At the time of this interview, José Hugo Granadino Mejía was chief of the professional training unit of the National Police of El Salvador. A lawyer and notary, he in 1993 became one of the first professors at the National Academy of Public Security (Academia Nacional de Seguridad Pública), an institution separate from the National Police. He also served as director of study and later as director general of the academy, and he worked as a professor of law at the Universidad de El Salvador for 25 years and at the Universidad Tecnológica de El Salvador.

At the time of this interview, Ranjit Singh Sardara was the chief of operations of the United Nations Police in Manatutu, Timor-Leste. He served in the Royal Malaysian Police for 27 years. His experience spanned community policing, traffic cases, crime prevention, and operations and intelligence. Sardara was also a part of the U.N. mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He served as an election officer in Visegrad; he held the post of deputy station commander and later, station commander. Sardara also served as the deputy regional commander of Sarajevo.

At the time of this interview, Julie Fleming was chief of the community policing project in Kosovo, working with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the U.S. International Crime Investigative Training Assistance Program. She started working as a police officer in 1985 and worked in California, in Oregon, in the Public Safety Academy, as a consultant in various U.S. states, and finally at the Regional Community Policing Institute (covering six western U.S. states) before coming to Kosovo in 2003 to implement the Community Safety Action Teams program.

At the time of this interview, Paavani Reddy was working as a civil society officer for the United Nations Development Programme, seconded to the Ministry of Gender of the government of Liberia as a technical assistant on policies. Her duties entailed mainstreaming gender-based policies in the national security sector and implementing the Poverty Reduction Strategy. Previously, she worked for CARE International (Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere, Inc.) in Rwanda in 2005 and in New York in 2004. 

At the time of this interview, Knut Walter was president of the Accreditation Commission of El Salvador.  He earned a doctorate in history and held academic posts at Jose Simeon Cañas Central American University for 23 years.  He was a fellow at the New York Social Science Research Council, and he served as director of graduate programs at the Latin American University of Social Sciences in Guatemala.

Graham Muir was the commissioner of the United Nations Police as part of the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti from 2005 to 2006.  At the time of the interview, he had served 32 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  Prior to his service in Haiti, Muir served as the director of general learning and development for the RCMP.  He first became involved in international police work in 1993 as a part of the U.N. Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia.  Between 1993 and 2005 Muir was heavily involved with the training of RCMP members for U.N. police service.  He also had been involved with the Pearson Peace Keeping Center for a number of years at the time of the interview.

Ilir Gjoni served as chief of staff under Albanian Prime Minister Pandeli Majko, being appointed to the position in 1999. When the administration changed that same year, the new prime minister, Ilir Mehta, reconfirmed Gjoni’s appointment. Prime Minister Meta went on to appoint Gjoni as minister of defense in July 2000. Gjoni also became the minister of public order under Meta’s regime, holding the post until February 2002. A philology major in the Tirana University class of 1985, Gjoni’s involvement in the public sector began when he was recruited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs upon graduation. Leaving the ministry in 1994, Gjoni pursued a master' degree in diplomacy. He then opted to acquire a second degree in national security studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monteray, California. Gjoni also spent some time working as an international news editor at the only independent newspaper in Albania at the time, Koha Jone. After his venture into journalism, Gjoni went on to become a liaison officer for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees office in Tirana, assisting in the management of both the ’98 and ’99 Kosovo refugee crises until his appointment in the Majko administration.