Wagdy Sawahel is a senior consultant and advisor with more than 20 years of experience in higher education, science, technology, innovation and knowledge economy. He is currently associate research professor at the National Research Centre in Cairo.
Dr Sawahel holds a PhD from Leeds university. He is currently a member of Egypt's Council for Education, Scientific Research and Technology and an international associate at the UAE-based Centre for Learning Innovation and Customized Knowledge Solutions.
He is also the founder and general coordinator of the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) Alumni and Science Development Network; a research fellow at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in India; and a visiting scientist at Vienna University and Ghent University.
Dr Sawahel has received numerous national and international awards, and his many published works range from books and research papers in molecular biotechnology to reports on science and technology development and intellectual property rights.

Wagdy Sawahel

Ali Ibrahim holds a PhD in Administrative and Policy Studies in Education, and an MEd in International and Development Education, both from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr Ibrahim has co-directed the Institute for International Studies in Education at the University of Pittsburgh and engaged with development projects across numerous countries.
Dr Ibrahim is currently a Professor at the United Arab Emirates University, where he has taught and supervised undergraduate, master, and doctoral students at the College of Education since 2008. Previously, Dr Ibrahim taught in colleges of education in Egypt and Oman before moving to the UAE where he co-founded the Gulf Comparative Education Society (GCES), a not-for-profit organization that enables academic, professional, and educational discourse from a comparative standpoint with a focus on the Arabian Gulf region.
Dr Ibrahim has been a researcher and analyst for two UNDP knowledge reports; was a member of the central team and co-author of the section on higher education in the Arab Knowledge Index Reports in 2015 and 2016; and was a core team member for the Arab Reading Index 2016, and a co-author of the Global Knowledge Index in 2017 and 2021.

Ali Ibrahim

Andreas Schleicher is Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the OECD. He initiated and oversaw the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), which comprise a global platform for policymakers, researchers and educators to innovate and transform educational policies and practices.
Andreas Schleicher has worked for over 20 years with Ministers and education leaders around the world to improve quality and equity in education. He is a recipient of the Theodor Heuss prize, awarded for &ldquo;exemplary democratic engagement&rdquo;, and holds an honorary professorship from the University of Heidelberg.

Andreas Schleicher 

Anna Cristina D&rsquo;Addio is an economist by background and works as a Senior Policy Analyst in the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report team, where she leads the thematic element of the Report and the work on the Profiles Enhancing Education Reviews (PEER). Previously, she worked at the OECD on a range of issues spanning financial education and literacy, inequality, poverty, the intergenerational transmission of education and income, the life course approach to social policy and the decline of fertility, ageing unequally, pension adequacy and sustainability.
Before joining OECD, Dr D&rsquo;Addio taught and carried out research in institutions including the Centre for Applied Econometrics (CAM), University of Copenhagen; the Higher Institute for Labour Studies (HIVA), Catholic University of Leuven; the Department of Economics, University of Aarhus; the Centre for Research in Integration, Education, Qualifications and Marginalization at the Aarhus Business School; and the Center of Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) and the IRES of the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve.
She holds two PhDs, in Quantitative Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (CORE and IRES), and in Public Economics from the University of Pavia.

Anna Cristina d'Addio

A Professor and Researcher in Economics at the Department of Economics of University Paris East Cr&eacute;teil (UPEC) since 2002, and a research fellow at Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE), Poland, Boris Najman began his career as an economic policy advisor in Ukraine in 1994.
He has lectured in the field of labour and development economics at Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne; HEC; Sciences-Po; Madrid Carlos 3; Belgrade; Sienna; Lille; Versailles-Saint Quentin; ITC-ILO (Torino); Lucca; the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and Vietnam National University.
Professor Najman has provided analysis of recent labour market developments, informal economy and poverty in the EU, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and has advised on governance and macro-economic analysis in Ukraine, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro.
Professor Najman has worked on projects funded by the EU and international agencies (UNDP, USAID, EUROPEAID, ILO). His current research interests focus on informal competition and labour productivity in Africa.

Boris Najman

Brahima Sanou is the Founder and CEO of BSANOU Consulting. He is a former Elected Official of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and a former Director of the ITU&rsquo;s Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) elected in 2010 and unanimously re-elected in 2014.
A national of Burkina Faso, he has more than 35 years of experience in the telecommunications/ICT sector, having served as the ITU Regional Director for Africa and Representative to the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) for more than 10 years.
As Director of BDT, he spearheaded collaborative approaches with other United Nations agencies such as UNESCO, WHO, FAO, and the World Bank, with the view to streamlining ICTs to accelerate the attainment of the SDGs in agriculture, health, education, gender, trading, infrastructure, environment and climate change.
He also directed and supervised the data collection and the yearly release of the ICT Development Index (IDI) by ITU.

Brahima Sanou

Cordelia Mason is an associate professor at Universiti Kuala Lumpur, the leading Higher Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institution in Malaysia. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Malaysian Institute of Management; a Member of the Board of Examiners for the Asian Institute of Chartered Bankers; Chair of the Examination Committee at the Chartered Institute of Islamic Finance Professionals; a Technical Research Advisor for the Credit Counselling and Debt Management Agency (AKPK) &ndash; an agency of the Central Bank of Malaysia; Vice-President of the Malaysian Association of Applied Linguistics; and an alumni of the UNESCO UNEVOC TVET Leadership Programme.
A strong proponent of the case method, her areas of expertise are in strategy, ethics, leadership, knowledge management, assessment, innovation and technology, as well as social entrepreneurship.

Cordelia Mason

Dana Kelly is Director of Development and Reporting at the TIMSS &amp; PIRLS International Study Center. She has worked on the two programmes, as well as other international assessments, since 1994.
Prior to rejoining Boston College in 2019, Dr Kelly led the assessment activities for USAID-funded education projects in low- and middle-income countries. She was previously branch chief for international assessments at the National Center for Education Statistics of the US Department of Education, where she oversaw US participation in TIMSS, PIRLS, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other international studies, and represented the United States at the IEA General Assembly and as vice chair of the PISA Governing Board.
Dr Kelly has an MA in Developmental and Educational Psychology and a PhD in Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation, both from Boston College.

Dana Kelly

Daria Tataj is a leading global expert on innovation networks and ecosystems. Following her post-doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, she established Tataj Innovation and the Network IQ digital skills assessment, which has been employed by businesses and universities in Europe and the United States for leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship training.
Dr Tataj has served as the Chair of Advisors to the EU Commissioner for Research and as WEF&rsquo;s Digital Leader, and has worked in numerous different roles with UNESCO and UNDP, EIT Manufacturing, and various investment funds and large companies.&nbsp;

Daria Tataj

Hamdy Ragb is a Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) consultant with an educational background in the technical skills development of TVET teachers and students. He has over 15 years of practical experience in the field of TVET system reform in both the national and international contexts, including competency-based education and training, e-learning, dual training systems, on-job training, internships, apprenticeships and entrepreneurship.
Dr Ragb has served as a consultant and trainer in international TVET for the EU, ILO and German Development Cooperation (GIZ). He joined TVET Egypt (Support to the Technical and Vocational Education and Training Reform Programme in Egypt - Phase II) in June 2015 as Senior TVET expert.
Dr Ragb holds a PhD in Education Philosophy, focusing on instructional technology, and a Bachelor&rsquo;s of Technical Teaching and Education.

Hamdy Ragb

Harry Anthony Patrinos is the Practice Manager for the Europe and Central Asia region of the World Bank's education global practice. He specializes in all areas of education, especially school-based management, demand-side financing and public&ndash;private partnerships.
He has managed education lending operations and analytical work programs in Argentina, Colombia and Mexico, as well as a regional research project on the socioeconomic status of Latin America&rsquo;s indigenous peoples.
Dr Patrinos is one of the main authors of the report Lifelong Learning in the Global Knowledge Economy (World Bank, 2003), has published extensively in academic and policy literature, and is the co-author of Policy Analysis of Child Labor: A Comparative Study (St. Martin&rsquo;s, 1999); Decentralization of Education: Demand-Side Financing (World Bank, 1997), and Indigenous People and Poverty in Latin America: An Empirical Analysis (World Bank/Ashgate, 1994).
He has also worked in Africa, Asia, Europe, the MENA, and as an economist at the Economic Council of Canada, and holds a doctorate from the University of Sussex.

Harry Anthony Patrinos

Hugo Hollanders is an Economist and Senior Researcher at UNU-MERIT (Maastricht University). He has over 25 years of experience in innovation studies and innovation statistics and has been involved in various projects for the European Commission (EC) measuring innovation at the national, regional, industry and firm levels.
He has been involved for 20 years, and has been the lead author for more than 15 years, in the EC&rsquo;s European Innovation Scoreboard, which provides a comparative statistical assessment of research and innovation performance in Europe.
In the last 10 years he has also worked on the redesign of the questionnaire used in the Community Innovation Survey, a survey of innovation activity in European enterprises. As part of the EC&rsquo;s Smart Specialisation framework, Hollanders has also collaborated with the EC to develop a methodology for diagnosing the potential of European regions to strengthen their economic and innovation performance.
He has been a member of several expert groups on measuring innovation for the EC (including the 2010 High-Level Panel on the Measurement of Innovation and the 2013 Expert Group on Public Sector Innovation); and served as a member of the Advisory Board to the Global Innovation Index for the 2015 to 2018 editions, and the Advisory Board of the Global Knowledge Index, with a special focus on developing the Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) index.

Hugo Hollanders

Jacques Van Der Meer is an independent advisor offering coaching and assistance to governments, national and international organisations and companies in policy and project preparation, and investment analysis in the area of R&amp;D and Innovation.
Between 1991 and 2018, he was Managerial Advisor to the European Investment Bank, the EU long-term lending arm, and in charge of the economic and financial analysis and monitoring of some 200 proposed investment projects for EIB-financing, mainly focussed in RDI. These included numerous proposals from industrial clients, as well as for public sector projects including synchrotrons, laser Installations, CERN&rsquo;s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) upgrade, the European Spallation Source, and the ESO&rsquo;s Extremely Large Telescope.
Jacques Van der Meer set up and led the Innovation Capacities working programme at the Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI) in Marseille, the objective of which was to build capacity and establish best management practice in "R&amp;D and Innovation Management" in private and public organizations in the MENA countries.

Jacques Van Der Meer

Jos&eacute; F. Otero is an adjunct instructor at NYU. Over three decades, Jos&eacute; has collaborated on more than 100 research projects and authored numerous studies on the regional telecommunications industry. His past work includes restructuring the wholesale division of a Mexican operator, working on a mobile operator's entry strategy in Central America, developing a business model for the launch of more than fifteen mobile networks in the Caribbean, and auditing the purchase/sale of telecommunications assets.
Mr Otero has been consulted on issues of public policy and telecommunications technologies for the White House, the Senate of the Republic of Mexico, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, the World Bank, the Inter-American Investment Corporation and government institutions in more than 30 countries.
Mr. Otero has studied Latin American politics at Boston University; information technology law at the University of Edinburgh; technology administration at Georgetown University; and social innovation at the University of Cambridge.
He is also currently Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean at 5G Americas, where he promotes the use of ICT as a catalyst for the region's economic and social development.

José Felipe Otero

A physics engineer and economist (PhD, cum laude), Jozef Ritzen has taught in several different universities in the US and the Netherlands.
Previously, Professor Ritzen was Minister of Education, Culture and Science of The Netherlands from 1989 to 1998, making him one of the longest-serving Ministers of Education in the world. He subsequently served as Vice President of the World Bank's Human Development Network and as President of Maastricht University. Ritzen has also worked with UNESCO, UNDP and OECD, and served on the International Advisory Boards of the Universities of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Charles University in Prague-Czech Republic, University of Siegen in Germany and University of Bled in Slovenia.
Professor Ritzen has written or co-authored 12 books and numerous articles in the fields of education, economics, public finance and development economics.

Jozef Ritzen

Khalid Al-Wazani holds a Bachelor&rsquo;s degree in Accounting from Cairo University, a Master&rsquo;s degree in Economics from the American University in Cairo and a PhD in Economics from the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at Cairo University.
Dr Wazani is currently an Associate Professor of Public Policies in Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government (MBRSG). He has served as a freelance consultant in strategies, economic policies, economic modelling and administrative reengineering, agility and nudging; as the Chairman of Jordan Investment Commission (JIC); as the Strategy and Knowledge Advisor for Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF).
Dr Wazani is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Arab Bank - Syria since 2005. He was also the Chairman and Board Member of several companies in Jordan and abroad in the fields of banking, mining, aviation, logistics, export, tourism, newspapers, magazines, media, real estate development, and education.
Dr Wazani is in the advisory board of the Arabic version of Harvard Business Review Magazine, and served on the editorial board of Flashes-MBRF&rsquo;s English monthly magazine, and Wamadat-MBRF&rsquo;s Arabic monthly magazine. He has published extensively, and participated as a chief economist and strategist in numerous projects with UNDP, USAID, NDI and other organizations in a wide range of policy papers and development projects for Jordan.

Khalid Al-Wazani

Kevin Balanda has over 40 years of experience in applied public health, health services and clinical research across the academic, government and semi-government sectors in Ireland and Australia.
He is currently adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health at the University College Cork in Ireland and founder of Eolas Projects. Formerly, he was Director of Research and Information at the Institute of Public Health in Ireland, where he also led Ireland and Northern Ireland&rsquo;s Population Health Observatory.
Professor Balanda has considerable expertise and experience in the areas of: knowledge translation; the development and evaluation of complex health services and policy interventions to promote health; decision analytic modelling of the impacts of public health and clinical interventions; and health monitoring and surveillance, including the estimation and projection of the population prevalence of chronic diseases.
He holds a doctorate in mathematics and statistics from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Kevin Balanda

Luis Serv&eacute;n is Senior Research Associate at Center for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI) and a member of the Bank of Spain Governing Board. Until recently, he was a Senior Advisor at the World Bank&rsquo;s Research Department and Director of the Bank's research program on Macroeconomics and Growth. Previously, he managed the World Bank&rsquo;s regional research program on Latin America and the Caribbean.
Prior to joining the Bank, Dr Serv&eacute;n worked as a senior researcher at FEDEA, and taught at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, MIT, PUC-Rio and CEMFI. His recent research focuses on capital flows and exchange rates, fiscal policy, and productivity and growth. He has published numerous books and articles in professional journals on these and other research topics.
Dr Serv&eacute;n holds a bachelor&rsquo;s degree in Economics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a PhD in Economics from the MIT. &nbsp;He is co-editor of The World Bank Economic Review and The World Bank Research Observer.

Luis Servén

Marie Mc Andrew is an emeritus professor at the Faculty of Education of Universit&eacute; de Montreal and acted as the Rector Special Advisor on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion from 2018 to 2020.
An internationally recognized scholar in the education of minorities and comparative&nbsp; education,&nbsp; she has published numerous books, including Immigration et diversit&eacute; &agrave; l&rsquo;&eacute;cole: le cas qu&eacute;b&eacute;cois dans une perspective comparative (Immigration and diversity in school: Quebec&nbsp; case in a comparative perspective), which won the Donner Prize in 2001 for the best book on Canadian public policy; and Les majorit&eacute;s fragiles et l&rsquo;&Eacute;ducation: Belgique, Catalogne, Irlande du Nord, Qu&eacute;bec (Fragile Majorities and Education: Belgium, Catalonia, Northern Ireland, Quebec), for which she was nominated for the Governor General Awards in 2010.&nbsp;
She has received numerous distinctions in recognition of the impacts of her work, including the Order of Canada in 2018 and an Honoris Causa doctorate from Universit&eacute; du Qu&eacute;bec in Montreal in 2021.

Marie Mc Andrew

Marieke Vandeweyer is a senior policy analyst in the OECD Centre for Skills, where she leads the work on Vocational Education and Training (VET).
Since joining the organisation in 2014, she has worked on a range of issues, including skills, activation policies and labour market reforms. She has been actively involved in the OECD&rsquo;s Getting Skills Right project, analysing the match between skills demand and supply and the responsiveness of adult learning systems to changing skill needs.
Dr Vandeweyer&rsquo;s current work is related to the future-readiness of VET systems, including comparative analysis of employer engagement in VET, flexibility of provision and higher-level VET programmes.
She holds a MSc in Business Engineering and a MSc in European Politics and Policies, as well as a PhD in Economics from the University of Leuven in Belgium.

Marieke Vandeweyer

Matti Rossi is a Senior Education Adviser in educational development projects. He is also a teacher trainer, advising schools in their learning environment design; leads a curriculum content writers&rsquo; team and coordinates Finnish experts providing training to schoolteachers and composing new educational content.
Dr Rossi&rsquo;s work on Finnish education has been closely linked to the development and testing some of the key educational initiatives in Finland, funded by the Ministry of Education and the National Agency for Education; he has served as a member of STEM-learning National Committee of the LUMA Centre Finland and as the Director of Learning in Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre.
Matti Rossi has a PhD degree in science; he has worked in international research groups in Australia, Iceland and China, and as a visiting scientist in the USA and Bolivia.

Matti Rossi

Mohamed Ismail is the Chairman of the Statistics Department at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science and a teaching professor at Cairo University. He is a member of both the statistical studies permanent scientific committee for promoting academic staff and the International Statistical Institute.
Ismail served as a consultant to a wide range of organizations and institutions, including the Information and Decision Support Center of the Egyptian Cabinet and Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).
His research interests lie primarily on constructing composite indicators, time series, and dynamic modeling in general, with emphasis on Bayesian methodology, multiple seasonality, applied econometrics, and applications of statistics in the social sciences. Ismail has authored and published over 60 papers and technical reports on these topics, delivered sessions and talked in several scientific conferences, all in parallel with teaching more than 20 tutorials and short courses.
Ismail earned his PhD in Statistics in 1994 from Wales University in UK, and his master&rsquo;s and bachelor&rsquo;s degrees in Statistics from Cairo University.

Mohamed Ismail

Motaz Khorshid is a former Minister of Higher Education and Minister of State for Scientific Research in Egypt. He held several other positions throughout his career: Vice President of Cairo University for Graduate Studies and Research, Vice President of the British University in Egypt, Chief Technical Advisor and Expert on Decision Support Systems in Socioeconomic Development Planning at the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), Senior Research Scientist at Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), and Dean and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Computers and Information at Cairo University.
Dr Khorshid has developed several Social Accounting Matrices (SAM) and Economy-wide Models for several Arab Countries. His research interests and publications focus on Computer Aided Modeling and Decision Support Systems (DSS), Computer Simulation Methodology, Economy-wide Modeling and Analysis, Planning and Management of Higher Education and Scientific Research.
He holds a Doctorate of State in Management Sciences and a Doctorate of Engineering in Computer Sciences and Simulation Modeling, from Paris University in France, a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from Cairo University, and a Bachelor in Mechanical Engineering from Ain Shams University in Egypt. He has been awarded the &ldquo;Academic Palm&rdquo; from the government of France.

Motaz Khorshid

Najoua Fezzaa Ghriss is Professor at the Higher Institute of Education and Continuous Training at the University of Tunis. Professor Ghriss holds a PhD in Educational Sciences jointly from the University of Tunisia and the University of Louvain-La-Neuve Belgium. Professor Ghriss was Head of the Assessment in Education project at the Education, Cognition, Technologies and Didactic research unit at ECOTIDI-The Virtual University of Tunis; and is a member of the Association Internationale de P&eacute;dagogie Universitaire (AIPU) in Tunisia, the Association pour le d&eacute;veloppement des m&eacute;thodologies d&rsquo;&eacute;valuation en &eacute;ducation' (ADMEE) in Europe, and the scientific board of the King Abdulaziz prize for scientific research on issues of childhood and development in the Arab World.
Professor Ghriss was a co-author of the 2011 and 2014 Arab Knowledge Reports, the main author of the 2015 and 2016 Arab Knowledge Index reports, and a member of core team of the Global Knowledge Index 2017.
She has served as an expert with CIEP-S&egrave;vres in France in charge of the project, "Model against school failure and dropping out in Tunisia (M4D)&rdquo;, and as a Consultant to DVV International in North Africa branch tasked with the implementation of the RAMAA project in Tunisia.
Professor Ghriss has conducted extensive research on education, and has contributed as an expert to the projects of regional and international organizations including UNDP, UNESCO, ALECSO and The Arab Council for Childhood and Development (ACCD).

Najoua Fezzaa Ghriss

Nibal Idlebi heads the Innovation Section of UN-ESCWA. She is a senior policy expert in innovation and technology for sustainable development, knowledge societies, and digital and open government. Dr Idlebi has worked extensively to develop policies and strategies to establish knowledge societies in the Arab region, with a focus on enabling environments for information societies, innovation policy, entrepreneurship, e-services and digital content. She also has expertise in digital transformation with focus on open and e-Government.
Dr Idlebi currently leads two regional projects&mdash;on open government, and innovation and emerging technologies for developing specific sectors. She is an active member of several international and regional working groups and a jurist for various innovation, entrepreneurship and digital content awards. Dr Idlebi holds a degree in computer engineering and a PhD in Computer Science.

Nibal Idlebi

Nicola Duell, who holds a master&rsquo;s degree in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management and a Doctorate in Economics, is an expert in labour market analysis and policy, education and training, social protection, international labour migration, regional labour markets and scenario techniques. She has over 20 years of experience in comparative analysis of employment, skills development and social policies and has consulted national and international organizations such as the European Commission (EC), OECD, ILO, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, the German Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, as well as public institutions in other countries.
Dr Duell worked as an official at the OECD from 2008 to 2010 and was previously the German correspondent of the European Employment Observatory.
She is now a member of the scientific committee of the European Centre for Expertise in Labour Market Policies, a thematic expert of the Mutual Learning Programme of the EC, and a managing partner at Economix Research &amp; Consulting.

Nicola Duell

Paul Foley is the CEO of Tech4i2 Ltd. He is an expert in policy and technology evaluation and the development of benchmarking and indexes using qualitative and quantitative methods.
Prof. Foley has more than 25 years&rsquo; experience in academia. He became Head of the Department of Corporate Strategy and Professor of policy evaluation at Leicester Business School in 1993, and retains close association with several universities including the University of Leicester and Trinity College Dublin.
He has acted as a consultant and adviser to international organisations and governments around the world in undertaking work to support evidence based policymaking and impact assessments. In the past ten years, Paul has led more than 30 Tech4i2 technology projects, with a value in excess of &pound;8 million, including studies for the European Commission, OECD, UK Government and the Digital Catapult on gender and skills development, cloud computing, bigdata analytics, 5G, NGA, IoT, blockchain and digital entrepreneurship.
Paul is also the author of five technology books, and more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and is a board member of several International Journals.

Paul Foley

Philip G. Altbach is Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, where from 1994 to 2015 he was the Monan University Professor. He was the 2004&ndash;2006 Distinguished Scholar Leader for the New Century Scholars initiative of the Fulbright program, and has taught at Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, and the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Dr Altbach has authored and edited several books, including Global Perspectives on Higher Education and Turmoil and Transition: Student Politics in America. He also co-edited The Road to Academic Excellence (with Jamil Salmi); American Higher Education in the 21st Century (with Michael Bastedo and Patricia Gumport); the International Handbook of Higher Education; and World Class Worldwide: Transforming Research Universities in Asia and Latin America.
Dr Altbach is a member of the Russian government&rsquo;s &ldquo;5-100 University Excellence Commission.&rdquo; He holds a BA, MA and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago.

Philip Altbach

Pirjo Koivula is currently Counsellor of Education in the Finnish National Agency for Education, responsible for developing special needs and inclusive education, and the achievement of all learners on national level, and a National Coordinator for Finland at the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education.
She has worked in close cooperation with the Ministry of Education to draft national legislation, and with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs on development projects in South Africa, Tanzania, Russia and Ethiopia.
Ms. Koivula is Chair of the Board of Celia, the National Centre for Accessible Literature and Publishing, and a Member of Common Board of State-owned Approved Schools. She has acted as a country representative in the projects of OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, CERI and UNESCO IBE.
Ms. Koivula holds a master&rsquo;s degree in Educational Administration, Research and Planning, has completed postgraduate studies in Education, and Specialist Qualification in Leadership and Management for Educational Administrative Personnel, and is a Knight of the Order of the White Rose of Finland.

Pirjo Koivula

Sarah Elson-Rogers joined UNESCO-UNEVOC in July 2021 as Team Leader for the Innovation and Future of TVET programme, which includes the Bridging Innovation and Learning in TVET (BILT) project. The team supports efforts to strengthen TVET systems in UNESCO&rsquo;s Member States, with a focus on the themes of digitalization, greening, migration and entrepreneurship.
Previously, she worked in various national and international TVET contexts, including for the UK Department of Education and the EU Centre for the Development of Vocational Education and Training (CEDEFOP).
She has led projects on TVET financing and reporting on TVET policy trends; worked with bilateral and multilateral donors to design, implement and evaluate their TVET and labour market projects; and engaged with policymakers, researchers and TVET practitioners in the EU, Africa, the Middle East and Eurasia.

Sarah Elson-Rogers

Sid-Ahmed Soussi is a sociologist at the Department of Sociology at the Universit&eacute; du Qu&eacute;bec &agrave; Montr&eacute;al (UQAM), in Canada.
He is a member of the Work and Employment axis at the Centre of Research on Social Innovations (CRISES), and the Scientific Committee of the Groupe de recherches interuniversitaire et interdisciplinaire sur l&rsquo;emploi, la pauvret&eacute; et la protection sociale (GIREPS, Canada).
Professor Sid Soussi&rsquo;s research focuses on contemporary changes in labour, international flows of temporary migrant labour, and their local impacts on regulation in the context of the contemporary international division of labour.

Sid-Ahmed Soussi

Susan Bainbridge received her doctoral degree in Distance Education at Athabasca University, where she investigated the development of pedagogical models for open universities in developing countries. Her research interests include online learning in underdeveloped countries, global educational equity, open access, leadership, online pedagogy and design, as well as gender issues in education.
An educator and thought leader for the past 40 years, Dr Bainbridge has lived in Canada&rsquo;s Arctic, Japan, South Korea and the Middle East, and is now based in Central America.
Her ideas and philosophy of transformational leadership go beyond a traditional &lsquo;vision&rsquo;, and aim to support potential leaders to create and sustain positive change.
Today, she continues her leadership journey as an instructor and co-supervisor with the Distance Education graduate/postgraduate programs at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Athabasca University in Canada, and works with Oldenburg University in Germany in the Online Teaching and Learning Program.
Her most recent project is the completion of The Encyclopedia of the Female Pioneers in Online Learning, Routledge.

Susan Bainbridge

Sylvain C&ocirc;t&eacute; is an economic and policy expert with over 25 years of experience providing strategic evidence-based policy advice to senior management in Europe, North America and more recently in the Middle East on a variety of labour market and economic issues.
He holds a master&rsquo;s degree from University of Victoria and an Executive Certificate on Nonprofit Leadership from Harvard's Kennedy School.
During his career, Mr. C&ocirc;t&eacute; has been a Senior Economist with the Strategy and Market Analysis Group at Aramco. He was also a Program Director and Senior Research Fellow at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he led the research program on energy transition and employment. Prior to this, he worked as an economist with the OECD in Paris, and at the North American Commission for Labor Cooperation (NAALC) in Washington, DC.
Mr. C&ocirc;t&eacute; has also held various responsibilities in Canadian government departments, including Statistics Canada, and has lectured on labour economics at the University of Ottawa and on political science at the University of Alberta.
He has also served as a member of several expert groups including UNDP and MBRF&rsquo;s Global Knowledge Index 2021 Advisory Board; the College of Business Administration Industrial Advisory Board (CBA IAB), Prince Sultan University; the Saudi Labour Market Strategy Advisory Committee; GEM Saudi Arabia National Expert Group; Eurostat&ndash;OECD Entrepreneurship Indicator Development Programme; and the International Consortium for Dynamic Entrepreneurship Benchmarking.

Sylvain Côté

Yousry Elgamal is a Professor of Computer Engineering, a senior consultant at The Arab Academy for Science and Technology, and Chairman of The Computer Scientific Society (CSS), Alexandria, Egypt. He is the Chairman of the Communication and Information Committee of The National Forum of Education, Culture and Sciences (UNESCO, ALECSO, ISESCO) and has served as the Minister of Education of Egypt (2005&ndash;2010); Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Egypt Japan University of Science and Technology (E-JUST); and as a senior consultant to the National Telecommunications Institute of Egypt.
Professor Elgamal has also served in a number of capacities at The Arab Academy for Science and Technology and Maritime Transport, including Vice-President for Education and Research, Founding Dean of the College of Engineering and Technology, Founding Chairman of Electronics and Communication Department, and Assistant to the President for Informatics.&nbsp; He also served as a Lecturer of Nuclear Electronics at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Professor Elgamal holds a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alexandria, an M.Sc. from Ain-Shams University, and a D.Sc. in Computer Science from The George Washington University, and is a recipient of Richard Merwin Award (1984).

Yousry El Gamal

Youssef Sadik is Professor of Sociology at the Faculty of Law, Economic and Social Sciences Agdal, Mohammed V University in Rabat.
Sadik is also a Research Associate at several universities and international research centers, including Paris Dauphine University, Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada, and the University of Quebec at Montreal, Canada, along with his position as an Associate Professor at the Paris Sorbonne University.
Sadik served as an expert in the Moroccan Parliament and a consultant for USAID, the World Bank, International Labour Organization, UNDP RBAS and UNESCO. He also served as an Adviser to Morocco&rsquo;s Prime Minister between 2010 and 2012.
His latest publications include Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development: South-North perspectives (University of Paris, 2021), Economic and Social Resistance in the South (Rabat, 2020), and Youth Employability Contradictions (Paris, 2018).

GKI Advisory Board

Wagdy Sawahel