Jake Horowitz

INFLUENCER

• Organization: PolicyMic
• Title: Co-Founder, Editor

Jake Horowitz co-founded PolicyMic, the fastest growing platform for Millennials to read and discuss the news. PolicyMic has writers in over 40 countries and is read by more than 1 million young people every month. Jake manages the editorial process and focuses on sparking thoughtful debate on important issues. He graduated from Stanford University, where he studied Middle East history and politics. His political experiences include living and working on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict, researching democracy and governance issues in Morocco, working for the Carnegie Endowment in Lebanon, and doing community organizing in New York City. When he's not reading the news, you can find him outdoors, cycling, running, hiking, or traveling to faraway places.

Back to Influencers

Matthew Miller

INFLUENCER

• Organization: World Economic Forum
• Department: Middle East/North Africa, North America
• Title: Global Leadership Fellow

Matthew Miller is a Global Leadership Fellow and Associate Director of the Middle East and North Africa at the World Economic Forum. Prior to joining the WEF, Matt’s career moved through mature and emerging markets in positions with top professional services firms. Having developed an early expertise in handling the business challenges of different countries, he focuses on building global and cross border alliances and networks. He completed his studies at Brown, Yale, and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is a trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His recent publications include: The Role of Large Employers in Driving Job Creation in the Arab World; The Compendium on Economic Governance in the Arab World 2011 (editor); and Addressing the 100 Million Youth Challenge, Perspective on Youth Employment in the Arab World in 2012 (editor). His areas of expertise include: Arab youth unemployment, MENA economic policy, negotiation and conflict resolution, and multi-stakeholder partnerships. He divides his time between Switzerland and New York.

Back to Influencers

Jacqueline Musiitwa

INFLUENCER

• Organization: World Trade Organization
• Department: Office of the Director General
• Title: Advisor

Jacqueline Musiitwa, who started her career at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, is the founder and Managing Partner of Hoja Law Group, a boutique law firm advising on political, corporate, and intellectual property law. Jacqueline has also been an Adjunct Professor of Law at universities in the U.S. and Rwanda. She was previously an advisor to the Rwandan Minister of Justice on legal matters related to trade, investment and regional integration. Jacqueline is a thought leader, speaker, and writer on African issues. She is an Archbishop Desmond Tutu fellow 2011 (African Leadership Institute), a Young Global Leader 2011 (World Economic Forum), and a Mo Ibrahim Foundation fellow (World Trade Organization).

Back to Influencers

Sabrina Roshan

INFLUENCER

• Organization: The World Bank
• Department: Africa Region, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management
• Title: Program Coordinator

Sabrina Roshan currently works in the World Bank’s Africa Region Poverty Reduction and Economic Management unit, where she focuses on gender disaggregated impact evaluations, portfolio management, and related economic and sector work. Serving as a program coordinator in the region’s Gender Practice, Sabrina administers the evaluation of a project on the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, to measure the impact of training related to gender-based violence, rights, tariffs, and reporting mechanisms for small scale traders on the levels of violence, income and productivity. She also manages the external relations and financial planning of the Practice.

Prior to joining the World Bank, Sabrina served as a research assistant to Sarah Sewall, at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, where she supported the authorship of Secretary Sewall’s most recent account of the history of U.S. foreign policy towards civilian protection norms and the humanitarian implications of conflict. Sabrina was the project manager of the Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense’s Pakistan/Afghanistan Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Rich Contextual Understanding Project, at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. As part of her Master’s thesis, Sabrina advised the Defense Coordinating Office, Stability Division at NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Kabul on how to measure the effectiveness of their stabilizing operations, with a focus on short-term development and governance projects implemented by Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Sabrina holds a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and a BA in Communication from the University of Maryland, College Park. Sabrina is fluent in Dari and Pashto, proficient in Spanish and Urdu.

Back to Influencers

Stephanie Schwartz

INFLUENCER

• Organization: Columbia University
• Department: Political Science
• Title: Ph.D Student

Stephanie Schwartz is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Columbia University. She is the author of Agents of Change: Youth in Post-Conflict Reconstruction. Through in-depth case studies, the book challenges prior notions of the impact of the global youth population bulge.

Schwartz served as a Senior Program Specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace where she also headed the Youth and Peacebuilding Working Group. Recently, she was a consultant to the Sudd Institute, a South Sudanese think tank. Her current research focuses on international mediation and the role of diaspora in civil war.

Schwartz holds a B.A. in Government from Wesleyan University.

Back to Influencers

Alexis Serfaty

INFLUENCER

• Organization: Transatlantic Policy Network
• Department: Policy
• Title: Fellow

Alexis Serfaty was recently named inaugural Fellow to the Transatlantic Policy Network (TPN). With significant experience in transatlantic relations across a range of business, political, and security issues, Alexis concurrently serves as a Policy & Research Fellow, Organizing for America Virginia and Chairs the YPFP Europe & Eurasia Discussion Group.

Alexis is the former Policy Director for the European-American Business Council and has held a variety of positions in the private and public sectors, including with the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee and the French Foreign Ministry’s Policy Planning Office in Paris. He is the author of publications for Bloomberg, the Daily Caller, and EU Observer, among others.

Back to Influencers

Ali Wyne

INFLUENCER

• Organization: Harvard Kennedy School
• Department: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
• Title: Researcher

Ali Wyne (born in 1987) is a researcher at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 with bachelor’s degrees in Management Science and Political Science, and, as a senior, received the Institute’s highest honor for students, the Karl Taylor Compton Prize. Prior to joining the Belfer Center, Ali was a Junior Fellow in the China Program (now the Asia Program) at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Ali is a member of Chatham House, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Council for Emerging National Security Affairs (CENSA), and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy. He serves as a discussant at Bloggingheads.tv, a contributing analyst for Wikistrat, a Next America Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a Delphi Fellow at Big Think, for which he writes the “Power Games” blog.

Ali’s writings have been published in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, World Politics Review, and Global Asia, among other outlets. He contributed an essay, “Public Opinion and Power,” to the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (London: Routledge, 2008), and is contributing another, “American Power and Influence in the New Century,” to the forthcoming American Strategy and Purpose: Reflections on Foreign Policy and National Security in an Era of Change (Washington, DC: CENSA, 2013). He is also a co-editor, with Graham Allison and Robert Blackwill, of the forthcoming Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012).

In 2011, Ali delivered the welcome address at the 41st St. Gallen Symposium.

Back to Influencers

Aashika Damodar

INNOVATOR

• Organization: Survivors Connect
• Department: Anti-Human Trafficking, Human Rights
• Title: Founder, Director

Aashika Damodar is social entrepreneur, artist, tech-enthusiast, and long-standing anti-trafficking activist. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in Anthropology & Political Science. Her honors thesis on the politics of the “trafficked victim” won the Ronald Frankenberg Prize for the best thesis in Critical Medical Anthropology, the Sylvia Forman Prize from the American Anthropological Association, and was recently published in the 2010 Project Censored Journal. She was awarded the UN Association Community Human Rights Award, Zimmerman Fellowship and Freedom Award in 2008 for her anti-trafficking work.

Aashika is the founder of an NGO called Survivors Connect, a non-profit working to develop and extend innovative technology platforms for the anti-trafficking movement, which has assisted grassroots organizations in Vietnam, Ghana, Haiti, Guatemala, and more. Most recently, she is starting up a social enterprise called Breaking Heels, which sells survivor inspired fashion (and height adjustable heels) to combat commercial sexual exploitation. She completed her MPhil in Development Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in 2011, and will start her DPhil in Criminology at the University of Oxford fall of 2013.

Back to Innovators