Maryruth BELSEY PRIEBE is the Director for Women, Peace & Security (WPS) Programs and a Senior Fellow at Pacific Forum International where she researches at the intersection of gender and climate security. Maryruth holds a Harvard International Relations graduate degree where she also received a Climate Leaders Fellowship, and recently completed her thesis, "Gender All the Way Down: Proposing a Feminist Framework for Analyzing Gendered Climate Security Risks" which was nominated for the Dean's Award. Maryruth is a member of the Research Network on Women, Peace & Security in Canada and a Teaching Fellow at Harvard Extension School.

Lieutenant Colonel Laura Louise Cranston was born in Hawick, Scotland in January 1978, was educated at Hawick High School and subsequently attended the University of St Andrews from 1995 to 1999, graduating with a Bachelor of Science (Honors) Degree in Geography.
Student Officer Cranston undertook officer training at Royal Air Force College Cranwell, Sleaford, Lincolnshire and graduated in December 2000 as a Flying Officer. For the next five years she served as an Operations Branch, Provost and Security Officer at RAF Aldergrove, Northern Ireland; RAF Coltishall, Norwich; the Falkland Islands and with RAF Counterintelligence Squadron, HMS Caledonia, Rosyth, Scotland. She was promoted to the rank of Flight Lieutenant in June 2002 and qualified as a Special Investigator. Flight Lieutenant Cranston took her release from the Royal Air Force in August 2005.
In November 2005, Lieutenant Cranston laterally transferred to the New Zealand Army, New Zealand Intelligence Corps and was posted as the Adjutant 2nd Logistics Battalion.
Promoted Lieutenant Colonel) in December 2018, she then served as Inspector General (Army). During her time in this role Lieutenant Colonel Cranston conducted a Comprehensive Safety Review of the NZ Army Training System, designed the NZ Army Risk Maturity Journey Map and supported the development of the Operational Preparedness Readiness Evaluation System (OPRES).
Lieutenant Colonel Cranston now serves as the NZDF lead for United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 Women Peace and Security and Headquarters Joint Forces New Zealand Gender Advisor.
Lieutenant Colonel Cranston has two children Lochy (9) and Rhona (7). In her free time Lieutenant Cranston is an active volunteer for Upper Hutt Junior Rams Rugby, enjoys fitness including Pilates, F45, triathlon. She is also involved in charity work though New Zealand Rotary.

Federica Dall’Arche is a Senior Research Associate with the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP). She also serves as an advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy. She is a former policy advisor to the Italian Presidency of The Council of Ministers (Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri). Ms. Dall’Arche’s work focusses on arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament and on gender in international security.
She is the co-founder of the Young Women and Next Generation Initiative (YWNGI) under the EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (EUNPD) Consortium. Most recently, Ms. Dall’Arche authored a book, titled Non-Proliferazione, Controllo degli Armamenti e Disarmo Umanitario: una breve guida pratica, published by the Italian National Association of Civil War Victims. Ms. Dall’Arche graduated summa cum laude in Political Science from the University of Roma Tre and won a full merit scholarship for an exchange program at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She obtained her Master’s degree in Non-proliferation and Terrorism Studies and a Certificate in Conflict Resolution at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), California. In 2014, she won the Michiel Brandt Memorial Prize for best MIIS paper on human trafficking and completed an internship at the Asian-Pacific Center for Security Studies, an academic institute of the U.S. Department of Defense. She was later the recipient of the United Nations Security Council Monitor Fellowship at the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and of the Non-proliferation and Nuclear Security Fellowship at the Pacific Forum. During her career, Ms. Dall’Arche has also worked at Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), Deloitte UK, the James Martin Center for Non-proliferation Studies (CNS), the William Tell Coleman Library and as a freelance collaborator for the magazines AirPress Formche and Geopolitica.info.

Nicole George is an Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. Her research focuses on the gendered politics of conflict and peacebuilding, violence, security and participation. She has a strong interest in feminist institutional theory, as well as conceptual debates on regulatory pluralism and contested notions of (gendered) order in local and global politics.
Since the early 2000s, she has conducted research in the Pacific Islands region focusing on gender politics, gendered security and post conflict transition in Fiji, New Caledonia, Bougainville and Solomon Islands. She has worked in collaboration with women's organisations, women decision-makers and policy-makers in these settings to progress aspects of this work. She has led large, externally funded, comparative research projects examining how women's rights to security are institutionalised in Pacific Island countries (2013-2016) and where and how women participate in post-conflict transformation (as part of a broader collaborative ARC Linkage Project (2016-2020). She has recently completed a book manuscript which draws from feminist institutional theory and feminist theories of scale to examine how women navigate regulatory complexity to achieve gendered security in the conflict-affected territories of the Western Pacific. She is developing a new cross-regional study on gender and electoral administration in the Pacific jurisdictions. She is a regular contributor to national and regional intergovernmental policy forums on gender, security and development and writes for a range of national and regional on-line opinion editorial sites.

Professor Susan Harris Rimmer is the Director of the Griffith University Policy Innovation Hub, which helps policymakers solve policy problems through evidence based collaboration with multidisciplinary experts. Sue works at the intersection of human rights and politics and researches gender dynamics in transitions. She is a member of the Law Futures Centre and the Griffith Asia Institute.
With Professor Sara Davies, Susan is co-convenor of the Griffith Gender Equality Research Network. Sue also leads the Climate Justice theme of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon. She delivers courses to the Australian Diplomatic Academy and the Australian War College.
In 2018, she was named one of Apolitical’s 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy, globally and is a Fulbright scholar.
Sue was previously the Director of Studies at the ANU Asia Pacific College for Diplomacy. She was Advocacy lead at the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID). She has also worked for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the National Council of Churches, Attorney-General's Department and the Parliamentary Library.

Monica Herrera is the Women, Peace & Security (WPS) Curriculum Developer at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command where she leads efforts to mainstream gender perspectives into training and education and supports command-wide WPS implementation. She is a certified Gender Advisor (GENAD) and subject matter expert on Gender in Military Operations. She is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves, where she serves as an information operations officer and political affairs strategist.

She previously served 12 years on active duty, most recently as a Foreign Area Officer and Australia Country Director at Pacific Air Forces. At this assignment, she also served for three years as the WPS Program Director for the command. As part of this collateral duty, she established and led the Headquarters program, to include developing strategic goals, directing implementation, and monitoring and evaluating the command’s WPS activities for annual Congressional reports.

Monica was also a Mansfield Fellow in Japan from 2015-2016 where she worked at placements within the Government of Japan, including at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Education, and the National Institute for Defense Studies. During this time, she contributed to Japan’s first National Action Plan on WPS and authored policy research focused on bilateral defense cooperation on WPS. She also participated in a two-month internship with former Minister of Defense and current Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.

Monica started her career as a Behavioral Scientist. She has held assignments teaching in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Air Force Academy and conducting research on human performance optimization at the Air Force Research Laboratory. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Mansfield Foundation. She holds an M.A. in Sociology from Rutgers University and a B.S. in Behavioral Science with Japanese minor from the United States Air Force Academy.

Bringing national and global experience in creating systemic change to Boston University, Jin In is the Assistant Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion. As an integral member of the SDO team, In assists the Senior Diversity Officer in overseeing the work of the University’s Community Safety Advisory Group and Antiracism Working Group. She also serves as the central resource for diversity and inclusion data across the University.
Eastern born, western bred, In’s commitment to equity and inclusion stems from her personal story. Born into one of the wealthiest families — but in an underdeveloped country with no rights or protection for women — poverty became her new reality at seven months when her father unexpectedly died. South Korea, then, entrenched in systemic and systematic inequity and discrimination, her mother immigrated them to the United States. There, Jin met her childhood mentor who taught her — through community service and social justice action — that an eight-year-old immigrant from a poor country, raised by a widow, can change the world.
With expertise in empowerment and the next generation of female changemakers, In has worked with both Democratic and Republican administrations, Departments of State, Defense, and Homeland Security, UN Agencies, global and grassroots organizations in 145 countries, serving over 10 million girls, particularly in world’s poorest communities. She also founded For Girls GLocal Leadership (4GGL), collecting the first-ever global data on young women’s empowerment to drive equality and social change. In her free time, Jin enjoys baking, salsa dancing, and sky diving.

Dr. Amporn Marddent is an assistant professor in anthropology at the Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology, Thammasat University, Bangkok. As part of her scholactivist work, Amporn has spent time partnering with NGOs and CSOs to discover the ways to advance women, peace, security and social justice. She is also working for Thai government as a member of ASEAN Women's Peace Registry (AWPR) to support groups of women and the country to promote Women, Peace and Security in ASEAN. Her areas of research interest are Cultural Anthropology, Muslim Feminism, Peace Building and Preventing Violence Extremism.

Ms. Jacel J. Paguio is a licensed social worker and is currently a Senior Officer in the Poverty Eradication and Gender Division, Human Development Directorate, ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Department, in the ASEAN Secretariat.
Ms. Paguio has been supporting the ASEAN Sectoral Bodies in advancing social welfare and development and in promoting and protecting the rights of women and children ensuring mainstreaming of gender and social inclusion in the regional development agenda of ASEAN.
Ms. Paguio has extensive work and experience on social welfare administration, gender and development, social protection and child protection in her stint as former Deputy Program Director of ABS-CBN Foundation, Inc. and Assistant Regional Director of the Department of Social Welfare and Development – National Capital Region, Philippines. She served as part-time faculty member of the Social Work Program of the College Department - St. Mary’s College in Quezon City, Philippines.
She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work at The Philippine Women’s University (PWU) and her post-graduate education in Masters of Science in Social Work (MSSW) at the Asian Social Institute (ASI) in the Philippines.

COL Dana Perkins is a Microbiologist in the U.S. Army Reserve, currently serving as the Deputy Commander for Administration, 7457th Medical Operations Readiness Unit (MORU) in Richmond, VA. Prior assignments include: Commander of the 7244th MSU in Mount Carmel, TN; Director of Women, Peace, and Security Strategic Studies at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA; Commander of the 7221st MSU in Newark, DE; Command Surgeon of the 7th Civil Support Command (7th MSC) in Kaiserslautern, Germany; Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine with the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD; Civil Affairs Officer with the 20th CBRNE Command in Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD; and Chief of Clinical Immunology and Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at Madigan Army Medical Center.
As a civilian, Dr. Perkins currently works as a Senior Science Advisor with the Administration for Preparedness and Response, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She served as a member if the U.S. delegation to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and as an advisor to the Secretary of State for the 7th BWC Review Conference. She also served in a U.S. Government-seconded position in New York as a member of the Group of Experts supporting the UN Security Council 1540 Committee on Weapons of Mass Destruction non-proliferation upon selection by the U.S. Department of State and nomination by the UN Secretary General.

Kathryn (Kitty) Pilgrim is an award-winning broadcast journalist, foreign policy expert and thought leader on how media shapes global affairs in an increasingly interconnected world.
A pioneer in cable news, she played a key role in helping build CNN into a global news powerhouse through her work as a correspondent and anchor, writing her own reports on both U.S. domestic and international events. She was a co-anchor of the CNN morning show and served as a solo prime time anchor in New York for more than a decade.
Her reporting has spanned the globe and she has interviewed countless world leaders and public figures. Along with her team at CNN, she has won multiple industry awards including an Emmy and several Overseas Press Club awards and citations.
Kathryn Pilgrim is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has participated in that organization’s programs and meetings for the last 23 years. She served as a fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu Hawaii for Asian economic and security issues. At that institute, she was also a Hong-Kong journalism fellow, as well as a fellow in the Korean Studies program, and participated in a fellowship on Asia-Pacific Security. She was a fellow at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria, in a program on Asian-Pacific security. She was a distinguished fellow at East West Institute in New York and served on that board.
She holds a BA from Manhattanville College and has served on the board of that college. She gave the commencements address in 2012 and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. She holds a Masters in International and Public Affairs from Columbia University in NYC, with a specialization in Russian studies from the Harriman Institute and is currently earning an Graduate Certificate in International Security at Harvard. She has authored numerous feature articles for various magazines and has published three mystery novels with Scribner in New York. She is a full member of The Explorers Club of New York, an organization dedicated to the advancement of scientific field research.

Ms Norul Mohamed Rashid has more than 26 years' professional experience in the areas of human rights, development, gender, governance and the rule of law in conflict-affected countries, as well as at UN Headquarters. She is currently the Policy Advisor for UN Women on Governance, Peace and Security for the Asia-Pacific region, based in Bangkok. Among her UN posts, Ms Rashid worked on post-conflict transitional justice for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. As a Policy and Programme Advisor at UN Women HQ, Ms Rashid worked with the UN system on integrating the Women, Peace and Security agenda in justice and rule of law initiatives in crisis and conflict contexts. She managed the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq’s human rights office in Northern Iraq, and has worked with UNDP in Libya and Indonesia on governance, peace and security programming. She last served with the UN Executive Office of the Secretary-General where she supported strategic and high-level policy development and implementation of organizational vision and strategies in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, peace and security and emerging global challenges such as climate change and new technology. Prior to joining the United Nations, Ms Rashid was a State Counsel in Singapore. She graduated with a law degree from the National University of Singapore and a LLM in International Law from the University of London, United Kingdom.

Samantha Turner is a non-resident fellow with the Stimson Center and a career US government servant, who recently served as an appointee in the Biden-Harris Administration as the Senior Advisor on Gender Equality at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington DC. There she helped craft US national strategy on gender equality and equity, as well as served as an on-site Humanitarian Advisor and Civ-Mil coordination officer during Operation Allies Welcome in Ramstein Germany evacuating 35,000 people. Prior to joining USAID, Samantha was the Gender Advisor to the Commander of US European Command in Stuttgart Germany, and a key player in NATO’s Women, Peace, and Security implementation as an advisor to senior US and multinational officials at NATO where was invited to testify at a deputies meeting on the Alliance’s lessons learned and implementation of WPS during the War in Afghanistan. She served 11 years in uniform as an Engineer and CIMIC officer in the US Army and is a veteran of Operation New Dawn. She holds a MS in civil engineering, a certificate in Entrepreneurial Leadership from Stanford GSB, and her BS in Civil Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point.