Amb. Ma Zhengang

Diplomat

China

Ambassador Ma Zhengang is chairman of both the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association and the National Committee at the Council for Security and Cooperation in the Asia Pacific. He is a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Group and Public Diplomacy Advisory Group of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ma is also a distinguished research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, where he served as president from 2004 to 2010. Prior to his work at the institute, he served as ambassador to the U.K. and as vice minister of the Foreign Office of the State Council.

Amb. Kishore Mahbubani

Diplomat

Singapore

Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani is dean professor in the practice of public policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of the National University of Singapore and served as its dean from 2004 to 2017. He joined the Singapore Foreign Service in 1971, serving in Cambodia, Malaysia, Washington, D.C. and as ambassador to the United Nations in New York, where he was president of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002. From 1993 to 1998, he served as permanent secretary at the Foreign Ministry. He was awarded the Public Administration Medal by the Singapore Government in 1998 and the Foreign Policy Association Medal in June 2004. Mahbubani is on the board of several institutions, including the Yale President’s Council on International Activities and the Indian prime minister’s Global Advisory Council. He has published extensively in leading international journals and has authored several books, including “The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World.”

Amb. Jamsheed Marker

Diplomat

Pakistan

Ambassador Jamsheed Marker was a lecturer and diplomat-in-residence at Eckerd College in Florida. He was a former ambassador of Pakistan and served as Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations. In 1997, then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan enlisted him to head the campaign to persuade Indonesia to grant independence to East Timor. Marker  served at postings in more than ten nations since his diplomatic career began in 1964, including Ghana, Romania and the former USSR. As ambassador to the United States in 1986, he worked closely with the Reagan administration in negotiating the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Prior to his lengthy and illustrious diplomatic career, Marker was known in Pakistan as a cricket commentator. After leaving diplomatic work, he authored “Quiet Diplomacy: Memoirs of an Ambassador of Pakistan” and “East Timor: A Memoir of the Negotiations for Independence.”

Marker passed away on June 21, 2018.

Amb. Jack Matlock

Diplomat

United States

Ambassador Jack Matlock is a former United States diplomat, who has held academic posts since 1991 at U.S. institutions such as Columbia and Princeton University. During his 35 years in the Foreign Service, he served as ambassador to the Soviet Union, special assistant to the president for national security affairs, senior director for European and Soviet affairs on the National Security Council Staff and ambassador to Czechoslovakia. Matlock is also the author of several books about the end of the Cold War.

Amb. Yoshiki Mine

Diplomat

Japan

Ambassador Yoshiki Mine entered into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in 1968 and retired in 2009. He served as director general for international relations at the Ministry of Defense, ambassador to Yugoslavia, ambassador in charge of Global Environment and permanent representative of Japan at the Conference on Disarmament. Mine was also the chief representative of Japan for the normalization negotiations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and served as research director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies until 2014.

Amb. Abdul Samad Minty

Diplomat

South Africa

Ambassador Abdul Samad Minty is a deputy director-general of South Africa’s Department of Foreign Affairs and South Africa’s representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors. He is a chairperson of the South African Council for the Nonproliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and representative of the Department of Foreign Affairs on South Africa’s National Conventional Arms Control Committee. Previously, Minty served as a chairperson of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and as a member of the UN secretary-general’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. From 1979 until 1994, he held the position of director of the World Campaign against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa. Minty is also known for his work as an anti-Apartheid activist, having served as the honorary secretary of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement for more than 30 years.

Amb. Brajesh Mishra

Diplomat

India

Ambassador Brajesh Mishra was the first national security advisor to Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Appointed shortly after India’s 1998 nuclear tests, he worked to assuage the developing tensions between India and China. He was able to draw on his vast experience as head of the Indian Embassy in Beijing where, in May 1970, Chinese leader Mao Zedong famously told Mishra that India and China “must become friends again.” He also served as ambassador to Indonesia and as India’s permanent representative to the United Nations, where he worked for a time on the staff of the UN secretary-general. Mishra passed away on September 28, 2012.

Mishra was a member of the Global Zero Commission.

Amb. Seyed Hossein Mousavian

Diplomat

Iran

Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Prior to this position, he served as foreign policy advisor to Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. Mousavian served as spokesman for Iran’s team in nuclear negotiations with the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency from 2003 to 2005.

During the 1980s, Mousavian held a number of government positions in Iran that included vice president of the Islamic Propagation Organization, chairman of the Parliament Administration Organization and head and subsequently director general of the West Europe department of the Foreign Ministry. He served as ambassador of Iran to Germany from 1990 to 1997 and later as head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran.

From 2005 to 2007, Mousavian served as foreign policy advisor to the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and vice president of the Center for Strategic Research and in numerous capacities for the Expediency Discernment Council’s Center for Strategic Research (CSR) from 2005 to 2008.