Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Speakers

Here you can find the list of inspirational leaders and experts who will set the tone for the 16th IACC plenary debates. Each plenary session will be moderated by a world class moderator who will lead the discussions. Keep checking this space for updates on the inspiring speakers coming to the 16th IACC.

Huguette Labelle, Chair of Transparency International Huguette Labelle is Chair of the Board of Transparency International, member of the Board of the UN Global Compact, member of the Group of External Advisors on the World Bank Governance and Anti-corruption Strategy, member of the Advisory Group to the Asian Development Bank on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, member of the Executive Board of the Africa Capacity Building Foundation, member of the Board of the Global Centre for Pluralism, member of the Advisory Council of the Order of Ontario and Vice Chair of the Senior Advisory Board of the International Anti-Corruption Academy. A former Chancellor of the University of Ottawa, she also serves on additional national and international boards. She provides advisory services to national and international organisations. Labelle served for 19 years as Deputy Minister of different Canadian Government departments.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the 24th President of the Republic of Liberia and the first elected female Head of State in Africa. She is serving her second term as President after winning the 2011 presidential election. President Sirleaf has demonstrated passionate commitment to hard work, integrity and good governance, advocating for the rights of women and the importance of education to provide a better future for her country and its people. In 2011 President Sirleaf was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for her non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work. Johnson Sirleaf began her career in the Treasury Department of Liberia in 1965, rising to the position of Minister of Finance in 1979 where she introduced measures to curb the mismanagement of government finances. After the 1980 military coup d’état, she served as President of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI) but fled her country and the increasingly suppressive military government that same year. In 1992 she joined the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as Assistant Administrator and Director of its Regional Bureau of Africa with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. She resigned her UN post in 1997 to return home and contest the presidential election, losing to Charles Taylor. She went into self-imposed exile, this time to Côte d’Ivoire. In 2003, when Charles Taylor was exiled to Nigeria and the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL) was formed, Johnson Sirleaf was selected to serve as Chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission, where she led the country’s anti-corruption reform. In 2005 she successfully contested the presidential election, resulting in her historic inauguration, on January 16, 2006, as Liberia’s first female President.

José Angel Gurría, Secretary General of the OECD Angel Gurría has been the OECD Secretary-General since June 2006. Before coming to the OECD Gurría served as Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from December 1994 to January 1998, and then as Minister of Finance and Public Credit from January 1998 to December 2000. As OECD Secretary General he has reinforced the OECD’s role as a hub for global dialogue while pursuing internal modernisation and reform. Under his leadership, the OECD has expanded its membership to include Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia and opened accession talks with Russia. It has also strengthened its links with other major emerging economies, including Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa, with a view to possible membership. The OECD is now an active participant in both the G-8 and the G-20 Summit processes and it continues to support governments in improving integrity and transparency. The Government at a Glance series provides easy access to evaluations of government effectiveness across a multitude of important performance areas. We also contribute policy tools and international standards through the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. Under the Convention, the CleanGovBiz initiative concretely supports governments, business and civil society to build integrity and fight corruption. It draws together existing anti-corruption tools, reinforces their implementation, improves co-ordination among relevant players and monitors progress towards integrity.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University teaching at the Columbia Business School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (Department of Economics) and the School of International and Public Affairs. He is also the founder and Co-President of the university’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue, and a member and former chair of its Committee on Global Thought. A graduate of Amherst College, he received his PHD from MIT in 1967, became a full professor at Yale in 1970. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information. In 2011, Time named Stiglitz one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000. In 2008 he was asked by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy to chair the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, which released its final report in September 2009. He now chairs a High Level Expert Group at the OECD attempting to advance further these ideas. In 2009 he was appointed by the President of the UN General Assembly as chair of the Commission of Experts on Reform of the International Financial and Monetary System, which also released its report in September 2009. Since the crisis, he has played an important role in the creation of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), which seeks to reform the discipline so it is better equipped to find solutions for the great challenges of the 21st century. He is now serving as President of the International Economic Association and is Chair of the Management Board of the Brooks World Poverty Institute, as well as serving on numerous other boards. Twitter: @JosephEStiglitz

Aryeh Neier, President Emeritus, the Open Society Foundations Aryeh Neier has been President Emeritus of the Open Society Foundations since 2012, serving as President from 1993 to 2012. Before that, he served for 12 years as executive director of Human Rights Watch, of which he was a founder in 1978. He worked 15 years at the American Civil Liberties Union, including eight years as national executive director. He served as an adjunct professor of law at New York University for more than a dozen years, and has also taught at Georgetown University Law School and the University of Siena (Italy). Since 2012, he has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Paris School of International Affairs of Sciences Po. Neier is a frequent contributor to a number of publications including the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, The Nation, the Huffington Post, and The Guardian among others. Author of seven books, his most recent is The International Human Rights Movement: A History (2012). He is the recipient of seven honorary degrees and numerous awards from such organizations as the American Bar Association, the Swedish Bar Association, the International Bar Association and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Magdy Martínez-Solimán, Deputy Assistant Administrator UNDP and Director ad interim of the Bureau for Development Policy Magdy Martínez-Solimán is currently UNDP’s Deputy Assistant Administrator and Director ad interim of the Bureau for Development Policy. Magdy Martínez-Solimán has been working for the United Nations for the past 15 years From 2008 to 2012, he was UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Mexico. Mr. Martínez-Solimán was Senior Governance Advisor for the 18 West African countries (2000-2003) and Practice Manager of the Democratic Governance Team (2003-2006). In 2006, he was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General as the first Executive Director of the UN Democracy Fund (UNDEF). He has also served in Burundi, Togo, Bangladesh and Senegal. Prior to the United Nations, Mr. Martínez-Solimán has been State Secretary for Youth in the Spanish National Government, CEO of two public corporations and member of the Organizing Committee of the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. He was also Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, in charge of relations with the Parliament of Andalusia, and an elected member of the Municipal Council of his hometown, Malaga. Mr. Martínez-Solimán initiated his Law Studies at the University Complutense of Madrid, holds a degree in Law (Juris Doctor) from the Universidad de Malaga and has been a Member of the Spanish Bar Association since 1984.

Pascal Lamy, former Director General of the WTO From September 2005 to August 2013, Pascal Lamy served for two consecutive terms as General Director- of the World Trade Organization (WTO). A committed European and member of the French Socialist party, he was Chief of Staff for the President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors from 1985 to 1994. He then joined the Credit Lyonnais as CEO until 1999, before returning to Brussels as European Trade Commissioner until 2004. Mr. Lamy holds degrees from HEC School of Management, the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP) and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA). He currently shares his activities between the think tank Notre Europe – Jacques Delors Institute, the presidency of the World Committee on Tourism Ethics, the presidency of the Oxford Martin School Commission for Future Generations, the vice-presidency of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), his participation to the Global Ocean Commission and UNAIDS as well as different subjects related to international affairs. He is also President of the Board of Directors of the Musiciens du Louvre of Grenoble MDLG (Orchestra of Marc Minkowski), member of the Board of Directors of the Fondation nationale des Sciences politiques and the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company, member of the Advisory Board of Transparency International, affiliated Professor at HEC et Strategic Advisor of the Simone Veil Governance Center for Europe (Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance, Berlin).

Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International After an early life in South Africa involving anti-apartheid activism, expulsion from school, arrest and exile to the UK, Naidoo returned to South Africa to assist with the democratic process. Throughout his career Naidoo has worked on a various human, civil and environmental issues, including establishing the South African National NGO coalition (SANGO) and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP). As Executive Director of Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo has used his passion for activism, non-violence and mobilisation to promote the environmental movement. He has recently been in the spotlight for boarding an oil rig to deliver 50,000 signatures against arctic drilling, resulting in his arrest. You can see an article about his arrest and a video of the oil rig boarding here and you can keep up to date with articles about and by him on the Guradian’s Naidoo feed, his Twitter and the Greenpeace blog. Twitter: @kuminaidoo

Patrick Alley, Co-Founder of Global Witness Patrick Alley is a Co-founder and Director of Global Witness, which focuses on preventing conflict and corruption arising from the use of natural resources. Mr. Alley focuses on tackling the trade in Conflict Resources (natural resource trade that can cause, perpetuate and fund conflict). In particular Mr. Alley works on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire, and also leads Global Witness’ campaign against industrial logging. He has taken part in over fifty field investigations in South East Asia, Africa and Europe.

Dunja Mijatović, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic, an expert in media law and regulation from Bosnia and Herzegovina, was appointed Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media in early 2010. In 1998, as one of the founders of the Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina she helped create a legal, regulatory and policy framework for the media in a complex post-war society. She was also involved in setting up a self-regulatory Press Council and the first Free Media Helpline in South East Europe. In 2007 she was elected President of the European Platform of Regulatory Agencies (EPRA) the largest media regulators’ network in the world. She held this post until her appointment to the OSCE. She has chaired the Council of Europe’s Group of Specialists on freedom of expression and information in times of crisis, during which the CoE Committee of Ministers adopted the Declaration on the protection and promotion of investigative journalism and Guidelines on protecting freedom of expression and information in times of crisis. Mijatović has also written extensively on “new media” topics. She has served as a consultant on projects relating to media regulation and new technologies in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. She is an expert in human rights, media law and regulation, regulatory and policy framework and institution building in transition states particularly for the media in a complex post-war society. She also has extensive experience in new technologies with the emphasis in digitalization, convergence and Internet technologies. Twitter: @OSCE_RFoM

Anya Schiffrin, Director of the International Media, Advocacy and Communications specialization at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs Anya Schiffrin is the director of the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs’ International Media, Advocacy and Communications Specialization. She spent 10 years working overseas as a journalist in Europe and Asia, writing for a number of different magazines and newspapers. Schiffrin was bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires in Amsterdam and Hanoi and wrote regularly for the Wall Street Journal. She was a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1999-2000 and then a senior writer at the Industry Standard, covering banking and finance. In addition to her work at Columbia University, Schiffrin directs the journalism training programs of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a global economic think tank based at Columbia University. She organizes seminars around the world to strengthen the capacity of journalists in developing countries to cover finance and economics. Schiffrin currently serves on the advisory board of Revenue Watch Institute and is also on the advisory board of the Open Society Foundation’s Program on Independent Journalism. She writes regularly for the Guardian and Reuters. Her forthcoming book is “Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Reporting from Around the World” (New Press 2014).

Peter Eigen, Founder of Transparency International Prof. Dr. Peter Eigen is a lawyer by training. He has worked in economic development for 25 years, mainly as a World Bank manager of programs in Africa and Latin America; from 1988 to 1991 he was the Director of the Regional Mission for Eastern Africa of the World Bank. Under Ford Foundation sponsorship, he provided legal and technical assistance to the governments of Botswana and Namibia. In 1993 Eigen founded Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization promoting transparency and accountability in international development. From 1993 to 2005 he was Chair of TI and is now Chair of the Advisory Council. In 2005, Eigen chaired the International Advisory Group of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and became Chair of EITI in 2006. In 2007 he founded the Berlin Civil Society Center and chairs its Board. Eigen has taught law and political science at the universities of Frankfurt Main, the John F. Kennedy School of Government/ Harvard, SAIS/ Johns Hopkins, University of Washington and Bruges College of Europe. Since 2002, he is teaching as an Honorary Professor of Political Science at the Freie Universität, Berlin. In 2000, he was awarded the ‘Honorary Doctor’ degree at the Open University, UK, in 2004, the Readers Digest Award “European of the Year 2004″ and in 2007 the Gustav Heinemann Award.

Anna Bossman, Director of the Integrity and Anti-Corruption Department, African Development Bank Anna Bossman is the Director of the Integrity and Anti-Corruption Department (IACD) of the African Development Bank (AfDB). Before this she was Deputy Commissioner and later Acting Commissioner of Ghana’s human rights and anti-corruption institution, the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ). Ms. Bossman, an anti-corruption advocate and activist started her legal career as an Assistant State Attorney in the Criminal Division of the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General after she graduated from the Ghana Law School. She has also worked in the energy sector, taking up various legal, managerial and consultancy services with multinational oil and gas companies in West and Central Africa.

Dimitri Vlassis, Chief of the Corruption and Economic Crime Branch, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Dimitri Vlassis holds a law degree from the University of Athens, Greece and an LL.M. (Master of Laws) from the University of Miami, U.S.A. He has pursued post-graduate studies in international law at the George Washington University. He is licensed to practice law in Greece and member of the Athens Bar Association. Mr. Vlassis was recruited in 1989 following the successful completion of the United Nations National Competitive Examination, and has been working with the UNODC ever since. From 1998 to 2003, he was Secretary of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Elaboration of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and from 2004 to 2008 the Secretary of the Conference of the Parties to that Convention. From 2001 to 2003, he was Secretary of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Negotiation of a UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). Mr. Vlassis is currently Secretary of the Conference of the States Parties to the UNCAC. As Chief of the Corruption and Economic Crime Branch, he leads the UNODC’s work to combat corruption and other forms of economic crime.

Drago Kos, Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery Drago Kos is the Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions. He is also the International Commissioner, and occasional Chair, of the Joint Independent Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC) in Afghanistan. Between 2003 and 2011 he was the Chairman of the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). In 2011 and 2012 he served as a Special Advisor to the Anti-Corruption Agency of the Republic of Serbia. Between 2004 and 2010 he was the first Chairman of the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption in Slovenia. He also used to be a Co-Chair of European Partners against Corruption and a member of COGEL’s Global Affairs Committee. Prior to this he was a Deputy Director of the Slovenian Criminal Investigation Directorate, the Head of the Organised Crime Section of the Slovenian Police and a member of the Council of Europe’s Group of Specialists on Organised Crime. He used to be a soccer player and UEFA/FIFA referee and is now a UEFA/FIFA referee observer.

Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of Transparency International Dr. Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director of Transparency International, is a South African sociologist whose work experience spans the fields of globalisation, development policy, international relations and multinational business management. His academic experience includes teaching at universities in South Africa, Australia, Japan and Germany. He has also worked for multinational corporations, trade unions and research institutes in managerial and research-related capacities in various countries. During the 1980s and early 1990s he was active in the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa chairing the ANC in Cape Town. In June 2007 he was appointed Managing Director of Transparency International (TI). Cobus de Swardt is a Board member of the WEF Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI). Twitter: @CobusdeSwardt