Dr. Grace Wermenbol is a senior fellow for International Security and Geopolitics at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. Dr. Wermenbol is a former Middle East specialist at the US Department of State. Prior to that, Dr. Wermenbol was a Middle East director at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where she served both on the National Intelligence Management Council and the National Intelligence Council. She joined ODNI from the US intelligence community, where she worked on counterterrorism issues in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Dr. Wermenbol is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and the author of A Tale of Two Narratives (Cambridge University Press, 2021), a study of Israeli and Palestinian societies in the post-Oslo era. She is the founder and executive director of Boussole Mondiale, a global advisory firm based in Paris that works with select private companies and public sector entities at the intersection of geopolitics, business, and global strategy. She holds a master's and DPhil from St. Antony’s College, the University of Oxford.

Chris Ogunmodede, based in Lagos, is an independent analyst of African politics, security, and international affairs with a focus on West Africa, pan-African affairs, multipolarity, global governance, and multilateralism. Ogunmodede is the author of Penkelemesi, a newsletter about African political economy, international affairs, and culture. He is a member of the African Research Network on Regional and Global Governance Innovation, a pan-African community of scholars, policymakers, and practitioners.