Alex Wong, Chairman, Swiss Council
Alex has over 30 years professional experience in a series of leadership roles that has consistently focused on building partnerships to address the world’s biggest development challenges. Alex currently serves in the Executive Office of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies, where he is responsible for developing and managing key engagements between the ITU and its partners, including within the UN system. He also oversees several ITU wide initiatives such as Giga and Partner2Connect. From 2019-2022, Alex served as Senior Strategy Advisor and Chief, Special Initiatives, in the Office of the Director of the Telecommunications Development Bureau (BDT).
Prior to joining the ITU, Alex worked in both the private and not-for-profit sectors. From 2018-2019, he served as President of CG/LA Infrastructure, a US based company that promotes and develops infrastructure projects around the world. From 2000 to 2018, Alex was a member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum, an international organization for public private cooperation with a mission to improve the state of the world, where he held several leadership roles including the development and rollout of the Forum’s Global System Initiatives; heading the ICT, Media & Entertainment, Basics, and Infrastructure industry teams and related projects; and heading the Center for Global Industries Geneva. From 1988-2000, Alex worked in a variety of professional roles at Accenture as a Strategy Consultant, General Motors as a Quality Control Engineer, and the US National Parks Service.
He is a licensed Professional Engineer with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Toronto and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University.
Michael Kende
Michael Kende is a Senior Advisor at Analysys Mason and the chair of the board of the Datasphere Initiative. Michael is a digital policy expert, and has done a significant amount of work on promoting Internet development in emerging regions around the world. He has a Ph.D. in economics from MIT and a BA in mathematics and economics from Bowdoin College. After MIT, he spent five years as a professor of Economics at INSEAD, teaching microeconomics to MBA students and a course in industrial organisation for Ph.D. students. He was also the Director of Internet Policy Analysis at the US Federal Communications Commission, where he was responsible for managing a wide range of policy analyses and regulatory decisions, and then a Partner at Analysys Mason before becoming the Chief Economist at the Internet Society.
Clarisse Morgan
Clarisse A. Morgan is Senior Counsellor in the Rules Division of the World Trade Organization, where she has served since 1995. She has over 30 years of extensive experience in high-level policymaking in a broad range of topics. Most notably, she has led teams of policy advisors providing expert technical assistance to Member governments, been integral to high-level multi-stakeholder policy negotiations, and provided expert legal and policy advice to many WTO dispute settlement panels. Recently, she created a set of experiential eLearning training modules to provide an integrated learning tool for national government officials.
Steve Sénèque
Steve Sénèque is an Australian and Swiss national living in Geneva. Steve holds a PhD in Economics from the Australian National University and has 30 years of international experience. He began his career as an economist working principally in Vietnam on poverty and development projects for UNICEF and UNDP. After moving to Geneva in 1997 he began a career in wealth and fund management. Since then Steve has held a variety of senior management roles, including Senior Vice President for Santander Group (Geneva), President and Chief Investment Officer of Sparx International Hong Kong, Head of Equities (Japan) for Fidelity International in Tokyo, Investment Director at Octogone Gestion SA (Geneva) and most recently Chief Investment Officer of XP Private Europe. He is currently an independent financial consultant. Outside of his professional activities, Steve has been involved with philanthropic causes, including the Ashoka Support Network, through which he began his involvement with IBJ in 2014.
Karen Tse
A former public defender, Karen first developed her interest in the cross section of criminal law and human rights as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in 1986, after observing Southeast Asian refugees detained in a local prison without trial. In 1994, she moved to Cambodia to train the country”s first core group of public defenders and subsequently served as a United Nations Judicial Mentor. Under the auspices of the U.N., she trained judges and prosecutors, and established the first arraignment court in Cambodia.After witnessing thousands of prisoners of all ages being held without trials, usually after being tortured into making “confessions”, Karen founded International Bridges to Justice in 2000 to promote systemic global change in the administration of criminal justice. In the initial stages, she negotiated groundbreaking measures in judicial reform with the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. Under her leadership, IBJ has expanded its programming to sixteen countries, including Rwanda, Burundi and India. IBJ has created a Global Defense Support Program to bring IBJ assistance to public defenders worldwide. In 2010, IBJ launched the Justice Training Center in Singapore.A graduate of UCLA Law School and Harvard Divinity School, Karen was named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America”s Best Leaders in 2007. She has been recognized by the Skoll Foundation, Ashoka and Echoing Green as a leading social entrepreneur. Karen was the recipient of the 2008 Harvard Divinity School”s First Decade Award, and the 2008 American Bar Association”s International Human Rights Award. She also received the 2009 Gleitsman International Award at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Anna Wang
Anna is a strategic philanthropy, advocacy and impact professional with more than 25 years of experience in the non-profit, philanthropy and social venture sector. Since 2008, she has helped RS Group, a family office based in Hong Kong, shape its philanthropy portfolio and advance its “total portfolio approach” in managing all of the principal’s investments. RS Group is now a leading voice in promoting impact investment globally. At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she supported the foundation’s relationship with other funders and provided advice on the foundation’s global health R&D strategy and advocacy activities. Anna has also recently joined Gore Street Capital, a private equity firm focused on renewable energy, as a Venture Partner to lead the firm’s impact agenda.
Anna is on the board and advisory boards of several charities and B-Corps dedicated to tactical fundraising, access to justice and girl empowerment. She is the founder and director of a non-profit photography collective, Photographers for Hope which aims to use the power of images to support positive social change.
Biljana Braithwaite
Biljana leads the AIRE Centre’s Western Balkans Rule of Law Programme. She has over twenty years’ experience developing, funding and delivering more than fifty rule of law projects, ranging from strengthening national judiciaries and other forms of technical assistance, human rights training, legislative reform, and the fight against corruption, often in partnership with local civil society. She is one of the founders of the Rule of Law Forum for South East Europe, a network of highest courts of seven countries. A lawyer by training with degrees from Belgrade University and Lund University’s Raul Wallenberg Institute, Biljana began her career at the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and has been associated with the AIRE Centre since 1998. She founded and co-edits the professional legal bulletin, Human Rights in Europe,now over 150 editions. She has also co-edited a series of guides for judges, decision makers and practitioners in South East Europe on range of topics such as freedom of expression, domestic violence, fair trial, international child protection, and European asylum law.
Bharat Dube
Bharat Dube is a graduate of Duke Law School (J.D. ’86) and is a graduate of the United World College of the Atlantic, and Harvard University (A.B. magna cum laude, ’83).
He is the founder and Executive Chair of Strategic IP Information Pte. Ltd. (www.sipi-ip.com), Asia’s leading online brand protection company.
Bharat was a key member of the litigation and enforcement team of Richemont, the Swiss luxury goods conglomerate, between 1990 and 2010 and headed Richemont’s global IP litigation team for several years. At Richemont, he was particularly responsible for the Group’s two principal brands, Cartier and Montblanc. Prior to joining Richemont, Bharat worked with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in Geneva. He has lectured extensively at IP symposia around the world, including events sponsored by the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition, the International Trademark Association, ACACAP, WIPO and various bar associations and universities.