Mr Mignot was previously the Ambassador of the European Union to Mexico. Before joining the European External Action Service in 2021, the career diplomat spent 26 years in the Foreign Service of his home country of France. He has diplomatic experience in some of the most demanding regions of the world, including Latin America.

Johanna Blakley is the Managing Director at the Norman Lear Center, where she researches media impact, global entertainment, cultural diplomacy, disinformation, celebrity culture, fashion, digital media, and intellectual property law. She has delivered two TED talks—Social Media & the End of Gender and Lessons from Fashion’s Free Culture—and her work has been widely cited by leading outlets including The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, and Forbes. With Marty Kaplan, she co-founded the Media Impact Project, a Gates Foundation–funded hub for advancing approaches to measure media impact. She has guided more than forty manuscripts through publication at the Lear Center and holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Wame Jallow is a global health, rights, and environmental advocate with more than 22 years of experience promoting equitable access to health services and medicines. She is the Executive Director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, where she oversees entertainment-education and mass media interventions addressing the intersections of rights, health, and the environment. Wame has led global programs on HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis C, non-communicable diseases, sexual and reproductive health, maternal and child health, and nutrition. She has been instrumental in strengthening community health systems through community-led monitoring, research, advocacy, and social impact communications, while championing the rights of women and young girls and empowering communities worldwide.

Aric Noboa is Co-CEO and Executive Producer of Impact(Ed) International, where he oversees operations and leads efforts to create measurable change through entertainment-education. His work spans award-winning documentaries, feature films, animated series, and talk shows addressing education, gender equity, public health, life skills, and the environment. These productions have reached more than 800 million people worldwide and earned industry recognition, including a 2021 Peabody nomination for Shaina and a 2022 Emmy Award for My Better World. Aric also founded the Transformational Media for Social Impact Leadership Summit at St. George’s House, Windsor Castle, and has been a leading advocate for greater investment in media as a tool to achieve global development goals.

Jacob Arback has extensive senior executive business and media experience, including expanding the representation of African voices in global media. After serving as the Company’s CEO for 11 years, Jacob is currently the Executive Vice Chairman of AREWA24, the largest Hausa-language entertainment and lifestyle television network and production studio in Northern Nigeria and West Africa, reaching over 50 million viewers. Jacob previously was the Co-Founder and President of The Africa Channel, was Managing Director at Business Research International, and before that, a Vice President at DIRECTV International where he led the company’s global market expansion. He holds a Master’s degree in Middle East Studies and International Business from the University of Michigan.

Hajara is an education and humanitarian professional with expertise in program management, monitoring and evaluation (MEL), and knowledge management. She leads Impact(Ed) International’s Kano Social & Emotional Learning Project, managing program activities and teams while coordinating MEL and knowledge systems to strengthen education outcomes. She has contributed to large-scale initiatives such as the FCDO PLANE program, coordinating remedial learning efforts, and the FITILA Girl Education Challenge, where she advanced accelerated learning, teacher training, and classroom media use. Earlier, she worked with Discovery Learning Alliance as a lead trainer for teacher professional development and as a community mobilizer empowering girls and fostering school–community partnerships.

Renos Vakis brings behavioral science to the forefront of policy design, shaping how governments address pressing development challenges. As Head of eMBeD at the World Bank, he leads an interdisciplinary team applying behavioral insights across education, health, public sector effectiveness, and climate adaptation. His work focuses on improving learning and health outcomes, strengthening policy uptake, increasing accountability, and shifting social norms around resource use. He also drives initiatives on knowledge diffusion, impact analytics, and AI integration through the Institute for Economic Development, advancing the scaling of behavioral solutions worldwide. Renos actively promotes the adoption of behavioral science through global advisory work, teaching, and speaking engagements. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ana Maria’s research focuses on gender, poverty, and inequality across Latin America, Europe and Central Asia, Africa, and South Asia. Prior to her current role, she led research and policy engagement in the World Bank’s behavioral science unit, advancing socio-emotional skills to reduce education and labor market gaps and shifting behaviors linked to poor human capital outcomes. She co-authored the World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, contributed to the South Asia Gender Innovation Lab, and led analytical research, impact evaluations, and technical assistance. Ana Maria holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and pursued doctoral studies at University College London.

Nausheen is a research analyst at the World Bank specializing in impact evaluation, policy analysis, and data-driven research in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. She has worked on projects in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, and Tunisia, focusing on governance, education, and poverty reduction. Her work spans the full cycle of impact evaluations—from study design and survey development to data analysis, dissemination, and policy engagement with governments and donors. She previously worked with the Khan Foundation in Bangladesh on governance and rights initiatives and represented civil society at UN forums. Nausheen holds a Master’s in International Development Policy from Georgetown University and studied Social Innovation in a Digital Context at Lund University.

Oluwaseyi is a social scientist and a Research Consultant with the World Bank Group, where she supports gender-responsive research and strategy across global initiatives. She works jointly with the Development Impact Department and the Gender Group, contributing to two complementary streams of work: generating evidence on gender norms interventions through entertainment media and digital campaigns, and supporting the implementation of the World Bank Gender Strategy 2024-2030 through strategic partnerships. Oluwaseyi is completing a Ph.D. in Geography and Environment at Western University, where her research examines the intersections of gender, climate change, and food security in Northern Nigeria. She holds an M.Sc. from the University of Oxford and dual Bachelor’s degrees in Economics & African Studies and Psychology from Carleton University.

Sam is a research scientist working at the intersection of computer science and the social sciences, using the digitization of daily life to study human behavior at unprecedented scale. His work has been published in Science, PNAS, Science Advances, and leading computer science conferences such as ACL, EMNLP, and ICWSM, and featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, Axios, and an award-winning documentary. At the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation Department (DIME), he develops machine learning methods and applications to scale development impact. He is also a visiting researcher at NYU Computer Science and a fellow at MIT Connection Science, where he advances the use of data and technology to address global challenges.

He directs the Computational Social Listening Lab, where his group builds predictive models and conversational agents to uncover insights into health outcomes and psychological states of individuals and communities. This research aims to supplement clinical diagnoses and facilitate early, personalized interventions to improve treatments and well-being. He develops computational models using large-scale user-generated text, image, and mobile sensor data to explore geospatial, cross-cultural, and temporal dimensions of human behavior. His work has been featured by the American Psychological Association, WIRED, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Atlantic, U.S. News, and other prominent outlets.

Tomas is an education economist specializing in data-driven decision-making, impact evaluation, and large-scale survey design. He leads government engagement in Sierra Leone, working closely with the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education and the Teaching Service Commission to strengthen the use of data in education policy and teacher management. His work focuses on enhancing education systems through data, technology, and AI-driven tools, and on translating evidence into actionable strategies that improve learning outcomes. He co-leads the design and delivery of rigorous impact evaluations, the programming and implementation of large-scale survey instruments, and the management and analysis of education data. Tomas holds a master’s degree in economics from University College London and has taught at Middlesex University London.

Sharif works on AI product and research strategy, managing ImpactAI—a Google.org–funded evidence synthesis platform—and leading projects on LLM bias evaluation and machine-augmented social science. He coordinates partnerships, drives product development, and supports policy uptake through applied AI research. His prior experience includes consulting at Cairneagle, education strategy with the Aga Khan Development Network, and policy research with UNDP. Sharif is committed to advancing equitable, evidence-based solutions through AI and data. He holds a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University (SIPA), specializing in economic development and data analytics, and a first-class honors degree from the London School of Economics.

Erikan is a global investor and creator on a mission to increase the wealth of Africans through edutainment. She is the Founder and Owner of Audacity Assets, a cultural asset management firm investing in venture capital, private equity, and real estate worldwide. She also serves as CEO of Audacity Entertainment, a media company that distributes viral live streams, shows, and films on social media.

Erikan was a Gates Foundation–funded malaria researcher in Northern Nigeria and a National Science Foundation–funded scientist focused on curing HIV. Today, she is a trade and investment advisor to the Mayor of Los Angeles and an alum of Microsoft, LinkedIn, Condé Nast, UCSF, and SFDPH. She earned a B.A. in Human Biology from Claremont McKenna College.