Adriana Erthal Abdenur (Ph.D. Princeton, BA Harvard) is a Brazilian policy expert and Coordinator of the Peace & Security Division at Instituto Igarapé, a think tank based in Rio de Janeiro. She serves on the Committee for Development Policy (CDP) of the United Nations ECOSOC for the 2019-2021 term.

Michelle Bachelet took up her post in September 2018 and is the seventh United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She was previously elected President of Chile on two occasions (2006–2010 and 2014–2018) and was the first female president of the country. Since the early 1990s, Bachelet has worked closely with many international organisations. In 2011, she was named the first Director of UN Women.

Edward B. Barbier is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Economics, Colorado State University and a Senior Scholar in the School of Global Environmental Sustainability. His main expertise is natural resource and development economics as well as the interface between economics and ecology. He has consulted for a variety of national, international and non-governmental agencies, including many UN organisations, the World Bank and the OECD.

Kjell E. Berg is Director of Formcell AB - Bioren Systems. He invented and developed the BIORENSYSTEM, comprising the Living Filter and other components which effectively removes contaminants from wastewater, storm drainage and other effluents, without the addition of any chemicals, being utilised successfully in the US and Europe. He consults and advises on the use of environmentally sound systems for the purification of wastewater from residential/industrial sources, and their application in phytoremediation.

Costanza Biavaschi is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on the economics of migration, emphasizing topics such as cultural and political integration, as well as the importance of immigrant self-selection for addressing costs and benefits of labour mobility.​

Fred Carver is the Head of Policy for UNA-UK. Prior to joining the organisation, he ran the Sri Lanka Campaign for Peace and Justice, a human rights NGO. Before then he worked in local government and as a researcher and writer. He has conducted field research in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Israel and Palestine.

Valerie Cerra is an Assistant Director in the Institute for Capacity Development of the International Monetary Fund. She has provided policy advice, lending support, and training to countries around the world since 1996. Her research publications focus on international macroeconomics, inclusive growth, exchange rates, and financial crises.

Louis Charbonneau is the United Nations director at Human Rights Watch. Prior to joining HRW in 2016, he was a journalist for more than two decades in the US, Europe and Asia. His last post was as UN bureau chief for Reuters. He won several awards for his reporting on the UN. He is also working on a PhD in political science at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

Pedro Conceição is the Director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP. He has published widely on financing for development, global public goods, inequality, the economics of innovation, technological change, and development. Pedro has a degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy.

Robert G. Eccles is a Visiting Professor of Management Practice at the Säid Business School, Oxford University. He was the founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. One of his current areas of research is the relationship between investor materiality and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The President of the 73rd session of the General Assembly, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés has more than 20 years of multilateral experience in international negotiations, peace, security, defence, disarmament, human rights, indigenous peoples, gender equality, sustainable development, environment, biodiversity, climate change and multilateral cooperation. She has served Ecuador as Minister of Foreign Affairs (twice), Minister of National Defence, and Coordinating Minister of Natural and Cultural Heritage.

Vanessa Fajans-Turner is the Managing Director for SDG Financing for the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an entity that mobilises global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development. She is also an advisor to the Avatar Alliance Foundation, a climate and energy grant-making organisation established by filmmaker James Cameron. Prior to joining the Foundation, she worked for UNDP in both New York and Nigeria.

Henrietta Fore became UNICEF’s seventh Executive Director in January 2018. She has worked to champion economic development, education, health, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in a public service, private sector and non-profit leadership career that spans more than four decades. From 2007 to 2009, she served as the Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Director of United States Foreign Assistance – the first woman to serve in these roles.

Jonathan Glennie is a writer, researcher, consultant and practitioner on sustainability, poverty and human rights, looking in particular at the changing nature of development cooperation as global paradigms and relationships evolve. He has held senior positions in several international organisations and was, until recently, Director of the Sustainable Development Research Centre at Ipsos.

Martin Hearson is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, where he works with the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD). His research focuses on the politics of international business taxation, and in particular the relationship between developed and developing countries. Before joining ICTD, Martin was a fellow in international political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, teaching courses on political economy and global financial governance.

Yuan Qiong Hu is a Senior Legal and Policy Advisor for the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Access Campaign and a legal researcher at the Law, Environment and Development Centre (LEDC) at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (SOAS) and Durham University Law School in the UK.

Lysa John is Secretary-General of the CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation. She has worked on issues of governance accountability and social justice since 1998. She most recently worked with Save the Children International as their Global Campaign Director, and previously served as Head of Outreach for the UN High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Agenda. Born in India, Lysa John spent the early part of her career working on grassroots-led advocacy and large-scale campaigns, including at Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA); ‘Wada Na Todo Abhiyan’ (Don’t Break the Promise Campaign, India) and the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP).

Viktoria Kis is a policy analyst with extensive experience of vocational education and training (VET) policy. She is the lead author of 'Seven Questions about Apprenticeships: Answers from International Experience' and the co-author of two earlier comparative studies, which draw on VET reviews conducted around the world: 'Learning for Jobs' and 'Skills beyond School'.

Mukhisa Kituyi, of Kenya, is Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He has an extensive background as an elected official, academic and holder of high government office. He was Kenya's Minister of Trade and Industry from 2002 to 2007. Immediately prior to becoming Secretary-General, he was Chief Executive of the think tank and advocacy organisation Kenya Institute of Governance, based in Nairobi.

Sang-Hyop Lee is Professor of Economics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the East-West Center. He is currently chairing the Executive Committee of the National Transfer Accounts (NTA) network (www.ntaccounts.org).

As Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock oversees all emergencies requiring United Nations (UN) humanitarian assistance. He is also the focal point for governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental relief activities and leads the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, a unique coordination, policy development and decision-making forum involving key UN and non-UN humanitarian partners.

Ellen MacArthur made yachting history in 2005, when she became the fastest solo sailor to circumnavigate the globe. She remains the UK’s most successful offshore racer ever, having won the Ostar, the Route du Rhum, and finished second in the Vendée Globe. She received the French Legion of Honour from President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008, three years after having been knighted by HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Andrew Mason is Senior Fellow at the East-West Center. He is co-founder of the NTA, which now covers more than 70 countries in Asia, North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific.

Adam is the Director of Ethics and Engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, Co-Chair of the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) and a Board Member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC). He also led the negotiations with Royal Dutch Shell resulting in the Joint Investor-Shell climate statement.

Lauren McGivern is a third year medical student at The University of Edinburgh. She is currently undertaking her intercalated BMedSci degree in Global Health Policy. Her research is on gender based projects at The World Bank.

Fiona McRaith is the Research Analyst to the President and CEO of the World Resources Institute. In this role, she helps to curate and communicate the research from across the institute to contribute to the real-world impact of the programs. She formerly interned with the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. Prior to working at WRI, Fiona was a student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women, sworn into office on 19 August 2013. She has worked in government, private sector and civil society and was actively involved in the struggle to end apartheid in her home country of South Africa

Florencia Montagnini is a Senior Research Scientist at Yale University, School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (F&ES), and she is also Director of the Program in Tropical Forestry and Agroforestry at Yale. She has written ten books and some 200 scientific articles. She teaches courses in tropical forest ecology and management, soil science, agroforestry, and landscape restoration. She also works as a consultant advising projects related to her expertise in tropical forestry, agroforestry and rural development worldwide.

Patricia Moreira is Managing Director of Transparency International. Before joining Transparency International in 2017, she spent 13 years at Ayuda en Acción, a Spanish aid organisation, where she was CEO from 2009. Patricia has also worked as an international management consultant, specialising in technology, innovation and impact. She holds an MBA from INSEAD, France and a BA in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ambar Narayan is a lead economist at the World Bank where he advises teams conducting policy analysis, evaluations and research in development from a microeconomic perspective. Topics that he works on include inequality of opportunity, economic mobility, policy evaluation, structural and spatial transformation, and the welfare impacts of economic shocks.

Cécile Riallant is a senior migration and development expert with 22 years of experience having worked across diverse contexts and countries. She currently leads the Migration and Sustainable Development Unit at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) after having led a UN global programme on migration and development for UNDP. She was trained as a political scientist and holds a Master of Science from the London School of Economics.

Pallavi Roy is a lecturer in International Economics at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS. She is Co-Research Director for DFID’s Anti-Corruption Evidence research partnership consortium. Her research interests include the political economy of inclusive growth in developing countries, governance and corruption, Institutional Economics and modern South Asian History.

Currently Deputy Director-General for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Maria Helena Semedo is an economist and politician from Cape Verde. A strong advocate on the importance of food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture to tackle hunger and poverty, Semedo gives voice to the most vulnerable communities around the world, especially the rural poor and women.

Devi Sridhar is a Professor at the University of Edinburgh Medical School and holds a Personal Chair in Global Public Health. She is the founding Director of the Global Health Governance Programme and holds a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award. She was previously Associate Professor in Global Health Politics and a Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford University and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University.

Andrew Steer is the President and CEO of the World Resources Institute, a global research organisation whose 950+ experts work in more than 80 countries, with offices in Brazil, China, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He joined WRI from the World Bank, where he served as Special Envoy for Climate Change from 2010-2012. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Director General at the UK Department of International Development in London.

Achim Steiner became UNDP Administrator in June 2017. He also chairs the UN Development Group, which unites the 32 UN funds, programmes, specialised agencies and other bodies that work to support sustainable development. Steiner has served across the United Nations system and led the United Nations Environment Programme from 2006 to 2016

Rory Sullivan is Co-Founder and Director, Chronos Sustainability, Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Chief Technical Advisor to the Transition Pathway Initiative. He is an internationally recognised expert on climate finance and responsible investment. He is the author/editor of eight books and of many papers and reports on these and related issues.

Dirk Willem te Velde is a Principal Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, specialising in trade, investment and economic transformation. His work has featured in the media, including the BBC, Economist and the Financial Times. He has advised bilateral and multilateral agencies, government ministers and parliaments. He holds a PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London.

Katherine Trebeck is Policy and Knowledge Lead for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. She is a political economist with over eight years’ experience with Oxfam GB (including developing their Humankind Index). She sits on a range of advisory boards and holds several academic affiliations. Katherine instigated the Wellbeing Economy Governments partnership and her book The Economics of Arrival (with Jeremy Williams: Policy Press) was published in 2019.

Roy van der Weide is a Senior Economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank. He recently assumed the responsibility of leading the poverty and inequality mapping research within the department. His other research is concerned with inequality of opportunity and poverty reduction. His work has been published in a range of academic journals including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Econometrics, the Journal of Applied Econometrics, and the World Bank Economic Review.

Susan L. Woodward is professor of political science at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Author of The Ideology of Failed States: Why Intervention Fails (Cambridge 2017), Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Brookings Press, 1995), and Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia, 1945-1990 (Princeton University Press, 1995), she is a specialist on the Balkans and on UN peacekeeping.

Liu Zhenmin has more than 30 years of experience in the diplomatic service, with a strong focus on the promotion of bilateral, regional and global issues. He was deeply involved for ten years in climate change negotiations including the conclusion of the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.