Board

Julian is an entrepreneur and has been the Member of Parliament for Skipton and Ripon, North Yorkshire since 2010. He is a qualified mediator.
Most recently he was an informal advisor to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Number Ten Downing Street focused on Northern Ireland, industrial relations, and parliamentary management.

He began his ministerial career as a ministerial aide in the Department for International Development from 2010-2015. From 2017-2019, he was Government Chief Whip during the Brexit period and led efforts to resolve the parliamentary impasse in Government and across parties in parliament.

In July 2019, Julian was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. On behalf of the UK Government, he led the negotiations that culminated in the “New Decade, New Approach” which restored devolved Government to Northern Ireland. He was awarded Spectator magazine’s Minister of the Year in 2020 following the deal.

Julian was appointed CBE by Theresa May and Knight Commander of the Order of Bath in Prime Minister Sunak’s dissolution honour’s list for political and public service.

Karthik Krishnan is a CEO with experience building startups and accelerating enterprise value of large public and private companies in EdTech, HealthTech, and Media. He is the former Global CEO of Britannica Group, Venture Chair at Redesign Health, and SVP & General Manager at RELX (Fortune 500) where he led four global businesses: Media, eCommerce, Pharma and Clinical Decision Support. Since 2010, he has been an adjunct professor at NYU Stern School of Business.

Karthik has actively shaped several transformative initiatives including UNICEF’s Youth Skills Development, Revitalizing Harlem (NYC), and transforming NYC public housing residents’ lives through a jobs-plus model for parents and a college pathway model for youth. He also secured regulatory approval to launch a credit union to serve low-income communities. He was recognized by former President Clinton for his leadership in launching the Urban Enterprise Initiative.

Karthik is NACD Directorship CertifiedTM and was recognized for his board work by Financial Times/Agenda in Diversity 100 public company board-ready leaders. On the World Economic Forum Expert Network, he has published articles several topics from ESG to Augmented Intelligence.

Karthik has an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a bachelor’s in engineering from Coimbatore Institute of Technology.

Alicia Herbert OBE is the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Director of Education, Gender and Equalities and the UK’s Special Envoy for Gender Equality. Previously Alicia worked in academia, at the World Bank, and represented the UK government in senior roles in Mozambique, Sudan, and Nigeria.

Over the past 25 years, she has played a leading role in shaping international development policy and driving programme delivery and policy reform in countries across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Peter MacDougall is Canada’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Office of the United Nations and to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, in Geneva.

Previously, Peter was the Assistant Deputy Minister for Global Issues and Development at Global Affairs Canada. In this role, he led Canada’s multilateral development and humanitarian assistance programs, and thematic policy issues such as climate finance, global health, and education. Peter has also served as the Assistant Deputy Minister for Europe, Arctic, Middle East, and Maghreb and as Ambassador of Canada to Jordan.

Since July 2019, Fabio Segura has been Co-CEO at Jacobs Foundation (JF), sharing responsibility for the overall success of the organization, while leading the development and execution of its 2030 strategy.

From 2015 to 2019, Fabio was JF’s Head of International Programs and managed the strategic, financial, and operative direction of programs across Africa and Latin America. During this time, he designed and led JF’s largest program to date: Transforming Education in Cocoa Communities (TRECC), a comprehensive strategy involving the public and private sector to improve quality of education in Côte D’Ivoire.

Before joining JF, Fabio held management roles at LGT Venture Philanthropy and the Center for Sustainability at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). He has notable experience as a peace and development worker in Colombia, underscoring his commitment to humanitarian efforts and working with at-risk communities.

Jörg Frieden has been the Board Chair of the Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets (SIFEM) since 2018.

From 1986 to 2018, Jörg held a broad range of posts and responsibilities at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.a. He worked as coordinator in Mozambique, advisor for the World Bank in Washington, and as Head of the Eastern and Southern Africa Section in Bern.

Between 1999 and 2003, his professional career took a sidestep to the Federal Office for Refugees where he held the position of Deputy Director. In 2003, he returned to the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) as Resident Director of Development Programmes in Nepal. From 2008 to 2010, he was Deputy Director of the SDC and headed the Global Cooperation Department. He was also an advisor to and representative of Federal Councillor Micheline Calmy-Rey in the UN Commission on Sustainable Development.

From 2011 to 2016, Jörg was Executive Director of Switzerland at the World Bank Group, specifically at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and then Swiss Ambassador to Nepal until 2018. Jörg is also a board member of Helvetas, a development cooperation NGO in Zurich, and member of the development commission of the Canton of Fribourg.