Mustapha Ben Jaafar is the elected President of the National Constituent Assembly of Tunisia. He is the president of the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties (FDTL - Ettakatol), a political party that he founded in 1994. He was also elected in January 2013 Honorary President of the Socialist International.

Ben Jaafar was born in 1940 in Tunis. He attended Sadiki College and then studied medicine in France to become a radiologist. In 1970 he returned to Tunisia, joined the University of Tunis's medical faculty and worked at the university hospital where he was also the Chief of the Radiology Department at the Rabta Hospital.

In 1976 he was one of the founders of a weekly opinion magazine and an organization that evolved into the Tunisian League of Human Rights (LTDH). In 1978 he was part of the founding group of the Movement of Socialist Democrats (MDS). The MDS became one of the largest opposition parties in the early nineties. Ben Jaafar resigned as the secretary-general of the MDS in 1992 and founded in 1994 the FDTL-Ettakatol. The new party was not legally recognized until 2002. He was a founding member in 1998 of the Tunisian National Council of Liberties. Ben Jaafar attempted to run for the presidency in 2009 as the FDTL candidate against Ben Ali but was disqualified.

After the revolution that led to the departure of Ben Ali, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi included Ben Jaafar as Minister of Health in an interim government beginning 17 January 2011. Along with other party members, Ben Jaafar refused to join as protests continued against the continued dominance of the former ruling party RCD in government. Ben Jaafar's party, FDTL- Ettakatol, was placed fourth in the October 2011 elections to the Constituent Assembly, and Ben Jaafar was elected as President of the Constituent Assembly.

Jorge I. Domínguez is Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico, vice provost for international affairs, special advisor for international studies to the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, and chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He is the author or editor of various books, among them Cuban Economic and Social Development: Policy Reforms and Challenges in the 21st Century; Debating U.S.-Cuban Relations: Shall We Play Ball?; Contemporary U.S.-Latin American Relations: Cooperation or Conflict in the 21st Century?; La política exterior de Cuba, 1962-2009; Consolidating Mexico’s Democracy: The 2006 Presidential Campaign in Comparative Perspective; The United States and Mexico: Between Partnership and Conflict, 2nd ed.; Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America, 3rd ed.; The Construction of Democracy: Lessons from Practice and Research; Between Compliance and Conflict: East Asia, Latin America, and the "New" Pax Americana; Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean; Technopols: Freeing Politics and Markets in Latin America in the 1990s, and many other books and articles on domestic and international politics in Latin America and the Caribbean. A past president of the Latin American Studies Association and a past board chairman of the Latin American Scholarship Program of American Universities, he currently serves on the editorial boards of Political Science Quarterly, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica, Cuban Studies, Foro internacional, and Journal of Cold War Studies. He was series editor for the Peabody Award-winning Public Broadcasting System television series Crisis in Central America. His current research focuses on the international relations and domestic politics of Latin American countries. For more information, visit http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~jidoming.

Dr. Mo Ibrahim is a global expert in mobile communications with a distinguished academic and business career. He was the founder of Celtel International, one of Africa's leading mobile telephone companies.

In 2006, Dr Ibrahim established the Mo Ibrahim Foundation to support good governance and great leadership on the African continent. The Foundation focuses on two major initiatives to stimulate debate around, and improve the quality of, governance in Africa. The Ibrahim Index of African Governance provides civil society and governments with a comprehensive and quantifiable tool to assess governance and promote accountability. The Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership recognises and celebrates excellence.

Dr Ibrahim is also Founding Chairman of Satya Capital Limited, an investment fund focused on Africa.

Dr Ibrahim was listed by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

He has also received numerous honorary degrees and fellowships from a range of academic institutions. These include honorary doctorates from Imperial College, the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), and the University of Pennsylvania, and honorary fellowships at the Royal College of Engineers, London Business School and Cornell University. Dr Ibrahim is the also the recipient of a number of awards including: The Chairman’s Award for Lifetime Achievement from the GSM Association in 2007; The Economist Innovation Award 2007 for Social & Economic Innovation; Ordre national du Burkina Faso (Officier) and the BNP Paribas Prize for Philanthropy in 2008.

Mehdi Al Amine Fichtali is a Director at the Dubai-based Investment Bank boutique deNovo Corporate Advisors. He has shared his time last year between Dubai and Washington DC, where he was a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), conducting research and lecturing on the economic and business challenges facing the Arab Awakening.

Fichtali was born and raised in Casablanca. After his graduation from HEC Paris, Europe's top business school, he pursued his education with 'Institut des Etudes Politiques' (Sciences Po Paris) where he got a Masters in International Relations, focusing on the Arab world. Most recently, he went to University of California, Berkeley for an Executive Leadership Program. He spent more than ten years in Paris where he studied and started his professional career that led him to London and then to Dubai in 2005.

Fichtali has a private sector professional background. He spent the last twelve years as an investment banker working for Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley before founding deNovo with his colleagues. He has long had an interest in the economic and the business world and how it interacts with the political and social spheres.

Throughout his career, Fichtali advised large corporations, state-owned firms, sovereign wealth funds, and governments in the Middle East and North Africa on their risk management. He had the opportunity to meet several senior officials and directors of sovereign wealth funds, and often his work took into account economic policies and social issues. Being close to these centers of power helped him understand, in each country, how the political sphere interacts with economic and social forces and uses the powerful state-owned companies as levers to shape economic development.

 Khaled Al Hroub is Professor in Residence of the faculty of Liberal Arts at Northwestern University in Qatar. His focus is Middle Eastern studies and Arab media studies. Hroub is also a senior research fellow at the Centre of Islamic Studies of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, where he is the director of Cambridge Arab Media Project (CAMP).

He authored Hamas: A Beginners Guide (2006/2010), Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (2000), and edited Political Islam: Context versus Ideology (2011) and Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East (2012). In Arabic he published Fragility of Ideology and Might of Politics (2010), In Praise of Revolution (2012), Tattoo of Cities (literary collection, 2008) and Enchantress of Poetry (poems, 2008). Currently he is writing a book on a Critique of the Arab Renaissance Project.

Between 2000 and 2007 he was the host of a weekly book review program on Al Jazeera. His academic writings appeared in Middle East Journal, Middle East International, Journal for Palestine Studies, \'Shu\'un Arabyya\' (Cairo), Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Holy Land Studies Journal, New Global Studies, The International Spectator (Rome), Outre Terre (Paris), Internationale Politik (Berlin). His weekly article appears in six Arab dailies (Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, UAE, Oman, Palestine, Mauritania and the UK); he has also been published in the Daily Star, International Herald Tribune, El Pais and La Razon, and is a frequent writer for OpenDemocracy.com and Qantara.de.

Maryam al-Khawaja is currently the Acting President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. Al-Khawaja is also the Co-Director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights. In Bahrain, al-Khawaja has played an instrumental role around the national movement for greater rights and political participation. She is the daughter of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, the founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, who went on a 110 day hunger strike to protest his conditions and sentence. Although she has since left Bahrain to play her role in the BCHR and to avoid harassment, she remains very connected to events on the ground and has emerged as a leading voice for human rights and political reform in Bahrain and the Gulf region. She has been influential in the media and other public forums in the conversation around Bahrain and the changes in the wider region.

Ibrahim Al-Safadi, Mr. Al-Safadi is a board member and CEO for Luminus Group. He is the brainchild behind the transformation of Al-Quds College and is the mastermind behind driving new standards of education and training services to ensure the highest quality of international programs. He transferred the college from a theoretical learning environment to a practical one.

In 2006 Mr. Al-Safadi restructured Luminus Group to be in line with the economic boom in Jordan and the region and began an international acquisition and certification strategy for Luminus Education.

His charisma, energy, passion and desire to excel are electric and evident across all the business units he comes into contact with.

 Natalie E. Brown, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, has served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia since July 21, 2010. She joined the Foreign Service in 1990 and her previous overseas assignments include service as Economic Counselor in Amman, Jordan; Political Chief in Kuwait City, Kuwait; language student at the Foreign Service Institute’s Arabic Field School in Tunis, Tunisia; Political/Economic/Consular Officer in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and General Services Officer in Conakry, Guinea. Domestically, Ms. Brown has twice served in the Operations Center and was one on the Senior Watch Officers on duty on September 11, 2001; was the Desk Officer for Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger; and worked on international justice and non-proliferation issues in the Office of UN Political Affairs. She is the recipient of several U.S. Department of State awards.

Ms. Brown earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a concentration in comparative studies of Africa and Western Europe from Georgetown University’s Edmund E. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From 1998-1999, she was one of two State Department Officers assigned to the Marine Corps Command and Staff College where she earned a Master of Science degree in Military Studies.

Ms. Brown is a member of 2007-2008 fellows class of the International Women’s Forum Leadership Foundation and an alumna of the International Career Advancement Program of the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. She is from Omaha, Nebraska, but resides in Arlington, Virginia. Her two dogs, Cashmere and Riko, who was adopted in Kuwait, travel with her.

Raghida Dergham is Columnist and Senior Diplomatic Correspondent for the London-based Al Hayat since 1989. Dergham is also the Founder and Executive Chairman of Beirut Institute, an independent nonpartisan Arab Think Tank.

An authority on strategic international relations, Raghida Dergham is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and an Honorary Fellow at the Foreign Policy Association. She is on the International Media Council of the World Economic Forum, and is also a member of the Development Advisory Committee of the IAP- the Global Network of Science Academies.

Dergham is Contributing Editor for LA Times Syndicate Global Viewpoint, Contributor to The Huffington Post and has frequently contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune and Newsweek and was Political Analyst for NBC, MSNBC and the Arab satellite LBC for eight years.

Dergham is a frequent lecturer at Universities, Think Tanks and Business Councils throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. She spoke at Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Georgetown among other distinguished universities. Dergham is a frequent participant in Policy conferences worldwide and a regular contributor to The World Economic Forum at Davos, the Dead Sea, Sharm El Sheikh, Marrakech, Istanbul and Vienna. She is a regular participant in the Nobel Laureates conference in Petra and in the Media Summits in Abu Dhabi.

Dr. Dergham is in SUNY's Hall of Fame as a Distinguished Alumna and has received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in 2003 from SUNY. She is also the recipient of numerous lifetime achievement awards.

Served as Under Secretary General at UN, Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission of Western Asia.

Chairman of the Export Development Bank of Egypt.

Professor of Economics at the University of Alexandria Egypt.

Contributed to many ereas of economics ,in particular, the concept of the" Rentier State Economy".

 Mohamed El Dahshan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Development, and a commentator based in Cairo. He is also a lecturer at Ain Shams University in Cairo.

As a writer and analyst, Mohamed contributes to to a wide array of publications and has been published in the New York Times, Foreign Policy Magazine, the Guardian, Yale Global, Al-Masry Al-Youm (by example) on the Middle East, economic development, and technology. He also co-authored “Tahrir Diaries”, a collective memoir of the 18 days of the Egyptian 2011 revolution, and wrote an award-winning essay, published in Arab Spring Dreams <http://www.amazon.com/Arab-Spring-Dreams-Generation-Freedom/dp/0230115926/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_7> . He recently presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, on "Millennials" in the Middle East.

Prior to his fellowship at Harvard, where he focuses on fostering entrepreneurship in the developing world, Mohamed worked for international organisations including the African Development Bank in Tunis and the United Nations Development Programme in Jerusalem and Ramallah, as well as national governments in the Middle East.

In 2011 Mohamed received an Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Journalism Award for his coverage and analysis of the Egyptian revolution for traditional and social media. He is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Sciences-Po Paris, and Cairo University.

Ahmed el-Gaili (Vice-president of the Harvard Arab Alumni Association (HAAA)) is a Partner at the Middle East offices of Vinson & Elkins LLP, an international law firm. His practice areas are project development and financing, M&A, private equity and joint ventures. He was previously a Senior Associate Attorney at the London offices of Sullivan & Cromwell and prior to that an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley\'s Global Energy Group in New York. He received a Juris Doctorate, cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2003 and a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, in Economic Development Studies from Harvard College in 1998. While at Harvard College he served as President of the Society of Arab Students (SAS) and was a founding organizer of the Intercollegiate Arab Students Conference (IASC). He was the founding President of Justice for Palestine (JFP) while at HLS.

Nakhle El Hage is the Director of News and Current Affairs at Al Arabiya News Channel. Al Arabiya is a 24hr news network that runs a global network of correspondents and reporters with bureaus in major cities in the Arab World, Europe and USA. Al Arabiya has become a major credible source to its viewers for breaking news, interviews and exclusives.

El Hage joined MBC Group in 1991 in London as chief sub-editor of news. He was the first Arab news editor in a Pan-Arab satellite channel and was among the first to contribute in Arabizing technology in the news business. In 2002, he supervised the move of MBC from its headquarters in London to Dubai and contributed in setting up the work flow of news in MBC and later in Al Arabiya. At the inception of Al Arabiya, he established the department of Current Affairs and was responsible for the launching of 15 different programs. In July 2004, he became Director of News and Current Affairs bringing a wealth of experience in politics and culture to the news.

Before joining MBC Group, El Hage started his career in radio as editor and presenter for Voice of Lebanon (VOL) radio station in Beirut. He later moved to television becoming a reporter for Tele Liban covering the Lebanese war.

Tarik Mohamed Yousef was appointed in March 2011 as Chief Executive Officer of Silatech, a social initiative for youth employment and entrepreneurship in the Arab world.

He began his career in 1997 as an economist at the International Monetary Fund, and joined the faculty of Georgetown University in 1999, where he held the positions of Associate Professor of Economics in the School of Foreign Service and Sheikh Sabah Al Salem Al Sabah Chair of Arab Studies at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Between 2006 and 2010, he served as the Founding Dean of the Dubai School of Government and nonresident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He co-founded the Middle East Youth Initiative at the Brookings Institution in 2007, where he has since served as nonresident Senior Fellow.

He received his PhD in economics from Harvard University. An expert on youth inclusion and policy  reform in the Arab world, he has contributed over 50 articles and chapters, and co-edited several volumes and reports.

His policy experience includes working at the African and Middle East Departments of the International Monetary Fund, the Middle East and North Africa Region at World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Millennium Project at the UN. At present, he is nonresident Senior Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy at the American University in Beirut; Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum; member of the MENA Advisory Panel at the World Bank; and, Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Arab World, 2011-2013.

He is a regular media commentator, public speaker and advisor to international institutions, governments and corporations on Middle Eastern affairs.

Said Ferjani is a senior member of the political Bureau of Nahdha; a member of the Communication Bureau of Nahdha, and a member of the International Relations department of Nahdha.  Ferjani is a former political prisoner, forced into exile in the UK for 22 yrs during the Ben Ali era.  He is a former member of the executive bureau of Nahdha from 1992 till 2000; a former member of the Shoura council for Nahdha; Secretary General of 'Islam and Modernity Forum': intellectual debate. He is an Human Rights Activist and leading founder of AISPPT (Association Internationale de soutien pour les prisoniers politiques) and leading founder of Families Relief UK (International Charity Organisation).  He is  the former Vice Chair of MINAB (Mosques and Imams Advisory Board, UK); former Head of Policy, Media and PR of the Muslim Association of Britain and former advisor and consultant to the Ministry of Justice.

Based in Tunisia, Adel Goucha is a member of the team that manages The Abraaj Group’s investments in the Middle East and North Africa. He led the investments with Opalia Pharma, Unimed Pharma, PEC and Moulin d\'Or in Tunisia.

Before joining The Abraaj Group, he led the MENA coverage team at Natexis Pramex International. He previously worked in sales for Prudential Bache Securities.

Mr Goucha graduated in Business Administration from the Institut des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, Tunisia and holds a Master’s in Economics and International Finance from the University of Paris Dauphine.

Pr Ghazi GHERAIRI is a lecturer-researcher in public law and political science at the Faculty of Judicial, Political and Social Sciences of Tunis, University of Carthage.  He also teaches at L'institut diplomatique de Tunis and at Tunis School of politics.

He is also:
-Secretary-General of the International Academy of Constitutional law
-Vice President of the International Association of Legal Methodology
-Member and spokesmen of the high instance of realization of the achievement of the revolution’s goals, of political reform and of democratic transition
- Member of the editorial board of the newspaper Le Maghreb
- General Coordinator of the Averroès Foundation for democracy and progress

He published several papers on public administration systems, constitutional law, competition law, arbitration, dispute resolution and public international law.

Until Tunisian Revolution, Cyril Grislain Karray was a Global Partner at McKinsey & Co where he led its Rio de Janeiro Office and its Latin American Transformation, Organization, Governance, Family Successions and Leadership Development Practice.

As a McKinsey Partner he led or was involved in consulting projects to governments, business and NGO leaders across all continents on a wide spectrum of impacting strategies and transformation programs.
In particular, Cyril worked intensively on national economic development, education strategies and leadership development in private and public institutions as well as has been a personal coach for several corporate, familly or public leaders.

Since January 2011, he is deeply involved in the Tunisian Revolution, advising and acting on political, economical, social and educational grounds. He is also particularly close to the Tunisian youth, lectures in universities, participates in MBA jury, etc

Author of best selling book, first transformation program wrote for the new Tunisia: “La prochaine guerre en Tunisie – La victoire en 5 batailles” (www.ceresbookshop.com <http://www.ceresbookshop.com> ), Cyril dedicated one of his five battle to 'A diploma is good, a job is better', exploring issues, bottleneck and solutions for the high unemployability of Tunisian Youth. A diagnostic and recipe that is applicable in large parts to the arab world. 

Cyril is also a Business Angel, an Advisor and a Board Member.

Amel is the President of the Tunisian American Chamber of Commerce. In this capacity, she was elected Chair of the MENA AmCham Council in July 2011. On the regional level, Amel is also the Vice- President of the Middle East North Africa Business Women's Network. Amel is also a member of the International Policy Committee of the US Chamber of Commerce.

Amel is the Chair of the Tunisia PNB-NAPEO Advisory Board, aiming to identifying regional and national economic opportunity priorities and to initiating sustained efforts to address these priorities and acting as the main partner for the Aspen Institute. She is also a member of the PNB-NAPEO International Advisory Board.

Amel Bouchamaoui Hammami was the First Vice President of the Chambre Nationale des Femmes Chefs d'Entreprises, Tunisia (CNFCE) and the CNFCE Executive Manager of the Project 'Private Public Partnership' in collaboration with Vital Voices and MEPI with the objective of creating an Artisan Center in Tunisia (April- December 2010).

She is an active member of a family holding involved in the Oil and Gas Industry from the exploration phase till the production (up-stream activities) in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria as well as in new projects in the renewable energy sector. Amel is currently the Chairperson of HBG Holding, is a holding aiming to develop the family group activities in different sectors of the industry and distribution locally and in the region.

Graduate of the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida , Amel speaks Arabic, French & English, with primary notions of Italian. She is married and has two daughters.

Dr. Hegazy has over 15 years of legal experience over 15 years of legal experience representing and advising clients on transactions and disputes involving the commercial laws and regulations of many Middle East countries, including: Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Libya. Walid's main areas of expertise include, Islamic banking and finance, project financing, corporate restructuring and corporate governance. Walid has S.J.D. (Doctor of Juridical Science) and LL.M. degrees from Harvard Law School. In 2011, Walid was named to the "Leading Lawyer 50" in the area of Islamic Finance by Lawyer Monthly Magazine. Before launching Hegazy & Associates, Dr. Hegazy was heading the Islamic Finance Practice Group at the international law firm of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. The other international law firms at which Dr. Hegazy practiced law include: Fulbright & Jaworski (Houston, TX), Baker & McKenzie (Riyadh, KSA), White & Case (New York), Groupe Monassier (Paris), formerly known as "Monassier & Agassi", and Zaki Hashem (Cairo). Walid is the Vice President of the Harvard Law School Association of Arabia.

With more than 30 years of experience in international banking and finance, he has firmly established Swicorp's reputation as an innovative provider of business solutions and developed Swicorp into a unique investment banking firm active in the MENA region with focus on financial endeavors (financial engineering, privatizations, mergers & acquisitions, project financing and related investment banking activities) and one of the largest private equity firms in the region.

Before founding Swicorp in 1987, Mr Lazaar was Vice-President at Citibank in North Africa and Saudi Arabia, and was part of the Citibank team that founded the Saudi-American Bank (Samba) in Saudi Arabia. Mr Lazaar holds a Masters of Business Administration in Finance from the Institut Supérieur de Gestion in Tunis and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Tunis.

Mr. Lazaar is a philanthropist, collector of contemporary Arab art and a very active advocate of the promotion of Arab art and culture through the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. He is the initiator of the largest visual art magazine in the region, Ibraaz, as well as the founder of the Maghreb Economic Forum (MEF), a think tank whose objective is the economic integration of the Maghreb countries.

Fares Mabrouk is Director at the Arab Policy Institute, a Tunis based "Think Tank” ,dedicated to develop and promote innovative policy solutions and reforms. Fares previously ran a number of companies based in North Africa focused on mobile banking and oil logistics. Fares is visiting professor at Sciences-Po Paris. In 2010, he was selected as Yale World Fellow. Fares obtained a Master degree in Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to that, he graduated in Economics and Statistics from the ‘’Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’administration Economique, Paris’’. 

Aziz Mebarek is an engineer graduated from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris) in 1987. After a short period with SITEP as principal engineer in El Borma (Tunisia), Aziz Mebarek joined the leading Tunisian steel manufacturing group Tunisacier/Ilva Maghreb between 1987 and 1991, first in the production part, then as assistant to the President of the Group. There, he had the opportunity to steer the industrial and financial restructuring, and finally the handover of the company to the Italian public conglomerate ILVA. Between 1991 and 1994, he was General Manager and Board member of both companies.

In 1994, , Aziz cc-founded the financial group Africinvest Tuninvest, specialised on private equity and financial advisory services. In that context, he took part to M&A transactions, IPO’s, and played a leading role in the launching of altogether 12 private equity funds covering Tunisia, Maghreb and several countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. The total funds raised amounts to about USD 700 million. He also served as board, executive committee, audit and credit committee member of several financial institutions, of companies operating in the industrial or services sectors in the Maghreb region, as well as in Sub-Saharan African countries and in Europe. He also took part in the launch of several start ups, the turnaround and development of few others.
Aziz Mebarek is co-founder and former Vice-Chairman of the African Venture Capital Association (AVCA), located in Nairobi. He is co-founder of the Tunisian French High school Alumni (ATUGE Tunisia). He also participated to the Tunisian university pilot project « IPEST » and was member of the first scientific council of the Polytechnic School of Tunisia.

Taufiq Rahim is Executive Director of Globesight, an advisory firm for strategy in emerging markets and complex political environments. He is also the Co-founder of Project Encounter, a UAE-based non-profit initiative that promotes constructive engagement between the Middle East and West. He blogs regularly on TheGeopolitico.com and is a regular contributor to regional and international media. He has served as an Expert Advisor to the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (ahead of the Doha Forum), was a Fellow at the Dubai School of Government and sat on the Steering Group for the Project on Cultural Dialogue & International Security at Chatham House.  In 2012, he was named one of the Top 99 Under 33 Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.  Taufiq has worked across four continents with public, private and social sector organizations, including past experience with McKinsey & Company’s Middle East office, the Aga Khan Foundation, the United Nations Political Office in Lebanon, and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. Taufiq received a Master’s in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He obtained his A.B. from Princeton University.

Dr. Triki started his teaching career at HEC Paris (France). He then joined the University of Tunis as a Professor of Marketing and International Business. In 1977, he was appointed Dean of the Higher Institute of Management (ISG) in Tunis. In 1981, he founded and directed for a six-year-period the “Mission Universitaire et Scientifique de Tunisie” (MUST) in Washington D.C. MUST is a “Technology Transfer Project” between Tunisia and North America under which more than eight hundred engineers were trained in some of the best North American universities. In 1993, Dr. Triki founded a consulting firm (PRO-INVEST) specialized in education and vocational training. By the year 2003, Pro-Invest became the leading Tunisian institution in its area of specialization. At the national level, Dr. Triki organized the first “National Export Day” for the “Tunisian Export Federation” (FEDEX). He undertook a number of research projects and carried out various consulting assignments related to the development of Tunisian exports. At the international level, Dr. Triki conducted several training seminars on Export Promotion for the International Trade Centre UNCTAD/GATT in a number of countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. He has carried out consulting assignments related to the development of educational institutions for the World Bank (Egypt, Sudan and Saudi Arabia). Since 2002, Dr. Triki devoted his efforts to the founding and development of South Mediterranean University (SMU), a regional private institution established in Tunis (Tunisia) and organizing its programs in English.

He has been decorated by the National Order of the Republic for his contributions to the development of the Tunisian economy.

Dr. Mahmoud Triki received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri, his MBA from the American University, Washington D.C., and his PhD from the Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio (1973). Prior to starting his teaching career, he joined the one-year International Teachers Program (ITP) at the Harvard Business School (Boston, Mass.). Dr. Triki is married and father of a son and two daughters.

Dirk is a Partner in McKinsey’s Dubai Office. He co-leads McKinsey’s public sector work in Europe, the Middle East and Africa with a focus on education, economic development and government reform. Dirk is also a former Fellow of the McKinsey Global Institute that leads McKinsey's high profile economic research efforts. He holds a Ph.D in Economics and Finance from the University of Muenster, Germany. Selected recent projects include:

*Designing and implementing the worldwide largest effort to grow and improve the national vocational education and training sector of a major MENA country
*Restructuring of a major K-12 system in EMEA
*Leading various labor market reform projects in the GCC
*Designing of national and sectoral development strategies for various major countries in EMEA with a focus on increasing competitiveness and job creation

Amira Yahyaoui is the founder and president of the tunisian NGO Al Bawsala. 

For the past decade, Amira Yahyaoui was a fierce activist aigaint Ben Ali\'s regime as a member of the tunisian anti-censorship & freedom of speech movement, she has been banned from the country for 5 years. Following the revolution in early 2011, she continues to focus on human rights with an emphasis on constitutional rights. Amira was Sawt Mostakel candidate in the Tunisian election earlier this fall, as a head of the youngest independent list.

Amira is currently the president of Al Bawsala, a tunisian NGO working on promoting human rights in Tunisia by repositioning citizens at the core of political action and by defending the concepts of social progress and human rights.
Al Bawsala oversees the tunisian constituent assembley. The organization has won the OpenGov award for transparency.

She won the Vital Voices global trailblazer award as "Women Transforming the Middle East and North Africa" and has been ranked by arabian business magazine as the most influential tunisian.