Our Leadership

Adeolu Adewumi-Zer is the former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Allianz Nigeria Insurance Ltd. Prior to this role, she served as the first and only female member of the Allianz Nigeria board as Non-Executive Director. Concurrently, she was the Regional Head of Mergers, Acquisitions and Transformation Africa for the Allianz Group. She is a U.S.-trained actuary and business consultant with more than two decades of professional experience. Her career has seen her move from the United States to hold executive positions in Europe, Asia, and now Africa. She is a member of the Institute of Directors Nigeria, the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, the Nigerian Actuarial Society, and Women in Management, Business and Public Service, among other local and international professional bodies, and volunteers her advisory and mentoring services to several organizations. Before exiting the insurance sector in 2022, she was recognized as one of the Top 50 Women in Insurance in Africa by the African Insurance Organization. She is developing the next generation of great African leaders, focusing on gender empowerment and financial inclusion, and acts as an ambassador, business mentor, and investor for Ashoka, the African Angel Academy, and VC4A.

Laila Bokhari is a non-resident Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a former State Deputy-Minister with the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a State Secretary at the Office of the Norwegian Prime Minister. She was a member of the 22 July Commission (Breivik case), tasked with examining the terrorist attacks and their aftermath in Norway. She has worked with the United Nations Security Council al-Qaida/Taliban Monitoring Team and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on counterterrorism and human rights issues. She also served as a diplomat at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. She has a long career as a researcher on security policy, counterterrorism, and violent extremism at institutes including the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, and King’s College London.

Rachel Briggs is the former Executive Director of Hostage US, a nonprofit organization that works to ensure that U.S. hostages and their families get the support and guidance they need to survive the challenge of a kidnapping. She has been a writer and policy analyst working on preventing and countering violent extremism and other national security issues with governments and the private sector around the world. She was awarded an OBE (Officer of the British Empire) by Her Majesty the Queen in 2014 in recognition for her services to hostage families and kidnapping victims overseas. She is an advisory committee member for an initiative of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society to counter youth-oriented hate speech online, an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, and a member of the Risk and Security Management Forum. She was a member of the Advisory Council of Wilton Park, an executive agency of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, from 2006 to 2015 and co-chair of the European Commission’s working group on the role of the internet and social media in tackling radicalization from 2012 to 2014.

N. Justin Chinyanta chairs the Loita Group, a pan-African investment banking and financial information and communications technology group he cofounded in 1994, and is Chief Executive of the subsidiary Loita Capital Partners International. He is a former senior officer at African regional offices of Citibank and HSBC Bank and served on the Advisory Board of the Initiative for Global Development and on the President of Zambia’s International Business Advisory Council. He is a member of the Prince of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conference Leaders Forum, a Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and an Advocate of the Zambian High Court. He holds an LLB undergraduate degree from the University of Zambia and a master’s degree in international business transactions and financial law from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

Victoria Holt is the Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. She was previously a Vice President at the Henry L. Stimson Center, focused on international security and multilateral issues. From 2009 to early 2017 Holt served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, where she was responsible for developing policy guidance on issues before the UN Security Council, including regional crises, peacekeeping and political operations, sanctions and counterterrorism. She also led diplomatic efforts on Presidential initiatives on peacekeeping and atrocity prevention. Before joining the State Department, Holt was a Senior Associate and co-director of the Future of Peace Operations program at Stimson, leading studies on the United Nations and regional peace operations, the protection of civilians, targeted sanctions, rule of law, and U.S. policy. Earlier she was appointed Senior Policy Advisor (Legislative Affairs), at the State Department during the Clinton Administration; led Washington-based policy programs at non-governmental organizations; and worked as senior staff to Members of Congress, including Rep. George Hochbrueckner and Rep. Tom Andrews, focused on defense and foreign policy. She is a graduate of the Naval War College and Wesleyan University.

Tess McEnery is Executive Director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to examining how genuine democracies can develop in the Middle East and North Africa. She has dedicated her career to standing up for a U.S. foreign policy that advances democracy, protects civic space, and defends universal human rights. She has significant expertise working on conflict prevention, stabilization, fragile states, elections, political transitions, and the strategic use of foreign assistance and foreign policy. She served two tours as a Director for Democracy and Human Rights at the U.S. National Security Council. At the U.S. Department of State, she led a global democracy and human rights policy team and served as a Senior Conflict Prevention Advisor. She began her career at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she managed some of its largest foreign assistance mechanisms and pioneered the agency’s electoral security initiative. She received her MPA from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and her BA in political science from Guilford College.

David McGowan is the Vice President, National Security Services at Kaiser Permanente. As Kaiser Permanente’s senior security executive, he is responsible for the full service and delivery of the organization’s physical security functions including technology, security force management, asset protection, investigations, and executive protection, as well as security standard operating procedures for Kaiser’s diverse health maintenance and delivery channels. He is a member of Kaiser’s Enterprise Business Services and its Enterprise Shared Services Executive Leadership teams. He was formerly the Vice President, Global Protection Services at Tiffany & Co, and the President of the Board of Directors of the International Security Management Association, a global association of leading corporate chief security officers. He was the 2017 recipient of the Security Industry Association Insightful Practitioner Award. He holds a BA from the College of the Holy Cross.

Bishakha Mukherjee is a development economist and financial services professional. She has been closely involved with implementing the FATF Recommendations, the international standards for anti–money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) and proliferation. She had a long career as chief economic adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat, where jointly with the UK HM Treasury she advised member governments on improving the effectiveness of their AML/CFT systems. She now works for a range of companies and organizations as an international business development adviser and financial sector consultant, with a particular interest in emerging markets, and has served on the boards of private equity funds. She is vice chair on the Board of the Commonwealth Association and an adviser to the Commonwealth Businesswomen’s Network on Investment and Access to Resources. She holds a BA with honors and a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics.

Jacqueline Oburu is Vice President for Human Resources and Administration at Search for Common Ground. She leads the organization’s human resource management functions globally, providing leadership oversight for diversity, equity and inclusion, leadership development, global talent acquisition and management, compensation and benefits, performance management, and employee recognition and engagement. She has served in several human resource leadership roles in the international development sector, working with World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, WorldFish, and ChildFund International and was Chief Talent Officer with Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, an affordable housing nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. She has more than 25 years of human resource management expertise, working and living in Africa and Asia for 12 years, providing human resource leadership in more than 40 countries. She is a board member for the Kenya Scholarship Fund and holds an MA in intercultural studies and leadership development from Fuller Seminary.

Angela Vigil is a Partner and the Executive Director of the Pro Bono Practice at Baker McKenzie LLP. She has been a practicing children’s rights lawyer for more than 20 years, publishing and giving presentations focused on criminal justice; human trafficking; child welfare; homeless advocacy; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other sexual minority rights; and various other issues related to human rights of children, youth, and emerging adults. She is also the chair of the Board of Trustees for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy. She brings her experience in social justice, public interest law, pro bono advocacy, and organization and leadership of nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations to help support the work of the Global Center. She received her JD from Northwestern University School of Law.

Howie Wachtel is a Senior Director, Policy, on Microsoft’s UN and International Organizations team. Prior to this role, he was a senior director and head of global sanctions policy at PayPal. He spent over a decade in a number of roles in the U.S. government, including as a civil servant at the National Security Council (as Director of UN and Multilateral Affairs), the U.S. Department of State (as Acting Coordinator of Sanctions Policy), and the U.S. Mission to the United Nations (as a policy adviser).  He began his career as a litigation associate at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett LLP and has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia, Duke University, and New York University.