ABOUT D @ G

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Christopher Dowswell

Director for Strategic Planning and Program Coordination, Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) and Sasakawa Africa Fund for Education (SAFE).

All his career, Christopher Dowswell has been active in the area of agriculture, specializing first in agricultural communication, at institutions such as the international Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), and the international Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) where he was communication coordinator and Head, Information Services. For the last 15 years, Christopher Dowswell has occupied different responsibilities at the Sasakawa Africa Association, as Special Assistant to the President of the Association, Norman Borlaug, and as Director for Program Coordination. Increasingly, Christopher Dowswell is involved in strategic planning in agriculture, while continuing to be an active writer on agriculture, rural development and natural resource management.

Christopher Dowswell, an American National who lives in Mexico, studied at the University of Colorado in Boulder where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. He has a Master of Science in Agricultural & Resource Economics of the Colorado State University at Ft. Collins.

Christine Eibs Singer

Deputy Executive Director, E+Co

Christine Eibs Singer has more than 25 years experience in the design and implementation of public-private partnerships. Ms. Singer has been with E+Co since its inception. Her responsibilities include partner and investor relations, fund-raising and strategic planning. Ms. Singer played an integral role in the design and implementation of the United Nations Foundation REED (Rural Energy Enterprise Development) programs with UNEP. Ms. Singer spent more than 10 years at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, concentrating on the development of public-private partnerships. She served as the Manager of the World Trade Institute, an international business education center training over 6000 professionals per year worldwide. Ms. Singer received a BA from Douglass College and an MA in Public Policy, with Honors, from the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

Jean F. Freymond

Director, D@G

Jean Freymond has developed, and experienced with new approaches in capacity development, problem solving, and conflict transformation, focusing on countries under stress and countries affected by conflict, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the African Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa Regions, as well as several countries in West Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Jean Freymond served as Director, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations (CASIN), which he founded in 1979. He heads Dialogues Geneva (D@G), which aim is to create the conditions for stakeholders to address and to solve complex and conflictual societal issues. He is the initiator of the Network for Governance, Entrepreneurship & Development (GE&D), which objective is to simultaneously foster entrepreneurship and create the conditions for enhancing the capacity of public administration through innovative capacity development. Prior to his appointment as Director of CASIN, Jean Freymond has held several academic positions at the Colegio de Mexico, the Institute of International Relations of the University of the West Indies, in Trinidad and Tobago, and as co-director of the Diplomacy Training Programme of the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. He is also a co-founder and the Executive Director of the Business Humanitarian Forum (BHF).

Victor Yves Ghebali

Honorary Professor, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland.

Member of the Institute faculty since 1980; Mr. Ghebali became full professor in 1990. He is Scientific Director of the collections "Axes" and "Organisation internationale et relations internationales" as well as Director of the OSCE Cluster (Swiss contribution to the Partnership for Peace programme). His Research interests concentrate on the League of Nations and the United Nations, East-West relations, the OSCE, the Mediterranean, as well as national minorities. His published work includes: La diplomatie de la détente and L'OSCE dans l'Europe post communiste.

Blanca Heredia

Director of the Mexican Office of the Organisation for Economic and Development Cooperation (OECD).

Blanca Heredia has foremost an academic career. Besides being engaged in research, she has been actively in managing and leading academic institutions as Academic Secretary of the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE), in Mexico, and as Vice-Rector of the American University in Paris. She was also Director of the Centro para el Desarrollo Democrático of the Mexicanl Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE).

Blanca Heredia, a Mexican National, studied international relations at the Colegio de México and has a Doctorate in Political Science of Columbia University.

Hans R. Herren

President, Millennium Institute (MI)

Hans Herren, was appointed MI's president in May 2005. Prior to joining MI, he was director-general of the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Nairobi, Kenya. He also served as director of the Africa Biological Control Center of International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in Benin. At ICIPE, Hans developed and implemented programs in the area of human, animal, plant and environmental health (the 4-H paradigm) as they relate to insect issues. At IITA, he conceived and implemented the highly successful biological control program that saved the African cassava crop, and averted Africa's worst-ever food crisis. Over the years, Hans has moved his interests toward integrated sustainable development, in particular, linking environmental, plant, animal, and human health issues. Hans co-chairs the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development. He is a member of the CGIAR Science Council, President of BioVision and President: of the International Association of Plant Protection Sciences.
web: http://www.millennium-institute.org

Philip LaRocco

Executive Director, E+Co

Mr. LaRocco, E+Co's founder and Executive Director, brings over 25 years experience in international business and project development. Since 1990, he has focused solely on creating energy enterprises in developing countries and the refinement of the "enterprise centered model" of development. Mr. LaRocco was formerly Director of World Trade and Economic Development for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where he oversaw the NY World Trade Center, a network of international offices and a portfolio of local economic development projects. In addition to his duties as E+Co's CEO, Mr. LaRocco concentrates on innovative financing mechanisms. In August 2006, Mr. LaRocco received an Honorary Award for his contribution to the sector from the World Renewable Energy Congress (WREC) during the WREC IX Congress in Florence, Italy.

John Maresca

Ambassador, Rector of the United Nations University for Peace; Founder and President, Business Humanitarian Forum Association (BHF)

Ambassador Maresca was a career American diplomat, and Ambassador to several multilateral organizations and negotiations, as well as a conflict mediator in the Caucasus and Mediterranean regions. He negotiated a number of landmark international agreements, including the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, and was sent as Special Envoy to open U.S. relations with the newly independent States from the former USSR. Maresca served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense, and was chief of staff for two Secretary Generals of NATO. After leaving the Diplomatic Service, Maresca was Vice President of a major worldwide energy company and President of an international research institute. Ambassador Maresca has published widely on issues of international relations, conflict prevention, economic development and corporate social responsibility. He is a frequent visiting lecturer and has been a featured speaker in more than thirty countries. Ambassador Maresca was born in Italy and educated at Yale University and the London School of Economics.

Carmen Moreno

Director, United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW)

Graduate in international relations from El Colegio de Mexico, Carmen Moreno has spent most of her career at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Mexico where she served as Director General for Multilateral Economic Relations, (1980-1988), Director General for Regional Organizations in the Americas (1988-1989) and Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of Mexico responsible for the United Nations, Africa and the Middle East (1998-2000). Abroad, she was Ambassador of Mexico to Costa Rica (1989-1994), then Permanent Representative of Mexico to the Organization of American States (1995-1998). In this last capacity, she presided over the Permanent Council of the OAS, the Commission on Hemispheric Security, and chaired the Working Group for the elaboration of the Inter-American Convention against the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms, ammunitions, explosives and other related materials. More recently, she represented Mexico in Guatemala.

Ambassador Moreno has represented Mexico in numerous international meetings on political, economic, and social affairs, and on gender equality and the empowerment of women. She participated in negotiations such as the Convention on prohibitions or restrictions on certain conventional weapons, which may be deemed excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects, the OAS Declaration and Plan of Action of Lima to combat terrorism, and the Inter-American Convention against corruption. At the United Nations, she was coordinator of the Group of 77 (1983) and their spokesperson for debt and development (1984) when the only consensus resolution on debt and development was reached. She was also Member of the Group of 10 Advisors to the Secretary-General of the United Nations for the reform of the Organization (2001). She also represented the Organization of American States at the Conference of Ministers of Defense of the Americas (Bariloche) and at the Conference of Ottawa for launching the negotiations on the Convention to prohibit anti-personnel landmines.

Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro

Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro is since February 2003, the Independent Expert of the UN Secretary-General for the study on violence against children. He published the conclusions of this study as the World Report on Violence against Children in November 2006 and now he follows up worldwide the recommendations of the report.

Paulo Pinheiro is professor of political science(retired), University of São Paulo, USP and a visiting professor of international relations at the Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University. He is also a research associate at the Center for the Study of Violence, USP, which he also founded and of which he was Director from 1987 to 2002.

He is also the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar. He has been appointed in July 2006 by the UN Secretary-General to chair the Independent Special Commission of Inquiry on Timor Leste. He is a Commissioner of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, IACHR, Organisation of the American States,OAS. He was from 2004 to 2007 a member of the International Group of advisors of the International Committee of the Red Cross. ICRC.Pinheiro also served as Secretary of State for Human Rights, under President Cardoso, Brazil,

He has published many articles, essays and books on social history, democracy, violence and human rights. He lives between Geneva, Providence and São Paulo.

M. Rajaretnam

Director & Chief Executive, The International Centre, Goa

Mr Rajaretnam started his career at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore in 1971. In 1985, he founded the Information & Resource Centre, Singapore. Since then he has held various positions including as Executive Director of Singapore Institute of International Affairs, coordinator and Advisor of the Asian Renaissance Project at the Institute for Policy research in Malaysia and initiated a number of training and other projects such as the One Southeast Asia project, and recently the Asian Dialogue Society which is a fellowship of "citizens and friends of Asia" which is committed to building a better Asia. He is also a member of the academic committee of the Future Leaders Retreat Program of the Nippon Foundation of Japan and is advisor to the Myanmar program at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Katharina R. Vogeli

Katharina R. Vogeli, Deputy Director of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP)

During her most recent position as the Executive Director of the Swiss Foundation for World Affairs, which was based at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., she was a regular guest at the GCSP, and a partner in several joint projects. Under her leadership, the Swiss Foundation for World Affairs became a highly respected institution promoting dialogue on a wide variety of issues of critical political interest, such as peace and security policy, human rights and humanitarian law, migration, and development. By providing a politically neutral forum for high quality and non-partisan dialogue, she succeeded in creating a large network of policy makers and experts from a variety of backgrounds from which both official Switzerland and the GCSP benefit.

In her career, Ms. Vogeli has held numerous positions - governmental, non-governmental, as well as within the United Nations - that reflect a commitment to the issues that frame the mission of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. Her main focus, both in her professional and academic responsibilities, has primarily been on the resolution of conflicts, ethnic conflict, and peace building, with a regional focus on Africa.

Ms. Vogeli is an acknowledged analyst of United States politics and its actors, on which she has been a featured commentator for the Swiss media.

She has lived and worked in Switzerland, the United States of America, Germany, Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya. She holds an M.A. in International Economics and African Politics from the Johns Studies (SAIS) and is presently completing her Ph.D. with the same institution.

Theodore Winkler

Ambassador, Director of the Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, Geneva, Switzerland

Born on 6 June, 1951, in Aarau, Switzerland, Theodor H. Winkler studied political sciences and international security at the University of Geneva, Harvard University, and at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Winkler joined, in 1981, the Swiss Department of Defence where he worked first as a political analyst before being appointed Representative of the Chief of Staff for Politico-Military Affairs (1985), Head International Security Policy (1995)a and finally Deputy Head, Security and Defence Policy (1998). He was instrumental in setting up the three Geneva centres and several other government initiated academic structures in Switzerland.

In October 2000, he was promoted to the rank of ambassador and nominated as Director of the newly created Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF).

Winkler's professional affiliations include membership of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London, the Council of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and the governing bodies of more than a dozen other academic institutions in Geneva and beyond.

Theodor H. Winkler has written several books and numerous articles on international security issues, arms control, and security sector governance and reform.