Colonel Pavlo Khazan, Ph.D, currently serves in the General Directorate of Electronic and Cyber Warfare of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He commanded Unmanned Systems in the Army Branch; he was a C4/Cyber officer and a C4ISR group commander in the Signal & Cyber Security Corps. Veteran of the Russian war in Ukraine since 2014. Physicist and electrical engineer by training with a Ph.D. in statistics, he also held a scholarship from the John Smith Trust in the UK, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a training in the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. In civilian life, he was a Head of Science and Engineering at the Environmental Monitoring Centre and an expert in the UNDP and British Council. He is a developer of civil and military engineering systems, author of scientific papers on renewable energy, economics, and statistics.

Fiona Murray is the Associate Dean of Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship. She is the Faculty Director of MIT’s Office of Innovation and also Faculty Director of The MIT Kuo Sharper Center for Prosperity and Entrepreneurship. Fiona is an associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. She received her BA ’89 and MA ‘90 from the University of Oxford in chemistry. She subsequently moved to the United States and earned an AM ’92 and PhD ’96 from Harvard University in applied sciences.

Fiona is Vice Chair of the NATO Innovation Fund and has served on the British Prime Minister’s Council on Science and Technology and was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) for her services to innovation and entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom. She is also a member of the Ministry of Defence Innovation Advisory Panel and the European Innovation Council Joint Expert Group. She also sits on a number of Boards including Prime Coalition (a not-for-profit creating new venture fund with catalytic capital to support start-ups focused on climate impact) and MassChallenge (one of the first large-scale accelerators in New England supporting entrepreneurs solving significant global issues).

Murray is an international policy expert on the transformation of investments in science and technology into deep-tech start-up ventures that solve significant global challenges and create national advantage – from defence and security to health, food and water security. Her work includes understanding new funding approaches for innovations that arise from scientific research, and educating the next generation of technical leaders to build effective ventures. She has focused on the particular issues faced by ventures who have dual-use (commercial and government) solutions and work in contexts characterized by complex global power competition. She also works with large public and private sector organizations to effectively drive their strategic goals by linking to external innovation ecosystems especially universities, start-ups, and risk capital.

Jennie Brooks is the senior leader for Booz Allen’s client service and delivery supporting Navy-Marine Corps clients across the nation. She and her teams develop solutions across capabilities, including cybersecurity, systems engineering, and data science and analytics.

Leveraging technology and innovation for their clients’ missions, Jennie spearheads Booz Allen’s partnerships with Qualcomm and Tableau. Under her leadership, Booz Allen sponsored the Defense Innovation Voucher Program to help small and mid-sized defense companies scale their solutions, and the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Series to assess the impact of AI across specialties, including cybersecurity and unmanned systems.

Previously, Jennie led Booz Allen’s work serving the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command. In this role, Jennie led integrated teams supporting Naval Systems Commands and Warfare Centers, spanning acquisition to engineering competencies.

Active in the San Diego community, Jennie serves on the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, Rady Children’s Hospital Foundation Advisory Board, and San Diego State University College of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Board.

Jennie holds a B.A. in psychology from the University of California, San Diego, and an M.B.A. from San Diego State University.

Sir Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History.

He is the author of sixteen books. His first, Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927, was short-listed for the History Today Book of the Year award, while the collection of essays he edited, Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals, was a UK bestseller. In 1998 he published to international critical acclaim The Pity of War: Explaining World War One and The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild. The latter won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History and was also short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Award and the American National Jewish Book Award. In 2001, after a year as a Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, he published The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000.

In 2003, Ferguson wrote and presented a six-part history of the British Empire for Channel 4, the UK broadcaster. The accompanying book, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States. The sequel, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, was published in 2004 by Penguin, and prompted Time magazine to name him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Two years later he published The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, a television adaptation of which was screened by PBS in 2007. The international bestseller, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, followed in 2008; it too was a PBS series, winning the International Emmy award for Best Documentary, as well as the Handelszeitung Economics Book Prize. In 2011 he published Civilization: The West and the Rest, also a Channel 4/PBS documentary series. A year later came the three-part television series “China: Triumph and Turmoil.” The book based on his 2012 BBC Reith lectures, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, was a New York Times bestseller within a week of its publication.

An accomplished biographer, Ferguson published High Financier: The Lives and Time of Siegmund Warburg in 2010 and is currently writing a life of Henry Kissinger, the first volume of which was published in 2015—to critical acclaim—as Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist. The book won the 2016 Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award. In 2011, his film company Chimerica Media released its first feature-length documentary, “Kissinger”, which won the New York Film Festival’s prize for Best Documentary.

Niall Ferguson’s most recent book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.

Ferguson was the Philippe Roman Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics in 2010-11. His many prizes and awards include the GetAbstract International Book Award (2009), the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012), the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013), the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize (2013), the Philip Merrill Award of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education (2016); and Columnist of the Year at the 2018 British Press Awards. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Buckingham (UK), Macquarie University (Australia), and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile).

In addition to writing a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, an advisory firm, and a co-founding board member of Ualá, a Latin American bank. He also serves on the board of Affiliated Managers Group and is a trustee of the New York Historical Society and the London-based Centre for Policy Studies.

Niall Ferguson is married to the author and women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He has five children.

Vic Mercado joined IBM in May 2023 as its Leader for Navy and Marine Corps Strategic Growth. He is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities (ASD SPC), where he advised the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy on national security and defense strategy; the forces, contingency plans, and associated posture necessary to implement the defense strategy; nuclear deterrence and missile defense policy; and security cooperation plans and policies. Mercado ensured that Department program and budget decisions support and advance senior DoD leaders’ strategic direction, especially as articulated in defense planning guidance.

As ASD SPC, Mr. Mercado also chaired NATO’s High-Level Group responsible for reviewing and providing recommendations regarding NATO’s nuclear policy, planning, and force posture to ensure the safety, security, and effectiveness of NATO’s nuclear deterrent.

Prior to being confirmed by the Senate and appointed as ASD SPC, Mercado served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Plans and Posture after retiring from the Navy in November 2018. His final assignment on active duty was Director, Maritime Operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet where he managed the daily operations of 200 ships and submarines and 1,500 aircraft within the world’s largest naval area of responsibility – encompassing the West Coast of the United States outward to the Indian Ocean.

Other flag assignments included Deputy Director, Surface Warfare (N96B) and Director, Assessments Division (N81) on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations; Vice Director, Strategy, Plans and Policy (J5) at U.S. Central Command; and he commanded Carrier Strike Group 8. A surface warfare officer, he served aboard cruisers and destroyers, culminating with command of USS Decatur (DDG 73) during an accelerated deployment with the John C. Stennis Battle Group in support of Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan and United Nations sanctions on Iraq. He also commanded Destroyer Squadron 21 with duties as sea combat commander for the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group.

Ashore, he served with the Navy’s engineering and acquisition community as the Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence Warfare Systems Engineering Manager for the AEGIS Program Manager (PMS 400), as an action officer and Vice Director, Navy Staff for Staff Operations and Special Events, as the National Defense Legislative Fellow for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, and led the Commander’s Action Group for Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet. On the Joint Staff, he served as the Joint Staff lead in the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategy Group; as Assistant Deputy Director, Global Strategic Partnerships (J-5); as Executive Assistant to the Director, Strategic Plans and Policy (J-5); and as Executive Assistant to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. Following his tour on the Joint Staff, he served as the Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Mercado graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics/Computer Science, and earned a Master’s in Systems Technology in Joint Command, Control and Communications from the Naval Postgraduate School.

Michael Brown is a partner at Shield Capital and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He serves on the Board of Advisors at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and the United States Innovative Technology (USIT) fund.

Michael previously served as the Director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) at the U.S. Department of Defense (2018-2022). DIU fields leading-edge commercial capabilities to the military faster and more cost-effectively than traditional defense acquisition methods. During his tenure, DIU introduced 100 new vendors to DoD, fielded 50 new capabilities to the military, and increased the transition rate of fielded capabilities to 50%. While at DIU, Michael created the initiative to catalyze private investment in more deep tech hardware startups, National Security Innovation Capital.

From 2016 to 2018, Michael was a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow co-authoring a Pentagon study on China’s participation in the U.S. venture ecosystem, a catalyst for the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA). FIRRMA was signed into law in August 2018 and provided expanded jurisdiction to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

Prior to civil service, Michael was the CEO of Symantec Corporation (2014-2016), at the time the global leader in cybersecurity and the world’s 10th largest software company. He is the former Chairman and CEO of Quantum Corporation (1995-2003) and Chairman of EqualLogic (2003-2008).

Michael received his BA degree in economics from Harvard and his MBA from Stanford University.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. He holds non-residential fellowships with the Foreign Policy Research Institute (editor of “Orbis”) and Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (co-host of the “Doorstep” podcast). He is a member of the Loisach Group, a collaboration between the Munich Security Conference and the Marshall Center to enhance the U.S. and Germany’s security partnership. He is a contributing editor for The National Interest. He has taught at Baylor, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard Extension, and Brown universities. From 2016-20, he held the Captain Jerome E. Levy Chair in economic geography and national security.

 Gillian Tett is a columnist and member of the editorial board for the Financial Times. She writes a weekly column on Friday, covering a range of economic, financial, political, and social issues. She also serves as Provost of King’s College, Cambridge.

Previously, she chaired the FT editorial board, ran Moral Money, the FT’s sustainability newsletter, which she co-founded, and wrote two columns a week. Gillian’s earlier roles included US managing editor for the FT, assistant editor, capital markets editor, deputy editor of the Lex column, Tokyo bureau chief, reporter in Russia, and Brussels.

She has been named Columnist of the Year (2014), Journalist of the Year (2009), and Business Journalist of the Year (2008) in the British Press Awards, and received three awards from America’s Society of Business and Economic Writers Awards. She is a best-selling and award-winning author of four books, and received the Royal Anthropological Institute Marsh Award and the American Anthropological Association President’s Medal for her work in social science. She has received honorary degrees from Carnegie Mellon, Miami, and Baruch universities in America, and Exeter, Lancaster, Goldsmith’s, and London in the UK.