Amjad Bseisu founded Petrofac Resources International Limited in 1998, the operations and investment arm of Petrofac, where he was Chief Executive and a member of the board of Petrofac Limited. In April 2010, he formed EnQuest PLC and was appointed to the board. Amjad is also non-executive Chairman of Enviromena Power Systems, a private company and the leading developer of solar services in the Middle East and North Africa. From 1984 to 1998, he worked for the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), ultimately becoming the President of ARCO Petroleum Ventures and ARCO Crude Trading, Inc. Previously, he was a founding non-executive director of Serica Energy plc and Stratic Energy Corporation. He is a supporter of many charities and sits on a number of charity boards. The Amjad and Suha Bseisu Foundation has been focused on children’s education, sports, and women’s empowerment, principally in the Middle East region.

Ambassador Patterson was the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and North African Affairs at the Department of State (2013-2017). She served as Ambassador to Egypt (2011-2013), to Pakistan (2007-2010), to Colombia (2000-2003) and to El Salvador (1997-2000). She recently retired with the rank of Career Ambassador after more than four decades in the Foreign Service.   Ambassador Patterson also served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, among other assignments. She is currently a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale and a member of the Commission on National Defense Strategy.  

Secretary Chuck Hagel is currently on the Board of Trustees of RAND, and a Distinguished Executive in Residence at Georgetown University, as well as a Distinguished Statesman at the Atlantic Council. He was the 24th Secretary of Defense. He is the only Vietnam veteran and the first enlisted combat veteran to serve in that position. He also served two terms in the United States Senate (1997-2009) representing the state of Nebraska. He previously was a Distinguished Professor at Georgetown University, Co-Chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, Chairman of the Atlantic Council, Chairman of the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration Advisory Committee, and Co-Chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Corporate Council. He served on the Secretary of Energy’s Blue Ribbon Commission on the Future of Nuclear Power. He is the author of the book ‘America: Our Next Chapter’.

Daniel Levy is the President of the U.S./Middle East Project (USMEP), which emphasizes the Palestine-Israel issue alongside regional conflicts, trends and geopolitics.

From 2012 to 2016, Levy was Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that he was a senior Fellow and Director of the New America Foundation’s Middle East Taskforce in Washington D.C. and a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation in New York. Levy was a Senior Advisor in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and to Justice Minister Yossi Beilin during the Government of Ehud Barak (1999-2001). He was a member of the official Israeli delegation to the Israel/Palestine peace talks at Taba under Barak and at Oslo B under Yitzhak Rabin (1994-95). 

Levy is a founder and Advisory Board member of the newly formed Diaspora Alliance (combatting antisemitism and its conflation), a Council Member of the ECFR, and serves on the board of the European Middle East Project. He is a former Trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York and of the New Israel Fund, a co-founder of J Street, and a founding Editor of the Middle East Channel at foreignpolicy.com. 

He frequently writes for, is interviewed by and quoted in multiple media outlets and has been published in the New York Times, FT, and Foreign Affairs, amongst others. 

Levy was born and educated in the UK where he has returned to residing and where he graduated with an MA and BA from King's College, Cambridge with awards. His most recent testimony to the UN Security Council can be viewed here.

Contact email: dlevy@usmep.us

Efraim Halevy is currently the Chairman of the Israel National Center for Jewish History. He until recently served as head of the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He served as head of the National Security Council and National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 2002-2003, as head of the Mossad on 1998-2002, as Israeli Ambassador to the European Union on 1996-1998. He was deputy Head of the Mossad on 1990-1995, and for for three five-year periods between 1980-1995, he commanded three divisions as division chief. He served in the Israel Embassy in Washington. D.C. (1970-1974) and in the Israel Embassy in Paris (1976-1979).

Enzo Viscusi is currently the Senior Vice President of Eni Group, as well as the Chairman of Eni’s affiliates Eni Petroleum Company Inc. and Sonsub International Inc., and the Director of American Agip Co., Inc. He sits on the Board of several institutions: amongs others, Aspen Institute Italia - an institution whose founding he played a key role in -, Foreign Policy Association, Council of the US and Italy, Eurasia Group, Council on Foreign Relations, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Brookings Institution.

Fouad M.T. Alghanim is Chairman of the Fouad Alghanim & Sons Group of Companies, a multi-operational body of companies consisting of a number of fully independent divisions as well as fully and partly owned subsidiary companies based in the U.S., Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Other positions he holds include: Member of the International Conference Board, Member of the Society for the Care of Arab Children, Member of the Advisory Board, Medis Technologies Ltd., Member of the World Economic Forum and Member of the International Council of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

George R. Salem established the Law Offices of George R. Salem, PLLC in January 2005, and is a Strategic Advisor with DLA Piper. From 1990-2004, Mr. Salem was a partner at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, LLP, and served as the Solicitor of Labor, the U.S. Department of Labor’s chief legal officer from 1985 to 1989. He played key roles in the Reagan-Bush ’84, Bush-Quayle ’88, and Bush-Cheney ’00 campaigns. In addition, he served as a member of the board of directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and as chairman of the Tripartite Advisory Panel on International Labor Standards, the legal arm of the President’s Committee on the International Labor Organization. He co-founded the Arab American Institute in 1985 and currently serves as its chairman, and has served as treasurer of United Palestinian Appeal, Inc. since 1982. He is a past president of the National Association of Arab Americans and has served on the board of directors of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. In 2003 he was named to the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy’s Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. In 1992, he received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

Professor Amato is since 2013 a Judge of the Italian Constitutional Court. Before that, he was a part-time professor at the EUI in Florence and gave yearly seminars at the Law School at the Columbia University, New York. He was the Prime Minister of Italy on two occasions, Treasury Minister and Vice-President of the Convention on the Future of Europe. He is a former member of the Chamber of Deputies and former Minister of Interior in the Government of Italy. From 1994 to 1997, he headed the Italian Antitrust Authority. He also was a Full Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Rome from 1975 to 1997. He has written books and articles on the economy and public institutions, antitrust, personal liberties, federalism and comparative government. In 2002, he was elected Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Hanan Ashrawi is a distinguished Palestinian leader, legislator, activist, and scholar who served as a member of the Leadership Committee and as an official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace process, beginning with the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991.  Making history as the first woman to hold a seat in the highest executive body in Palestine, she was elected as member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 2009.  As a civil society activist, she founded the Independent Commission for Human Rights (1994), MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (1998) and AMAN, the National Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (1999).  She serves on the advisory and international boards of several global, regional and local organizations, and she is the recipient of numerous awards from all over the world and several academic accolades, including eleven honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Arab world. 

Henry Siegman is a former research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Program of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He served as a Senior Fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations for fourteen years. Prior to 1993, he served as Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress for 16 years, and as general secretary of the American Association of Middle East Studies and editor of its quarterly Middle East Studies. He was a Resident Scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. He also served as a commissioned officer in the US Army during the Korean War and was awarded the Bronze Star medal for service in Korea. In the more than 30 years of his involvement in the Middle East peace process, he has published extensively on the subject and has been consulted by governments, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations involved in the peace process. He has authored several hundred articles and op-ed pieces that have appeared in editorial pages in the United States and throughout the world. His areas of specialization include Arab-Israel relations, the Middle East peace process, U.S. Middle East policy, interreligious relations, and the American Jewish community.

Jerry is the founder and Chairman of The Lodestar Foundation, whose mission is to expand philanthropy through two strategies: to encourage philanthropy, public service and volunteerism; and to increase nonprofit impact by encouraging nonprofits to collaborate and employ other business practices. Beyond his work with Lodestar, he has pursued promoting peace and/or stability in the world: he is on the advisory board of the Global Leadership Foundation, created by former South African President FW De Klerk, has served as an advisor to John Mroz, founder and former president of the EastWest Institute, and is involved in leadership of several organizations promoting peace in the Middle East. Prior to his career in philanthropy, Jerry practiced law and was an entrepreneur in the computer/aerospace industry and commercial real estate development.

Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi is presently a distinguished senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and a a governing board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He served as the United Nations and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria. He is a member of “The Elders”, a small group of Elder Statesmen and Public Figures created in 2007 at the initiative of President Nelson Mandela and Chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He is the former Algerian Foreign Minister, as well as Under Secretary General of the United Nations for Special Assignments in Support of the Secretary-General’s Preventive and Peacemaking Efforts. He spent two years at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, NJ, USA.  Ambassador Brahimi has done extensive work in the field of conflict resolution, peace-making, peace-keeping and worked more generally on peace and security issues.  In 1988/1990, he mediated the end of the Lebanon civil war. He also took an active part in the struggle for liberation of his country (and served as Algeria’s Ambassador to Egypt and the United Kingdom.  He also was Under Secretary General of the League of Arab States. He chaired an independent panel established by Secretary-General Annan to review United Nations Peace Operations.  The report was endorsed by the “Millennium Summit” held in September 2000 and became known as the “Brahimi Report”. 

Congressman Lee H. Hamilton is director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. He is currently also a member of the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, the CIA External Advisory Board, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Task Force on Preventing the Entry of Weapons of Mass Effect on American Soil. Before that, he served as President and Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He served as Chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and as Chair of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He was Co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, Vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission and Co-chair of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project to monitor implementation of the Commission’s recommendations.  

Mark Sedwill, Baron Sedwill of Sherborne KCMG FRGS, is Chairman of the Atlantic Futures Forum and a cross-bench member of the House of Lords. He recently chaired a G7 Panel on Global Economic Resilience. He is a member of Rothschild & Co’s Supervisory Board and Senior Independent Director of Lloyd’s of London.  

Lord Sedwill was Cabinet Secretary & Head of the Civil Service (2018-20), National Security Adviser (2017-20), Permanent Secretary at the Home Office (2013-17), and British Ambassador and NATO Representative in Afghanistan (2009-11). Before that he had a diplomatic and security career serving in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Cyprus and Pakistan.   

Educated at St Andrews and Oxford Universities, Lord Sedwill is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Institute of Directors, an Honorary Fellow of Oxford University and of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and a Distinguished Fellow of RUSI. He is President of the Special Forces Club, a member of the IISS Advisory Council, the RNLI Council and the HALO Trust board, an Honorary Colonel in the Royal Marines and an Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple. He is also the recipient of several awards and honours for national and international public service. 

Monica Maggioni is an Italian journalist, and is currently President of RAI—the Italian national public television. She is also Vice-President of EBU, the European Broadcasting Union. Ms. Maggioni is a former war correspondent, editor and editor-in-chief for the main news outlets in RAI. In 2003, she was the only Italian journalist embedded with the American ground forces in Iraq during the second Gulf War. Since then, she has traveled extensively in Iraq and covered all major developments, reporting from Baghdad and Mosul among other cities. In 2008, she relocated to the U.S. to cover the presidential campaign that led to the election of Barack Obama. She has served as both Editor for the Foreign News Team and Special Features Section, as well as Anchor for several programs at TG1.

Peter A. Joseph is the Chairman of the Trenton Biogas LLC (TBL), a company that is developing the first commercial-scale food waste recycling facility in the New York metropolitan area. Based in Trenton, New Jersey, TBL will provide a cost-effective, sustainable approach to address the pervasive problem of managing organic waste streams. It will represent an integrated recycling solution that harnesses the latent energy potential contained in the millions of tons of organic waste discarded in landfills each year.

Ramez Sousou is Chairman of Daycrest Holdings, a private family office investing in purpose-driven and entrepreneur-led growth companies. He was Founder of TowerBrook Capital partners, where he was co-CEO and then co-Chair until his retirement in 2024. Underhis leadership, TowerBrook grew over 25 years from a start-up into a global investment firm managing funds across three investment platforms: Private Equity, Structured Opportunities and Impact Investments. Before founding TowerBrook, Ramez was co-CEO of Soros Private Equity Partners and a member of the Management Committee at Soros Fund Management. He was previously a senior member of the Principal Investments group at Goldman Sachs. 

Ramez serves on the board of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Global Advisory Council of Harvard University, and the US/Middle East Project. He is also the Chair of the Steering Committees of the Gaza Health Alliance and Teach for Palestine.

Richard A. Debs is an Advisory Director of Morgan Stanley and a member of its International Advisory Board. He joined Morgan Stanley in 1976 as the founding President of Morgan Stanley International to develop the investment bank’s international business. More recently, he was a member of the Group of Eight, former senior managers of Morgan Stanley who worked to bring about corporate governance improvements in the Firm. Before joining Morgan Stanley, he was the Chief Operating Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he also served as an Alternate Member of the Federal Open Market Committee. He was the Fed’s principal contact with the OPEC countries with regard to petrodollar issues in the 70’s. During his transition from the Fed to Morgan Stanley, at the request of David Rockefeller, he served as a pro-bono financial advisor to President Sadat of Egypt. Through his consulting firm, R.A. Debs & Co., formed after he retired as president, he has been involved in variety of business and philanthropic activities.

Robert Malley was appointed US Special Envoy for Iran on January 28, 2021.  Prior to that, he served as President and CEO of the International Crisis Group.

Under the President Barack Obama, he served as Special Assistant to the President, Senior Advisor to the President for the Counter-ISIL campaign, and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Region in 2015-2016 and, before that, as Senior Director for the Gulf Region and Syria.

Before joining the National Security Council staff in February 2014, Mr. Malley founded and directed the International Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa Program from January 2002.  Prior to that, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Until January 2001, Mr. Malley was Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. Mr. Malley first joined the National Security Council staff in August 1994 as Director for Democracy. In July 1997, he became Executive Assistant to the National Security Advisor from July 1997 to September 1998, acting as an informal chief of staff for Samuel R. Berger.

Mr. Malley served as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White of the United States Supreme Court in 1991-1992.

Mr. Malley is a graduate of Yale University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University, England, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of “The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution and the Turn to Islam” and of articles published in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Le Monde, and several other publications.

* Currently not serving on the Board given new government commitments

Rula Jebreal is an acclaimed writer and journalist. She produced and hosted a TV show in Egypt for Egyptian television in 2009. In 2005, she received the International Ischia Award for Best Journalist of the Year, Europe’s most prestigious broadcast journalism award. She has written three books, ‘Miral’, ‘La promise d’Aswan’, and ‘Divieto di Soggiorno’. In 2006, she co-presented Anno Zero, the most important and controversial political television show in Italy. In 2004, she started her own daily talk show for Italian television, Ominibus, and worked with several television stations in Italy hosting her own political talk shows, including Rai 1, Rai 2 and Rai News 24, and created a special for Channel 7 in Italy about the international moratorium against the death penalty. She got her first job as an on-air reporter in 2000, and she quickly became the first foreign anchorwoman broadcasting the 8pm news in the history of Italian television.

Samer Said Khoury was named Director & President of his father’s engineering and construction company – Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) –, in 1997, after having worked in the firm for many years and in various departments. CCC is one of the largest Arab international construction companies operating throughout the Middle East, Africa, CIS, Europe and America. He is highly involved in business, social and educational activities in the Middle East and Europe. He is also a Board and Committee Member of several Associations, such as the Lebanese American University, Peace Works Foundation, Tufts University, Aspen Middle East Strategy Group, Education for Employment Foundation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Senator Sam Nunn is Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a charitable organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In addition, he has continued his service in the public policy arena as a distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech and  as chairman of the board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He served as a United States Senator from Georgia for 24 years (1972-1996) and is retired from the law firm King & Spalding. He first entered politics as a Member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1968. After active duty service in the U.S. Coast Guard, he served six years in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. During his tenure in the U.S. Senate, Senator Nunn served as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He also served on the Intelligence and Small Business Committees.

Sawsan Asfari co-chairs the Executive Committee of the International Board of the U.S. / Middle East Project. Mrs Sawsan Asfari is a co-founder and Trustee of the Asfari Foundation, which aims to help young people make a valuable contribution to society by empowering them through education, research and the power of free thinking. She is the Executive Director of the Galilee Foundation, supporting the development of the Palestinian community in Israel through educational and cultural initiatives. She is also a board member of the leading Palestinian development organization, the Welfare Association, and is active in various charities across the Arab world. She is a partner in the production company Cactus World Films.

Thomas R. Pickering holds the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. In a diplomatic career spanning five decades, he was U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Pickering also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Tanzania. From 1997 to 2001, he was U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. From 1989 to 1992, he was Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York. He also served as Executive Secretary of the Department of State and Special Assistant to Secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger from 1973 to 1974. Prior to that, he was briefly the President of the Eurasia Foundation. Following his retirement from government, he served as Senior Vice President for the Boeing Company, and is currently Vice Chairman at Hills & Company, which provides advice and counsel to a number of major US enterprises. In 1983 and in 1986, Pickering won the Distinguished Presidential Award and, in 1996, the Department of State’s highest award – the Distinguished Service Award. He is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1984, he was awarded an honorary doctor-in-laws degree from Bowdoin College, and has received similar honours from 12 other universities. Along with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, Ambassador Pickering led a State-Department-sponsored panel investigating the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.