Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Jabr Al-Thani
Minister's Assistant for International Cooperation Affairs, and Chairman of Permanent Committee for Organizing Conferences, Qatar
Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Jabr Al-Thani is the Foreign Minister’s Assistant for International Cooperation Affairs of the State of Qatar and the Chairman of the Standing Committee for Organizing Conferences. In 1984, he held a position in the Urban Planning Department at the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture and joined the Technical Office of the Emir at the Emiri Diwan in 1986. Later, he was Secretary of the Supreme Council for Planning under the chairmanship of the Emir. He was a Senior Economic Researcher in the Planning Sector and Director of the Economic Development Planning Department at the Supreme Council for Planning. In December 2011, he was appointed the Minister’s Assistant for International Cooperation Affairs, and in this capacity, has represented the State of Qatar at several regional and international conferences and meetings. He received his master's degree in Development Planning from London University.

Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani
Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Qatar
Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani is Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the State of Qatar. Previously, he served as First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. From 1982 to 1989, he was the Director of the Office of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture. In July 1989, Al-Thani was appointed Minister of Municipal Affairs and Agriculture, and served as Deputy Minister of Electricity and Water for two years. He has also served as Chairman of the Qatar Electricity and Water Company, President of the Central Municipal Council, Director of the Special Emiri Projects Office, member of Qatar Petroleum Board of Directors, and member of the Supreme Council for Planning. Additionally, Al-Thani has held several other key positions, including member of the Supreme Defense Council, head of Qatar’s Permanent Committee for the Support of al-Quds, member of the Permanent Constitution Committee, member of the Ruling Family Council, and member of the Supreme Council for the Investment of the Reserves of the State.

Zainah Anwar
Founder, Sisters in Islam
Zainah Anwar is a founding member of the Sisters in Islam (SIS) and the Director of Musawah, a global movement for equality and justice in Muslim communities. She is at the forefront of the women’s movement working in Muslim contexts, pushing for the creation of a public space and culture of public debate on Islam and women’s rights. Anwar writes a monthly column on politics, religion, and women’s rights, called “Sharing the Nation” in Malaysia’s Sunday Star. She is also a former member of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia. Anwar’s other work experiences include: Chief Program Officer, Political Affairs Division, Commonwealth Secretariat, London; Senior Analyst, the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Kuala Lumpur; and Political and Diplomatic Writer, the New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur. Her book, Islamic Revivalism in Malaysia: Dakwah Among the Students, has become a standard reference for the study of Islam in Malaysia.

Karen Armstrong
Author and Historian of Religion; Founder, the Charter for Compassion
Karen Armstrong is an author of numerous books, including A History of God, The Battle for God, Holy War, Islam: A Short History, The Great Transformation, The Bible: the Biography, The Case for God, and, most recently, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. Her work has been translated into over fifty languages, and Armstrong is invited to speak regularly in Muslim countries. She has addressed members of the U.S. Congress on three occasions, lectured to policy makers at the U.S. State and Defense Departments, participated in the World Economic Forum, addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington and New York, and is an ambassador for the UN Alliance of Civilizations. In 2007, she was awarded a medal by the Egyptian government for her services to Islam, under the auspices of the prestigious Al-Azhar University, the first foreigner to have been awarded this decoration. She was presented with the Four Freedoms Medal for Freedom of Worship by the Roosevelt Institute and the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize at Tubingen University in 2009. In February 2008, she was awarded the TED Prize and is currently working with TED to propagate the Charter for Compassion.

Durriya Badani
Deputy Director, U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, The Brookings Institution
Durriya Badani is Deputy Director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Saban Center at Brookings. Prior to her tenure with Brookings, Badani was appointed as Senior Associate for Government Affairs for Dawate-Hadiyah (America). As a Presidential Management Fellow, she also served as policy advisor for the Near East and South Asia for the President’s Interagency Council on Women, as a speechwriter to U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and as an Economic Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad for the U.S. Department of State. Badani served in the U.S. Peace Corps in Yemen and, in 2008, was appointed by Governor Martin O’Malley to the Commission for Middle Eastern American Affairs for Maryland. Badani is the co-author of the Brookings publication “The Role of Religious Leaders and Religious Communities in Diplomacy” and the author of “Forty Years of Female Rule in Yemen: The Reign of-al-Sayyida bint Ahmed al-Sulayhi.” She completed her M.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Hossam Bahgat
Founder and Director, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
Hossam Bahgat is the Founder and Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), a Cairo-based independent organization defending human rights in Egypt. Since 2002, EIPR has used research, advocacy, and litigation to promote and defend the rights to privacy, religious freedom, health, and bodily integrity. Since the 2011 revolution that ended the rule of Hosni HosMubarak, EIPR has expanded its scope of work to include transitional justice, the protection of civil liberties and political rights, the promotion of economic and social justice, and the reform of the criminal justice system. With training in political science and international human rights law, Bahgat is also a board member of the International Network for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net), and a member of the Board of Directors of the Fund for Global Human Rights.

Anies Baswedan
Rector, Paramadina University
Anies Baswedan is Rector of Paramadina University in Jakarta, Indonesia, and the Founder and Chairman of Indonesia Mengajar (Teaching Indonesia). In 2008, Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world, and in 2009, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader. He was also named one of the 500 Most Influential Muslims in the world by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center in Jordan. Baswedan’s publications include Indonesian Politics in 2007: The Presidency, Local Elections and the Future of Democracy, “Political Islam in Indonesia: Present and Future Trajectory,” and numerous op-ed articles in leading newspapers and magazines in Indonesia. He has received several distinguished awards such as the 2010 Yasuhiro Nakasone Awards, the 50 Distinguished NIU Alumni Awards, The Bina Antar Budaya Award, the 2004 Gerald Maryanov Fellow from Northern Illinois University, an Indonesian Cultural Foundation Scholarship in New York, and a William P. Cole III Fellowship from the University of Maryland. Baswedan holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Gadjah Mada University, a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, and a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University.

Endy Bayuni
Senior Editor, Jakarta Post
Endy Bayuni is Chief Editor of The Jakarta Post, Indonesia’s leading independent English language newspaper, and has held his current position since August 2004. Bayuni writes regular and widely read columns in the newspaper, commenting on Indonesian domestic politics, political Islam, and foreign policy conduct. He has also written in The New York Times, the Washington/Newsweek blog, and Foreign Policy’s Democracies in Transition blog. He began his career as a cub reporter for The Jakarta Post in 1983, and between 1984 and 1991 worked as the Indonesian correspondent, initially for Reuters and later for Agence France Presse (AFP). Bayuni is a United Nations Global Expert in Media, a project of the UN Alliance of Civilizations. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2003 and 2004, where he spent time attending classes at the Kennedy School of Government. He was a Jefferson Fellow at the East West Center in the fall of 1999. He has a bachelor‘s degree in Economics from Kingston University in Surrey, UK.

Abdullah bin Bayyah
Sheikh, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia
Abdullah bin Bayyah is an instructor at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah and is the Deputy Head of the Union of Muslim Scholars, under Yusuf al Qaradawi. Before coming to teach in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh bin Bayyah was Minister of Education, Minister of Justice, and one of the first Vice Presidents in his native Mauritania. He is also a member of the International Islamic Fiqh Academy (Al Majma’ al Fiqhi) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. He has also written numerous texts and his engagements draw crowds of tens of thousands of Muslims. He has spoken at length about the endurance of the Islamic legal tradition and written extensively on rulings for Muslims living as minorities in foreign countries.

Dean M. Dilley
Senior Partner, Patton Boggs LLP
Dean M. Dilley is a Senior Partner at Patton Boggs LLP, an international law firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. Dilley’s experience in the Middle East spans more than two decades. He specializes in international transactions and dispute resolution, with a particular focus on representation of foreign governments. Dilley has represented the Egyptian Ministry of Defense in defending international arbitration claims under weapons contracts, and served as legal advisor to the Qatar Foundation in negotiating agreements to establish the Doha campuses of the Weill Cornell Medical College, Texas A&M University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Georgetown University. He also advised the State of Qatar in establishing the College of the North Atlantic and the Rand Qatar Policy Institute, and he served as lead legal counsel to the Qatar Katrina Fund, a $100 million gift to the victims of Hurricane Katrina which involved major collaborative projects with prominent charitable organizations and universities. He also advised Carnegie Mellon University in establishing engineering degree programs in Rwanda and China. Dilley received his bachelor’s degree in History from Cornell University, and his law degree from Catholic University.

Michael Doran
Roger Hertog Senior Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings
Michael Doran is a senior fellow in the Saban Center, where he specializes in Middle East security issues.
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Nabil Fahmy
Founding Dean, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, American University in Cairo
Nabil Fahmy is the founding Dean of the School of Public Affairs at the American University in Cairo. He is also the Chair of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies’ Middle East Project. He served as Ambassador of Egypt to the United States from 1999 to 2008, as Egypt’s Ambassador to Japan from September 1997 to September 1999, and as the Political Advisor to Egypt's Foreign Minister from 1992 to 97. He headed the Egyptian delegation to the Middle East Peace Process Steering Committee in 1993 and the Egyptian delegation to the Multilateral Working Group on Regional Security and Arms Control. Fahmy has been a member of Egyptian Missions to the United Nations in Geneva and New York. He was elected Vice Chairman of the First Committee on Disarmament and International Security Affairs of the 44th Session of the UN General Assembly in 1986. From 1999 until 2003, he was a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board of Disarmament Matters, and served as the board chairman in 2001. Fahmy received his bachelor’s degree in Physics/Mathematics and his master’s of arts in Management from the American University in Cairo. He also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 2009.

Rached Ghannouchi
Co-Founder, Ennahdha, Tunisia
Rached Ghannouchi is Co-Founder of the Ennahdha (renaissance) movement in Tunisia, which emerged in the recent elections as the largest party in the constituent assembly. Ghannouchi became active in politics and went on to organize the Islamic Tendency Movement in 1981, which was later referred to as Ennahdha. He was imprisoned due to his political activities from 1981 until 1984 and again from 1987 until 1988. After the falsification of the 1989 legislative elections by former President Ben Ali, Ghannouchi left for London where he lived as a political exile for two decades, until his return home on January 30, 2011 after the Tunisian revolution. He is well known for his moderate views on Islam and the principles of pluralism, freedom, modernity, and democratic governance. He has reached out to Tunisian Jews and the women of Tunis, promising them respect and participation in a new Tunisia. Born in the village of El-Hamma in the south of Tunisia in 1941, Ghannouchi graduated from Tunisia’s Zaitouna University in 1962 and from the University of Damascus in 1968. He later completed studies in Paris.

Walter Parkes is a motion picture producer, writer, and founder, with his wife Laurie MacDonald, of Parkes/MacDonald ImageNation, a collaboration with the Abu Dhabi Media Company. A former studio head at DreamWorks Pictures, Parkes is a three-time Academy Award nominee as both producer and screenwriter. He has produced or executive produced films including: the Men in Black series, The Kite Runner, Sweeney Todd, Dinner for Schmucks, Gladiator, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, The Ring, The Terminal, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Road to Perdition, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Deep Impact, Twister, The Legend of Zorro, and Amistad. Parkes is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Writers Guild of America, and the Global Business Network. He is on the board of directors of the Center for A New American Security, the Starlight Foundation, and Para Los Niños Charter School. For six years, Parkes has served as President of Yale’s University Council and serves on the advisory board of the Arts and Culture Dialogue Initiative of the U.S-Islamic World Forum. Parkes is a graduate of Yale University and attended the School of Communications at Stanford University.