WEmin Cihangir Akşit is a former Director of the NATO Standardization Agency (NSA). Akşit had a forty-year military service, where he earned seventeen badges before retiring in 2008 as a major general. He is known for his establishment of total quality management and change management that modernized the Turkish Armed Forces. Akşit is also a noted author, having written three historical fiction novels, as well as articles for several military magazines and journals.
WJames Appathurai is a Canadian journalist and former NATO Spokesperson. He currently serves as the NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, and as the NATO Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia. He was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and has degrees from the University of Toronto and the University of Amsterdam. Prior to joining NATO, he held positions the Department of National Defense of Canada and as a journalist with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He has a number of publications to his credit.
WClaudio Bisogniero has been Italy’s Permanent Representative to NATO since 2016. From 2007 until 2012, he was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO before serving as Ambassador to the United States (2012-2016).
WSir Simon Lawrance Gass is a British civil servant. Since 2019, he has been appointed as Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Between 2018 and 2019, he was the Commandant of the Royal College of Defence Studies. During his diplomatic career, he served as British ambassador to Greece and to Iran.
WArndt Freytag von Loringhoven is a German diplomat and chemist. He currently serves as Germany's ambassador to Poland. Loringhoven was deputy director of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) between 2007 and 2010. He served as NATO's first chief of intelligence. He was also Germany's ambassador to the Czech Republic and served as a diplomat at the German Embassy in Moscow.
WGeorgi Velikov Panayotov is a Bulgarian diplomat who has held numerous posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria and in the foreign affairs department of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He is currently the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Bulgaria to the United Nations.
WOle Otto Paus, né Ole von Paus, was a Norwegian General, diplomat and NATO official. He was head of the army group in the military intelligence service of the exile Norwegian High Command in London during the Second World War, and thus was one of the founders of the Norwegian Intelligence Service. He served as a military attaché in Stockholm and Helsingfors during the 1950s, and was commander-in-chief in Central Norway from 1964 to 1971. From 1971 to 1974 he was Land Deputy of the Allied Forces Northern Europe, i.e. the Norwegian representative in the NATO military command for Northern Europe. As such he was the highest-ranking Norwegian in the NATO command structure at the time.
WGeneral Petr Pavel is a Czech army officer who served from 2015 to 2018 as the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. He is the first person from a former Eastern Bloc state and the first former communist to hold the position. Prior to his current role he was Chief of the General Staff of the Czech Army from 1 July 2012 to 1 May 2015.
WMark Philip Sedwill, Baron Sedwill is a British diplomat, public policy analyst and senior civil servant who served as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service to Prime Ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson from 2018 to 2020. He also served as the United Kingdom National Security Adviser from 2017 to 2020. He was previously the United Kingdom's Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010 and the NATO Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan in 2010. He was the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office from February 2013 to April 2017.
WJamie Patrick Shea was Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium until his retirement in late September 2018.
WLamberto Zannier is an Italian diplomat who is currently OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and earlier served as the Secretary General of the OSCE.