The first meeting with the International Advisory Board took place on the 30th of April in Leuven. Jacint Jordana started with a short welcome and a presentation of the project to the present IAB members.

• Antoni Estevadeordal is Special Advisor and Head of the Migration Initiativeof the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) since October 2018, where he coordinates IDB’s strategic and operational agenda on migration issues in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), as well as IDB’s Regional Public Goods Initiative.

• Connie Hedegaard is the chair of the Board for the KR Foundation, a large Danish climate and sustainability foundation operating globally. She is also the current chair of OECD’s Round Table for Sustainable Development and chair of the Board for the green think tank, CONCITO.

• Igor Ivanov served as Russia’s Ambassador to Spain (1991-1993), as Foreign Minister (1998-2004) and as Secretary of the Security Council (2004-2007). Cuurently, he is a member of the think tanks’ boards, including the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), European Leadership Network (ELN), Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe.

• Aleksander Kwasniewski is former President of Poland (1995-2005). During his mandate Poland joined the NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. He was a mediator on behalf of UE during the Orange Revolution in 2004 and Special envoy of EP in Ukraine (together with Pat Cox) in 2013-2014. He is also author of numerous initiatives for reconciliation between Poles and the German, Jewish, and Ukrainian people.

• Elizabeth Sidiropoulos is the chief executive of the South African Institute of International Affairs, which she has led since 2005. With more than 26 years of experience in the field of politics and international relations, Elizabeth’s expertise lies in South Africa’s foreign policy, South-South Cooperation and the role of emerging powers in Africa.

• Anna Triandafyllidou holds a Robert Schuman Chair at the Global Governance Programme of the European University Institute (Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies) where she directs the Cultural Pluralism Research Area.  She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, Chair of the IMISCOE Editorial Committee, and member of the IMISCOE Board of Directors. She has been Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Brugesbetween 2002 and 2018.

Also the present IAB members, Miles Kahler and Samuel Sam-Sumana introduced themselves.

• Miles Kahler is Distinguished Professor at the School of International Service, American University and Senior Fellow for Global Governance at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D. C.   Previously, he was Rohr Professor of Pacific International Relations and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) and the Political Science Department, University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

• Samuel Sidique Sam-Sumana is a politician and former Vice President of Sierra Leone. Sam-Sumana stood as the vice-presidential candidate of the All People's Congress (APC) in the 2007 presidential election, alongside presidential candidate Ernest Bai Koroma. 

Kahler and Sam-Sumana shared their background and areas of expertise in relation to the project. After that they were asked to make comments and suggestions about the project directions and goals.

Later, the GLOBE team connected per skype with two more members of the IAB, Sharon Friel in Australia and Alicia Garcia-Herrera in Hong Kong.

• Sharon Friel is Professor of Health Equity and Director of the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University. She is also Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Policy ANU.

• Alicia Garcia Herrero is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel and a non-resident research fellow at Real Instituto El Cano. She is also the Chief Economist for the Asia Pacific at NATIXIS. Alicia Garcia Herrero is currently adjunct professor at City University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and visiting faculty at China-Europe International Business School (CEIBS).

During the Skype talk, Friel and Garcia Herrero gave recommendations about the GLOBE project and answered the questions of the GLOBE Team.