Rima Al Mokarrab is Executive Director of the Strategic Affairs Unit of the Executive Affairs Authority (EAA). The EAA provides analysis and advice on a variety of portfolios to the President of the UAE, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Ms. Al Mokarrab is on the Board of Trustees of New York University, and on the Board of Trustees of the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies (ECSSR). Ms. Al Mokarrab also is Chair of Tamkeen, an organization that plans, develops, and delivers projects on behalf of the UAE, and co-founded and currently co-chairs the annual Abu Dhabi Ideas Forum in partnership with the Aspen Institute.  She is the Vice Chair of the Board of Zayed University. She previously sat on the Board of the UAE Space Agency.

Daniel R. Porterfield is President and CEO of the Aspen Institute. He has been recognized as a visionary strategist, transformational leader, devoted educator, and passionate advocate for justice and opportunity. Prior to leading the Aspen Institute, Porterfield served for seven years as the President of Franklin & Marshall College, a national liberal arts college founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1787. Before assuming the presidency at Franklin & Marshall, Porterfield served as Senior Vice President for Strategic Development and as an award-winning professor of English at his alma mater, Georgetown University.

Porterfield earned B.A. degrees from Georgetown and Oxford—where he was a Rhodes Scholar—and his Ph.D. from The City University of New York Graduate Center, where he was awarded a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities and wrote his dissertation on the poetry of American prisoners.