Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).

Hal served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning from 2015 to 2016, and has been a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He has also consulted with a range of government offices and agencies in the intelligence and national security communities and served as lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States.

Hal received his BA from Stanford University (2005) and his PhD from Yale University (2009). He previously worked at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the Institute for Defense Analyses.

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National Security Institute

Jamil N. Jaffer is the Founder and Executive Director of the National Security Institute, and an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the National Security Law & Policy Program and the nation’s first Cyber, Intelligence, and National Security LL.M at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he also teaches classes on counterterrorism, intelligence, surveillance, cybersecurity, and other national security matters, as well as a summer course in Padua, Italy with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. Jamil is also affiliated with Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and previously served as a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution from 2016 – 2019.

Jamil is also an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, a strategic advisory firm; and serves on the advisory boards of IronNet Cybersecurity, a NYSE-listed cyber collective defense company; U.S. Strategic Metals, North America’s largest primary producer of cobalt, a critical mineral used in EV batteries, aerospace, and other national security applications; and 4iQ, a deep and dark web intelligence startup. Jamil also serves as an advisor to Duco, a technology platform startup that connects corporations with geopolitical and international business experts and Amber, a digital authentication and verification startup.

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Georgetown University

Brenda Shaffer is a foreign policy and international energy specialist, focusing on global energy trends and policies, the interplay of politics and energy in the Middle East and Europe, and ethnicity and politics in Iran. She is a visiting researcher and adjunct professor at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center in Washington, DC.

Professor Shaffer is the author of several books: Energy Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), Borders and Brethren: Iran and the Challenge of Azerbaijani Identity (MIT Press, 2002) and Partners in Need: The Strategic Relationship of Russia and Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001). Energy Politics is used as a text book in over 200 university courses around the globe. She has also served as the editor for Beyond the Resource Curse (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) and Limits of Culture: Islam and Foreign Policy (MIT Press, 2006).

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