The Rt Hon Patricia Scotland QC is the 6th Commonwealth Secretary-General. She was born in Dominica and was their candidate for the post at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Malta in 2015. She is the 2nd Secretary-General from the Caribbean and the 1st woman to hold the post.
Patricia Scotland was born in the Commonwealth of Dominica. She completed her LLB (Hons) London University at the age of twenty and was called to the Bar at Middle Temple at the age of twenty-one.
Her career has been marked by achieving a number of extraordinary firsts, not least of which was to be the first woman in the more than 700-year history of the office to serve as Her Majesty’s Attorney-General for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland.
While holding these and other senior ministerial offices she was given responsibility, inter alia, for gender equality, domestic violence, forced marriage, and international child abduction, and from these positions promoted diversity and equality of opportunity, particularly for women and girls.
As the only woman to have been appointed Secretary-General of Commonwealth she is placing special emphasis on mobilising the 54 nations of the Commonwealth to tackle climate change – including its disproportionate impact on women – and, through women’s enterprise, to build the resilience of smaller or more vulnerable countries. Eliminating domestic violence and violence against women and girls is another area of focus.
Salma is the Chief Executive Officer of Cashew Coast, a business that integrates the cashew value chain from farm (West Africa) to fork (Europe).
Operating in Cote d’Ivoire, Cashew Coast has built an organic supply chain of more than 5000 smallholders, and employs 700 young women and men at its 9000T cashew processing plant. It is currently expanding its operations into a second processing facility.
Salma has spent the last 18 years working on debt, equity and special situations investments in London and Africa as an investment banker.
Tom Seidenstein is the Chair of the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and the Co-CEO of the International Foundation for Ethics and Audit, the recently created organization that houses the IAASB and the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA). Since the beginning of 2023, he has served as IFEA’s Co-CEO with IESBA Chair Gabriela Figueiredo Dias.
Mr. Seidenstein was initially appointed IAASB chair in July 2019 and reappointed to a three-year term in June 2022. In this role, and now as Co-CEO, he has overseen significant revisions of existing audit standards aimed at enhancing public trust, the initiation of a new workstream aimed at creating a global assurance standard for sustainability, and an updated strategy aimed at increasing the responsiveness of standard setting.
Mr. Seidenstein’s career has spanned both the private sector and international standard setting. Prior to joining the IAASB, Mr. Seidenstein held senior strategic leadership positions at the US Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae (Senior Vice President, Strategy, Innovation & Capital Management: 2012-19), and the IFRS Foundation (Chief Operating Officer: 2000-2011).
Additionally, Mr. Seidenstein has served at a consulting organization for not-for-profits, CCS Fundraising (Executive Director: 1999-2000), and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Special Assistant to the Managing Director: 1995-1997). He has also served as a Trustee of the International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC) and on XBRL International’s Board of Advisors.
A strong believer in volunteer service, Mr. Seidenstein has held or holds volunteer leadership positions serving school education the US and the Make-A-Wish Foundation (both UK and international boards). He holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and an undergraduate degree (cum laude) from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
H.E. Dr. Younes Sekkouri has been the Minister of Economic Inclusion, Small Business, Employment, and Skills in the Kingdom of Morocco since October 2021.
He holds a Ph.D. in Strategy from ISCAE (Institut Supérieur de Commerce et d’Administration des Entreprises) and two Executive MBAs from Ecole des Ponts Business School and the Fox School of Business at Temple University. He is a state engineer in telecommunications and graduated from the Institut National des Postes et Télécommunications (INPT). He is a laureate of the ASPEN Institute in Paris in leadership.
Prior to his appointment, Dr. Sekkouri was Dean of the Africa Region of the Ecole des Ponts Business School. He is also an expert in the UN Economic Commission for Africa in the areas of economic and industrial policies and structural change.
Dr. Sekkouri has developed significant research, teaching, and consulting experience in the United States, Europe, and Africa in the areas of corporate strategy, leadership, innovation, and public policy design.
Miguel Ho Chi Minh Almeida Pires Miranda Semedo has been President of the Board of Directors of the Competition Authority (AdC) since late December 2024.
Previously, he served as Special Advisor to the Minister of Family, Inclusion and Social Development from 2022 to 2024.
Between 2018 and 2021, he was President of the Board of Directors of the National Press of Cape Verde (INCV), where he also held the positions of Executive Director from 2016 to 2018, and Head of the Legal Office from 2015 to 2016. From 2011 to 2015, he was a Legal Advisor at LegisPalop.
Mr. Semedo holds a law degree from the Universidade Lusíada de Lisboa, where he also pursued a master's degree in Legal and Criminal Sciences. He holds a postgraduate degree in Legistics from the Higher Institute of Legal and Social Sciences (ISCJS).
Kunal Sen has over three decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research. Since 2019 he has served as Director of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) while on leave from the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, where he is a professor of development economics.
Kunal is a leading international expert on the political economy of growth and development. He has performed extensive research on international finance, the political economy determinants of inclusive growth, the dynamics of poverty, social exclusion, female labour force participation, and the informal sector in developing economies. His research has focused on India, East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.
In addition to his work as a professor of development economics, Kunal has been the Joint Research Director of the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) research
Alieu Senghore is the Managing Director of the Gambia Angel Investors Network (GAIN), the first angel investor network in The Gambia. He is a strategic finance and investment professional with over 10 years’ experience as the lead consultant in varied management consulting mandates for leading institutions in the Gambia and Senegal. He has successfully helped over 20 businesses in different sectors ranging from finance, tourism, ICT and real estate amongst others, in various strategic planning engagements and successfully managed capital raising programs in excess of $20m.
Ms Senne is a Technical Director at the Pan African Federation of Accountants (PAFA) and the Deputy Chairperson of the Financial Reporting Standards Council (FRSC) of South Africa. In her role at PAFA, Lebogang has been instrumental in developing and supporting the overall organisational strategy and has specifically been responsible for the organisation’s technical excellence strategic pillar.
Ms Senne is the Africa representative on the IFRS Foundation’s Sustainability Standards Advisory Forum (SSAF) and represents PAFA on the International Forum of Accounting Standard Setters (IFASS). Additionally, she is co-secretariat for the Africa Integrated Reporting Council (AIRC), the vehicle through which PAFA and the World Bank, as co-convenors, seek to promote and support the adoption of sustainability reporting, integrated thinking and Integrated reporting in Africa.
