Peace, Security and Defence Summit – Europe after February 24th: how secure is it?

Mark Boris Andrijanic is the former Slovenian first minister of digital transformation. During Slovenia’s presidency of the Council of the EU, he chaired the Telecommunications and Energy Council and the Competitiveness Council. Under his leadership, EU member states approved the general approach to the Digital Services Act and made progress on the European declaration on digital rights and principles. Previously, Boris Andrijanic has led the National Digitalisation Council, an advisory body to the Slovenian government, and Uber’s public policy in central and eastern Europe. He is a David Rockefeller Fellow at the Trilateral Commission and the recipient of the Ukraine Peace Prize for his efforts to strengthen Ukraine’s digital resilience.

Prior his current position, Hendrik Bourgeois was the head of government affairs in Europe and Russia at Apple. He previously served as vice president of corporate affairs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Cargill and occupied several positions at General Electric, including as European general counsel and vice-president of European affairs, European competition counsel and European general counsel for general electric industrial systems. He has also worked for Jones Day as an associate.

Oleksandr V. Danylyuk is a specialist in Soviet and Russian intelligence, hybrid aggression and multidimensional warfare. He has served as the coordinator of the Ukraine-NATO platform for the early detection and countering of hybrid threats. Prior this, he has worked as the chief advisor to the Ukrainian Minister of Defence. Danylyuk has held several other positions within the Ukrainian government, including as an assistant to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a special advisor to the Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine. He was also a member of the Ukrainian parliamentary working group on countering hybrid threats.

Prior to her current appointment, Ludivine Dedonder has served as a member of the Belgian Federal Parliament. She is the former co-president of the Socialist Federation of Picardy Wallonia and alderman of Tournai. Prior to her political career, she worked as a journalist.

In her current position at the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Valeriya Ionan has notably launched the Diia Digital Education platform to improve digital education hubs in Ukraine. She is Vice-President of the Youth Centre of the Atlantic Council of Ukraine, Ambassador of the Ukrainian Boxing Federation and Managing Partner of Quadrate 28. In addition to experience in marketing and business development, she founded the local MC.today online media publication, served as the promotion director at say.tv and worked as an organiser at Disrupt HR Kyiv.

In her current role at the Crisis Group, Elissa Jobson provides strategic direction and oversight for the organisation’s advocacy and is responsible for developing strategies to maximise the organisation’s policy impact. She previously served as the director of Africa regional advocacy and acted as the organisation’s main liaison with the African Union. Prior to joining the Crisis Group, Jobson was a media relations specialist with UNICEF in New York, where she helped coordinate public advocacy around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Before that, she was a journalist working for The Guardian, Africa Confidential, The Africa Report and Business Day, among other publications.

Antti Kaikkonen has served as a Member of the Finnish Parliament for nearly two decades. He is the former president of the Young Centre Alliance (Nuoren Keskustan Liitto) and has previously worked as an advisor to a member of the Finnish Parliament.

Mariam Kintsurashvili is a strategic communications expert in security sector transformation, police reform, peacebuilding, small arms control, local development and gender mainstreaming in conflict affected regions in Georgia, Ukraine, East Africa and the Middle East. In addition to her current positions at Generation i and Transition International, she is also a Research Fellow at the Eurasia Democratic Security Network (EDSN), an independent consultant in strategic communications. She has previously worked as an advisor on communications, gender and community policies at Agriteam Canada Consulting and strategic communications consultant at the European Union Advisory Mission in Ukraine. She also served as a public information officer at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). Throughout her career, she has played a key role in initiatives such as the introduction of community policing in Ukraine, weapons marking and disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) for the Government of South Sudan, and countering disinformation in Eastern Partnership countries.

Prior to assuming his current position, David Korpela worked in the Office of European Union Special Representative (EUSR) to the Horn of African as a regional political advisor, in which role he primarily focused on Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Red Sea. Before joining the team of the EUSR, Korpela served as a senior policy advisor for conflict affected and fragile states at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. He has also worked as a political advisor for the EU Capacity Building Mission in Somalia (EUCAP Somalia) based in Mogadishu, and as an East Africa regional representative and Haiti country representative at Finn Church Aid.

Prior his current position, Torsten Küpper worked at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies as a senior director of government affairs in Europe and also held a seat on the Board of Qualcomm. He has previously served as vice-president of corporate, government and public affairs; deputy general counsel; and head of legal for EU, commercial and competition law at Huawei Germany. Küpper has also worked as senior legal counsel for Vodafone Luxembourg and Vodafone Germany.

Carlos Lopes is a Bissau-Guinean economist and civil servant, who specialises in strategic planning and development. He was the executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa prior to assuming his current role. Lopes has previously served as the UN assistant secretary-general, political director for the UN Secretary-General and executive director of the UN Institute for Training and Research. He has also held several positions at the UNDP, including the resident representative in Zimbabwe and Brazil, the director of the Office of Evaluation and Strategic Planning, and the director of the Bureau for Development Policy.

Specialised in EU regulatory and public affairs, Karen Massin currently leads Google’s EU government affairs and public policy operations in Brussels. She previously served as the CEO of public affairs consultancy BCW in Brussels, in which role she coordinated government affairs and communication consultancy with a focus on EU and international policy, as well as provided policy council and intelligence on EU public affairs issues.

Kavya Pearlman is an award-winning cyber-security professional with a deep interest in immersive and emerging technologies. As the Founder and CEO of XRSI, Pearlman is a pioneer of the organisation’s novel Privacy and Safety Framework for the Immersive Technologies Domain, security awareness in the metaverse, and various baseline security and privacy standards for emerging technologies. Pearlman serves as a member of the Global Coalition for Digital Safety at the World Economic Forum (WEF) and is part of the new WEF initiative, Defining and Building the Metaverse. She currently advises over 20 global governments on global policies for emerging technologies and human rights considerations and provides oversight to several key open-source efforts on metaverse-related technologies.

As the Vice-President of the European Investment Bank, Kris Peeters oversees the financing of security and defence, as well as relations with the European Parliament and NATO. His work as a former member of the European Parliament focused on justice and home, defence and foreign affairs, with a special interest in NATO-related topics. Peeters previously served as the Belgian deputy prime minister and minister of economy, consumer welfare and labour, prior to which he was the minister-president of the Flemish government. A lawyer by trade, he has also held several managing positions at UNIZO, the Belgian Union of Self-Employed Entrepreneurs and SMEs.

Kira Rudik is the Vice President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and Leader of the Ukrainian Holos Liberal Political Party. As a Member of the Ukrainian parliament, she serves as the First Deputy Chairwoman of the Parliament Committee on Digital Transformation. Before entering politics, Rudik was an IT entrepreneur and sat on the boards of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine and the IT Ukraine Association. A graduate of the Executive Program in Women’s Leadership at Stanford University, she has been named among the top 100 most influential women in Ukraine by Focus and Novoe Vremya (New Times) magazines.

Specialised in defence challenges, Jörg See served as the chief of the Operations and Missions Section for the German Military Representative to the EU and NATO prior to his current role at NATO HQ. He has previously held several positions abroad, including as a military assistant to the Commander of the NATO Mission in Kosovo (KFOR) and CJ-35 operations staff at the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Headquarters in Afghanistan. He is also the former deputy senior military assistant chief of branch for military personal development within the German Federal Minister of Defence.

Prior to assuming her current position, Kyllike Sillaste-Elling has held several positions at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including as director-general of the department for NATO and transatlantic relations, permanent representative of Estonia to NATO and director-general of the minister’s office. She has also worked as the undersecretary for political affairs and as deputy head of the Estonian embassy in the United States, as well as a foreign policy advisor to the Estonian prime minister and the first secretary at the Estonian embassy in the United Kingdom.

Alexander Stubb is President of the Republic of Finland. Prior to this role, Stubb served as Finland’s Prime Minister and previously served as the country’s finance minister, foreign minister and trade and Europe minister. Previously, Stubb was Director of the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute and as the Vice President of the European Investment Bank.  

Tomasz Smura currently leads the CPF Research Office and serves as a Member of the CPF Board. An independent, non-profit organisation, CPF is the main organiser of the Warsaw Security Forum, an annual European security conference with a strong focus on transatlantic cooperation. Smura’s research interests include United States foreign policy, East Asia and international security. His doctoral dissertation concerned the development of the system of balance of power in East Asia.

Specialised in security and threats, Richard Spearman previously served as the group corporate security director at the Vodafone Group before assuming his current position. Prior joining the Vodafone Group, Spearman held several positions within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, including at the British embassies in France, Turkey and the United States. He has also worked for Save the Children Fund UK in Pakistan and Gambia.

Veronica Tsepkalo was one of the three leaders of the national democratic movement in Belarus. Along with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Maria Kalesnikava, she succeeded in bringing together an unprecedented number of people to protest against a regime that violates human rights, falsified presidential elections and uses brutal violence against its citizens. The trio have recently been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and have already received International Democracy and Sakharov Awards. Currently, Veronica is supporting Belarusian women who have been on the receiving end of the regime’s cruelty, as the chair of the Belarus Women’s Foundation.

Prior his current position, Leendert van Bochoven has held several positions at IBM. Notably, he has previously served as the NATO and European defence leader. He was the director of the Baan Institute before joining IBM.

Dmytro Zolotukhin is a disinformation and information security expert. Prior to serving as the deputy minister of the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Policy, he founded the Institute of Post-Information Society to train journalists, bloggers, social media users and entrepreneurs on information security and citizen journalism. Zolotukhin has previously worked as an information warfare consultant for the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine and as an independent competitive intelligence specialist. Notably, he co-authored the Doctrine of Information Security of Ukraine, adopted in February 2017.