Chief of Mission, U.S. Mission to the European Union. Anthony L. Gardner was sworn in as the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union on February 18, 2014. Prior to assuming his current position, Ambassador Gardner was Managing Director for six years at Palamon Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in London that focuses on providing growth capital to fast growing businesses in a wide variety of service sectors throughout Western Europe. In that capacity he managed financing, legal and tax structuring issues related to the firm's acquisitions and divestitures. Previously, Ambassador Gardner served as an Executive Director in the leveraged finance departments of Bank of America and GE Capital and as a Director in the international acquisitions group of GE International.

Ph.D. in Sociology from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a Doctor-member of the Juan March Institute. He has been Visiting Fellow at Harvard University (Boston, USA) and Visiting Researcher at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy) and the University of Essex (UK). He was a lecturer at the University of Essex, the George Washington University (Center of Madrid), the Open University of Catalonia, the Pablo Olavide University and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where he is currently a professor of Sociology. He also collaborates with the Fundación Alternativas, where he was the Deputy Director of Progress Studies. In addition, he is part of the Next Left group at the European Foundation for Progressive Studies.

He holds a degree in telecommunications engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (1990) and an EMBA from IESE Business School at Universidad de Navarra (1998). He currently follows a Bachelor's Degree in History Studies at UNED University in Madrid and a post-graduate Master in Contemporary History at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He fluently speaks five languages. He has worked for the Spanish Navy (1992), different telecommunications companies (1993, 2000), and A.T. Kearney as Manager Consultant (1999-2000). Within Telefónica, he has worked as Business Development Manager for Telefónica Internacional (1994-1997) and Telefónica InterContinental (1998), International Projects and Synergies Director for Telefónica Móviles (2002-2006) and Telefónica España (2006-2007)...

Graduated in Economics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid y Tecnico Comercial del Estado. Memberon a personal basis of the Scientific Committee of the Elcano Royal Institute (since 2012). Member of the Editorial Board of El País and Grupo Prisa.

He develops his work in Spain and in Latin America. Lecturer and visiting professor in various communication masters and courses at different universities. Victory Award for Political Blog of the Year. Informative Impact Mention (The Victory Awards Conference, for three consecutive years: 2012, 2013, 2014). He writes regularly in different media such as El Periódico; El País (where he also writes on his blog Micropolítica); or Five Days. He also contributes periodically to Revista R (Sunday supplement on politics and culture of the newspaper Reforma, Mexico), in the FORBES-México blogger network, in the newspaper El Telégrafo (Ecuador) in the section Reflections Dominicales, and in the program of Pablo McKinney.

Gideon Rachman became chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times in July 2006. He joined the FT after a 15-year career at The Economist, which included spells as a foreign correspondent in Brussels, Washington and Bangkok. He also edited The Economist’s business and Asia sections. His particular interests include American foreign policy, the European Union and globalisation.

Career Diplomat of the 1989 consignment of the Foreign Service of India, Mr. Vikram Misri (born 7 November 1964 in Srinagar, India) has held various positions in the Headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of India , New Delhi, in the Prime Minister's Office in New Delhi, and in various Indian Missions in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North America. Among the main appointments of Mr. Misri in New Delhi are the following: Deputy Secretary in the Office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of India (Mr. I.K. Gujral, November 1996 - April 1997); Private Secretary to the Prime Minister of India (Mr. I.K. Gujral, April 1997 - March 1998) among other positions.

Stephen Balkam is the Founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. FOSI’s mission is to make the online world safer for kids and their families. Prior to FOSI, Stephen was the Founder and CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) and led a team which developed the world’s leading content labeling system on the web. While with ICRA, Stephen served on the US Child Online Protection Commission (COPA) in 2000 and was named one of the Top 50 UK Movers and Shakers, Internet Magazine, 2001. He writes regularly for the Huffington Post, appears often on TV and has appeared on nationally syndicated TV and radio programs such as MSNBC or CNN.

She is a Costa Rican economist, the current Ibero-American Secretary-General, a former UN Under-Secretary-General, and the Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. She was the Vice President of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998. Grynspan previously served as Director of UNDP's Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, appointed to the position by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in December 2005. In 2017, she received a Forbes Excellence Award and was granted the Grand Cross of Civil Order of Alfonso X “El Sabio” by the Spanish Government.

Extraordinary Doctoral Thesis Award from the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. In addition, he has been an advisor to the Cabinet of the Department of Education of the Community of Madrid and Deputy Director of the Unit of Evaluation and Analysis of that same department. He has taken extended study courses and research stays at the University of California Santa Bárbara, the Australian National University, the Royal Complutense College of Harvard University and the University of Nottingham. His areas of interest are the quality and improvement of education, educational evaluation, fiscal policy, economic growth and globalization.