Expert Bios

 

Dr. Ethan Chorin

Ethan Chorin (Arabic, French, Farsi) is Founder & CEO of Perim Associates. He is the author of two books, including Exit the Colonel: the Hidden History of the Libyan Revolution (PublicAffairs, 2012), and Translating Libya (Darf, 2015). From 2008 to 2011, he was Sr. Manager for Government Relations and Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Dubai Ports World. As a Foreign Service Officer from 2004 to 2008, Chorin was posted to Libya, Washington D.C., and the United Arab Emirates. Chorin holds a PhD from U.C. Berkeley in Agricultural and Resource Economics (2000), an MIPS from Stanford and a BA from Yale, cum laude, with distinction in Near Eastern Languages. A two-time Fulbright fellow (Jordan, Yemen), Chorin received a Meritorious Honor Award from the U.S. Department of State for his support to U.S. business in Libya, and a Sinclaire Award for language achievement. Chorin's work on Libya, the Gulf, Iran, and Africa has appeared in numerous publications, including The Financial Times, The New York Times, Forbes, Foreign Policy, Words Without Borders and Jane’s Islamic Analyst. Chorin has appeared on CNN, BBC, NPR, CBS, Canal+, and others. Chorin has been Nonresident Fellow at the Dubai School of Government, Social Enterprise Fellow at Yale University School of Management and a member of the Obama Campaign Foreign Policy Group. Read More

Mr. Wolfgang Pusztai

Mr. Wolfgang Pusztai has both a military and an academic background in strategy. His education includes a Master of Science in Political Science from the University of Vienna and a Master of Science in National Security Strategy from the National Defense University / National War College in Washington, D.C. Wolfgang's military experience ranges from various positions on the strategic level in the Austrian Ministry of Defense/General Staff to several international assignments for the Austrian Government, the European Union and NATO). He has also worked extensively in the intelligence business. From 2007 to 2012 he was Austria's Defense Attaché to Italy, Greece, Tunisia and Libya and spent considerable time on the ground during the “Arab Spring”. This included the organization of the evacuation of hundreds of Austrian and EU citizens from Libya at the beginning of the Revolution, and various reconnaissance missions. Wolfgang has lectured and written extensively about strategy as well as about the developments in North Africa, in particular Libya and Tunisia. He is well‐known for his accurate assessment, forecasts, and country risk analyses. Read More

Ms. Azza Maghur

A senior lawyer with Maghur & Partners in Tripoli, a firm that represents Libyan and international cases, Azza Maghur gained her legal expertise with her father, former UN diplomat Kamel Maghur, on international cases, such as the territorial dispute between Chad and Libya (1996) and the Lockerbie case in the Netherlands (2000). She acted as a member of the inaugural committee within the Tripoli Bar Association that issued the first Libyan human rights report (1998) and as consultant to BNP Paribas on the first privatization process in the Libyan bank sector (2007). With assistance from the International Red Cross, Azza Maghur is the lawyer to have located and assisted a Libyan detainee in Guantanamo at the request of his wife and family. She was also the first to address the rights of HIV infected citizens in her lectures to the Lawyers Syndicate in Tripoli and the Libyan International Medical Faculty in Benghazi. Azza is also known as one of Libya's leading writer of short fiction, and is the author of two books. Read More

Ms. Rabea Benhalim

Ms. Rabea Benhalim (Arabic) is a lawyer, with focus on oil and gas finance, and Islamic law. She has been in-house counsel to Maersk Oil on a major Angola oil and gas facility, and worked as a finance attorney assisting major financial institutions with multi-million and multi-billion dollar oil and gas deals. At the Brookings Institution, Ms. Benhalim was Legal Fellow in Governance Studies where she researched and published papers on law and policy related to detention and privacy. She has previously worked for the Carter Center in the Democracy Program, researching democratic developments in the Middle East and North Africa. She has an established family business network in Libya. Ms. Benhalim studied at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, and holds a Master of Public Policy Degree from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the University of Texas. She is currently completing her PhD in Islamic Studies at the University of Texas. Read More

Dr. Robert Springborg

Robert Springborg (Arabic) is a leading expert on Egypt, and the Egyptian military. He has held a number of senior academic appointments, including the MBI Al Jaber Chair in Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where he also served as Director of the London Middle East Institute. Before taking up that Chair he was Director of the American Research Center in Egypt. From 1973 until 1999 he taught in Australia, where he was University Professor of Middle East Politics at Macquarie University. He has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere. He has been Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs of the Naval Postgraduate School and Program Manager for the Middle East for the Center for Civil-Military Relations, and is currently Visiting Professor at King's College in the UK. Springborg has worked as a consultant on Middle East governance and politics for the United States Agency for International Development, the US State Department, the UNDP, and various UK government departments, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defense and the Department for International Development. He has worked for various US consulting firms and was the Cairo based Director for the Middle East for Development Associates. He has served as expert witness in courts in the UK and Australia on criminal, civil and immigration cases. Read More

Mr. Jean-Luc Bernard

Mr Bernard is an experienced development practitioner, with focus on the energy sector environment, industrial issues, monitoring and evaluation. He spent 5 years in the European Commission's Directorate General for Energy, and has been the UNIDO and FAO Representative ad interim in Morocco. In his capacity, he co-chaired the Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group of the UN System in Morocco. Much of Mr Bernard’s career has been spent in Morocco, where he currently resides, and Iran, where he spent 5 years as the UNIDO representative. His work experience spans the Mediterranean Countries, the Middle East, sub Saharan Africa, Central Europe Countries and Russia. Besides his knowledge of international organizations, Mr Bernard has experience with managing both small and larger companies. For ten years he ran the Moroccan subsidiary of the French conglomerate Alcatel-CETT, and has been a cofounder of a French SME dealing with consultancy and projects auditing. This company is now a majority holder in SATMOS, offering satellite data communications services for remote management and real time monitoring systems. Read More

Ms. Noura Abdi

Noura Abdi (Somali, Arabic, French, Portuguese) is an environmental and development professional, focused on disaster risk management, water resources and forced migrations. She has consulted regularly to both the Djiboutian government (Executive Secretariat for Disaster Risk Management, or SEGRC)) and the World Bank on issues related to vulnerability, urban and disaster risks management. Ms. Abdi has held a number of practical fellowships from “Centre d’Etudes Géographiques de l’Université de Metz”, France and “Universidad Federal Fluminense”, Brazil. In 2012 she advised the City of Rio de Jeneiro, Brazil on disaster planning and risk management and water resources management, and assisted with preparations for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (RIO+20). She is a skilled project manager, who holds a Master's degree in Environment and Development from the University of Lorraine, France (2012). She is currently a PhD candidate working on Forced Migrations and Climate Change in Africa. Ms. Abdi is the first Djibouti national to participate in the U.C. Berkeley Environmental Leadership Program. Read More

Mr. Mark Hope

Mark Hope has spent 28 years in a number of senior positions at resource-focused multinationals with operations in Africa and the Middle East, in Libya, Nigeria, Gabon, Angola, Mozambique, Kenya, Iran, and Sao Tome e Principe. Born and raised in East Africa, Mr.Hope successfully built five companies, which have together employed more than 1,000 new staff. From 2005-2010 Mr. Hope was Vice President and Country Managing Director for Royal Dutch Shell in Libya. This followed an appointment as acting CEO for Olakola LNG, for which he set up a $4 billion LNG project in Lagos, Nigeria. Mr. Hope has been Deputy Chairman and Managing Director at Fayum Gas Co. in Egypt; Business Development Manager – Middle East & North Africa for Shell International Gas, and Drilling Commercial manager for Shell International. Mr. Hope has deep experience in auxiliary sectors such as water management and integrated transport. He began his career with Shell in oilfield operations. Mr. Hope holds degrees in law, business and mechanical engineering from the University of London and the University of Birmingham, respectively, and hold several professional certificates and professional honors. Read More

Amb. Lange Schermerhorn

Ambassador Schermerhorn’s 35-year Foreign Service career included economic, political, staff, and program direction assignments in the Department of State, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Iran, the United Kingdom, Belgium (twice) , and lastly as Ambassador to the Republic of Djibouti (1998-2000) during which the year-long Arta Somalia reconciliation conference sponsored by the Government of Djibouti took place. Since retiring in 2001, she has continued her interest in Africa and the affairs of the Horn, with consulting assignments in Egypt, Somaliland, and Djibouti. She participated in election observation missions for Nigeria’s April 2003 and April 2007 presidential elections, Somaliland’s September 2005 parliamentary and June 2010 presidential elections, and Kenya’s December 2007 Presidential election and August 2010 Constitutional referendum. Ms. Schermerhorn served from October 2003 through June 2004 as the Political Advisor to the commanding general of the U.S. Central Command’s Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), based in Djibouti since 2003. She has participated in training exercises for personnel assigned to CJTF-HOA (20005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011) and at AFRICOM headquarters (2008, 2009) and has participated in various activities with U.S. military entities and contractors, including a series of workshops in 2008-09 devoted to an in-depth analysis of the U.S. military combatant command for Africa (AFRICOM), established in October 2008. She most recently served as temporary Officer in Charge at the American Embassy in Asmara, Eritrea (May-July 2012) and again in August-September 2013. Read More

Mr. Richard Griffiths

Mr. Richard Griffiths is international advisor and business development serving clients in government and the private sector. In 2011, Mr. Griffiths founded, and has since been head of the U.S.-Libya Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), which currently has more than 20 major U.S. companies as members. He currently serves an advisor to Patton Boggs LLP, a leading international law firm. Over the course of a 15-year career, Griffiths has developed international branding and promotional programs for a governments and private sector companies, and has considerable experience on science-related projects via the National Aeronautics and Space administration (NASA), where he pioneered the development of electric vehicles for US government installations. He has been a lead on alternative energy programs with automotive manufacturers and various US Government agencies. Mr. Griffiths has been a Senior advisor on international affairs to the Office of the Secretary 
General, Bogota Colombia, through which he was able to increase international attention to children living in extreme poverty. Mr. Griffiths helped Libya's National Transitional Council build relationships with Presidents of a number of Latin American nations, as a means of securing official recognition as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people. Read More

Mr. Geoffrey Milton

An expert in emerging markets and bank regulatory matters, Geoffrey Milton began his career with Bank of America in 1969 after graduating with a Degree in Economics from London University. From then until 1983 his responsibilities took him, via London & Manchester, to the Middle East (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia & Cairo) for 6 years. He was CEO & a Director of Misr America International Bank in Egypt (1979-1983). He chaired the American Business Group in Cairo, was a Member of the Founding Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt (1982-3), and became a Board Member and Vice President of the Arab Bankers Association of North America (ABANA) from 2000-2005. In 2006, he was elected to the Board of the ABANA Foundation. After a 20 year career in London, Singapore & New York, Geoffrey left Arab Banking Corporation, where he was the General Manager of the U.S. and Latin America business, in 2003 to assist in the start-up of C.I.S. LLC (Capital Investment Solutions), a boutique investment advisory firm. During his career at ABC he was also appointed to the Boards of Banco ABC Brasil in Sao Paulo (1998-2003) and Union Bank of Bangkok in Thailand (1987-1988), after negotiating significant investments in both entities. He had served on the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee of the Institute of International Bankers in New York and chaired their Legislative and Regulatory Committee. He was a Member of the Advisory Board to the Middle East Institute in Washington DC and, in addition, worked in Jordan and Yemen with the Financial Services Volunteer Corps. Read More

Mr. Bashir Elmegaryaf

Bashir Izzat Elmegaryaf is a development professional with wide-ranging experience in finance, development economics and public policy. After graduating from Emory University in 2012 where he received a BA in International Studies and Economics, Bashir joined the Libyan Investment Authority’s (LIA) African Portfolio. Serving as a strategy consultant for the African Portfolio, Bashir was responsible for developing high-level strategy aimed to improve the portfolio’s performance, sustainability and transparency. Bashir subsequently joined Deloitte as a consultant. From supporting a multi-billion dollar asset valuation for Libya’s flagship sovereign wealth fund to developing a communication strategy for a newly minted infrastructure PPP unit, Bashir has been heavily immersed in Libya’s post-conflict development efforts and has gained a nuanced understanding of the country’s political and economic challenges. Bashir is currently a Masters candidate at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government where he has been awarded a John F. Kennedy Fellowship. Bashir’s research interests include public-private partnerships, infrastructure development, and energy. Read More

Mr. Francis Ghilès

Francis Ghilès is a trilingual (English, French and Spanish) journalist and political analyst who through eighteen years with The Financial Times reporting on international capital markets and North Africa has built up extensive experience and high level contacts throughout the Western Mediterranean, the UK, the USA and Japan. He has been Research Assistant to Pierre Mendès France (MP and the Mayor of Grenoble), Co-founder of the annual Mediterranean Gas Conference, and founder of the North Africa Business Development Forum, and Senior Fellow at IEMed in Barcelona. Mr. Ghiles is now based at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs (CIDOB), where he analyses emerging security, political, economic and energy trends in the region and connects them to European, US and North African policy priorities. Mr. Ghiles has been a freelance writer for the IHT, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Les Echos, Libération, El Pais, La Vanguardia, The Financial Times, Institutional Investor, Euromoney, Nature, The Times Literary Supplement, Pouvoirs, Le Monde Diplomatique, Politique Etrangère, and has been interviewed widely on international media. He has lectured at most of the major U.S. and European universities, including Columbia, NYU, Harvard, Tufts, Princeton, Berkeley, Wharton, The Council on Foreign Relations, SciencePo, INSEAD, the Pentagon, The Arab Bankers Association, the Japanese Institute of Middle Eastern Economies, NATO Defense College, the Royal College of Defense, IISS, the Aspen Institute, etc. Francis Ghilès earned advanced degrees from St Antony’s College Oxford and the University of Keele. He graduated from SciencePo Grenoble with distinction. Read More

Ms. Thelma Tajirian

Ms. Thelma Tajirian (Arabic, French and Armenian) is an international finance and development professional with 25 years experience in the US, Canada and emerging markets. Much of Ms. Tajirian’s career has involved taking new initiatives from ideation to strategy to revenue generation and sustainability. Most recently Ms. Tajirian worked at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), where she was Program Manager and Product Leader providing advisory on access to finance services in six countries on financial and financial infrastructure projects. Ms. Tajirian was responsible for setting up the Iraq's first small-business lending facility, and expanded the Iraqi Credit Guarantee Company, In Kurdistan she opened three micro finance institutions in Erbil, Sulaimaniya and Dahok, and expanded SME lending units. In Yemen, Ms. Tajirian worked in similar capacities for U.S. Government-funded projects. In Qatar, Ms. Tajirian has been Director of Youth Initiatives Finance for Silatech, a social enterprise of Her Highness Sheikha Mozah. In that context, she was seconded to Qatar Ministry of Business & Trade, where she advised on creating portfolio credit guarantee scheme. She started her career in the US at Wells Fargo Bank where she worked for 19 years in lending, marketing, strategy and business development. Ms. Tajirian holds an Executive MBA from University of Southern California and MA in International Relations. Read More

Mr. Cyril Kormos

Cyril Kormos (French) is Vice-President for Policy at The WILD Foundation, where he conducts research and advocacy on a range of issues including wilderness law and policy, climate policy, conservation finance and biodiversity offsets. He is a specialist in conservation issues in Africa, and has done extensive fieldwork in Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau and Botswana. Mr. Kormos also serves as Vice-Chair for World Heritage for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA). In this capacity he is a member of IUCN’s World Heritage Panel, which advises UNESCO on World Heritage nominations, and attends U.N. World Heritage Committee meetings as a member of IUCN’s delegation. Mr. Kormos is also an associate editor for the International Journal of Wilderness and an editorial board member for IUCN-WCPA’s Parks journal. Prior to moving to WILD in 2002, Mr. Kormos was Senior Director for Programme Management in the President’s office at Conservation International. He has published widely in scientific, law and policy journals and has edited or coedited several books. Mr. Kormos holds a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.Sc. in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics and a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School. Read More

Mr. Peter Francis

Peter Francis is the founder and president of Global Energy Consultants, which specializes in providing advice to the oil and gas industry in emerging and developing countries. Mr. Francis completed 30 years of service with ExxonMobil in a number of executive treasury and government relations positions in the U.S., Europe and Africa. He has extensive knowledge of working in developing and transition economies; how to influence and build relationships with senior government officials; and developing strategies to support new business entry. He also has extensive knowledge of working with U.S./U.K./Brussels government agencies, multilateral and international financial institutions and NGOs. Mr. Francis has been instrumental in raising loans for Mobil’s E&P; worldwide operations including the groundbreaking NNPC/Mobil Producing Nigeria $1 billion loan for the Oso field development. He has also guided ExxonMobil’s new business entry strategies in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. He holds professional qualifications Associate and Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute in London. He is a member of Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Energy Institute and has served on the U.S.-Kazakhstan Business Council, U.S.- Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce, U.S.-Qatar Business Council, US- Angola Business Council and the Corporate Council on Africa. He is a director of Oracle Energy Corp, a Vancouver based TSX listed company focused on exploration and production in Africa and a member of the board of Africare in Washington DC, the largest African American development organization. Mr. Francis is a citizen of the United Kingdom. Read More

Ms. Sylvana Sinha

Sylvana Q. Sinha has wide-ranging experience in government relations and public and private international law issues. She has advised governments in Afghanistan, Asia, and the Middle East on governance and legal reform. Her legal practice has included Investor-State and international commercial arbitrations and U.S. federal court proceedings relating to international disputes, representing clients in the energy, extractives, telecommunications, hospitality, and insurance industries, among others. She has particular expertise in business and human rights, including representation of a Canadian oil company in human rights (Alien Tort Statute) litigation involving allegations of international law violations in Sudan and research for the Special Representative to the UN Secretary General on business and human rights issues. Ms. Sinha also served as a foreign policy advisor to the 2008 Presidential campaign of then-Senator Barack Obama. Ms. Sinha has a law degree from Columbia university, a master’s in international development from Harvard University, and a B.A. from Wellesley College (philosophy and economics). She is also a member of the South Asian Women’s Leadership Forum and Asian Women in Business. She is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Read More