Our Advisory Council

Najat Vallaud Belkacem is the CEO Global Affairs at the IPSOS Group, a global market and opinion research company. She also directs a research collection within Fayard, a French large publishing house.

Previously, Vallaud Belkacem served as the French Minister for National Education, Higher Education, and Research from 2014 to 2017. She has also served as the French Minister for Women’s Affairs, the government spokesperson, and the Minister for Urban Planning, Youth and Sports. Prior to that, she was involved in local politics for ten years – she served as Regional Councillor for Rhône-Alpes, Deputy Mayor of Lyon, and General Councillor of Rhône.

Patrick Bitature is a Ugandan businessman and entrepreneur.

Bitature is the founder and chairman of the Simba Group of Companies, an east African conglomerate with interests in telecoms, energy production, mining, media, real estate, travel, and leisure. Bitature and his wife Carol Bitature started Simba Telecom Limited together in 1998. The company became a franchisee of MTN Uganda and has since grown into the largest seller of MTN airtime in Uganda. Over the years, Bitature has formed other companies to create the Simba Group of Companies, which has subsidiaries in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. He also serves on a variety of boards in Uganda, including as Board Chairman of Private Sector Foundation Uganda, and is an active philanthropist.

Jay Collins is Citi’s Vice Chairman of Corporate and Investment Banking, serving as the bank’s senior banker for governments.

Collins has covered clients around the world in a wide variety of sectors and run transactions across the full product spectrum of Citi. He has advised governments and corporations on large scale financings and mergers and acquisitions on every continent. Over the course of his career, Jay has advised 54 different governments on privatizations, liability management and funding solutions, infrastructure finance, market solutions, structured products and derivatives, and electronic banking services, including a wide range of digital solutions. He has been a Senior Credit Officer of the Firm since 2006. Prior to joining Citi in 1997, Jay held roles at Merrill Lynch and CSIS.

Joe Gebbia is the co-founder and CPO of Airbnb. He serves on the company’s Board of Directors and Executive staff and also leads Samara, Airbnb’s in-house design and innovation studio.

Airbnb’s groundbreaking service began in Gebbia’s San Francisco apartment and has since spread to nearly 5 million listings across more than 191 countries, creating a new economy for thousands of people around the world. Gebbia is involved in crafting the company culture, shaping its design aesthetic, and innovating future growth opportunities. He has spoken globally about both entrepreneurship and design and has received numerous distinctions, such as being included in the Inc 30 under 30 and Fortune 40 under 40. Gebbia serves on the Rhode Island School of Design’s Board of Trustees, Malala Fund Leadership Council, and USA for UNHCR Advisory Council.

General Michael Hayden is currently a principal at The Chertoff Group.

Hayden is a retired four-star general who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. As head of the premier intelligence agencies in the United States, he was on the frontline of global change, the war on terrorism, and the growing cyber security challenge. General Hayden has also served in numerous other senior roles at the Pentagon, U.S. European Command, the National Security Council, and more. He serves on a variety of boards and consultancies and is the founder of the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security and a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.

Per Heggenes is the CEO of IKEA Foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of Stichting INGKA Foundation and the owner of the Swedish home furnishings company IKEA.

As CEO, Heggenes sets and drives the Foundation’s funding and innovation strategies and is a tireless advocate for children living in some of the world’s poorest communities. Since becoming the Foundation’s first CEO in 2009, he has presided over the Foundation’s evolution into a global, grant-making philanthropic organization that funds programs in more than 45 countries. Heggenes also serves as an Advisory Group member of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute, a Councilor for the World Refugee Council, and a member of the World Commission for Forced Displacement.

Muhtar Kent is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Coca-Cola Company.

Kent was formerly the company’s President and CEO. He joined the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in 1978 and has held a variety of global marketing and operations leadership roles throughout his career. He is a current member and past Chairman of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum. He is a member of the Concordia Leadership Council, the Federation Internationale l’Automobile – High Level Panel on Road Safety, a Board Member Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Chairman Emeritus of the U.S. ASEAN Business Council. He also serves on the boards of 3M, Special Olympics International, Catalyst, Cambridge China Development Trust, and the advisory boards of Tsinghua University and Emory University.

Betty Liu is the Executive Vice Chairman for NYSE Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE). Liu oversees the NYSE marketing strategy, including customer-centric messaging, brand, digital, and events consistent with Intercontinental Exchange’s growth strategy.

Prior to joining the NYSE in 2018, Liu was an award-winning business journalist. She most recently anchored the Bloomberg Television “Daybreak Asia” program. She also co-created and anchored “In the Loop” for eight years on Bloomberg. Prior to the NYSE acquisition, Liu served as founder and CEO of Radiate, a content platform that aims to empower leaders with expert advice. Before joining Bloomberg Television, Liu was an anchor for CNBC Asia, the Atlanta bureau chief for the Financial Times and the Taiwan bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswires.

Denis McDonough is a Senior Principal at the Markle Foundation, a national initiative to modernize the labor market, where he chairs the Rework America Task Force.

McDonough previously served as White House Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama. In that role, he managed the White House staff, as well as Cabinet Secretaries and agency leaders. He provided strategic advice to the President and planned and coordinated efforts to recruit and retain key talent. In the first term of the Obama Administration, he served as Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor. Currently, McDonough also serves as an executive fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, teaching a global policy seminar. He has written extensively about the global refugee crisis.

Samantha Power is a Professor of Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School.

From 2013 to 2017, Power served as the youngest-ever U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obama’s cabinet. From 2009 to 2013, Power served on the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Power began her career as a journalist, reporting from places such as Bosnia, East Timor, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, and was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School.  Power’s book, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. She is also the author of Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

Azita Shariati is President of Sodexo Nordics and CEO of Sodexo Sweden. Sodexo is a global service management company with 425,000 employees and is the 19th largest employer in the world.

Shariati came to Sweden from Iran in 1988 and worked her way up from a position as a restaurant manager to Sodexo’s top management in Sweden, thanks to her ability to work inclusively and leverage diversity as a resource. The Swedish business magazine “Veckans Affärer” named Shariati as the most powerful CEO in business in Sweden in 2015.

Mehmet Şimşek is Turkey’s former Deputy Prime Minister for Economic and Financial Affairs.

Şimşek previously served as Turkey’s Minister of Finance and Minister of Economy. He was elected to Parliament for three terms, representing the AK Party. Before entering politics, he worked for Merrill Lynch in London, initially as an economist and strategist, and later as the head of Fixed Income Strategy and Macro Economic Research for the emerging EMEA region. He was named as one of the 500 most powerful people on the planet by Foreign Policy in 2013, and awarded as the “Finance Minister of the Year for Emerging Europe 2013” by Emerging Markets magazine.

Beatrice Trussardi is the chair of the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi and an Italian cultural entrepreneur.

Previously, Trussardi held various positions within the Trussardi Group, including President and CEO. She also holds positions in prestigious Italian and international organizations, bringing to bear the experience she has acquired in both the business and the cultural world to raise public awareness of issues like innovation, sustainability, and envisioning a different future for our planet. Trussardi previously worked at some of the leading museums in New York, such as the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Wendy Woods is a Senior Partner and Managing Director of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Global Leader of the firm’s Social Impact practice.

Woods is responsible for BCG’s work addressing global health, development, education, environment and climate, humanitarian response, impact investing, and total societal impact. She works with businesses, governments, and social sector organizations, helping clients rethink business’s role in society, create inclusive strategies, improve effectiveness, develop public-private partnerships, and drive change. She has given two TED talks, “Collective cooperation in the social sector” and “The business benefits of doing good,” and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the Centre for Public Impact, a BCG foundation dedicated to improving the positive impact of governments.