The Hon. Bob Rae is the Liberal Member of Parliament in the federal riding of Toronto Centre and foreign affairs critic for the Liberal Party of Canada. 

Bob Rae served as Ontario's 21st Premier, and has been elected ten times to federal and provincial parliaments.

Mr. Rae has a B.A. and an LLB from the University of Toronto and was a Rhodes Scholar from Ontario in 1969. He obtained a B.Phil degree from Oxford University in 1971 and was named a Queen's Counsel in 1984. Mr. Rae has received numerous honorary degrees and awards from Canadian and foreign universities, colleges, and organizations.

Mr. Rae was appointed to Her Majesty's Privy Council for Canada in 1998 and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2000, and appointed an Officer of the Order of Ontario in 2004.

From 1996 to 2007 he was a partner in the law firm, Goodmans LLP one of Canada's leading international law firms. Mr. Rae's clients included companies, trade unions, charitable and non-governmental organizations, and governments themselves. He has extensive experience in negotiation, mediation and arbitration, and consults widely on issues of public policy both in Canada and worldwide.  He remains connected with the mediation and arbitration firm of ADR Chambers.

Mr. Rae is the past president and founding Chairman, of the Forum of Federations and served as Chairman of the Institute of Research on Public Policy (IRPP).  He was chair of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and is the Chairman Emeritus of the Royal Conservatory of Music, as well as National Spokesperson of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada. He was the Chief Negotiator of the Canadian Red Cross Society in its restructuring, and also served as a member of the Canada Transportation Act Review and the Security and Intelligence Review Committee for Canada.  He has served on the boards of a number of public companies and charities.  He was Chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University from 2002 to 2007.

Mr. Rae completed a review of Ontario's Postsecondary School Education for the Ontario Provincial government, with a report entitled Ontario:  A Leader in Learning, which in turn led to significant policy and budgetary change. 

In the spring of 2005, Mr. Rae was appointed a special advisor to the Canadian Minister of Public Safety on the Air India bombing of 1985.  His report, Lessons to be Learned was published in November of 2005 and led to his further appointment as Independent Counsellor to the Prime Minister of Canada.

Mr. Rae's books From Protest to Power, The Three Questions, Canada in the Balance, and Exporting Democracy: The Risks and Rewards of Pursuing a Good Idea are published by McClelland & Stewart.

Mr. Rae is Senior Fellow of Massey College in the University of Toronto.

Brian Levy currently is Head of the Bank's Governance and Anti-Corruption Secretariat in the World Bank - from where co-ordinates implementation of the Bank Group's GAC strategy. He is the author of Governance Reform: Bridging Monitoring and Action (World Bank, 2007), which builds on his 2006 work on governance monitoring featured in the 2006 Global Monitoring Report, Mutual Accountability: Aid, Trade and Governance . He worked in the World Bank's Africa Vice Presidency from 1991 to 2003 on the challenges of strengthening the institutional underpinnings of African development, for the last four years as sector manager of the Africa Public Sector Reform and Capacity Building Unit. He was a member of the core team which produced the World Bank's 1997 World Development Report, The State in a Changing World.  He has published numerous books and articles on the interactions between public institutions, the private sector and development in Africa, East Asia, and elsewhere, most recently editing (jointly with Sahr Kpundeh) the volume, Building State Capacity in Africa (World Bank Institute, 2004) Prior to joining the Bank he was assistant professor in development economics at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He completed his Ph.D in economics at Harvard University in 1983.

Born in New York in 1977, Nir Rosen has been reporting from Iraq since April of 2003 and has spent most of the last seven and a half years in Iraq. He recently returned from a trip to seven provinces in the country. He has also reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Mexico, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Turkey and Egypt. He has written for magazines such as The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and most major American publications. He has filmed documentaries. He is a Fellow at the New York University Center on Law and Security. His new book, Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America's Wars in the Muslim World, is about occupation, resistance, sectarianism and civil war from Iraq to Lebanon to Afghanistan.

Ben Rowswell is a Canadian diplomat with a specialization in statebuilding and stabilization. As Representative of Canada in Kandahar from 2009 to 2010 he directed the Kandahar Provincial Reconstruction Team, leading a team of more than 100 American and Canadian diplomats, aid workers, civilian police and other experts in strengthening the provincial government at the heart of the Afghan conflict. Having served before that as Deputy Head of Mission in Kabul, Rowswell brings a practitioner's knowledge of Afghanistan and of statebuilding in general to the CDDRL.

His previous conflict experience includes two years as Canada's Chargé d'Affaires in Iraq between 2003 and 2005, and with the UN in Somalia in 1993. He has also served at the Canadian embassy in Egypt and the Permanent Mission to the UN, and as a foreign policy advisor to the federal Cabinet in Ottawa. An alumnus of the National Democratic Institute, he founded the Democracy Unit of the Canadian foreign ministry.

Rowswell is a Senior Associate of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the co-editor of "Iraq: Preventing a New Generation of Conflict" (2007). He studied international relations at Oxford and at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

Zalmay Khalilzad is President and CEO of Khalilzad Associates LLC, an international advisory firm. He serves as a Counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and sits on the Boards of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), America Abroad Media (AAM), the RAND Corporation's Middle East Studies Center, the American University of Iraq in Suleymania (AUIS), and the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF).

Dr. Khalilzad served as U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2007-2009, a post for which he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Prior to that position, he spent more than two years in Baghdad as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq
(2005-2007).

He previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (2003-2005), Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan (2001-2003), and Special Presidential Envoy and Ambassador at Large for Free Iraqis (2002-2003).

Dr. Khalilzad held a series of high level positions at the National Security Council and in the White House between 2001 and 2003, including Special Assistant to the President for Islamic Outreach and Southwest Asia Initiatives, and Special Assistant for Southwest Asia, Near East, and North African Affairs. He is the recipient of three Distinguished Public Service Medals, one each from three consecutive Secretaries of Defense.

Between 1993 and 1999, he was Director of the Strategy, Doctrine and Force Structure program for RAND's Project Air Force. At RAND, he also founded the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Dr. Khalilzad previously served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning from 1990 to 1992. He served on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and as Special Advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs from 1985 to 1989.

Earlier in his career, he was an associate professor at the University of California at San Diego and an assistant professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Ambassador Khalilzad earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, as well as a PhD from the University of Chicago. He regularly appears on U.S. and foreign media outlets to share his foreign policy expertise.