Governing Board

Stefan Löfven has been the Chair of the SIPRI Governing Board since June 2022. Löfven was the Prime Minister of Sweden from October 2014 to November 2021 and the leader of the Social Democratic Party from 2012 to 2021. In 2022, he was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General to co-lead a High-level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism in preparation for the Summit of the Future. He was previously the International Secretary of the Swedish trade union IF Metall and, subsequently, its Chair (2006–12), and also Deputy Chair of the Swedish Trade Council (2004–12). Löfven has been a board member of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (2006–12), the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (2010–12) and the Olof Palme International Centre (2002–2006).

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein is President and CEO of the International Peace Institute and Perry World House Professor of the Practice of Law and Human Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2019, he was elected to The Elders, an independent group of global leaders working for peace, justice, human rights and a sustainable planet, founded by Nelson Mandela. From 2014–18, Al Hussein was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. In January 2014, he was President of the UN Security Council. He has served twice as Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2000–2007 and 2010–14) and has been Jordan’s Ambassador to the United States (2007–10). From 2002–2005, Al Hussein was the first President of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court. Earlier in his career (1994–96), he served as a UN civilian peacekeeper with the UN Protection Force. He holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Cambridge.

Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas is a Ghanaian politician, lawyer, diplomat and academic. He is currently the African Union High Representative for Silencing the Guns. He previously served as Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for West Africa and Head of the UN Office for West Africa from 2014 to 2021. Chambas was the Joint Special Representative of the African Union–UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur and the Joint Chief Mediator in charge of the Darfur peace negotiations between 2013–14. From 2010 t0 2013, he was the Secretary General of the African Caribbean and Pacific Group. He served as President of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) from 2007–2010 as well as the Executive Secretary of ECOWAS starting in February 2002, when ECOWAS was a Secretariat. 

Dr Noha El-Mikawy is the Dean of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo. She is the former Regional Director of the Ford Foundation Office of the Middle East and North Africa (2012–22). El-Mikawy served as Team Leader for Governance at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Center between 2005–2007 and 2009–12, supporting governance in Egypt, Jordan, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen. She was the Policy Advisor at the UNDP Oslo Governance Center in Norway (2007–2009), supervising the UNDP’s global project on governance assessments, legal empowerment of the poor, and gender-sensitive service delivery. She led comparative research on the political economy of MENA at the Centre for Development Research at the University of Bonn (Germany) in 2000–2005 and lectured on politics of the Middle East in Egypt and Germany (1991–2000). El-Mikawy holds a BA from the American University in Cairo and an MA and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno is a French diplomat and expert in peacekeeping, global governance and transnational security threats. He is currently a Senior Advisor at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation. He is a member of the team of senior advisors of the President of the General Assembly of the UN and, since 2014, Guéhenno has been a Distinguished Fellow with Brookings Institute. He was the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for the funding of the African Union Mission in Somalia and, from 2014–17, he was the President and CEO of the International Crisis Group. From 2000–2008 he was Under-Secretary-General for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. 

Dr Patricia Lewis is an independent expert on international security, focusing primarily on arms control and disarmament. Lewis is a member of the EEAS Space Advisory Board and is Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Group for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Previously, she was the Research Director for International Security at Chatham House, the Deputy Director and Scientist-in-Residence at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute, and the Director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research and Director of Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC). She was a Commissioner on the 2014–16 Global Commission on Internet Governance and served on the 2010–11 Advisory Panel on Future Priorities of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the 2004–2006 Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission. She was also an Advisor to the 2008–10 International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. Lewis received Ireland’s Presidential Distinguished Service Award in 2023 and the the American Physical Society’s Joseph A. Burton Forum Award in 2009 for her ‘outstanding contributions to the public understanding or resolution of physics’.

Nathalie Tocci is Professor of the Practice at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Senior Fellow at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University and former Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali. She is also an independent non‑executive director of the multi‑utility company Acea. She has been Special Advisor to the EU High Representatives Federica Mogherini and Josep Borrell, and has authored the European Global Strategy and worked on its implementation. Tocci has held academic positions at the European University Institute, the Institute for Human Sciences, the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Tübingen. She has conducted research at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, the Transatlantic Academy in Washington and the European University Institute in Florence and has taught at the College of Europe in Bruges. Her research focuses on European integration and foreign policy, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, transatlantic relations, multilateralism, conflict resolution, energy, climate and defence. Tocci is a frequent media commentator.

Dr Jessica Tuchman Mathews is a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as Carnegie’s President from 1997 until 2015. She was the Director of the Washington programme of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior fellow from 1994 to 1997. From 1982 to 1993, she was founding the Vice President and Director of Research of the World Resources Institute, an internationally known center for policy research on environmental and natural resource management issues. From 1977 to 1979, she was the Director of the Office of Global Issues at the National Security Council, covering nuclear proliferation, conventional arms sales and human rights. She has served in the US State Department and on the National Security Council staff in the White House.
 

Brian A. Wong is Managing Director of the Aspen China Fellowship Program and Managing Director of Seacliff Partners Limited. He is also the Founder and CEO of RADII, a media platform covering Asia’s youth culture, digital innovation and contemporary society. Wong was the first American employee to join Alibaba, where he served as Vice President of Global Initiatives and Special Assistant to the Executive Chairman for International Affairs. He is the author of the award‑winning book The Tao of Alibaba. He has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and is a China Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Wong sits on the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College and serves on the board of the Committee of 100. He holds degrees from Swarthmore College, the Johns Hopkins–Nanjing Center and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.