At the time of this interview, Gail Teixeira was serving as a member of Guyana's Parliament as well as an adviser to President Bharrat Jagdeo on governance. Her comments center on her experiences as minister of home affairs from 2004 to 2006.

At the time of this interview, Mohammed Mokhlesar Rahman Sarker was the director of the Electoral Training Institute, a sister organization to the Bangladesh Election Commission that is responsible for training the entire electoral staff in the country. He had held the position for two and a half years. Some time after the interview, he became deputy commissioner of the Lalmonirhat district of Bangladesh.

At the time of this interview, Chief Superintendent Dave Beer was serving as the director general of international policing for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a position that included peace-operations deployments, liaison with INTERPOL, and oversight of the international operations branch, the visits and travel branch, and the international affairs and policy branch.  Beer led or participated in policing development missions under the auspices of the Canadian International Development Agency, the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the U.S. State Department.  Although he spent the most time in Haiti, partially due to his being bilingual in French and English, he also served in Liberia, Central African Republic and Iraq.   

At the time of the interview, Garry Horlacher was security sector reform coordinator for the U.K. Department for International Development. Prior to that, he was part of the U.K. police for 30 years, retiring with the rank of chief superintendent.

At the time of this interview, John Nikita had retired as director of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's International Peace Operations Branch in Ottawa, at the rank of superintendent, after more than 33 years of service to Canada.  As a member of Canada's national police service, he served in a variety of positions including municipal, provincial and federal law enforcement.  In 1994, he formed the RCMP's United Nations Civilian Police Administration and Logistics Unit.  After establishing Canada's national police peacekeeping operations program, he went on to serve in three U.N. peacekeeping operations.  In 1997, he served as the deputy commissioner and chief of operations for the U.N. mission in Haiti.  In 2000-2001, he served as the chief of operations of the U.N. Interim Administration Mission Border Police, followed by a period as the chief of human resources of the Kosovo Police Service within the U.N. mission in Kosovo.  In 2005-2006, Nikita served as the senior police adviser to the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

At the time of this interview, Rudolfo Landeros was senior police adviser at the United Nations Integrated Office in Sierra Leone. Prior to that, he spent more than 24 years at the Austin, Texas, police department, where his positions included assistant chief of police.

At the time of this interview, Carlos Manuel Lopes Pereira was serving as Dili district deputy commander for the United Nations Police mission in Timor-Leste.  He was a member of the Portuguese police for 20 years. He was the commander of a police unit north of Lisbon, and had previously worked as chief supervisor in Portugal.  He served in U.N. missions in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and  Timor-Leste.

At the time of this interview, Ibrahim Idris was a United Nations police operations coordinator and the officer in charge of the U.N. mission in Liberia.  He arrived in Liberia in 2004 as a U.N. police adviser. In his homeland of Nigeria, he was the deputy commissioner of police.  He joined the Nigerian police service in 1984 as a cadet officer.  He later served as a crime and traffic officer.  In 1987, he transferred to the Police Mobile Force, a special unit that dealt with riot control and anti-insurgency operations.  He served as the commandant of the Mobile Police Training School from 1998 to 2004.

At the time of this interview, Andrew Hughes had over 30 years of experience as a police officer, including as a deputy chief police officer in the Australian Capital Territory Police and assistant commissioner in charge of operations for the Australian Federal Police. He served as a liaison officer at the Australian High Commission in London, working with U.K. and European counterparts primarily on issues related to organized crime. Hughes also spent over three years as the commissioner of police in Fiji, prior to the December 2006 coup. On August 9, 2007, United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon announced Hughes' appointment as police adviser to the U.N., a role that placed him at the head of U.N. Police peacekeeping operations.