Bashir Goth is a veteran journalist, freelance writer, the first Somali blogger and editor of a leading news website. He is also a regular contributor to major Middle Eastern and African newspapers and online journals.

Rami George Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian and U.S. citizen whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is editor at large, and former executive editor, of the Beirut-based Daily Star newspaper, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune. An internationally syndicated political columnist and book author, he is also the first director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, and also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Harvard University and the Dubai School of Government. He was awarded the Pax Christi International Peace Prize for 2006. He teaches annually at American University of Beirut, University of Chicago and Northeastern University. He has been a fellow and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Mount Holyoke College, Syracuse University and Stanford University, and is a member of the Brookings Institution Task Force on US Relations with the Islamic World. He is a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (Jerusalem), and a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard University Divinity School. He also serves on the board of the East-West Institute, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University (USA), and the Jordan National Museum. He was editor-in-chief of the Jordan Times for seven years and for 18 years he was general manager of Al Kutba, Publishers, in Amman, Jordan, where he also served as a consultant to the Jordanian tourism ministry on biblical archaeological sites. He has hosted programs on archeology, history and current public affairs on Jordan Television and Radio Jordan, and often comments on Mideast issues in the international media. He has BA and MSc degrees respectively in political science and mass communications from Syracuse University, NY, USA.

Endy M. Bayuni took up the job of chief editor of The Jakarta Post, Indonesia’s independent and leading English language newspaper, in August 2004 shortly after he returned from a one-year Nieman Fellowship at the Harvard University. Endy has been with the newspaper since 1991, working his way up from Production Manager (Night Editor), to National Editor, Managing Editor, and Deputy Chief Editor through all those years. He previously worked as the Indonesian correspondent for Reuters and Agence France-Presse between 1984 and 1991, and began his journalistic career with The Jakarta Post in 1983. Endy completed his Bachelors of Arts degree in economics from Kingston University in Surrey, England, in 1981.

Glenda Gloria is the managing editor of Newsbreak, the Philippines’s leading news and current affairs online magazine. A journalist for two decades now, she writes about security issues, governance, elections, the media, and Southeast Asia. She began her journalism career as a reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in January 1986, a month before the edsa people power revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship. Three years later, she joined The Manila Times where she was assigned to cover the Philippine military, an institution that she has studied extensively. She left the Manila Times in 1992 to join the Manila bureau of Asahi Shimbun. In 1995, Ms. Gloria wrote about Makati and its mayor in Boss: 5 Cases of Local Politics in the Philippines, published by the PCIJ and the Institute for Popular Democracy. The book won the National Book Award. In 2000, together with Marites Dañguilan Vitug, she authored Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao, a groundbreaking book on the Muslim rebel movements in Mindanao that won the National Book Award. In 2003, Ms. Gloria published a pamphlet on the phenomenon of appointing military officers to the Philippine bureaucracy (We Were Soldiers). Previously, she co-authored the book, Kudeta: Challenge to Philippine Democracy, published by the PCIJ. Last year, she wrote a book assessing the impact of political advertising on the presidential and senatorial elections that were held in May 2004. ative reporting in 2004. Born on July 23, 1965 in Laoag City, Philippines, Ms. Gloria earned her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila (1985). She holds a masters degree in political sociology, with distinction, from the London School of Economics and Political Science (1999). She has a two-year-old daughter. At present, she is also a lecturer on Media and Politics and Investigative Reporting at the KAF Asian Center for Journalism of the Ateneo de Manila University.

Kyoko Altman has worked as a correspondent and anchor for CNN and CNBC, and as a news-magazine reporter for Japan's top-ranked news program 'News Station' on TV Asahi. She has covered more than twenty countries.

Charles "Mase" Onyango-Obbo a Ugandan author, journalist, former editor of The Monitor and political commentator of issues in East Africa and the African Great Lakes region. He writes a column, Ear To The Ground in The Monitor, and a second column in the regional weekly, The EastAfrican. He is currently managing editor in charge of media convergence at the Nation Media Group in Kenya. Born in the town of Mbale in eastern Uganda, Onyango-Obbo studied at Makerere University in Kampala, and the American University in Cairo where he obtained a Masters degree in journalism. In 1991, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. On May 1999, during the Second Congo War, Onyango-Obbo and other editors of The Monitor – Wafula Ogutu and David Ouma Balikowa – were arrested and charged with "sedition" and "publication of false news"´, following the publication of a photograph of a naked woman being sexually abused by men in military uniform. Ugandan officials insisted that the assailants might be soldiers from Congo or Zimbabwe (who where also involved in the Congo war), and could not possibly be Ugandan soldiers as the photo caption claimed. Onyango-Obbo and the other editors were acquitted on March 6, 2001.

Maria Cristina Caballero was Director of Investigations at Semana, Colombia's main weekly news magazine, from (1998-2001). Previously she was also editor of investigations at Cambio news-magazine and El Tiempo, Colombia's main daily paper. She is currently a Fellow at Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership. She completed a master's degree in public administration at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Previously, Caballero completed a Communications and Journalism degree at Colombia's Javeriana University.Caballero was a 1993 Alfred Friendly Press Fellow at Time magazine's Washington, D.C. Bureau (a working fellowship) and a 1997 Lucius W. Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Caballero won a 1998 Simon Bolivar National Prize in Journalism (the Colombian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) for her exclusive interview with Carlos Castano, leader of Colombia's paramilitaries. She won the same award in 1991 for a series of investigative reports regarding corruption at Colombia's National Property Institute. Caballero also received the 1990 Inter American Press Association Human Rights Award. In 1999, she won a World Press Freedom Award from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, "In recognition of her commitment to the defense of press freedom in Colombia and throughout the world." Her articles and editorials about Latin American and human rights issues, the situation of countries in conflict, press freedom issues, and gender issues have appeared in, among others, Newsweek, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, CNN Interactive, the International Herald Tribune and the Miami Herald. While at the Center for Public Leadership, Caballero plans to write about the leadership challenges facing Colombia and other Latin American countries.

Dr. Ali Ettefagh serves as a director of Highmore Global Corporation, an investment company in emerging markets of Eastern Europe, CIS, and the Middle East. He is the co-author of several books on trade conflict, resolution of international trade disputes, conflicts in letters of credit, trade-related banking transactions, sovereign debt, arbitration and dispute resolutions and publications specific to the oil and gas, communication, aviation and finance sectors. Dr. Ettefagh is a member of the executive committee and the board of directors of The Development Foundation, an advisor to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and an advisor to a number of European companies. Dr. Ettefagh speaks Persian (Farsi), English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Turkish.