Lucas Bento, J.D., LL.M.
Lucas Bento, serves as an adviser and a member of the board. He is of counsel with the law firm, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP in New York City where he specializes in dispute resolution and has an active pro bono practice. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, President of the Brazilian-American Lawyers Associations, and Chair of the Artificial Intelligence & International Law Subcommittee at the New York City Bar Association. He has published articles on international legal subjects in a number of leading publications, including the New York Times, Harvard Negotiation Law Review, and Berkeley Journal of International Law. He has spoken on international law at various conferences around the world (United Nations, Harvard University, University College London), and he has also taught dispute resolution courses at New York University and INSPER (Brazil).
Lucas is fluent in French and Portuguese and holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford, Bristol, and Warwick
Jadranka Mihalic, MIA
Jadranka, an advisor of the board, served with the United Nations for 30 years beginning as a political affairs officer, and finally a director for Latin America for the UN Department of Public Information, based in Mexico City. On the mission in Timor-Leste, Jadranka served as the Head of Office of Public Information in UNMIT.Also, Ms. Mihalic served as the spokesperson for the President of the General Assembly as well as on several UN peacekeeping missions, including Angola, Haiti, and Mozambique. Ms. Mihalic holds a Master of International Affairs, from Columbia University. She speaks, English, Croatian (native), French, Italian, Spanish, and is proficient in Russian.
Luis Miguel Ruiz Rios
Manager, Real Estate Firm, Immobiliere Alliance, in Paris. Previously, he served with International Organization for Migration (IOM), in: Geneva Headquarters with the regional bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, in Rome; El Salvador, managing the Amnesty and Relocation of political prisoners and amnesty beneficiaries to Canada and Australia; Bosnia Herzegovina Technical Assessment of capacity building need on migration; Evaluation of Technical Cooperation of Projects on migration in Central America. In addition, he served as the Chief of Mission for IOM in Portugal. He also served as an UN electoral officer in Timor-Leste. Luis currently maintains an international Law practice with offices in France, Peru, and Portugal. He has a BA from NYU, master’s in international public Administration, Polytechnic School of Lausanne MA, and Doctorate in International Politics from Institute for Graduate Studies in Geneva. Luis is multilingual, with fluency in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish
Gregory E. Sterling, Ph.D.
Dr. Gregory E. Sterling is the Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean of Yale Divinity School and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament. Dean Sterling, a New Testament scholar with a specialty in Hellenistic Judaism, has concentrated his research on the writings of Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and Luke-Acts, with a focus on the ways in which Second Temple Jews and early Christians interacted with one another and with the Greco-Roman world. He assumed the deanship in 2012 after more than two decades at the University of Notre Dame, where he served in several capacities at the College of Arts and Letters before becoming the first dean of the independent Graduate School.
Dean Sterling is the author or editor/co-editor of seven books and more than seventy scholarly articles and essays. He is the general editor for the Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series (E.J. Brill), co-editor of the Studia Philonica Annual, and a member of the editorial board of Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft. He served as editor of the Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity Series (University of Notre Dame Press) for twenty years. He has held numerous leadership positions in the Society of Biblical Literature, the Studiorum Novi Societas, and the Catholic Biblical Association. He is a minister in the Churches of Christ and serves in several leadership roles for his own denomination in addition to his other responsibilities.
Syed Agha Hyder Jafri
Mr. Jafri, served with the US Department for Health and Human Services for 30 years. He has served as an adviser on public health for UNDP and assisted in organizing seminars on inter faith understanding with UNITAR. Also, he has given presentations at the UN on Interreligious and intercultural dialogue for peace and security. He also serves on the Board of the Razi School, in New York. His education includes a BS and Master degree in Public Health from Michigan State University. He is bilingual English, Urdu and speaks Arabic.
Massimo Tommasoli, Ph.D.
Dr. Tommasoli, served with International IDEA in senior leadership positions, leading the Institute’s global programs and representing it as Permanent Observer to the United Nations in New York. He is currently a consultant to International IDEA as well as professor for an online seminar on “Professionalization in International Studies” with City University of New York. He holds a PhD in social anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He worked in the field of aid and development at the OECD/Development Assistance Committee in Paris; at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate General for Development Cooperation in Rome; and at UNESCO in Addis Ababa. He is a visiting scholar at the LUISS University in Rome and at the City College of New York. He has lectured at various Universities in Italy and Spain, the UN System Staff College in Turin, and at UNITAR in New York. He has fieldwork experience in Colombia, the Horn of Africa, and the Russian Federation. His publications include: Nel nome dello sviluppo (In the Name of Development); Politiche di cooperazione internazionale (International Aid Policies); Democracy and the Pillars of UN Work; and El desarrollo participativo: Análisis sociales y lógicas de planificación.