The advisory board consists of researchers, writers and other intellectuals who can safeguard the quality and relevance of the work and thus contribute to the forum’s mission. The advisory board is appointed by the secretariat, which in turn is appointed by the board of the Concerned Capitalists Foundation.
To date members include:
Andrew Apostolou
Andrew Apostolou is a Washington-based analyst on the Middle East. He has worked as Director of Research at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, consultant on Central Asian and Middle Eastern Affairs, Director of the customised research unit at the Economist Intelligence Unit, economist writing on the developments in the former Soviet republics at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He has also worked pro bono with leading Middle Eastern political figures to advise them on strategic political issues and strategic communications, providing briefings, speeches and letters that were used in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy. He has conducted extensive writing, presentations and interviews on Central Asia and the Middle East, including published articles in The Washington Post, Los Angles Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal (Europe) and Mediterranean Quarterly as well as published over 50 opinion pieces including The New York Post, In the National Interest, The Washington Times and The Weekly Standard.
Erik Berglöf
In January 2006, Erik Berglöf took up the position of Chief Economist and Special Adviser to the President at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He held the position of Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) and Professor at the Stockholm School of Economics from 2000 to 2005. He was previously Assistant Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and has held visiting positions at Harvard, Stanford and MIT. He is a widely published and internationally respected specialist in the field of transition economics. His focus has been on policy-related issues in transition economies and he has regularly provided advice to national governments and international institutions including the IMF and the World Bank. Erik Berglöf was the founder and President of the Centre for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR) in Moscow and a Programme Director at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London.
Rachel Briggs
Rachel Briggs is Director of the charity, Hostage UK, which is chaired by former Beirut hostage Terry Waite. Hostage UK aims to provide support to hostages and their families, and provides educational services for organisations sending employees to kidnap hotspots. She does this on a part-time basis, and combines it with freelance research, writing and policy advice. Rachel has written a number of reports, which have impacted on government and business policy. She is associate editor Renewal journal, a member of the Steering Group for the UK Foreign Office’s Global Opportunity Fund’s Economic Governance programme, a member of the Academic Council of Wilton Park (an executive agency of the Foreign Office), a Council member of the Risk and Security Management Forum, and a member of Glasshouse Forum’s Advisory Board. She was previously Head of International Strategy and Head of Identity Programme at Demos, and Risk and Security Research Programme Manager at The Foreign Policy Centre.
Magnus Henrekson
Professor of Economics and Director of the Stockholm based Research Institute of Industrial Economics, a private non-profit research institution founded in 1939 by the Federation of Swedish Industries and the Swedish Employers’ Confederation “to conduct research on economic and social issues with relevance for industrial development”. Magnus Henrekson’s research is empirically oriented. Since the end of the 1990s he has mostly examined the institutional determinants of the business climate. Throughout the 1990s he conducted several projects aimed at explaining cross-country growth differences, and more specifically he also tried to explain Sweden’s slow growth relative to other countries from the late 1960s until the mid 1990s. Magnus completed his doctoral dissertation in 1990 at the University of Gothenburg. The dissertation dealt with empirical determinants of public sector growth. He has since been published extensively both in international scientific journals and in Sweden. Since 2001 he is Jacob Wallenberg Professor of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics.
Diana Pinto
Historian and writer living in Paris. The daughter of Italian Jewish parents, educated in the US (Harvard B.A. and Ph.D) and a resident of France, she is a Senior Fellow of the London based Institute for Jewish Policy Research where she directs a Ford Foundation sponsored pan-European project, "Voices for the res publica". The project seeks to establish new bases of common belonging for Europe’s various religious and ethnic majorities and minorities, reflecting on the Jewish transformations of the last two decades as a backdrop and, when applicable, reference. The author of “Entre deux mondes”, she has lectured widely on transatlantic issues and on Jewish life in contemporary Europe for academic, European and Jewish policy audiences. Her articles have been published across the continent. Formerly Editor in Chief of Belvèdere, France’s first pan-European review and Consultant to the Political Directorate of the Council of Europe for its civil society programmes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. She has been a Fulbright Fellow, a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, of Collegium Budapest in Hungary and of the Einstein Forum in Postdam.
Gunnar Wetterberg
Historian and economist, head of the Research Department of the Swedish Confederation of Professional Associations (SACO). Joined the Foreign Service in 1975 (Hanoi, Geneva); executive secretary, the Expert Group on Public Finance (ESO), 1988-90; assistant under-secretary and responsible for the Medium-Term Surveys of the Swedish Economy, Ministry of Finance, 1990-95; director, Swedish Association of Local Authorities (responsible for economic affairs and labour relations), 1995-99. Published books and essays on economic affairs and history, e.g. The Chancellor, the first full-length biography of Axel Oxenstierna, Richelieu’s Swedish counter-part during the Thirty Years’ War.
The group will be extended to include experts on various aspects of capitalism and the relationship between the development of the business world and the society at large.