2025
Mr. Espen Barth Eide became Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs on 16 October 2023. From 14 October 2021 he was Minister of Climate and Environment. He is elected to the Norwegian Parliament as a representative from Oslo.
From 2017-2021, he was a Member of Parliament and the Norwegian Labour Party’s Climate and Energy spokesperson. He was reelected to the Parliament for the 2021-2025 legislative term, representing Oslo.
In the two Stoltenberg Governments, Mr. Eide occupied many prominent positions: Foreign Minister from 2012 to 2013, Minister of Defense from 2011 to 2012, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 2010 to 2011, State Secretary for Defense from 2005 to 2010 and State Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 2000-2001.
Mr. Eide was Managing Director and Member of the Managing Board of the World Economic Forum in Geneva from 2014 to 2016. Furthermore, he served as UN Under-Secretary General and the Secretary General’s Special Adviser on Cyprus (2014-2017), chairing the negotiations aiming at reunification of the divided island.
For over a decade (2001-2013), he was a Vice President of the Party of European Socialists (the association of European Social Democratic parties).
In his academic career, Mr. Eide, a political scientist, worked as a senior fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) from 1993 to 2000 and again from 2002 to 2005, specializing on international security, European integration, defense and international relations. During his tenure at NUPI, he was deeply involved in several UN, EU and NATO-related processes.
Mr. Eide was acting Secretary-General of the Norwegian European Movement in 1991-1993.
Until October 2021, Mr. Eide was the Chair of the Board of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva, a peace mediation organization, Board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Board member of the Norwegian Atlantic Committee, senior adviser to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington (CSIS) and a member of the European Leadership Network in London.
Philipp Blom (Hamburg, 1970) is a historian, writer and broadcaster. He is the author of many books on history, politics, and philosophy, as well as four novels. He also works as a journalist, radio presenter, podcaster, documentary film maker, and public lecturer.
Philipp’s books combine historical research and philosophical enquiry in an accessible narrative style. Among his best-selling books are The Vertigo Years and Fracture, on the cultural history of the early twentieth century, A Wicked Company, about the radical Enlightenment, Nature’s Mutiny, an investigation into history and climate change in the seventeenth century, What’s at Stake, a discussion of climate change, digitization, and democracy, and most recently, Hope: An intelligent engagement with the world.
Philipp’s wide-ranging work and research interests have received numerous prizes and accolades, and his books are translated into sixteen languages. In 2018 he opened the prestigious Salzburg Festspiele with a widely disseminated speech on the future of the Enlightenment in a time of climate change.
A keen amateur violinist, Philipp has presented a series of chamber music concerts at Vienna’s Konzerthaus. Having grown up in Germany, he has since lived in Oxford, London, Paris, and Los Angeles, and now makes his home in Vienna.
Colombe Cahen-Salvador is a political activist and co-founder of Atlas, a global political movement uniting people for humanity's survival, with 25,000+ members in over 134 countries. She is challenging the United Nations Secretary-General selection process, for climate change, artificial intelligence, wars, dictatorships, pandemics, and poverty to finally be tackled.
She is currently a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for International Policy, looking into how to design an effective, democratic global governance system.
Previously, Colombe co-founded Volt Europa, the first pan-European political party, served as a trustee of the United Nations Association – UK, and sat on the board of the Democracy and Culture Foundation. She also lectured at Northeastern University for the Socioloy & International Relations Departments, focusing on how global governance could tackle global challenges.
Nina is an internationally-recognized expert on disinformation and democratization, one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, and the author of two books: How to Lose the Information War (2020), which The New Yorker called “a persuasive new book on disinformation as a geopolitical strategy,” and How to Be A Woman Online (2022), an examination of online abuse and disinformation and tips for fighting back, which Publishers Weekly named “essential.” Jankowicz has advised governments, international organisations, and tech companies, and testified before the US Congress, the British Parliament, and the European Parliament.
Jankowicz knows what it is like to be attacked for defending the truth. In 2022, Jankowicz was appointed to lead the Disinformation Governance Board, an intra-agency best practices and coordination entity at the Department of Homeland Security. She resigned the position after a sustained disinformation campaign caused the Biden Administration to abandon the project.
From 2017-2022, Jankowicz held fellowships at the Wilson Center, where she led accessible, actionable research about the impacts of disinformation on women and freedom of expression around the world, testified before the US Congress, the British Parliament, the Canadian parliament, and the European Parliament. She advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship in 2016-17. Early in her career, she managed democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus at the National Democratic Institute.
Oksana Brovko is the CEO of the Association of Independent Regional Press Publishers of Ukraine. She has over 25 years of experience supporting independent regional media across Ukraine. Before the full-scale invasion into Ukraine, Oksana was engaged in the professional development of regional media, creating an environment and platforms for the formation of a democratic press in the country representing Association of Independent Press Publishers of Ukraine. Since February 24, 2022, has organized systematic support for more than 150 independent local media in Ukraine. Co-founder and coordinator of the International Insurance Fund for Journalists, member of the Association Directors Committee of WAN-IFRA, and member of the organizational committee of WexFo. In 2025, she accepted the Golden Pen of Freedom on behalf of Ukraine’s independent press. She also won INMA’s Global Media Award for “Best in the World” for organizing the campaign “Rescuing Freedom.”
Oksana advocates for press freedom, media sustainability, journalist safety, and editorial independence. Protecting press freedom in Ukraine is at the heart of her mission.
Anita Pratap is an award-winning international journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, having worked in Asia, Middle East, Europe and the United States.
She was CNN’s South Asia Bureau Chief; worked for Time Magazine and leading Indian media. She is a speaker at global conferences organized by the UN, Governments, conglomerates, universities and think tanks on war, terrorism, media, politics, inequality, diversity, women, environment and democracy.
An instant bestseller, her first book “Island of Blood” released by Penguin sold out in six days, creating publishing history. She received many awards, including the coveted American George Polk Award for her coverage in CNN of Kabul’s takeover by the Taliban. She won the Chameli Devi Jain Award for her “sensitive portrayal of the human condition”. She is Contributing Editor for the "The Week" magazine, a Board Member of the Switzerland-based Women’s International Network as well as the Vienna-headquartered Women Without Borders.