Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is the President of the Portuguese Republic since 2016. A Full Professor at University of Lisbon Law School he was very involved in several associations and academic bodies, having lectured at various Portuguese and foreign universities. In parallel, he performed various positions in the media, being one of Expresso and Semanário founders. In 2000 he began to perform as a political commentator, alternately on TVI and RTP. He entered PSD in 1974, its foundation year, and chaired the Party (1996-1999). In 1975, at the Constituent Assembly, he helped draft the first Constitution of the Portuguese Democracy. He served in governmental positions and integrated the Council of State during Jorge Sampaio (2000-2001) and Cavaco Silva (2006-2016) Presidential terms.

António Feijó is the President of the Board of Trustees of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. A Full Professor at Lisbon University he was Dean of its Arts School, Vice-Rector and Pro-Rector. He authored books and essays on English and American literature, and translations and dramatisations for the stage of Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, Hamlet, King Lear), and works by Oscar Wilde and Fernando Pessoa. Recent publications: A Shepherd's Admiration of the Devil (2015), The University as it should be, with Miguel Tamen (2017), The Canon - co-authored (2020). Chaired the Independent General Council of RTP and was Non-Executive Director of Casa de Mateus Foundation. He has a PhD (Brown University) and an MA (State University of New York at Albany) both in English and North American Literature.e.

Francisco Seixas da Costa is the Clube de Lisboa Chairman. He was a career diplomat (1975-2013), serving in Norway, Angola and the UK, and being Ambassador to the UN, OSCE, UNESCO, Brazil and France. He was Secretary of State for European Affairs (1995-2001) and Executive Director of the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe (2013-2014). Francisco was consultant, teacher and researcher in universities. Develops professional activity in management, strategic consultancy and supervision in the private sector, namely as non-executive Member of the Board at Jerónimo Martins and Mota Engil groups. He is a media commentator on international affairs, mostly on CNN Portugal. He published several works, the latest being: Antes que me Esqueça: a diplomacia e a vida (2023).

Ana Santos Pinto is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Studies at Nova Lisbon University and a Researcher at its Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI-NOVA). Ana is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD), a member of the Advisory Council of the Anna Lindh Foundation and a member of the Strategic Council of the Club of Lisbon. She Chaired the Group of Independent Experts which delivered in 2024 a report on NATO’s approach to the Southern Neighbourhood. She served as Secretary of State for National Defence (2018–2019). Her research and publications focus on Identities in International Politics, EU Foreign and Security Policy, Security and Defence in Transatlantic Relations, Middle East Geopolitics.

Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook is Bertelsmann Stiftung Senior Advisor, having served as an Executive Vice President. She led the German Council on Foreign Relations. With Ambassador Nicholas Burns she co-founded and directed for over a decade the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School. At Belfer Center, she was Executive Director for programmes. A political scientist, her research focusses on new actors in geopolitics, geoeconomics, technology policy, transatlantic relations and international security architecture. She was Board Member of European Policy Centre Management. Began her career as a broadcast journalist for CNN-International. Cathryn writes widely on international affairs in academic journals and mainstream German, US, British, Spanish media. Eisenhower and Truman fellow, she serves on non-profit boards and academic advisory councils.

Elissa Jobson is a Leadership Member and the Advocacy Director at the International Crisis Group. Elissa guides the strategy and oversees the Group's advocacy, and she is also responsible for the strategies to maximise the political impact of the organisation's activities. Previous to that, she was the ICG’s Regional Advocacy Director in Africa and its main liaison with the African Union. Before joining the International Crisis Group, Elissa was a media relations specialist at the UNICEF in New York, where she helped to coordinate public advocacy for the Sustainable Development Goals. Between 2012 and 2014, Elissa was a freelance journalist based in Addis Ababa, working for several news media, namely The Guardian, Africa Confidential, The Africa Repo and Business Day.

Luís Tomé is Full Professor at Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, Head of the Department of International Relations and of OBSERVARE, he is Guest Professor at National Defense Institute, Military University Institute, Higher Institute of Police Sciences and Internal Security and Visiting Professor at La Sapienza Universitá, Roma and at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara. Luís was Expert for International Relations and Combating Terrorism in the Office of the Minister of Internal Administration (2015–2017), Advisor to the Vice-President of the European Parliament (1999-2004) and NATO-EAPC Researcher, writing the report Russia and NATO's Enlargement (2000). His focus is on Euro-Atlantic, Eurasia and Asia-Pacific regions. He authored and co-authored a dozen books and several essays and articles in specialised journals.

Walter Russell Mead is Hudson Institute Strategy and Statesmanship Distinguished Fellow and Alexander Hamilton Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at University of Florida. Wall Street Journal Global View Columnist and Aspen Institute Italy Fellow. From 1997-2010, Council on Foreign Relations Member (Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy from 2003). Foreign Policy Research Institute awarded him the 2012 Benjamin Franklin Prize for his work on American foreign policy. Publications: Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (2004); God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World (2007); The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People (2022).

Bianca Dragomir is Director of Cleantech for Iberia, aiming to make the region the next European clean technologies industrial leader. She was a consultant for European Commission on ‘Industry 2030’, ‘Industrial clusters’ and ‘Skills for the renewable energy industry’. Bianca was the first woman to be named European Cluster Manager of the Year by the EC. She was CEO of AVAESEN for over a decade, founded the first European cluster accelerator and the Clusters of Change platform. He has two MA and completed Exponential Thinking & Foresight Studies at Singularity University. She collaborates with MIT Centre for Collective Intelligence and Global Entrepreneurship Network. She spoke in over 40 countries and publishes in international media, e.g. The Independent, Financial Times, Politico.

Henry Sanderson is Benchmark Mineral Intelligence Executive Editor, and Associate Fellow at RUSI. He authored The Volt Rush: the winners and losers in the race to go green (2022), chosen by the Observer as book of the week and by The Times as one of the best science and environment books of 2022. For seven years, he covered raw materials and mining for The Financial Times. Prior to that, he lived and worked in Beijing, where he served as Deputy Bureau Chief and Corporate Finance Reporter for Bloomberg. With Michael Foresight, he co-authored China's Superbank: debt, oil and influence(2012), that deals with the China´s financial system and state capitalism and its impact in various countries from Venezuela to Ethiopia.

Hung Tran is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the GeoEconomics Centre of the Atlantic Council. He is a renowned economist, with extensive experience in the private sector, at international organisations and at research institutions. Tran has produced important research and shaped policy decisions concerning advanced and emerging market economies, global capital markets, debt and capital flows, as well as financial stability issues. From 2007 until his retirement in 2018, Hung worked at the Institute of International Finance (IIF). Since 2012, he started out as Senior Director, Capital and Emerging Markets Department, before becoming the IIF’s Executive Managing Director. Prior to that, he worked for six years at the IMF as a Deputy Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department.

Raquel Vaz Pinto is Researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations of the NOVA Lisbon University (IPRI-Nova) and an Invited Associate professor at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at NOVA Lisbon University. She was President of the Portuguese Political Science Association, PPSA (2012 - 2016) and a Consultant to the Board of Directors of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (2020 - 2022). Her publications include: A Grande Muralha e o Legado de Tiananmen, A China e os Direitos Humanos, Os Portugueses e o Mundo. Her current major research interests are Chinese Foreign Policy and Strategy, the US and the Indo-Pacific, and Leadership and Strategy. Raquel has a PhD in Political Science and is an international politics resident analyst for SIC Notícias TV.

Tsutomu Sato is a Senior Researcher at Nakasone Peace Institute. He is an Expert in International Relations, Climate Change and Finance, Economic Security. He worked for over 20 years on infrastructure projects in Asian, and on climate finance at Japan Bank for International Co-operation (JBIC). In mid-1990s, he was JBIC representative in Beijing, and in the early 2000s he served at the Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Since 2020, he is an Adviser on Sustainable Finance to Japan Financial Services Agency and currently works in energy and climate study groups. He holds a JD in Law from the University of Tsukuba (2016) and was a Fellow of the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Nagoya University (2022- 23).

Sofia Lorena is a Journalist at Público since 2001, focusing on topics related to Africa and the Middle East. In 2003, she was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was captured, having returned to the country in 2010 to carry out a series of reports on the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait, for which she received the Gazeta de Imprensa award. Throughout the last 20 years she has been reporting from different war zones. In 2014 her report "They refuse to stop believing in the revolution and the future" about the war in Syria, was selected as a finalist for the Gabriel García Marquez Journalism Prize, in the news coverage category.

Luísa Meireles is Editor in Chief of the Portuguese Information Agency (Lusa).  She is Vice-President of the Club of Lisbon, Member of Eurodefense-Portugal Center of Studies and of Euromed, IHEDN. Practiced law for 10 years, before joining Expresso in 1989. As a special envoy, covered the final years of the USSR, regime transitions in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Balkan wars. Her expertise is on Politics, Defense, Security and European Affairs. At Expresso, Luísa was International Editor (2000-2006) and Senior Political Writer (2006-2018). She published E Depois do Iraque? in partnership with General Loureiro dos Santos (2003), and General Loureiro dos Santos - uma biografia (2018). She has a Law degree from Lisbon University, and post-graduated in European Affairs at the Catholic University of Lisbon.

Fernando Ayala is an Associate Professor at the Political Science Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.  He was Deputy Director for Strategic Affairs and Institutional Relations at the University of Chile. Before joining the University, he was Chile's Undersecretary of Defence. Previously, Fernando was Special Adviser for Partnership, South-South Cooperation and Parliamentary Affairs at FAO in Rome. In his diplomatic career, he was Secretary of the Chilean Embassy in Seoul, Consul in Stockholm and Chicago, Consul General in Milan, Ambassador to Vietnam, Portugal, Trinidad and Tobago and Italy. He was Director General of Ceremonial and Protocol, a post he held for three and a half years. He is an economist with a postgraduate qualification in Political Science.

Fidel Amakye Owusu iis a Geopolitics and Security Consultant at Riley Risk Inc., a company dedicated to assessing potential threats and risks for the company's clients. Prior to that, he was Senior Conflict Analyst at the Conflict Research Consortium for Africa. He is the founder and the CEO of DefSEC Analytics Africa Ltd, a consultancy company providing strategic advice and solutions on security and defence in the African Continent. Previously, he served as Special Assistant to the Vice President of Ghana and worked also in the President's Office.

Helena Carreiras is a Full Professor of Sociology at Iscte - IUL. She is a Member of the Strategic Council of the Club of Lisbon. She was Minister of National Defence (2022-2024) and Director of the National Defence Institute, IDN (2019-2022). She was Director of the School of Sociology and Public Policy at Iscte-IUL (2016-2019), President of the European Research Group on Military and Society, ERGOMAS (2017-2019), Board Member of the European Sociological Association (2009- 2013) and Portuguese Sociology Association Vice-President (1994-1996). In 2013 she was a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University (Department of Government).  She has published several books, book chapters and academic articles. She holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (Florence).

Madalena Meyer Resende, Madalena Meyer Resende is Associate Professor with habilitations at NOVA Lisbon University and Researcher at the Portuguese Institute of International Relations (IPRI- NOVA). She is President of the Portuguese Political Science Association and Vice- President of the International Political Science Association (IPSA). Before joining NOVA (2006), Madalena was Assistant Lecturer at Collège d'Europe, Warsaw (1998- 1999) and at the Government Department, London School of Economics, LSE, London (2001-2002), Gulbenkian Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, CEPS, Brussels (2005-2006) and Research Associate at the Europa Universitaet Viadrina, Frankfurt-Oder (2012-2016). Her research focuses on the intersection between religion and politics, on nationalism and on political parties and she authored and co-authored several publications. She is PhD in Political Science from LSE (2005).

Shivshankar Menon is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) in India and Chairman of the Centre for China Studies at Ashoka University. Shivshankar was National Security Advisor to the Indian Prime Minister (2010-2014), India's Foreign Secretary (2006-2009) and India's Ambassador and High Commissioner to several countries. He was a Distinguished Fellow at Brookings India. He published Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy (2016) and India and Asian Geopolitics: The Past, Present (2021). He was Richard Wilhelm Fellow at the MIT Centre for International Studies and Fisher Family Fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center. In 2010, the Foreign Policy magazine chose him as one of the "100 best global thinkers in the world".

Paulo Rangel is Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was Assistant Secretary of State to the Minister of Justice (2004-2005). In 2005 he was elected to the Portuguese Parliament and entered the PSD, becoming President of its Parliamentary Group in June 2008. He was Member of the European Parliament (2009- 2024), serving on the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee and on the Constitutional Affairs Committees. In 2015, he was elected vice-president of the EPP. A lawyer by profession, he has a law degree from the Portuguese Catholic University, where he chairs Political Science in Porto. Since 2011 he also lectures on the Executive MBA programme, University of Porto Business School.

Paulo Portas Vice-President at the Portuguese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, CCIP, and founding partner of Vinciamo Consulting (strategic analysis, business intelligence), which advises on business internationalisation. He teaches at NOVA Lisbon University (geo-economics, international relations), at Abu-Dhabi Diplomatic Academy and holds seminars on economic diplomacy for multinational companies. He served in various ministerial positions, including in Defence (2002-2005), Foreign Affairs (2011-2013), and as Deputy Prime Minister (2013-2015). He led the centre-right Party CDS-PP for 16 years, eight of which while in government. He was Parliament Member for eight terms. Since 2016 he retired from party politics, returning to the private sector. He is a regular commentator on international politics at TVI and is a frequent speaker at international conferences.

Branko Milanovic is a Senior Scholar at Stone Centre, City University of New York. His main area of work is income inequality. He was a senior economist in World Bank for almost twenty years, leaving to write Worlds Apart (2005). The Globalist selected The Haves and the Have-nots (2011) as the 2011 Book of the Year. Global Inequality (2016) won the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the best political book of the year and the Hans Matthöfer Prize in 2018. He addresses economic and political effects of globalisation and introduced the concept of inequality "Kuznets waves”. With Mariana Mazzucato was awarded the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Knowledge. Recent books: Capitalism, Alone (2019), Visions of Inequality (2023).

Catarina Barata is an Assistant Professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST-UL). She is also a researcher at the Computer and Robot Vision Lab (VisLab) of the Institute for Systems and Robotics (ISR/IST-ID) and at the Centre for Responsible AI. Her research focus is on explainable AI (machine and deep learning), with an emphasis on developing more efficient representations for neural networks, inspired by the way humans perceive the world and integrate new experiences. Due to her research work on computer vision, with a particular focus on analysing medical images, Catarina won a Google Scholar research award in 2021. She has authored and co-authored several scientific publications. She has a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico.

Karim El Aynaoui is Executive President of the Policy Center for the New South (PCNS). He is also Executive Vice-President of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University and Dean of its Humanities, Economics and Social Sciences Cluster. From 2005 to 2012, he served at the Central Bank of Morocco. Previously, Karim has worked for eight years at the World Bank as an Economist for its units of the Middle East and North Africa and Africa. He published books and journal articles on macroeconomic issues in developing countries. His recent research has been focused on growth and the labor market in Morocco, as well as on reforming international development economy. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Bordeaux in France.

Kathy Peach is is Director and co-Founder of the Collective Intelligence Design Centre at Nesta (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), which explores how human and machine intelligence can be combined to develop innovative solutions for social challenges. She is a Specialised Consultant for the World Economic Forum on Technology and Society. Prior to that, Kathy was Director of Innovation and Foresight at Bond - a global network of international development organisations. Between 2013 and 2019 she was a Member of the Board at Mines Advisory Group (MAG), the Nobel Prize-winning charity, and between 2018 and 2020 a Member of the Board at Newton Fund Prize Committee. Previously, Kathy worked in various organisations, namely Healthwatch England, Scope and VSO.

Luís Pais Antunes is is President of the Economic and Social Council since July 2024. He is President of the Supervision Council of the Club of Lisbon. He was on the Board of the Competitiveness Forum (2018-2024). He integrated the National Board of the Portuguese Red Cross (2023-2024). A lawyer since 1982, he joined PLMJ in 1997, being Managing Partner (2015-2023). He served as Secretary of State (2002 – 2005) and was Member of the Parliament (2005-2009). Luís was Executive Director of IEEI - Institute for Strategic and International Studies (2008-2012), Director- General for Competition and Prices (1994-1996), Legal Secretary at the European Court (1989-1994) and worked at the European Union Legal Service (1986-1994). Areas of interest include labour and competition law.

Bruno Menezes Ribeiro is First Opera Tenor, acclaimed on various world stages.He is artistic director of the AGLAIA Association, aimed to promote young Portuguese singers. He performed in major opera houses and concert halls, in Montreal, Florida, Minnesota, Dallas, Wexford, Hong Kong, Klosterneuburg, Vienna,St Gallen, Leipzig, Wiesbaden, Florence, Parma, Turin, Monte Carlo, Dublin, Bilbao, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, and Lisbon. He performed: Verdi’s La Traviata, Il Corsaro, Nabucco, La forza del Destino, Don Carlo, Stiffelio, Attila, Requiem; Puccini’s Tosca, La Rondine; Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Il Turco in Italia; Massenet’s Manon; Bizet’s Carmen; Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi; Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia; Strauss’s Salomé; Montemezzi’s L'amore dei tre re; Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.

Conceição Lino is a Senior Journalist at SIC TV since 1992, integrating its founding professionals. For several years she presented Morning and Evening News. Since 2010, she starred: 15|25, a weekly programme aimed at discussing current world affairs through the eyes of Generation Z; A Rede 2019, on internet "catfish”, a most watched programme; E Se Fosse Consigo? on prejudice, discrimination and violence, through staged social experiments, interviews, testimonies; Nós por Cá, on violation of citizens’ rights, which led to the resolving of many cases. Before 2010 Conceição presented Primeira Pessoa (2007-2008), Grande Plano (2004), O País em Directo (2003), Hora Extra (2003-2003), Casos de Polícia (1996-2000), Praça Pública (1994-1995). Prior to SIC she worked at Rádio Comercial, and Expresso.

Carlos Moedas is the Mayor of Lisbon. He worked at Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux Group and at Goldman Sachs. Since 2004 he chaired Aguirre Newman Portugal and was Member of the Group's Executive Committee in Spain. In 2008 he created his own investment management company. Elected to Parliament (2011), he was Assistant Secretary of State to the Prime Minister (2011-2014). He was European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science (2014-2019). A trustee at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (2019-2021), he is also Vice-President of Jacques Delors Institute, Paris. Publications include Open Innovation: Research, Practices and Policies, California Management Review, with Henry Chesbrough (creator of the Open Innovation concept). He is a Civil Engineer from IST and has an MBA from Harvard University.