Discrete Sovereign Advisory

Hamdani’s research and professional work is orientated around issues of security, stabilization and development in the Middle East and North Africa. Hamdani has volunteered at schools for disabled children, worked in camps for internally displaced persons, and represented Yemen at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. He holds an MA in international security from the American University in Cairo and an MSc in development from SOAS University of London.

Martin teaches MSc students on food security issues facing the MENA region and the world. His research interests centre around strategies for food and water security in the MENA region and how a rapidly growing region can address its future food requirements through sustainable and adapted domestic production, food technology innovation as well as agricultural trade. Martin has consulted a wide range of organisations including the German cooperation agency (GIZ) in Ethiopia and Germany, the International Food Policy Research Institute in Cairo and the Overseas Development Institute in London on water infrastructure, training programmes, knowledge management and watershed management.

Dr. Keulertz obtained his PhD from King’s College in London in 2013, on the drivers and impacts of farmland investment in Sudan. He has an MSc in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and BA in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Wales in Bangor He has recently co-edited the Handbook of Water, Food and Society (Oxford University Press 2018), and co-authored The Water-Energy-Food Nexus in Arid Regions: the Politics of Problem sheds in 2017.

His research focuses on China - Middle East relations, international relations of the Gulf, Chinese foreign policy, and Asia – Middle East relations. He has written widely for both academic and popular publications. His books include China’s Relations with the Gulf Monarchies, External Power and the Gulf Monarchies, Regions in the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Routledge Handbook of China-Middle East Relations. 

David Rundell is widely regarded as one of America’s foremost experts on Saudi Arabia. He Is the author of Vision or Mirage, Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads which has been acclaimed by numerous scholars and statesmen including Henry Kissinger and David Petraeus. Vision or Mirage has been described as the “best single book on the Kingdom”, by former American ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman. Professor Bernard Haykel of Princeton University has added "you will not find a better book on Saudi Arabia”.

David served as an American diplomat for thirty years, fifteen of which were spent in Saudi Arabia. He worked at the Embassy in Riyadh as well as the Consulates in Jeddah and Dhahran. His assignments included Chief of Mission, Deputy Chief of Mission, Political Counselor, Economic Counselor, and Commercial Counselor -- A unique record for an American diplomat, not only in Saud Arabia, but in any country.

David helped negotiate Saudi entry into the World Trade Organization. He conceived the Joint Commission for Critical Infrastructure Protection which has strengthened global energy security. He served in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm in 1990 and during the al-Qaeda insurrection from 2003 to 2006. He won numerous awards for his analysis and reporting from Saudi Arabia including four Superior Honor Awards and the Cox award given each year to the Foreign Service Office who has made the greatest contribution to American trade policy.

After leaving the State Department David worked as a business strategy consultant with the Monitor Group, now part of Monitor/Deloitte. His work included engagements with the Saudi Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Saudi Aramco, the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST), and the Saudi Arabian General Investment Agency (SAGIA). For the past five years, David has been a partner in Arabia Analytica a consulting firm which advises hedge funds and corporate clients on Saudi Arabia, energy markets and the broader Middle East.

David has been actively engaged in the production of oil and gas in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico for over 30 years.

He holds a B.A. cum laude in economics from Colgate University and a M.Phil. in Middle East Studies from Oxford University. He lives in London and Dubai with his wife and daughter.

He teaches classes on “Energy and Environmental Security” at Johns Hopkins. His PhD is from Yale.  He was in the 2006 class of MIT’s Seminar XXI.

He has given talks on five continents at places as varied as Windsor Castle, Ditchley Park, The Defense College of Mongolia, The IEEJ (Japan), The German Council on Foreign Relations, The FOA (Sweden), Harvard, Columbia, U. Penn, The HQ of the Chilean Army, The Baltic Defense College, The Jordanian Diplomatic Academy, The Diplomatic Academy of Malta, St. Andrews University, UNESCWA (Beirut), the Jackson Hole Center for Global Policy, among many others.

He is extensively published and is quoted across the world on his expertise. His present research interests include the energy-water-food-climate-security-resilience nexus, the US-Asia-MENA energy nexus, economic and resource aspects of human security, security and resilience aspects of climate change and the environment, the energy transition, practical energy economics and policies for future changes, cyber and other security issues for energy and natural resources, US-MENA relations, and many other topics.

He has quietly advised many senior leaders on a large variety of topics of his expertise for decades. He has almost three decades of experience with and in the MENA region and considerable experience in other parts of the world gathered over a nearly 40-year career that spans a lot of the globe. He has a considerable global network.

Sean is the ex-COO of USAID under the Obama Administration and the President and CEO of Anera, a 150-staff NGO working in emergency relief, sustainable long-term health, education and economic development in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. He oversees a wide range of programs, from distribution of in-kind medicines and other medical and humanitarian relief; to building community infrastructure in water, sanitation, education, sports and health; to revenue-generating agriculture and other economic growth programs, that improve thousands of families’ lives.

Before joining Anera, Sean worked in several international development and policy roles in Washington, DC, Europe and the Middle East, including Creative Associates International, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Club of Madrid, the US Congress, the UN’s World Food Programme and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). For three years he served in the Obama Administration as chief of staff and COO at USAID, which has 9,500 staff and 84 missions around the world, and a $1.7 billion operating budget. Sean also served for six years as director of programs for the Club of Madrid, a leadership alliance that includes 106 former presidents and prime ministers.

Sean’s career in international affairs began as he earned a bachelor’s in foreign service from Georgetown University and worked at GU’s Center for Immigration Policy and Refugee Assistance (CIPRA). He holds a master’s in international public policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Sean serves on several boards, including as chairman of Creative Frontiers.

Jean-François Seznec's research interests are in the influence of the political and social variables on the financial and oil markets in the Gulf region, with special focus on the industrialization of the Gulf and in particular the growth of energy-based industries such as petrochemicals, aluminum, and steel.

He has published and lectured extensively on chemical and energy-based industries in the Gulf, and their importance in world trade. Dr Seznec has written extensively on the politics and economics of the Persian Gulf region. He recently co-authored "The Financial Markets of the Arab Gulf: Power, Politics and Money" with Samer Mosis, published by Routledge in 2019. He has further contributed chapters to many academic books, more recently on GCC energy cooperation (2017) and the political economy of the GCC (2016). He regularly publishes scholarly articles and is a contributing author to several publication outlets including Foreign Policy, Jadaliyya, The Daily Star, and the Harvard International Review, and a frequent guest and interviewee for numerous media outlets.

Dr Seznec also has twenty-five years of experience in international banking and finance, of which ten years were spent in the Middle East. He holds a Master of International Affairs (MIA) from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, and a Master of Arts and Philosophy Doctorate in Political Science from Yale University.

His last book, "The Impossible Iraki State" was published in 2019. Adel is the research director of the french "Institute for Mediterranean and Middle East Research and Studies" (Institut de Recherche et d'Études Méditerranée Moyen-Orient - iReMMO). He also directs the Iraki sociology centre at Soran University and is an associate researcher within the Turkey and Middle East Program of the French Institute of International Relations (Institut Francais des Relations Internationales - IFRI). He lectures at the University of Evry since 2011.

John Tesh retired as a senior UK civil servant in 2012, after a 36-year career mainly in the Ministry of Defence. His last appointment, from 2006-2012, was on secondment to the UK’s Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) - the Unit in the UK Cabinet Office that advises the government on national crisis management, risk and resilience issues.

In the CCS, John
• Developed the UK’s National Risk Assessment to the point where, in 2009, this was acknowledged as best in class internationally by the OECD
• Coordinated the UK’s National Resilience Capabilities Programme, a portfolio of government-wide projects to improve preparedness for major emergencies and to improve the resilient characteristics of national infrastructure
• Pioneered work on risk communication in the public National Risk Register, the first edition of which appeared in 2008
• Contributed material on national resilience to the first three national security strategies (in 2008, 2009 and 2010)
• Initiated the Strategic Risk Assessment for the 2012 London Olympic Games

He is currently continuing work on risk assessment and resilience capability building through consultancy work to governments and to the OECD’s inter-governmental High Level Risk Forum for whom he has authored a comparative study of National Risk Assessment among a number of OECD Member States. Other publications have included: Trends and Directions in Disaster Risk Management in ‘Europe and Others Group’ – a paper prepared for the World Humanitarian Summit Regional Consultation in Budapest, 3-4 February 2015; a report for RUSI and the Swedish National Defence University on Supply Chain Resilience (focusing in particular on the resilience of supplies of energy, food and water, and pharmaceuticals); and an earlier (2013) RUSI report on the National Risk Register (NRR)’s value to communities and businesses.

He is a visiting senior fellow at King’s College London. He was awarded a CBE in the 2013 New Year’s Honours list for his work on civil resilience and the development of the National Risk Assessment.

Bernard Haykel is a professor of Near Eastern Studies and the director of the Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University. He is considered a global authority on the Arabian Peninsula's social history, identity and politics, and is regularly consulted by governments and the private sector for his expertise.

Bernard received his doctorate in Oriental Studies with an emphasis on Islam from the University of Oxford. Much of his teaching and research lies at the juncture of the intellectual, political, and social history of the Middle East with particular emphasis on the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. He also has a side interest in the effects of energy resources and rents on politics and society. An essential part of his work concerns the reception of reformist ideas at present and analysis of the Salafi heritage in contemporary debates among Sunnis as well as the Zaydi heritage among Shi`is. Another concern pertains to the history and politics of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, and Saudi Arabia in particular.

He has written extensively on Saudi and Yemeni culture and politics, Wahhabism, Salafism, and aspects of the Islamic doctrine and law. He regularly contributes articles to major newspapers and interviews for international media outlets. He is the co-editor of "Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change".

Bruce specializes in the governance of national risks and is an expert in emergency planning. He has served as the head of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the UK’s national risk and resilience unit within the Cabinet Office, where he led work to improve the UK’s resilience to major emergencies. During his tenure he worked with practitioners at every level and cross-sector to assess the risks of emergencies arising; to seek where possible to prevent them; to build collective plans and capabilities to handle consequences were they to occur; and to ensure the provision of an effective response when an emergency arose.

Through leading cross-UK work, he developed a shared vision and strategy for effective emergency preparedness and response, and the resulting programs to enhance the capabilities of over 1,000 public sector bodies, and the associated capabilities of industry, the voluntary sector and individual communities. He also led the central government response to a wide range of domestic emergencies, from foot-and-mouth and other animal diseases through wide-scale flooding and fuel shortages to the flu pandemic of 2009.

Prior to his role as a director of the CCS, he was the Secretary to the ‘Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction’ for Iraq. He led a team of six supporting the Committee of Privy Counsellors established by the Prime Minister to review intelligence and policy papers on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and other countries of concern, and to make recommendations.

Stephen Seche's diplomatic career spans 35 years. He spent the first seven years of his foreign-service career in public diplomacy positions in Guatemala, Peru, and Bolivia. He served on two separate occasions at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria, including 18 months as charge d’affaires from February 2005 – August 2006. In the two years between his Damascus assignments, he was the director of the Office for Egypt and Levant Affairs at the Department of State in Washington, DC. Subsequently, he served as deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the Department of State, with responsibility for U.S. relations with the Gulf Arab states and Yemen. Between 2007 and 2010 he was the US Ambassador to Yemen. Other overseas assignments included Ottawa, Canada and New Delhi, India.

Following his retirement from the diplomatic service, Stephen spent six years as the executive vice president of The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, stepping down at the end of 2020.

Dr Giacomo Lucian is an adjunct professor at the Graduate Institute and the Scientific Director of the Master in International Energy of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences-Po. He is also a Princeton University Global Scholar attached to the Woodrow Wilson School and the Department of Near Eastern Studies. He is Senior Advisor to the Gulf Research Center and in this context serves as the Team Leader in the EU-GCC Clean Energy Network Project. He is also actively involved in the POLINARES FP7 research project.

In 2007-10 he was Director of The Gulf Research Center Foundation, Geneva. In 1997-2010, he was Adjunct Professor of International Relations at the SAIS Johns Hopkins University Bologna Centre. From 2000-06, he was Professor of Political Economy and co-director of the Mediterranean Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. In this time, he directed the EUROGULF project within the SYNERGY program and participated in several other EU-supported projects (INDES, ENCOURAGED, MEDSUPPLY, EUROGULFHCT)

His research interests include Political economy of the Middle East and North Africa and Geopolitics of energy. His work has focused primarily on the economic and political dynamics of rentier states and issues of development in the GCC countries. He is a member of the Oxford Energy Policy Club, the Geneva Petroleum Club, and the Energy, Oil and Gas Club of the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP). He is a frequent speaker at conferences and events organized by leading institutions in the field of energy affairs.

Mohamed is the Director of Internet and Regulatory Policy at Packet Clearing House (PCH), San Francisco, USA. PCH is the global organization supporting and securing the critical Internet infrastructure, managing more than 191 Internet exchange points and the core of the domain name system globally.

Prior to PCH, Mohamed was the Founding Director of the Technical Affairs Department to Qatar’s Communications Regulatory Authority, where he established the Regulatory Framework and the Technical Affairs Department that oversaw Qatar’s Communications / Internet sector estimated at $2.7 B U.S. (2017). He managed all national telecom / Internet policy-related matters, directly reporting to the regulatory authority's president and Minister of Information / Communications Technology.

Mohamed has held leadership positions within the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global Internet Infrastructure coordinator. He has co-led a 26-month program to develop and deliver a proposal to U.S. Government NTIA Secretary on the biggest governance/policy changes in Internet’s history, the transfer of US Government oversight on the Internet’s root DNS & IP address to the global Internet technical community. He was elected to co-chair a group of 30 global Internet technology experts and was awarded the ICANN Leadership award in 2016.

Mohamed is the founder of the African Top Level Domains Organization ( AfTLD). He is the chair of the dotAfrica Registry Steering Committee and the founder of the Arab Internet Governance Forum ( ArabIGF ). He is also the founder and current chair of the African Regional Internet Organization ( AfRALO - ICANN At-Large ), and founder of the Sudan Internet Society ( current Registry operator of .SD ).

Mohamed holds an MBA from the University of Manchester and has completed executive programs form the MIT, Stanford University and Oxford University.

Eckart's research interests comprise the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa, energy issues and food security. He is author of Oil for Food (Oxford University Press 2013), co-editor of the Water-Energy Food Nexus in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge 2016) and editor of GCC Financial Markets (Gerlach Press 2012). Articles of him have been published in the Middle East Journal, Food Policy, Food Security, International Development Policy, the International Journal of Water Resources Development, Third World Quarterly, Global Environment, Globalizations, The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, several Oxford Handbooks and other edited volumes.

He has been a commentator to international media outlets and has contributed to various policy papers and reports. He has been involved in numerous third-party projects, among them a Marie Curie grant and FP7 and H2020 projects of the European Commission. His consultancy engagements have included the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Kuwait Investment Authority, the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning and international and regional organizations such as the European Parliament, UNCTAD, UNDP and the Union for the Mediterranean. He serves on the editorial boards of Food Security and the Journal of Arabian Studies and holds a PhD in economics from Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he conducted research about structural adjustment and trade unions in Egypt.

Before moving to Hamburg, he held positions at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), Sciences Po in Paris, Princeton University and the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. Prior to that he worked for banks in Germany and the United Arab Emirates in equity and fixed income trading.

Abdul-Rahman Fadhel Al-Eryani has been the water and environment advisor to the Office of the President of Yemen since 2011. Prior to that he served as Yemen’s Minister of Water and Environment from 2006 to 2011. Between 2002 and 2006 Al-Eryani was the national manager of the Socotra Conservation and Development Program, which was supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Governments of the Netherlands, Italy and Poland in partnership with a pool of international donors and NGOs. Previous to 2002 Al-Eryani was the vice president of the General Authority for the Promotion and Development of the Yemeni Islands.

For nine years he was the director of Al-Yemen Al-Khadhra, an NGO focusing on sustainable development and environmental protection. Between 1982 and 1991, Al-Eryani was a researcher at the Agriculture Research and Extension Authority. Al-Eryani holds an MSc in agriculture science from Colorado State University. He received his bachelor degree in agriculture science from the American University of Beirut.

Prior to joining the World Energy Council, Kate was the programme officer for the Middle East and North Africa in the Global Energy Relations Division of the International Energy Agency. During her tenure, she built relationships between the IEA and the governments of several Middle East and North Africa countries, using the extensive contacts that she accumulated during three decades spent in several Middle Eastern and North African countries as a journalist and energy analyst.

Dourian was actively involved in the discussions that led to Morocco becoming an IEA Association country and the joint work program for which she raised funds from IEA members. She also helped write and edit the Middle East and North Africa sections of several IEA publications and contributed to the supply section of the Oil Market Report. Kate is often consulted on Middle Eastern matters by banks, financial institutions, and oil and gas companies. She also served as the IEA’s representative on the executive board of the International Energy Forum, and is a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington Kate joined the IEA from the Middle East Economic Survey where she was a senior editor covering energy-related developments in the Middle East for the weekly from 2013-15. She was also responsible for compiling the monthly OPEC survey for MEES, which is one of the secondary sources used by OPEC. From 2000-13, Kate was the editor in chief for the Middle East for oil price reporting agency Platts, now a division of S&P Global, based in Dubai.

She was also the general manager of McGraw-Hill International. Additionally, she served as a member of the OPEC reporting team and was one of the reporters assigned to compile the OPEC production numbers. While in Dubai, Dourian served as a board member of the American Business Council. Dourian has been a speaker and moderator at international conferences and has made many radio and television appearances, discussing energy and geopolitics on a number of platforms in English, Arabic, and French on BBC, CNN, Al Arabiya, CNBC, and Al Jazeera English, and has been quoted extensively in several publications.

Meltzer has testified before the U.S. Congress, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the European Parliament on trade issues. He has been an expert witness in litigation on data flows and privacy issues in the EU and a consultant to the World Bank on trade and privacy matters. He is also a member of Australia’s National Data Advisory Council. Meltzer teaches digital trade law at Melbourne University Law School and at the University of Toronto Law School, where he is an adjunct professor. Meltzer also teaches ecommerce and digital trade at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office diplomatic academy. Before joining Brookings, Meltzer was posted as a diplomat at the Australian Embassy in Washington D.C. and prior to that was an international trade negotiator in Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Meltzer has appeared in print and news media, including the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Bloomberg, MSNBC, CBS, Fox, the Asahi Shimbun and China Daily. Meltzer holds an S.J.D. and LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School in Ann Arbor and law and commerce degrees from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Izak has expertise in productivity and competitiveness, industrial policy, competition policy, regulatory reform in general and in electronic communications and energy, analysis of firm level micro data (for example, firm dynamics and job creation), small and medium enterprise policies, privatization and political economy.

In Turkey, he has advised numerous government entities and non-governmental organizations on issues of competitiveness and regulation, trained their members and staff, and organized conferences to promote evidence-based policy findings. In the late 1990s he was also engaged in reform of budgetary institutions with the Treasury, State Planning Organization and the Ministry of Finance. Izak received his PhD in Economics from New York University.

He was then a staff member at the World Bank until 1995, then became a member of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University between 1998-2019. Between 2011-2019 he was also the Director of the Competitiveness Forum jointly established by Turkish Industry and Business Association (TUSIAD) and Sabanci University, an entity that carried out research and advocacy activities in collaboration with non-governmental and business organizations as well as government entities.

During his tenure, he examined constraints to economic growth, dynamics of productivity, job creation and destruction among Turkish firms, the role of foreign direct investment, the sophistication of Turkey’s exports, and characteristics of high growth firms. He has recently co-edited, with Ishac Diwan and Adeel Malik, a book on capitalism in the Middle East, recently published by Oxford University Press.

Steffen Hertog is an associate professor at the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. He has previously worked as Kuwait Professor at Sciences Po Paris, as lecturer in Middle East political economy at Durham University and as post-doctoral research fellow at Princeton University. He holds a PhD from Oxford, an MSc from SOAS in London and an MA from the University of Bonn in Germany. Steffen has been travelling and working in the Middle East extensively since 2000, both as an academic and as resident consultant for a local government entity.

He has worked with numerous public and private institutions in Europe, the US and the Gulf region, including a variety of GCC government agencies, the European Commission, the World Bank, GIZ, the OECD, European and GCC chambers of commerce, Accenture, Deloitte and Touche, PWC, McKinsey, Oliver Wyman, BCG as well as a variety of private clients. Steffen’s main research interests lies in Saudi, Gulf and Middle East political economy. He has participated in and led policy and consultancy projects on GCC labour market, public industry and public sector reform issues as well as several projects on national economic strategy and has published widely on labor market reform and economic diversification.

His academic publications have appeared in leading social science and area studies journals, including World Politics, Comparative Studies in Society and History, European Journal of Sociology, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Review of International Political Economy. His book on the politics of economic reform in Saudi Arabia, “Princes, brokers and bureaucrats: oil and the state in Saudi Arabia”, was published by Cornell University Press in 2010. He has edited a book on state-business relations in the Middle East as well as a book on labor and migration challenges in the GCC and is the co-author, with Diego Gambetta, of “Engineers of Jihad: the Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education” (with Princeton University Press 2016).