Thulisile Madonsela received her law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1990 and began her career in the trade union movement. She then moved to the Department of Justice, where she participated in the strategic planning process to transform the justice system in post-apartheid South Africa. Madonsela also was involved in the constitutional dialogue during the 1990s. In 2006, after several years in the private sector, she rejoined the Department of Justice as a law commissioner. In 2009, after a multi-party parliamentary committee backed her nomination, President Jacob Zuma appointed Madonsela public protector. She served a seven-year term in the office. In 2016, she began a fellowship at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative.

At the time of this interview, Judy Parfitt was General Manager of Human Resources (HR) at the South African Revenue Services (SARS). She began her career in journalism. But, in the wake of state censorship exercised in South Africa during the state of emergency declared in the late 1980s, Parfitt returned to school and obtained a Master’s in International Relations in Warrick, United Kingdom (U.K.). She then worked for Volkswagen South Africa, and later helped set up the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration in South Africa, specifically the Eastern Cape region. In 1998, Parfitt was recruited by SARS.

At the time of this interview, Mike McCormack was the co-president of the Guyana Human Rights Association.  Born in the U.K., he lived and worked in the Caribbean, Central America and South America since the late 1960s, serving as Oxfam's Andean regional director and working on human rights issues in Chile and Argentina. He returned to Guyana and was involved with the GHRA since its founding in 1979.  Through the GHRA, he championed political, economic and social rights.

At the time of this interview, Kathleen Imholz was an expert with the European Assistance Mission to the Albanian Justice System, where she worked on all aspects of the justice system. From 1999 until October 2005, she worked for several years with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the World Bank as an adviser to the Albanian government and the General Secretary of the Council of Ministers. Before that she taught commercial law as a Fulbright Fellow in Albania and worked on a legal education program in the country.

At the time of this interview, Robert Bradley was the interim component manager ofsafety and security at the Justice Sector Development Programme in Freetown, Sierra Leone. His career in policing began in 1966 when he joined the former Australian Capital Territory police. In 1967, he was drafted into the army and he served in Vietnam. On his return to Australia in 1969, Bradley was reappointed to the ACT police. He participated in community policing in Jervis Bay and later, he worked on criminal investigations and in the Juvenile Aid Bureau. Bradley also served in the general policing division, which dealt primarily with positions related to United Nations work such as recruitment and training of officers for overseas deployment. He was a part of the U.N. missions to Cyprus, Cambodia and Mozambique. In 1995, Bradley resigned from the police force and set up police training programs in Bosnia, Eastern Slovenia, Mongolia and other areas.  

At the time of this interview, Zef Preci was the founding head of the independent, non-governmental Albanian Center for Economic Research, established in 1992 as Albania's first independent, non-governmental organization dedicated to research and analysis in support of a market economy and democracy. He served briefly in 2000 as the minister of public economy and privatization before he returned to ACER as its director. Later, he was an adviser to Albania's president and chairman of the Authority for Competition.  During his career, he also was a lecturer in entrepreneurial economics at Tirana University.

At the time of this interview, Joseph Kekula was the former inspector-general of the Liberian National Police. He specialized in VIP protection and worked in the presidential mansion. He came up through the ranks to become a colonel. During the transitional government from 2003 to 2005, Kekula served as a deputy director for police administration. 

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.

At the time of this interview, Jeremy Cronin was the deputy minister for transport of South Africa and an African National Congress member of Parliament, as well as deputy general-secretary of the South African Communist Party. He was appointed as deputy minister of transport in 2009 and had been an MP since 1999. He previously worked on the South African Reconstruction and Development Programme, and he served as deputy general-secretary of the South African Communist Party since 1995. He was a political prisoner under apartheid for seven years, from 1976-1983. A respected poet, Cronin also worked as a lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Cape Town in the early 1970s.