Ivo Daalder
President, Chicago Council on Global Affairs
@IvoHDaalder

Ivo Daalder has been president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs since July 2013. Prior to joining the Council, Daalder served as the ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for more than four years. He also served on the National Security Council staff as director for European Affairs from 1995-97. Before his appointment as ambassador to NATO by President Obama in 2009, Daalder was a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, specializing in American foreign policy, European security and transatlantic relations, and national security affairs. Ambassador Daalder serves on the board of UI LABS and on the leadership board of the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ambassador Daalder was educated at Oxford and Georgetown Universities, and received his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Madeline Di Nonno
CEO, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
@GDIGM

Madeline Di Nonno leads the Geena Davis Institute's strategic direction, research, education, advocacy, financial, and operational activities. She began her career at ABC, and served as president and CEO of On The Scene Productions, leading the company’s development of video content platforms for clients. She has served in executive marketing positions for Anchor Bay Entertainment/Starz Media and Echo Bridge Home Entertainment, and was the executive vice president for Nielsen EDI. Di Nonno also served as senior vice president for marketing alliances and digital media at the Hallmark Channel, and as vice president for strategic marketing at Universal Studios Home Video. She holds a BA from Boston University.    

Julie Gichuru
Founder and CEO, Arimus Media
@JulieGichuru
@ArimusMedia

Julie Gichuru is an entrepreneur and media personality. Gichuru is a fellow and trustee of the Africa Leadership Initiative EA. Her career in media over the past 15 years has seen her work across the fields of broadcast, print, and digital media. Gichuru has also pioneered an impressive number of television shows, from the first Kenyan investigative TV series to various political and current affairs shows at NTV. Through Arimus Media Limited, she now oversees the production of African content. Julie and Anthony Gichurus established the Footprints Africa Foundation (FAF) to help empower and grow healthy, dignified, and informed societies in the region. She received her undergraduate degree and MBA from the University of Wales, Cardiff.

Claudia González Romo
Chief of Advocacy, UNICEF
@claudiagonzalez
@UNICEF

Claudia González Romo was seconded to the Executive Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations to lead communications for the special adviser on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change. She has led public relations, branding, and marketing strategies for some of the world's biggest global organizations—including the World Economic Forum, the UN Refugee Agency, and the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. González Romo holds degrees in communications and philosophy and an MA in political communications from the London School of Economics.   

Liz Gray
President, The Equation, The Female Quotient
@lizfoleygray

Liz Gray is currently president of TFQ Strategy at The Female Quotient, where she is responsible for collaborating with forward thinking brands that are dedicated to impacting the future of equality by providing them with the tools they need to authentically be part of the conversation. These tools include consumer and cultural insights as well as new metrics of accountability for equality in media and entertainment. Previously she was president of Trendera, a leading research, consulting, and trend analysis company specializing in understanding and interpreting the attitudes and behaviors of Gen X and Gen Y. Gray has worked on partnership deals with clients including, ESPN, HBO, Nike, NBC, Microsoft and The Gap. She began her sales and marketing career at ESPN, Conde Nas, and Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in market research and advertising sales.

Laura A. Jana
MD, FAAP, Pediatrician, Author, Health Innovator
@kiddocjana

Laura A. Jana, MD most recently served as a faculty member at Penn State University’s Prevention Research Center who has spent her career addressing the most pressing needs of children, families and communities. Formerly the director of innovation at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health, Jana serves as the American Academy of Pediatrics spokesperson and as a strategic consultant for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Ready Nation, All Children Thrive Network, and MIT Media Lab’s Emerging Worlds Initiative. Her latest books, The Toddler Brain: Nurture the Skills Today That Will Shape Your Child’s Tomorrow and Jumping into Kindergarten, focus on early development of critical 21st century skills. She received a BS from the University of Michigan an MD from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Niamh King
Vice President, Programs and Strategic Content, Chicago Council on Global Affairs
@kingniamh

Niamh King is the vice president for programs and strategic content at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, where she has worked since March 2007. Under her direction, the Programs team organizes over 200 events annually. This includes signature annual events such as the Chicago Forum on Global Cities, the Global Health and Development Symposium, and the Global Food Security Symposium. Prior to joining the Council, she held positions with Intel, the European Commission, FÁS, and the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. King is a member of the board of directors of The America Ireland Fund Chicago Regional Advisory Board, the Women’s Board of the University of Chicago, the Chicago Project on Security & Threats, and the Japan America Society of Chicago. She earned a BA in international relations and history from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an MA in development studies from the Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University in The Hague, Netherlands

Matt Krentz
Senior Partner and Managing Director, Boston Consulting Group
@BCG

Matt Krentz leads The Boston Consulting Group’s Global People Team. In this role, he serves on the firm’s Executive and Operating Committees. Krentz has focused on a variety of strategy, corporate-development, organization, marketing and sales, and pricing issues across a broad range of consumer industries. This includes food and beverage, personal-care products, broadcast and print media, and building products. He has advised numerous chief executives and senior management teams on their corporate strategy, change management, and marketing, sales, and distribution efforts in their current and future markets. He has also led the Women@BCG program designed to empower women employees at BCG. Prior to joining BCG, Krentz worked in corporate development for Hewlett-Packard. He received a BA from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.  

Roqayah Mohammed
Student, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Roqayah Mohammed was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1998. When the war began, her mother Ahlam was working as a fixer/translator for international journalists and later ran a humanitarian center until she was kidnapped for ransom in 2005. The family fled as refugees to Damascus, Syria, where Ahlam continued working as a fixer and opened a school for refugee girls. Mohammed was nine when her mother was arrested by Syria's secret police in 2008, and ten when her mother was released and the family began a new life in Chicago. Having arrived with no ability to speak English, she later became a mentor and translator for new refugees. At the age of eighteen, she is now a pre-med student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is empowering and paving the way for a new generation of refugee girls.

Michael J. Nyenhuis
President and CEO, Americares 
@AmericaresCEO
@Americares

Michael J. Nyenhuis heads the world’s leading nonprofit provider of donated medicine and medical supplies. For nearly 40 years, Americares has been responding to people affected by poverty or disaster with life-changing health programs, medicine and medical supplies. Nyenhuis has more than 20 years of experience as a global health professional. He has oversight of all Americares offices worldwide, including its operations in the United States, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Liberia, Nepal, the Philippines and Tanzania. Nyenhuis previously served as the president and chief executive officer of MAP International. He holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and an MBA from Emory University.  

Lilianne Ploumen
Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, The Netherlands

H.E Lilianne Ploumen was appointed minister for foreign trade and development cooperation in the Cabinet Rutte-Asscher in 2012. In this capacity, she is responsible for Dutch policy on trade, development cooperation and foreign aid. She founded Ploumen Projecten, an organization specializing in market research and innovation for commercial and non-profit clients. Ploumen was a fundraising coordinator for Mama Cash, an international fund supporting women’s initiatives, and became director of the organization. She worked for the development organization Cordaid, first as head of quality and strategy and later as director of international programs. Ploumen holds an MA in Social History and Strategic Marketing Management from Erasmus University Rotterdam.   

Navyn Salem
Founder and CEO, Edesia
@EdesiaNutrition

Navyn Salem set up Plumpy'Nut® in 2007 in Tanzania, with the aim of ending the crisis of malnutrition for over 250 million children globally. Plumpy'Nut® is a ready-to-use therapeutic food that treats severe acute malnutrition in young children. In 2009 Salem founded Edesia, a US non-profit food aid manufacturer. Edesia supplies UNICEF, the World Food Programme, USAID/USDA, and other humanitarian aid agencies with peanut-based ready-to-use foods. Since production began in March 2010, Edesia has helped nearly 5 million malnourished children in 50 countries. Salem is a member of the Chicago Council's Global Agricultural Development Initiative Advisory Group, as well as a 2014 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. In 2012, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Boston College, her alma mater.