At the time of this interview Sigrid Arzt Colunga was working with a think tank, conduting policy research in Mexico. She had extensive experience working on national and public security issues through her academic work, with the Fundacion Rafael Preciado, and through public service. She worked both as a public servant and a consultant for Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional  (CISEN) and served as Technical Secretary to Attorney General Antonio Lozano Gracia during President Ernesto Zedillo’s administration.  She also formerly directed the NGO Democracia de Derechos Humanos y Seguridad, an organization that gathered information and made policy recommendations regarding issues of security, human rights and transparency. She officially joined President Felipe Calderon’s transition team in October 2006 as the Technical Secretary of the National Security Council, and served in that role until resigning in March 2009. 

At the time of this interview, Nitish Kumar was the former Chief Minister. Kumar had previous experience in governing from his work as a Minister in the Union Government of India. Before that, he briefly worked with the Bihar State Electricity Board, putting his Electrical Engineering degree from NIT Patna to use. Kumar belongs to the Janata Dal (United) political party in India, and has gained popularity by initiating a series of developmental reforms in the state of Bihar during his times as Chief Minister there. His supporters and fans nicknamed him “sushasan babu,” which roughly translates to “man of good governance.”

Edmundo Jaime Pérez Yoma is a well-known politician from the Christian Democrat Party of Chile. He served as the Minster of Interior for President Michelle Bachelet’s first administration and helped ease the presidential transition process from President Bachelet to President Piñera. Prior to this position, he served, twice, as Minister of Defense during the administration of President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle. In addition to his political career, in the 1990s, he was president on the board of Petrox and Chilectra Metropolitana, oil and electricity companies, respectively.

At the time of this interview, Juan Miguel Luz was serving as an associate dean of the Center for Development Management (CDM) at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). Earlier on, from 1997-2005, he was a member of the business and development management faculty at AIM, and also served as the managing director of the AIM Center for Corporate Responsibility from 1999-2002. In 2002, he entered public service as undersecretary of the Philippine Department of Education, where he was in charge of finance and administration. He held this position until 2006, and during his tenure, was part of significant reform within the department, including the numerous Textbook Count projects that helped improve the quality and availability of textbooks to local schools. From 2006-2008, Luz served as president of the International Institute for Rural Reconstruction, an international NGO with programs in Southeast Asia and East Africa. He rejoined AIM in September 2009, and remains actively involved with a number of non-profit organizations, including the Knowledge Channel, the Philippine Center for Population Development, and Philippine Business for Education. He has also authored books on the strategic management of non-governmental organizations, corporate-community relations and education management. 

A career civil servant, Ciro Fernandes worked as a project manager for the Ministry of Social Security. He joined the newly-created Ministry of Administration and State Reform under Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

At the time of this interview, Iqbal Mahmood was the secretary of the Bangladesh Ministry of Public Administration. After obtaining a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Dhaka, as well as a degree in policy studies from the University of New South Wales in Australia, Mahmood joined the administrative service of Bangladesh as assistant commissioner in 1981. From there, he went on to serve in a number of different positions, acquiring over thirty years of experience in the country’s civil service. His tenure has included a position as the deputy secretary of the Economics Relations Division, the joint secretary of the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock as well as the secretary of the Ministry of Establishment. Mahmood was also a member of the first batch of civil servants that attended the national managing at the top 2 (MATT 2) training program in June 2006.

 At the time of this interview, Alfred Brownell was the president of the Association of Environmental Lawyers of Liberia (Green Advocates.) In 1997, while a law student at the University of Liberia, Brownell launched Green Advocates and put into place Liberia’s first framework environmental law. Brownell was also the lead campaigner for Liberia’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, successfully pressing for the passage of legislative reform in the national forestry sector. Between 2000 and 2003, Brownell’s work helped bring about the imposition of sanctions on Liberia’s timber exports, a travel ban and an asset freeze on corrupt government officials. Through the years, Brownell has devoted himself to campaigning for national policies that stem corruption and abuses related to natural resource extraction.