Jeff Schlegelmilch is a Research Scholar and the Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia Climate School, at Columbia University. In this role he oversees the operations and strategic planning for the center. Before becoming director, he served as the center’s deputy director for more than five years. He also oversees projects related to the practice and policy of disaster preparedness, including the multi-award winning Resilient Children / Resilient Communities Initiative. His areas of expertise includes public health preparedness, community resilience and the integration of private and public sector capabilities. Prior to his work at Columbia, he was the Manager for the International and Non-Healthcare Business Sector for the Yale New Haven Health System Center for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response. He was also previously an epidemiologist and emergency planner for the Boston Public Health Commission.

He has advised leaders on preparedness systems and policy at all levels of government. He is an Opinion Contributor with The Hill and is frequently utilized as a subject matter expert for numerous media outlets. He is also the author Rethinking Readiness: A brief guide to twenty-first-century megadisasters published by Columbia University Press. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from UMASS Amherst in Health Policy and Management, and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Quinnipiac University.

Mr. Schlegelmilch studied law and political science in Freiburg, in Breisgau and Berlin. He joined the German Foreign Service in 1987 and the European Commission Directorate General for External Relations in 1993. From 1998 to 2003, he worked on WTO matters in the European Commission Delegation in Geneva. From 2003 to 2010, Mr. Schlegelmilch was responsible in the European Commission’s Directorate General for Trade (DG TRADE), for the EU’s bilateral trade relations first with China, and later for the trade relations with the Americas and South Asia, Korea and ASEAN. In 2011, he became the Director in DG TRADE, for Trade in Services, Investment, Government Procurement and the protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). He has been the EU’s Chief negotiator for the EU-Singapore, the EU-Ukraine, and the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreements. From 2016 to 2019, Mr. Schlegelmilch served as the European Union’s Ambassador to the OECD and UNESCO in Paris. 2019 to 2023, he rejoined DG TRADE in Brussels as the Director for the United States, Canada, Latin America as well as Agriculture and food safety trade issues. In January 2024, he took over as the Chair of the OECD’s Investment Committee.

Peter Schmidt is Senior Advisor of Agriculture and Food at Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation.

Since 2021, he is managing a multi-country and multi-stakeholder project on water efficiency in rice and cotton on behalf of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation with substantial engagement of private sector partners.

Peter has 30 years professional experience of which 20 years experience with participatory methods in development work in general and in rural extension projects in particular.

He also has extensive experience in leading Participatory Learning and Action projects, Participatory Technology Development processes, Rapid Market Appraisals and Market System Development in various countries (Burkina Faso, Laos, India, Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Bhutan, Switzerland) inclusive facilitating processes to transform generated ideas into concrete action.

Matthias is the IIRC Region Lead: Germany and a member of the IIRC technical team. He is working closely with relevant institutional partners in Germany to increase awareness and advocacy of <IR>, e.g. as a speaker or delegate on conferences, through publications on the advancement of corporate reporting or in discussions with the German <IR> Roundtable and other organisations interested in <IR>. He follows closely relevant developments such as the implementation of the EU’s non-financial reporting directive into German GAAP. Matthias contributed to the development of the International Integrated Reporting <IR> Framework and to the discussions around assurance on <IR> and represented the IIRC in conferences on how accounting and assurance can help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and on how assurance can contribute to credibility and trust in stakeholder relations. Matthias is on part-time secondment from the Institute of Certified Public Auditors in Germany (Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer, IDW), where he is a technical manager for accounting and auditing. Matthias works especially on national and international developments in the fields of sustainability and Integrated Reporting as well as the consideration of non-financial aspects in corporate valuation. He is a technical advisor to FEE’s ESG Reporting Task Force and ESG Assurance Task Force and represents IDW in the A4S Accounting Bodies Network and in IFAC’s <IR> Accountancy Bodies Network.

Valérie Schmitt is Deputy Director of the Social Protection Department at the International Labour Organization in Geneva. She also leads the ILO Flagship Programme on Building Social Protection Floors for All, and coordinates the implementation of the UN Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions.

Ms. Schmitt holds a Master of Advanced Studies (first year of doctoral studies programme) in quantitative economics from Paris Sciences Economiques (Laboratoire du Delta) and a Master of Business Administration with honours from HEC (Europe's highest ranked MBA programme by the Financial Times). She also holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Paris IV – La Sorbonne.

Ms. Schmitt joined the ILO in 2003. She has 27 years of increasingly responsible professional experience in the field of social protection, combining both headquarters and field responsibilities in different types of organizations: ILO headquarters, the ILO in Africa and Asia, a consulting firm in France, and an NGO in West Africa.

Michel Scholte is co-founder and External Affairs Director of True Price, member of the Global Shapers of the World Economic Forum and ThinkTank Worldconnectors. True Price is a social enterprise specialized in impact measurement and valuation.

Ambassador Schroderus-Fox is the Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and Conference on Disarmament. She comes to this position from the United Nation Headquarters in New York, having served as the Director of the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS) from 2012 to 2023. In this capacity, she recently served as the Executive Secretary of the United Nations 5th Conference on the Least Developed Countries, in Doha,

Ms. Schroderus-Fox joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1988, and has previously served at Finnish missions in Paris, Washington DC, Tel Aviv, Pretoria and New York. She served as Deputy Permanent Representative of Finland to the United Nations in New York during 2006-2010. During her work for Finland, she has made significant contributions in the areas of intergovernmental policy dialogue, partnership building and negotiations. Earlier in her career she focused particularly on Security Policy, Arms Control and the Middle East, chairing many international negotiations relating to these issues.

In 2010–2011, she served as the Head of Policy Issues for the Office of the President of the United Nations General Assembly.

She holds a degree of Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration. She is also an alumni of the executive program of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Ms. Schroderus-Fox is married to Mr. Alan Fox and they have two children.

Aba Schubert is the co-founder and CEO of Dorae, a technology company serving the global trade space.

She also co-founded the Aethel Group, a global enterprise with businesses in alternative asset management and financial services, mining and technology. Earlier in her career, Aba was a partner at Eton Park, then a global multi-strategy hedge fund.

Aba is a Global Innovator of the World Economic Forum and is a leading voice in industry and policy dialogues relating to trade, technology, natural resources and investment. She is a member of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States of America and received a math degree from Cornell University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Anna Schulenburg is the founder of Permutation. Permutation mission is to remove the barriers to purchasing carbon removal. In her previous role at Climeworks, a Swiss company and the first to commercialise Direct Air Capture, she was responsible for developing carbon removal markets by devising original financial and technological business models for carbon removal. 

She has built her expertise in deep- and high-tech development and industrialisation in Fintech at Transferwise, the Cambridge University Spin-Out Flusso and the ETH Spin-Out Sensirion, now a world leader in sensor solutions. She holds a PhD from ETH Zurich and a Masters in Chemistry from Oxford University.
 

Peter Schwendener has been Deputy Director of the Swiss Federal Finance Administration (FFA) within the Federal Department of Finance since 2019. Since 2015, he has been leading the Fiscal Policy, Fiscal Equalisation, Financial Statistics Division. Under his supervision, the division prepares the budgeting and financial planning for the federal government. Importantly, the division bears responsibility for all matters pertaining to the federal debt brake.

In addition, Peter Schwendener and his team are responsible for implementing and assessing national fiscal equalisation, and for compiling the financial statistics for all levels of government. Besides ensuring a reliable basis for fiscal-policy decisions, he has played an important role in various economic policy reforms.

Prior to joining the FFA, he was Head of the Statistical Office and Head of the Finance Administration of the Canton of Basel-Stadt. He obtained his doctorate in Economics from the University of Basel in 1990.