at our school, in where a group of students follow the process of the Conference of the Future of Europe as part of our work on democracy.
Seoul National University
Soolim Kang is a first year graduate student at Seoul National University working towards a M.A. degree in Political Science and International Relations. Soolim's passion lies in international relations. She has studied abroad for four months at the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in Russian Language and Literature in 2019 from Seoul National University. Throughout her course work and study abroad program, she has found that she has talents at understanding cultures of other countries, lending her to continue in her studies to further focus on topics including but not limited to international cooperation, human rights, policy making procedure, and Russian diplomacy.
Yonsei University
Min Kyeong Jeong is a master’s student at Yonsei University, Graduate School of International Studies. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and International Relations from Yonsei, she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Global Affairs and Policy. Her two fields of concentration are International Development Cooperation, and International Security and Foreign Policy. As a Korean who grew up in Japan and studied abroad in China, she is particularly interested in the dynamics of Northeast Asian region. She wishes to contribute to overcoming historical hostilities and domestic nationalist logics in these countries for a more sustainable regional cooperation. During her undergraduate years, she had an internship at the largest newspaper media in Korea, where she came to understand the basic mechanism of the media industry as well as its relationship with the government. She also interviewed and personally assisted various economists and politicians during a global conference held in Seoul. Having been volunteering at Compassion, an international nonprofit organization, for more than 3 years, she has strong empathy for those in need. She believes more rigorous implementation of Sustainable Development Goals is necessary to alleviate poverty and build democratic capacity in less developed countries.
The Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town.
Maribe Mamabolo has over 17 years of professional experience across the public, private and civil society sectors. Having occupied senior management roles across all three sectors, Maribe has managed to accumulate an incredible array of skills and attributes in areas of Public Governance, Business Development and Youth Development. He is currently the executive manager of the Provincial Recreation Council of North West (PROREC NW), which is an organisation that renders recreational and wellness programmes to over 60 000 individuals per annum. Maribe previously served as advisor to Minister of Sports and Recreation and Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration. Maribe currently serves on the board of the Young Professionals Network, a body of the African Association of Public Administrators and Managers (AAPAM) and also on the board of the Youth Network of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). The APRM and AAPAM aim to foster the development and advancement of youth on the African continent to engage more effectively with their governments, civil society, and private sector. Maribe was selected as a Mandela Washington Fellow for 2021, a flagship of the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI). Maribe serves as an Executive Director of KUNYE Services, a large distribution company in South Africa. He is also a trustee of the Mosaic Business Trust which is part of the Mosaic Group. Mosaic is a sustainable Orphan and Vulnerable Children care model that caters for over 300 orphans in 4 sites in South Africa. Maribe obtained his master’s degree in Development Policy and Practice from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and upon completing his Mandela Washington Fellowship, he plans on completing his PhD in international development as he is passionate about partnerships across the state and non-state actors to improve participatory governance.
University of São Paulo
Matheus Tavares Poggetti is a 4th-year student of International Relations at Universidade de São Paulo – USP, in Brazil. He is also part of ODEC – Observatory of Democracy in the World, a project composed by undergraduate and graduate students of USP that analyses democracies and elections around the world under the lenses of International Relations.
The transformation of the way humans share and process information has given rise to a set of phenomena that impact the public debate and, consequently, our ability to share a common understanding of what is true. And democracies, in order to survive and thrive, require their citizens to share a modicum of shared truth.
Online anonymity and zero-cost publishing on online and social media platforms have democratised our capacity to disseminate information, yet this has also brought a larger circulation of fake news and extremist ideas. Falsehoods and polarising ideas now spread seamlessly online and have the potential to reach large portions of the population. This challenge feeds into other phenomena that also impact democracy’s capacity to thrive: a more polarised and divisive political discourse and citizen’s declining trust in their leaders and institutions.
All these challenges strike at the heart of our democracies. Aside from polarisation and political tensions, disinformation has, on occasion, impacted our ability to have free and fair elections. Furthermore, any attempt to intervene or regulate the business models and systems behind this new information flow collides with a fundamental democratic value we all uphold: freedom of expression.
What should be the basis and values of a democratic information environment able to guarantee freedom of expression, evidence-based information sharing and trust-building? In the current context of constant technological transformation, how can democracies counter disinformation, guarantee free and independent media and ensure the integrity of elections? Rethinking Democracy will offer principles and values that can guide action in balancing all issues involved in the information ecosystem of the 21st Century.
18 October 2021
04:00 PM / 10 AM EDT
Participating Working Group Members
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To a large extent, democracies thrive if their leaders respect the fundamental norms and institutions that define democratic rule. But in recent years, we have seen a rise of demagogues and populist leaders that have undermined media freedom, civil society, political opposition, judicial independence, the rule of law and electoral processes. Democracies with such leadership in power are at risk of undergoing a dragged-out democratic backsliding. In the long run, they risk becoming hybrid or outright autocratic regimes.
Democracies worldwide need responsive, responsible and reliable leaders able to help citizens recover from COVD-19 and navigate through the deep existential transformations we need to tackle sooner than later, such as digitalisation, the rollout of AI and the transition to a green economy. These leaders should also have an inclusive leadership style, as the challenges of inclusion (widening inequality, discrimination and systemic racism, the exclusion of minorities...) are many.
Considering the myriad of crises and the far-reaching transformations that we are undergoing, what kind of leadership do we need to guarantee the survival and success of democratic rule? How can we regain citizen’s trust in their leadership and institutions? Rethinking Democracy will lay out the traits and style of the leadership we need to address current and future challenges in an inclusive manner.
19 October 2021
04:30 PM / 10:30 AM EDT
Participating Working Group Members
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In several countries, we have recently witnessed systematic attempts to undermine the foundations of democratic systems. With varied degrees of success and failure, leaders and other societal actors have questioned election results for political means, destabilised the separation of powers, undermined judicial independence, disregarded the rule of law and engaged in opportunistic rhetoric against political pluralism.
Populists and authoritarian leaders despise the sort of pluralist, independent and equitable institutions that make democratic systems flourish. Democracy relies precisely on the legitimacy, credibility and strength of its institutions, principles and values. For as long as they continue to be under attack by some political and societal actors, democracy will languish. So we need to strengthen, refine and energise these institutions.
How can we strengthen institutional structures so democracy can thrive? What are the best governance practices to sustain and develop democratic government, even in the face of emergencies, such as COVID-19?
20 October 2021
04:00 PM / 10 AM EDT
Participating Working Group Members
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It is an essential part of Club de Madrid’s strategy to include youth in our activities. We see it as a fundamental step in addressing the global challenges that threaten old and young democracies alike. During the preparations of our Annual Policy Dialogue 2021 ‘Rethinking Democracy’, we have engaged university students from different regions around the world in a ‘Rethinking Democracy Challenge’. This initiative invites students to produce a white paper on the question ‘ What is your shared vision for the Future of Democracy? What would be your proposal for a New Global Agenda for Democracy?
Students have linked their papers to the main theme, described in the Concept Note, and the three sub-themes of this Policy Dialogue:
The students will present their conclusions during the Policy Dialogue in a Special Session titled ‘Youth vision for the future of Democracy’ on 29 October. 12:00 CET - 13:30 CET
Fostering responsible political leadership, media accountability, civic education, political consensus building, and local solutions to global problems are some of their key recommendations. Students will exchange perspectives on the state and future of democracy around the world and explore different routes of action and proposals to strengthen democracy in their respective countries and regions.
Session facilitated by Kim Campbell, Prime Minister of Canada
Club de Madrid is the world's largest forum of democratic former Presidents and Prime Ministers, who leverage their individual and collective leadership experience and global reach to strengthen inclusive democratic practice and improve the well-being of people around the world. As a non-partisan and international non-profit organisation, it counts on the hands-on governance experience of more than 100 Members from over 70 countries, along with a global network of advisers and partners across all sectors of society. This unique alliance stimulates dialogue, builds bridges and engages in advocacy efforts to strengthen public policies and effective leadership through recommendations that tackle challenges such as, inclusion, sustainable development and peace at the national and multilateral level.
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Club de Madrid commemorates 20 years strengthening democracy around the globe
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Take A Step Forward And Be Part Of The Change | Club de Madrid
Through its projects, studies and events, the Bertelsmann Stiftung debate and provides impetus for social change. Serving the public good and having a sustainable impact are the fundamental principles underlying its activities. The foundation’s initiatives not only generate solutions, they also provide empirically sound guidance for a broad public.
The Bertelsmann Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit think tank in Washington, DC dedicated to a strong and lasting transatlantic relationship.
As an incubator for democracy in the digital age, the Alfred Landecker Foundation promotes the development of open, democratic and discrimination-free societies via innovative and disruptive means. The foundation creates networks, spaces and knowledge by supporting a range of interdisciplinary projects. By building a network of globally active partners, it makes knowledge and experience widely available and brings together diverse perspectives from academia and practice. Projects supported by the Foundation are guided by the conviction that a democratic society cannot be taken for granted, but can only be the result of courageous and coordinated cooperation. To this end, the foundation makes expertise available to open societies and those involved in the fight for liberal democratic values. At the core of the foundation is a contemporary culture of remembrance, driven by the collapse of European civilization under National Socialism. More information on ongoing projects can be found here. By supporting a range of technologically progressive interdisciplinary projects, the foundation makes knowledge and experience widely available, brings together diverse perspectives from academia and practice and makes this expertise available to open societies and those involved in the fight for liberal democratic values.
Digital Justice Movement
The Boston Global Forum (BGF) offers a venue for leaders, strategists, thinkers and innovators to contribute to Remaking the World – Toward an Age of Global Enlightenment.
In 2019, the Boston Global Forum, in collaboration with the United Nations Academic Impact, launched the United Nations Centennial Initiative. It began with the release of a major work titled “Remaking the World – Toward an Age of Global Enlightenment”. More than twenty distinguished leaders, thinkers, strategists, and innovators put forth unprecedented approaches to the challenges that lay before the world. These contributors include President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Governor Michael Dukakis, Father of Internet Vint Cerf, Former US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Harvard University Professors Joseph Nye and Thomas Patterson, MIT Professors Nazli Choucri and Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, and MEP Eva Kaili.
The BGF introduced core concepts that are shaping groundbreaking international initiatives, most notably, the Social Contract for the AI Age, AI International Law and Accord, the Global Alliance for Digital Governance, the AI World Society (AIWS) Ecosystem, and the AIWS City.
Global Forum on Fundamental Rights in AI & Digital Societies Ends with Call for Urgent Action to build International Legal and Regulatory Frameworks:
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Global Forum on Fundamental Rights in AI & Digital Societies Highlights Central Role of United Nations Centennial Initiative:
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In Advance of International Parley, New Book Pushes for Global Accords on Artificial Intelligence:
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Book: Remaking the World – the Age of Global Enlightenment
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Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain
The Carnegie Endowment offers decisionmakers global, independent, and strategic insight and innovative ideas that advance international peace. We are over 150 thinkers and doers from diverse disciplines and perspectives spread across more than twenty countries, with centers in the United States, China, Europe, India, the Middle East, and Russia. Working together, our scholars and centers bring the inestimable benefit of multiple national viewpoints to bilateral, regional, and global issues.
The United States Institute of Peace is a national, nonpartisan, independent institute, founded by Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical and essential for U.S. and global security. In conflict zones abroad, the Institute works with local partners to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict. To reduce future crises and the need for costly interventions, USIP works with governments and civil societies to build local capacities to manage conflict peacefully. The Institute pursues its mission by linking research, policy, training, analysis and direct action to support those who are working to build a more peaceful, inclusive world.
Federal Foreign Office of Germany
The Organization of American States (OAS) is the main political forum in the region, bringing together all the independent nations of the Western Hemisphere to jointly promote democracy, strengthen human rights, promote peace, security, and cooperation and advance in achieving common interests. Since its origin, the OAS has had the main objective of preventing conflicts and providing political stability, social inclusion and prosperity in the region through dialogue and collective actions such as cooperation and mediation.
