Ray Salvatore Jennings is a practitioner scholar with extensive experience within war to peace transitions in over 20 countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Peru, and Sierra Leone. Over the last twenty years, he has served as country director and senior consultant with the United States Institute of Peace, the United Nations, the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and many non-governmental organizations. He has served as a Senior Fellow with the United States Institute of Peace, and as a Public Policy Scholar and an Eastern European Research Scholar with the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He is currently conducting research with the Stanford University Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law on comparative cases of democratic breakthrough, teaching post-conflict reconstruction and transitional development at Georgetown and Syracuse Universities and is a social development consultant to the World Bank on Middle East and North African affairs. He is the author of numerous articles and is co-authoring a book on democratic breakthrough with Michael McFaul. His media appearances include CNN, CSPAN, NPR and the BBC.

Academic

Pontifical University Comillas, Madrid, Spain (www.upco.es): Degree in Law (1987).

Pontifical University Comillas, Madrid, Spain: Degree in Economics (1988).

Collège d'Europe, Bruges, Belgium (www.coleurop.be): LLM in Hautes Etudes Européennes, 1989.

Professor of Corporate Law, Law School, Pontifical University Comillas.

National Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 2007-08.

Visiting Scholar, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Stanford University, 2007-08.

Rock Center Fellow, Stanford University, 2007-08.

Has published articles as author, co-author or co-editor in newspapers, legal reviews and books (see exhibit).

Professional

Member of the Madrid Bar Association since 1987 (www.icam.es).

Laureate lawyer of the European Commission (open competition Com A/638).

Has wide-ranging corporate and M&A experience, and specialises in private equity, antitrust, litigation and arbitration.

Partner of Ashurst (www.ashurst.com).

Founded the Spanish office of Ashurst in 2001.

Head of the Ashurst Corporate and Litigation and Arbitration departments of the Ashurst Madrid office.

Has worked in corporate, finance and contentious matters for companies like Apax Partners, Coller Capital, TA Associates, Mercapital, Barclays Bank, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland, Stada Arzneimittel, Conserve Italia, Bank of Scotland, ING, ONCE, Anschutz Investments, QXL Ricardo, ACS Dragados, Wella, Rothschild, Cerberus, Morgan Stanley, Candover, Citigroup, TetraPak, Castle Harlan, Ferrovial, etc.

Prior to joining Ashurst, he was a partner at Melchor de las Heras (now, CMS' Albiñana & Suárez de Lezo).

He was also Secretary General of the Spanish State owned TV and radio group Radio Televisión Española (www.rtve.es), the largest media group in Spain.

Mentioned as recommended or leading lawyer in Spain in M&A, Corporate, Restructuring and Insolvency, Private Equity and Media by Chambers Global, Who's Who Legal, Global Counsel 3000, European Legal Experts, Experts Guides Euromoney, Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions Handbook, etc.

Member of the following arbitration courts:

• CIMA, Civil and Commercial Arbitration Court of Madrid (www.cima-arbitraje.com).
• Arbitration Court of the Spanish Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Navigation (www.camaras.org).
• Arbitration Court of the Madrid Bar Association (www.icam.com).
• Spanish-Moroccan Arbitration Court.

Has also acted as arbitrator in the Swiss Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Member of the "Círculo de Empresarios" (www.circulodeempresarios.org), a non-profit, non-partisan and private Spanish association formed by around 200 Spanish business leaders whose companies together employ over 715,000 workers and who share an interest in the major issues affecting the country's economic and social well-being.

Other

Member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (www.bvca.co.uk)

Born in Madrid, on January 21, 1964. Married. Four children.

Speaks Spanish, English and French.

Publications

• "Culpable Insolvency", International Corporate Rescue, Kluwer Law International, Volume 3, Issue 6, London, 2006.
• "Subordination of claims under the New Insolvency Law", International Corporate Rescue, Kluwer Law International, Volume 3, Issue 5, London, 2006.
• "Understanding the New Insolvency Law", International Corporate Rescue, Kluwer Law International, Volume 3, Issue 2, London, 2006.
• "El libro blanco de la competencia española", Expansión, Madrid, May 31, 2005.
• "Brief Analysis of the new Spanish Insolvency Code", International Corporate Rescue, Kluwer Law International, Volume 2, Issue 4, London, 2005.
• "Comparing civil litigation procedures across Europe", Ashurst, London, 2004.
• "Principios generales y principales novedades de la Nueva Ley Concursal", Ashurst, Madrid, 2004
• "Study on the conditions of claims for damages in case of infringement of the EC competition rules", European Commission, Brussels, August, 2004.
• "Principales novedades de la Ley de Arbitraje", Madrid, June, 2004.
• "Public to Privates in Spain", Ashurst, Madrid, Abril, 2004.
• "A guide to investing in Europe. Spain", BVCA, London, 2004.
• "La polémica modificación de la ley de propiedad intelectual", Expansión, Madrid, April 16, 2003.
• "Derechos audiovisuales de los partidos de fútbol", Expansión, Madrid, January 11, 2003.
• "Nuevo Derecho de las Infraestructuras", Revista del Derecho de las Telecomunicaciones e Infraestructuras en Red (REDETI), Madrid, 2001.
• "Móviles", REDETI, Madrid, April 2001.
• "Liberalizaciones 2000", Fundación de Estudios de Regulación & Editorial Comares, Granada, 2000.
• "Algunas ideas sobre las empresas de Internet y el control de las concentraciones económicas", REDETI, Madrid, October, 2000.
• "Control de fusiones y participaciones empresariales", Expansión, August 2, 2000.

Huda Ahmed is an Iraqi journalist. She had a joint fellowship for the 2007-2008 academic year at CISAC and CDDRL. In 2006-2007 she held the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship, sponsored by the International Women's Media Foundation, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ahmed's interests include international relations, ethnic politics and peace, democracy and religion of the West versus the East, and human rights reporting. She is interested in exploring current issues in Iraq related to politics, the status of democracy conflicts, violence, and the impact of war on Iraq.

Prior to her studies in the United States, Ahmed was a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers (formerly Knight Ridder Newspapers) in Baghdad. Beginning in July 2004, she assisted in coverage and translation for a wide range of breaking news and feature stories including the bloody siege of Najaf, Iraq's historic elections, and corruption in the new Iraqi security forces.

She was recognized by Knight Ridder's Washington bureau for extraordinary bravery in covering combat during the siege of Najaf in Southern Iraq.

Ahmed served as a reporter and translator for The Washington Post in Baghdad, where she assisted in covering the search for weapons of mass destruction, looting after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, the secret massacre of students during Hussein's reign, and the abuse of women in the Islamic world among other stories.

Her journalism career began in 1992 when she served as a translator for The Daily Baghdad Observer and Al Jumhurriya Daily, in Baghdad. Earlier in her career, she worked as a translator and a high school teacher in U.A.E, Tunisia, and Libya.

Ahmed, along with 5 other Iraqi journalists from McClatchy's Baghdad bureau, received the Courage in Journalism Award for 2007 from the International Women's Media Foundation.

Professor Karl has published widely on comparative politics and international relations, with special emphasis on the politics of oil-exporting countries, transitions to democracy, problems of inequality, the global politics of human rights, and the resolution of civil wars. Her works on oil, human rights and democracy include The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (University of California Press, 1998), honored as one of the two best books on Latin America by the Latin American Studies Association, the Bottom of the Barrel: Africa's Oil Boom and the Poor (2004 with Ian Gary), the forthcoming New and Old Oil Wars (with Mary Kaldor and Yahia Said), and the forthcoming Overcoming the Resource Curse (with Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs et al). She has also co-authored Limits of Competition (MIT Press, 1996), winner of the Twelve Stars Environmental Prize from the European Community. Karl has published extensively on comparative democratization, ending civil wars in Central America, and political economy. She has conducted field research throughout Latin America, West Africa and Eastern Europe. Her work has been translated into 15 languages.

Karl has a strong interest in U.S. foreign policy and has prepared expert testimony for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, and the United Nations. She served as an advisor to chief U.N. peace negotiators in El Salvador and Guatemala and monitored elections for the United Nations. She accompanied numerous congressional delegations to Central America, lectured frequently before officials of the Department of State, Defense, and the Agency for International Development, and served as an adviser to the Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States Congress. Karl appears frequently in national and local media. Her most recent opinion piece was published in 25 countries.

Karl has been an expert witness in major human rights and war crimes trials in the United States that have set important legal precedents, most notably the first jury verdict in U.S. history against military commanders for murder and torture under the doctrine of command responsibility and the first jury verdict in U.S. history finding commanders responsible for "crimes against humanity" under the doctrine of command responsibility. In January 2006, her testimony formed the basis for a landmark victory for human rights on the statute of limitations issue. Her testimonies regarding political asylum have been presented to the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Circuit courts. She has written over 250 affidavits for political asylum, and she has prepared testimony for the U.S. Attorney General on the extension of temporary protected status for Salvadorans in the United States and the conditions of unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody. As a result of her human rights work, she received the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa from the University of San Francisco in 2005.

Professor Karl has been recognized for "exceptional teaching throughout her career," resulting in her appointment as the William R. and Gretchen Kimball University Fellowship. She has also won the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching (1989), the Allan V. Cox Medal for Faculty Excellence Fostering Undergraduate Research (1994), and the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Graduate and Undergraduate Teaching (1997), the University's highest academic prize. Karl served as director of Stanford's Center for Latin American Studies from 1990-2001, was praised by the president of Stanford for elevating the Center for Latin American Studies to "unprecedented levels of intelligent, dynamic, cross-disciplinary activity and public service in literature, arts, social sciences, and professions." In 1997 she was awarded the Rio Branco Prize by the President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in recognition for her service in fostering academic relations between the United States and Latin America.

Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. Dr. McFaul also is as an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (eds. with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. He is currently writing a book called Autocrats versus Democrats: Lessons from the Cold War for Competing with China and Russia Today.

He teaches courses on great power relations, democratization, comparative foreign policy decision-making, and revolutions.

Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. In International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. His DPhil thesis was Southern African Liberation and Great Power Intervention: Towards a Theory of Revolution in an International Context.