ADEL Bios

Dr. Fang Xiao is the deputy director of the Center for European Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS). She was also a visiting fellow with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) starting in January 2013 as a visiting fellow with Friedrich Ebert Stiftung EU office.

Quentin James is the African Americans director for the Ready for Hillary political action committee (PAC). There he manages engagement with the African American community throughout the United States to build momentum for a Hillary Clinton presidential run. Formerly, Quentin served as the national director for the Sierra Student Coalition, the youth arm of the Sierra Club and the largest youth environmental organization in the United States. 

Bako Kantiok is the coordinator of the Greetings from America radio program, an initiative that promotes cultural understanding between the United States and Nigeria. Prior to this position, he was a program officer at Fantsuam Foundation, a Nigerian NGO that specializes in community development.

Carolina Abrusci is a professor at the Central University of Venezuela’s School of Political and Administrative Studies. She has a master's degree in international politics from the Complutense University of Madrid and is currently a Ph.D.

Sergio Aguiar Matos is director for New Business Development & Consulting for Brasilinvest Group, Brazil’s foremost merchant and investment bank. He is also head of projects for Fórum das Américas, the group's NGO. He graduated, respectively, from Fundação Casper Libero, the country’s first school of journalism, and Mackenzie Presbyterian University, one of Brazil’s most prestigious law schools founded in 1870. He holds an MBA degree from Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado.

Lina Alaoui is currently a senior consultant in program risk management with Ernst & Young Advisory Services in Atlanta, Georgia. She is responsible for conducting independent program reviews for large IT implementations across multiple industries. She also conducts complexity and maturity assessment for IT projects and sales deals. Prior to this position, she was a senior consultant in telecommunications with Capgemini.

Sihame Arbib is currently the chief executive officer of Victory Consulting, advisor to the undersecretary general of United Nations and partner of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Economic Forum.

Ms. Nicola Barker-Murphy has been a member of Jamaica’s Foreign Service for nineteen (19) years serving in the areas of bilateral and multilateral affairs and trade.

After working for several years as a business consultant in major French consulting firms, Fatim-Zahra Biaz decided to become an entrepreneur in the start-up scene. She took part in a European project of coworking, a space to gather start-ups from across Europe. 

Enrique Bravo is currently finishing a Ph.D. in government at Georgetown University. For the past three years, he has been the senior advisor for policy planning at the Mexican Embassy in the United States. Prior to that he was the Mexico analyst of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm. He has also worked as an advisor to the immigration commissioner in Mexico’s Ministry of the Interior.

Dina Buchbinder is a social entrepreneur passionate about reimagining education. When she was 24 years old, in 2007, she founded Education for Sharing (E4S), an innovative, action-oriented organization that helps shape better global citizens using the power of play. When she was growing up, Dina didn’t like to sit still and didn’t understand why she was going to school. She perceived her classes as boring and useless.

Santiago Caramés is an active political and volunteer social worker. He is currently serving as councilman for the city of Montevideo. He is a member of the Human Rights and Social Development, Environment and Health, Legislation and Appeals, Estate and Accounts, and Budget Commission for the period 2011-2015.

Sylvia Croese is an urban sociologist and senior researcher based at the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning at the School of Architecture and Planning of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She works on urban politics, policy and governance in Africa through the lens of housing, land, urban infrastructure, mobility and knowledge co-production, on which she has published widely, including two edited books.

Ana María de la Parra Rovelo is currently vice president of the COMEXI Youth Program and External Road Operation Supervisor Technical Manager at Tecnopeaje. Prior to this, she worked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) with Palestinian and Iraqi refugees in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Previously, she worked as director assistant for the magazine Foreign Affairs en Español.

Bruce Dube is a 25-year-old social entrepreneur. He is the founder of Youth Village South Africa, Botswana Youth, Youth Village Africa, EduCAN, and a number of youth-owned startups in Africa. His work has been listed on Tech4Africa, Apps4Africa, Elevator Enterprise, and the 5th SA Innovation Summit Innovation Lab.

Meriem El Asraoui joined OCP Group in 2012 as a Legal Counsel. Over the years, she has taken on roles of increasing responsibility, becoming Senior Legal Counsel in 2015, Legal Director for Commercial and International Affairs from 2016 to 2022, and Head of International Affairs from January 2023. In September 2023, she was appointed Chief Global Affairs Officer. Mrs. El Asraoui has been a licensed attorney-at-law and a member in good standing of the Quebec Bar (Canada) since 2010.

Mohamed El Yacoubi is currently the chief executive officer of AlamJadid.com, the largest Arab social network. He started his company at age 19 and raised over $500,000 from foreign venture capitalist firms. He was named Best Young Entrepreneur in 2013 by the World Investment Conferences (WIC) and was selected by the U.S.

Jojoh Faal is a project manager of LEAD Afrique Francophone, focusing on communicating research, strategy, and business development around leadership and sustainable development. Prior to joining LEAD Afrique Francophone, she worked on water policy as a program officer at the Overseas Development Institute, in the U.K.

In 2006, Amadou Fall Ba co-founded the largest association of Senegal Africulturban HipHop, which has more than 1,100 members and hip hop artist, Matador, as president. Since its founding, Africulturban has become one of the largest organizations in the African hip hop scene, organizing numerous cultural projects.

Mohammed Jamal is the founding partner and chief executive officer of Molton Street Capital. He oversees all operations and manages a team specialized in structured, corporate, and emerging market credit investments. In a previous position, Mohammed was executive director at Resource America, Inc. where he was responsible of the European structured credit and structured finance trading platform.

Hicham Jerrar is currently the project controls manager for industrial development at OCP S.A. in El Jadida, Morocco. Prior to this position, he was the maintenance manager at the Khouribga mine.

Hind Kadiri is currently a consultant at the World Bank, specialized in private sector development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Prior to this position, she was strategy advisor to the Minister of Agriculture in Morocco, where she monitored the implementation of the sector’s strategy, “Green Morocco” and built partnerships with agriculture main business groups.

Gabriela Keseberg Dávalos is an independent senior consultant specializing in international politics, focusing on the Global South and the European Union. Until mid-2024, she served as the Director of Global Public Affairs at Southern Voice, a network of 70 think tanks from the Global South researching sustainable development and UN-related topics.

Mohamed Khachani co-founded E-Commerce Conseil in 2011, an e-commerce business solutions provider, in response to the strong growth of e-commerce in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to help businesses create a presence in the electronic marketplace.

Hervé Koffi has been vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) for West Africa at Citibank since 2012. He has been with Citibank for 11 years. Hervé is the co-founder of Initiatives Côte d’Ivoire, a non-partisan think tank. 

Elena Lazarou is head of the Center for International Relations of the Getulio Vargas Foundation FGV) and assistant professor at the FGV School of Social Sciences. Her current research focuses on the impact of the crisis of the euro on the EU’s external relations and EU-Brazil relations. She also coordinates a pilot program on think tanks and foreign policy in Brazil. Elena received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2008. 

Thiago Lima is currently specialist in international relations at the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry, where he is responsible for international business cooperation matters.

Estibaliz Luengo first worked in the internationalization department of the Bilbao City Council as a technician and is now the director of the internationalization department of the public entity named Bilbao Ekintza.

As project manager, Shane McCollam organizes and works in collaboration with leading European universities, technology transfer offices, research centers, and corporations to provide original research and analysis of key issues in EU research and innovation policy. Before joining the company in 2009, as a researcher and network manager, he worked for United Health Group as an expert in the area of healthcare insurance policy.

Alejandra Mejía is the director for Public & Private Sector Support for Latin America at Teach for All, a global network of independent social enterprises that promote educational excellence and equity. Previously, she was the account director for Latin America at the Financial Times.

 Vahid Monadjem is the founder and CEO of Nomanini, a pioneering fintech that is on a mission to improve the livelihoods of informal retailers by combining digital financial services and existing value chains.

Raphael Obonyo studied Public Policy and International Development at Duke University and Business at University of Nairobi. He started his professional career as assistant at the United Nations Development Programme Department of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy in New York. He's held the position of Program Associate at United Nations Habitat in Nairobi and Professional and Technical Consultant at United Nations Development Programme in Gaborone.   

Sidney Olinyk serves as the chief of staff for Middle East Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the U.S. Department of Defense. Prior to her appointment at the Pentagon, Sidney worked at the Truman National Security Project where she directed the Project's Democracy & Human Rights Initiative.

Hugo Passarello Luna is a photographer and multimedia journalist. He has been awarded the Eiffel Scholar in France, the Global Citizenship Award in Canada, and the Daniel Pearl Prize from the Wall Street Journal, Europe. His photos have been displayed in the Art Museum of the Americas with a special acknowledgment in Washington, DC in 2012.

Mohamed Rhaihat is currently a project manager in renewable energy projects at Jacobs Engineering, a joint venture with OCP, in Casablanca, Morocco. At Jacobs, he has been involved in a transformation plan, in which he conducted a master’s thesis in the theory of change management by adopting ADKAR model from the University of Sunderland, U.K.

Professor Landry Signé is a world-renowned professor and leading practitioner who has won more than sixty prestigious awards and distinctions from four continents for his academic, policy, business, and leadership accomplishments, receiving as well the fastest reported tenure and promotion to the highest rank of full professor in the history of United States universities, for a scholar who started at an entry-level position in his discipline. 

André Soares is a specialist in China-Brazil business relations. For the past three years, he has served as analysis coordinator for the China-Brazil Business Council (CBBC). He was involved in restructuring CBBC’s research area, which is now considered an international reference in the field. 

Mohamed Tlemcani has eight years of experience as a financial market and equity investment specialist within various investment banks based in London, Geneva, Tokyo, and Dubai. Mohamed worked for UBS Investment Bank as vice president in charge of the strategic equity investments covering institutional clients including large corporates, sovereign wealth funds, and family offices.

Swarnim Waglé has more than 12 years of experience in international organizations. His research interests include trade, investment, and public finance. Before joining the staff of The World Bank, he served as a policy specialist at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York, where he co-authored the 2013 Human Development Report, “The Rise of the South.

Eustace T. Wallace, a national of Saint Christopher, Saint Kitts and Nevis, is currently second secretary at the Mission of the Eastern Caribbean States. In this role, he is involved in bilateral and biregional negotiations with EU institutions and member states. He follows dossiers involving the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (ACP), as well as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States-European Union Partnership.

Dillon Webbe currently works as a building engineer at the Public Works Department of the Nevis Island Administration in the Federation of Saint Kitts & Nevis. He studied at the University of the West Indies where he obtained a bachelor’s in civil engineering.

Estelle Youssouffa is an independent bilingual broadcast journalist. A news anchor on French 24/7 news network ITélé and the global network TV5 Monde, she is also an investigative journalist working for France 2 “Un Oeil sur la Planète.” Estelle Youssouffa started her career at the French news network La Chaîne Info (LCI).

Minghao Zhao is a research fellow with the China Center for Contemporary World Studies, the in-house think tank of the international department at the Central Committee of CPC. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Center for International and Strategic Studies (CIIS), Peking University, and the executive editor of China International Strategy Review.