Lewis is also a long-time volunteer with the Saint Lucia Development Fund, where she has spent multiple summers working with under-represented populations and those living in poverty. She is heavily involved in a number of national and regional development organizations, and was recently appointed to the UNFPA/OECS and Barbados Youth Advisory Group. Lewis serves on the boards of the National Conservation Authority and the National Community Foundation. She is currently pursuing a law degree.

In this role, her work focuses on building resiliency to climate change through climate risk management and capacity building projects. She is also the co-founder of CliMates, an international youth-led think tank on climate policy. Her past professional experience includes working for the U. S. Agency for International Development and for a French professional trade union, where she conducted public relations for European energy efficiency companies.

She is the co-founder of Trailing Seeds, a project to assess permaculture and holistic management’s relevance to development programming, and she is poised to begin a Ph.D. project with the Catholic University of Louvain on mainstreaming agro-ecology within food and nutritional security projects. Her thematic focus is the political analysis of conflict and international interventions in fragile, transitioning, and developing countries, with a specific emphasis on using agro-ecological tools for conflict mediation.

Prior to this position, she worked with the French Development Agency in East-Jerusalem to refine its strategic interventions in the local development sector in order to enhance the resilience of the most vulnerable communities. In 2011-12, she co-led a post-revolution project in Cairo for GIZ to promote civic engagement and political participation among the youth in low-income areas.

She also works with several international foundations and institutions on democracy promotion, and is involved with the youth organization of the European People’s Party. She has been active in international politics for many years across multiple issue areas, and was a candidate in both the 2014 European parliamentary and national parliamentary elections. Kokalari has worked as a political advisor at the Minister’s Office in the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. She speaks Swedish, English, and Albanian fluently.

He currently works on a range of projects in partnership with international development organizations and academic institutions. He is an experienced researcher and consultant who holds a Ph.D. from the Università Politecnica delle Marche, and a certificate in re-grid management from the German Renewables Academy. Prior to working at MENARES, he was an analyst at Flo Cert, a development organization based in Germany.

At Kaiser, she has worked on a variety of projects, including a recent World Bank initiative to increase local procurement in the mining industry in West Africa. Prior to this, Hudak was an associate with The Tony Elumelu Foundation, where she worked with the newly formed National Competitiveness Council of Nigeria to devise a plan for a new sub-national competitiveness index.

Prior to this, she worked as a department head at Mexico’s Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos (IFAI), where she focused on global open government projects and transparency and accountability in Latin America. She has also worked as a migration assistant for the Embassy of Canada in Mexico. Guevara holds a master’s degree in international relations from Instituto Technológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), and she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in law at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Greaves is a passionate social activist, volunteer, and advocate for youth empowerment and local community engagement. He is a leading Liberian voice in the World Youth Alliance, and has more recently mobilized, trained, and deployed hundreds of volunteers to fight the spread of the Ebola virus through public outreach and education.

He previously worked at Société Générale, first as a junior analyst in the pharmaceuticals team, and subsequently in the European utilities and gas team. Gboka qualified as an accountant in France before obtaining a master’s degree in finance from BEM – Bordeaux Management School. He has spoken at various conferences discussing sub-Saharan Africa markets, including the Global CemTrader conference, the Exotix Frontier Forum, and the African Stock Exchange Association conference. Gboka is a contributor to Exotix’s media coverage and is regularly quoted in the financial press.