Ivonne Julitta Bollow is Director International Affairs in the Corporate Communications & Public Policy division at METRO AG Wholesale & Food Specialist Company. In this position, she represents the interests of the company and its sales branches like e.g. METRO Cash & Carry in Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and the MENA-Region. Before joining METRO GROUP in 2013, she held positions in the German Bundestag and the Foreign Office. Ivonne Bollow graduated in Political Sciences at the University of Hamburg.

Shenggen Fan has been Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) since 2009. He serves as advisor to many national governments (including China and Vietnam) on agriculture, food security and nutrition and is one of the Champions of Target 12.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on cutting global food loss and waste. In 2014, he received the Hunger Hero Award from the World Food Programme in recognition of his commitment to and leadership in fighting hunger worldwide.

Linde Götz is Deputy Head of the Department of Agricultural Markets at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO). Central to her research interest is the analysis of competition and efficiency of agricultural markets and supply chains and the effectiveness of agricultural policies based on time-series econometric analysis of price transmission and price volatility. A further emphasis lies on the development of the agricultural and food industry of Russia and its implications for global food security and the food sector of Germany.

Bernard Hoekman is Professor and Director, Global Economics at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He is a CEPR Research Fellow, where he co-directs the Trade Policy Research Network, a senior associate of the Economic Research Forum for the Arab countries, Iran and Turkey and a visiting professor at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on trade and development, the WTO, trade in services and international regulatory cooperation.

Tim Josling is a Professor, Emeritus, at the former Food Research Institute at Stanford University, member of the International Policy Council on Food and Agricultural Trade, and a faculty member at FSI's Europe Center. His research focuses on agricultural policy and food policy in industrialized nations, international trade in agricultural and food products, treatment of agriculture in bilateral trade agreements, and the development of the multilateral trade regime.

Roman Mogilevskii is Senior Research Fellow and Associate Director of the Institute of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Central Asia. He has been working as an expert in applied economic analysis for Central Asian governments, the Asian Development Bank, the EU, World Bank, UN, and other international organizations. Dr. Mogilevskii publishes extensively on topics related to development of Central Asian economies. His research interests include foreign trade, agricultural economics, macroeconomics, public finance, labor market, and social policy.

Bettina Rudloff holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics. At present she works at the research institute of the German Chancellery in Berlin, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). Prior to that she was Assistant Professor at the Institute for Food and Resource Economics at Bonn University and expert at the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht, The Netherlands.
She consults the German government, the German and European Parliament and different Ministries on EU trade and investment agreements, development and on food policy.

Federica Saliola is a Manager in the Development Economics Department at the World Bank Group. She is responsible for developing global programs that measure and assess regulations and regulatory costs that impact the functioning and the structure of markets. Federica Saliola has been leading the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) program since 2013 and to-date three reports have been published under her leadership. Federica Saliola’s latest research focuses on the role played by laws and regulations in the context of agricultural transformation.

Josef Schmidhuber is the Deputy Director in the Trade and Markets Division of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). He authored numerous books and peer reviewed articles, among them FAO´s long-term perspective of global agriculture “World agriculture: Towards 2015/2030”. His areas of interest include commodity market analysis and outlook; trade and investment in agriculture; global food and nutrition issues; climate change, as well as links between bioenergy and agricultural markets.

Natalya Volchkova is a NOVATEK Assistant Professor of Economics at the New Economic School in Moscow, Russian Federation, and Policy Director of the Centre for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR). Currently, she serves as a member of the Expert Council of Open Government of Russia. In 2008, she was awarded a Ful-bright scholarship. In 2016 she was nominated for Yegor Gaidar Award in Economics. Her research interests are in the areas of international trade theory and policy, natural resource economics and corporate governance.

Xiaobo Zhang is a distinguished chair professor of economics at the National School of Development, Peking University, and senior research fellow of IFPRI. His research fields include Chinese economy and development economics. He has published widely in top economics journals (such as JPE) and authored numerous books, most recently the "Oxford Companion to the Economics of China" (2014). Professor Zhang is a Co-Chief-Editor of "China Economic Review" and received the Sun Yefang Prize for Economics Research in China and the Zhang Peigang Development Economics Outstanding Achievement Award.