Non-Resident Visiting Fellows

MICHAEL BAK is a policy and digital & human rights professional with 25 years' of international experience working across issues of the political economy including public policy, freedom of expression, digital citizenship, digital rights, tech + democracy, international development, peacebuilding and democratic and crisis governance in diverse contexts. From working in small start-ups to multilaterals and multinationals, he is regarded as a bridge builder, authentic and inspirational leader, and empowering manager driven by a commitment to justice and equity. Often as a diplomat, he has have represented influential global leaders: USAID, the United Nations, and Facebook.

JONATHAN R. BELOFF, PhD is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Kigali Genocide Memorial and a recent Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of War Studies at the King’s College London. His research focuses on Strategic Theory along with the regional politics and security of the African Great Lakes and East Africa.

Since 2008, he has travelled to this region to work and consult with numerous Rwandan and international government officials. During these foreign residence periods, he developed unique methodological skills to engage and consult with various foreign officials, elites and policymakers to understand public policy formation.

ANDREA BONIME-BLANC i is founder and CEO of GEC Risk Advisory, a strategic governance, risk, ESG and cyber advisor to business, NGOs, and government. A former senior global corporate executive (Bertelsmann, Verint, PSEG), she serves on several boards and advisory boards (Cyber Future Foundation, NACD New Jersey Chapter, Athena Alliance & WireX Systems).

She is Independent Ethics Advisor to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, Independent ESG & Integrity Advisor to the Platform for Social Impact, and Founding Faculty for both the Institute for Directors Malaysia Mandatory ESG Governance Certification Program and the Diligent Institute’s Certification in AI and Ethics Oversight.

Andrea is Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the recipient of numerous awards including the 2023 Diligent Governance 100, 2022 NACD Directorship 100, 2019 Cyber Future Foundation Futurist of the Year and DCRO Institute’s 2018 Risk Governance Exemplar Award.

She is a NACD Governance Leadership Fellow, holds the Carnegie Mellon Cyber Oversight Certificate, and has served as Adjunct Faculty at NYU. Andrea is a global keynote speaker, and multiple book author, including Gloom to Boom: How Leaders Transform Risk into Resilience and Value (Routledge 2020) and the annual ESGT Megatrends Manual (Diplomatic Courier). She is now working on her 5th book on the governance of exponential tech to be published in 2025. She received her Joint JD in Law and PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, was raised in Germany and Spain, speaks several languages and lives in New York City.

BETHANY BRANTLEY is a sustainability executive and ESG investor with more than a decade of experience driving corporate action and investment strategy on topics related to climate change mitigation and adaptation and ESG integration in portfolio decision making.

Bethany is currently Head of ESG for IPI Partners, the world’s largest digital infrastructure private equity platform focused exclusively on hyperscale data center investments. Mrs. Brantley has published research for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and has been recognized for her influence as a sustainability thought leader in the digital infrastructure industry, most recently as a 2022 iMason’s IM100 award recipient.

As a non-resident visiting senior fellow at CGA, her work will focus on navigating the evolving landscape of ESG integration in private equity, and digital infrastructure investments that support environmental sustainability and the transition to a low carbon economy. Mrs. Brantley earned her master’s in environmental management and sustainability from Harvard University and bachelor’s in finance and marketing from Texas Christian University.

JAG GIL is an entrepreneur and inventor with extensive experience in technology and innovation, focusing on sustainability and global supply chains. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of VERTRU, an early-stage venture dedicated to transparency in global trade using big data and artificial intelligence to track human rights, social, environmental and climate impacts across global supply chains. VERTRU is backed by Europe’s largest impact venture capital fund.

She has served as Technology Partner to the European Union, where she designed and implemented digital transformation programs addressing worker rights and labor risks in Asian supply chains in collaboration with leading Multi Stakeholder Initiatives and NGOs and funded by institutions such as the UK’s Department for International Development, the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery, and the Norwegian Government.

Jag is the holder of a US patent for technology inventions related to developing methods to monitor and measure ESG-related risks across global value chains and has been funded across multiple ventures by prominent venture capital firms like New Enterprise Associates and foundations such as Omidyar, the philanthropic fund of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.

She is a graduate of MIT with studies at the Harvard Kennedy School and MIT’s Media Lab. As a non-resident visiting senior fellow at CGA, Jag’s work will explore how corporate entities and NGOs can effectively utilize AI and LLM technologies to monitor and manage ESG risks. Her work is particularly focused on the growing importance of the 'S' in ESG, highlighting how policy, regulation, and technology converge to address global challenges.

CHRISTIANE LEMKE is Professor Emerita of Political Science and International Relations at Leibniz University Hannover, where she was also the Director of the Jean Monnet European Center of Excellence. She has been a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at Harvard University, Visiting Krupp Chair in the Government Department at Harvard, Max Weber Chair in European Politics at New York University and DAAD-Visiting Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was the first woman in Germany to serve as the director of the state parliament in Lower Saxony where she was responsible – among other tasks – for the Europeanization of the parliament’s administration. Professor Lemke is also a media expert on transatlantic security, European affairs, and US politics. Her current research interests focus on transatlantic relations and the salience of climate change policy, the significance of gender in migration and international politics, and the unprecedented security challenges due to the war in Ukraine.

As a non-resident visiting senior fellow Dr. Lemke will mentor CGA graduate students in the above listed fields, support the organization of international panel discussions on global issues, and present her research on European and US approaches to global challenges, such as the climate crisis and the prospects of a new security policy for Europe. Dr. Lemke together with Dr. Maier will also co-author a paper on strategies of resistance by women's and LGBTQ rights activists in EU countries governed by right-wing populist regimes.  This paper will explore how the European Union serves as a catalyst and potentially as a resource for the resistance and norm contestation, and to what extend these activities are organized transnationally.

HELIDAH OGUDE-CHAMBERT is a scholar and practitioner of Migration and International Development with over 15 years of experience. Working on or in conflict-affected environments, she has dedicated her career to addressing issues related to migration, forced displacement, conflict prevention, social cohesion, and intersectional inclusion. In the broadest sense, her interdisciplinary scholarship uses critical theories, mixed methods, and historical ways of thinking to understand how political elites exploit emotions and discourse to shape news media and state policies in ways that engineer differential premature death.

She is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre and will commence her role as Departmental Lecturer in Migration and Development at Oxford's Department of International Development in Fall 2023. She has previously worked for the World Bank, Government of South Africa, and International Crisis Group.

As a non-resident visiting senior fellow at CGA, she will publish a working paper and host related events with Prof. Jens Rudbeck on initiatives proposed at the 2023 Global Refugee Forum and their efficacy in addressing global refugee challenges.

HENDRIK W. OHNESORGE is Managing Director of the Center for Global Studies and Research Fellow at the Chair in International Relations at the University of Bonn. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Münster and a Master’s degree as well as a PhD (summa cum laude) from the University of Bonn. He was Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

His research centers on power and power shifts in global politics, with a special focus on soft power, U.S. foreign policy and transatlantic relations, as well as charismatic leadership and individual agency in international affairs. His latest books include Soft Power and the Future of U.S. Foreign Policy (2023), Macht und Machtverschiebung: Schlüsselphänomene internationaler Poliik (2022), and Soft Power: The Forces of Attraction in International Relations (2020).

As a non-resident visiting distinguished fellow at CGA, he will work on soft power, both conceptually and empirically, re-examining its origins especially in realist thought and exploring its state and role in U.S. foreign policy today.

APRIL PHAM is a feminist and women’s rights advocate currently serving as the Senior Gender Advisor and Chief of Gender Unit at the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), where she brings over 30 years of experience in social justice and human rights, migrant and refugee rights, women’s rights and the prevention and response to violence against women/gender-based violence in development and humanitarian settings.

April started her career as a youth worker in Australia working with young people involved in the criminal justice system, and on alcohol and other drugs abuse counselling and prevention programs before finding her passion working on women’s rights with women’s civil society advocating for legislative reforms to protect migrant and refugee victims and survivors of domestic violence. Her strong activism informed later work in state government developing policy, prevention and legislative reforms to address violence against women.

MICHAEL TRAN is a Managing Director within the Global Energy Strategy Research team at RBC Capital Markets based in New York. He is responsible for views pertaining to energy markets including macro supply and demand fundamentals. Michael also leads RBC’s Digital Intelligence Strategy research platform, a newly formed data science driven team. The mission of DIS is to leverage alternative data sets to identify the hidden themes in society to unearth actionable investment opportunities spurred by changes in societal behavior and real time global events. Michael has spent nearly 15 years in research, sales and trading and investment banking with major banks like UBS based in London and energy trading platforms like BP based in Calgary.  

Michael's market views are frequently quoted in media outlets and he routinely appears on television networks like Bloomberg, CNBC and BNN. He is a frequent advisor to both the Canadian Federal and Alberta government on issues pertaining to energy policy and budgeting. He serves on the Advisory Board of Orbital Insight, a Silicon Valley based Artificial Intelligence SaaS company where his work lies at the intersection of big energy and big data.  Michael is a non-resident visiting senior fellow at CGA. He also serves on the Board of the New York Energy Forum and on the Business Committee of the US Association of Energy Economists (USAEE). He graduated with distinction from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Economics.

As a non-resident visiting senior fellow at CGA, Michael’s work will center around the intersection of big data, big energy and how the financial markets play a key role in global energy security and the energy evolution. Michael is in an excellent position to help CGA support and empower our students to be the energy thought leaders of tomorrow.

ANDRAS VAMOS-GOLDMAN is a retired Canadian diplomat, international lawyer and social entrepreneur. He has worked on international political, environmental and law of the sea issues, with a focus since 2000 on international justice. As political coordinator, and later legal adviser of the Canadian Permanent Mission to the United Nations, he worked on the creation of the Sierra Leone Special Court, becoming the founding Chair of its Management Committee. He was also part of the Bureau of the International Criminal Court Preparatory Committee that established the ICC as a functioning judicial institution. More recently, he helped to found and became the Executive-Director of Justice Rapid Response, a hybrid intergovernmental mechanism that has been helping to professionalize the field of international investigations. This achievement led to him becoming an Ashoka Fellow in 2014. He has been teaching international law as an assistant adjunct clinical professor in NYU’s Center for Global Affairs since 2018, and he has also been a visiting senior fellow there since 2019. He recently joined the Board of Diplomats Without Borders. 

As a non-resident visiting senior fellow at CGA, his work will contribute to reinforcing a rules based international system by, inter alia, fostering the debate to ensure that accountability for recent crimes of aggression is credible; and that the art of diplomacy is returned to the conflict-resolution and prevention tool-kits of the international community.