Juan Manuel Santos is the President of the Republic of Colombia. He studied Economics and Business Administration and carried out graduate studies at the London School of Economics, Harvard University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He has served in various political offices: He was Chief of the Colombian delegation before the International Coffee Organization (ICO) in London, Foreign Trade Minister, and Director of the Colombian Liberal Party, Finance Minister and Defense Minister. As a journalist he was a columnist and Deputy Director of the newspaper El Tiempo, he was awarded the King of Spain Prize and was president of the Freedom of Expression Commission for the Inter American Press Association. He created the Good Government Foundation (Fundación Buen Gobierno) and founded the political party “Partido de la U” in the year 2005, currently Colombia’s largest political party.

Kofi Annan was the 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations and is the founder and chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation. In 2001, he and the United Nations were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Kofi Annan was praised for being “pre-eminent in bringing new life to the organization.” Since leaving the United Nations, Kofi Annan has been active pressing for policies that will meet the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable, particularly in Africa. He continues to use his experience to mediate and resolve conflict. In 2007, Kofi Annan set up the Kofi Annan Foundation to promote better global governance and strengthen the capacities of people and countries to achieve a fairer, more secure world.
From February to August 2012, he was the UN–Arab League Joint Special Envoy for Syria, mandated to seek a resolution to the conflict there.

David Tolbert was appointed president of the International Center for Transitional Justice in 2010. Previously he was Assistant Secretary-General of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon and prior to that was Assistant Secretary-General and special expert to the United Nations Secretary-General on United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials. He served for nine years at the ICTY in different capacities, including as Deputy Chief Prosecutor, Deputy Registrar, Chef de Cabinet to President Gabrielle Kirk McDonald and Senior Legal Adviser, Registry. From 2000 to 2003, he held the position of Executive Director of the American Bar Association’s Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative. He also held the position of Chief, General Legal Division of the United Nations Relief Works Agency in Vienna, Austria, and Gaza. In addition Mr. Tolbert taught international law and human rights at the post-graduate level in the United Kingdom and practiced law for many years in the United States. He has a number of publications on international criminal justice, the ICTY, and the ICC. He also represented the ICTY in the discussions leading up to the creation of the ICC and the Rome Conference and served as an expert to the ICC Preparatory Committee Inter-Sessional meetings. Mr. Tolbert is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dag Nylander is the Head of the Norwegian team guarantor on the negotiating table for peace in Colombia. He is attorney from the Université d’Aix-Marseille and the University of Oslo. He is Special Envoy from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was Head of Mission of the Embassy of Norway in Bogotá in the period 2006- 2008. He served as a delegate of his country before the UN in New York, and at the Embassy of Buenos Aires.

Alejandro Santos is the Director of Semana magazine. He is an Economist from Universidad de los Andes, and has a specialization in Communication Law from Universidad Javeriana. He worked in the daily Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, and was a visiting researcher at the University of Georgetown. He has been a columnist for the magazine Semana, director of the Research Unit of the newspaper "El Tiempo" and manager of major cultural projects, accountability and philanthropy from civil society, including the magazine Arcadia, Colombia Leader, “Conexión Colombia”, Votebien (Vote-well), Amazonas 2030, Open Truth open and the Semana Foundation. He was awarded two national awards for Journalism Simón Bolívar, 1991, 1997, and the "Maria Moors Cabot" award from Columbia University.

Alan Doss is the Executive Director of the Kofi Annan Foundation. He was a UN diplomat who worked on issues such as peacekeeping and development of various humanitarian programs in Africa, Asia and Europe. He hold different positions in the UNDP and the United Nations Headquarters in New York. He was Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He currently serves on the Geneva headquarters of the Kofi Annan Foundation, working on issues of peace and security. He supports the prevention and resolution of conflicts, as well as issues of transitional justice, integrity and electoral reform drug policy worldwide.

Sergio Jaramillo Caro is a Philosopher from University of Toronto (Canada), and Philologist from Oxford University (United Kingdom). He has a MA in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. He was doctoral candidate in Greek at the University of Heidelberg (Germany).
He served as Vice Minister of Defense for Policies and International Affairs, from where he led such important projects like the design and implementation of the Comprehensive Consolidation Plan of La Macarena, the Comprehensive DDHH and DIH Policy, the Operational Law Handbook, the Intelligence Law, and the Rules for Engagement for Military Forces among others. One of his flagships project was the Program of Humanitarian Assistance to demobilized combatants. He served as Advisor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; he was a Political Advisor at the Embassy of Colombia in France; he served as Adviser for political and strategic affairs of the Minister of Defense, and Researcher at the Faculty of Management at Los Andes University.

Álvaro de Soto is an international mediator who worked during 25 years in the UN Secretariat. He conducted the 1990-1991 negotiations that led to the comprehensive peace accords which ended the war in El Salvador. He was the UN Special Envoy for Myanmar from 1995 to1999. He mediated the 1999-2004 negotiations on the Cyprus problem which led to parallel referendums on the comprehensive UN settlement plan. He was Special Representative for the Western Sahara (2003-2005). He left the UN after two years (2005-2007) in Jerusalem and Gaza as the chief UN envoy for the Arab-Israeli conflict. Among current affiliations he is a member of the Global Leadership Foundation and a Senior Fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute in New York. Since 2011 he has led a master’s level seminar course on post-Cold War conflict resolution in the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) at Sciences Po, in Paris.

Marcie Mersky joined the ICTJ staff at its New York headquarters in January 2011; she is currently the Director of Programs. Her relationship with ICTJ, however, began much earlier with her participation as a member of its “Managing Truth Commissions” group and as an occasional consultant on truth-seeking issues. Before coming to ICTJ, Ms. Mersky worked as a senior political officer in several UN operations, including with the Commission of Inquiry into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala, UNOPS/Guatemala and the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission. She also coordinated a community-based project of the Catholic Church in Guatemala that worked from the victims’ perspective to document human rights violations during the armed conflict there; and directing Greenpeace programs in Central America. She was born in the U.S., and after earning a Master’s degree from Harvard University, lived and worked in Latin America for twenty-five years; she now resides in NY.

María Camila Moreno is a Colombian anthropologist with a specialization in land use planning from the University of Havana. She has worked with ethnic communities on collective rights issues. In 1999, she began working on the formulation, implementation and evaluation of human rights public policies with a focus on vulnerable populations. She has worked in public institutions, such as the office of the President, the National Ombudsman’s Office, and the Office of the Attorney General, as well as in international agencies, including IIDH, the Swedish International Development Agency, UNHCR and UNDP. Her research has focused on human rights, internal displacement, DDR (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration), prisons, access to justice in Colombia and the political participation of indigenous peoples. She is currently Director of the ICTJ Colombia Office.

Christian Tomuschat is professor emeritus of Humboldt University Berlin. Before taking the chair of international law in Berlin in 1995, he held a chair of constitutional and international law. He was a member of the Human Rights Committee under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; he served on the UN International Law Commission. He was the rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Commission on the human rights situation in Guatemala. He has gained judicial experience as judge of the administrative tribunals of the Interamerican Development Bank and the African Development Bank. As legal counsel, he has represented the Federal Government of Germany before the Court of Justice of the European Communities/Union in Luxemburg, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the International Court of Justice, and the Federal Constitutional Court.

Pablo de Greiff took up his functions as Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence on 1 May 2012. Since 2001, he has been Director of Research at the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) based in New York, United States. He was an associate professor with tenure in the Philosophy department at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he taught ethics and political theory. He has lectured in many countries and universities across Europe and the Americas, including at the European University Institute, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, NYU and academic events in Morocco, Colombia, Chile, Germany, amongst others. Previously, he was a recipient of the Laurence S. Rockefeller fellowship at the Center for Human Values, Princeton University, and held a concurrent fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Jairo Estrada is associate professor of the National University of Colombia and a member of the Historical Commission of Conflict´s Victims. He is an economist specialized in Legal-Political Institutions and Public Law at the National University of Colombia, as in Labor and Industrial Relations from the Externado University of Colombia. He is PhD in Economics at the University Hochschule für Ökonomie in Berlin, Germany. In his professional experience it is highlighted his activities in teaching, research and consulting. He was director of the interdisciplinary research group of Political and Social Studies -THESEUS-. In 2007 he was awarded the distinction of "meritorious research" by the Faculty of Law, Political and Social Sciences at the National University of Colombia.

Gonzalo Sánchez is the Director, Center for Historical Memory. He is a lawyer and philosopher of the National University of Colombia. He holds a master's from the University of Essex, England, and a Ph.D. in political sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris, France. Among his research experience he has participation in the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations of the National University of Colombia. Between 2007 and 2010 he served as director of the Historical Memory Group of from the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation. He currently directs the Center for Historical Memory. His contribution to the study and understanding of the conflict and violence in Colombia have led to the granting of several awards, including the Order “Gerardo Molina” form the National University of Colombia and "Martin Diskin Memorial Lectureship" granted by the "Latin American Studies Association ".

Ron Slye teaches, writes, and consults in the areas of public international law, international criminal law, transitional justice, and international human rights law. Most recently, from August 2009 to August 2013 he served as one of three international Commissioners with the Kenyan Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission. Professor Slye is a legal advisor to the Documentation Center of Cambodia, and was an international consultant to the South African Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission. At Seattle University he previously served as Director of the Law School's International and Comparative Law Programs, the Center for Global Justice, and the Global Justice in South Africa summer program, which he helped to create.

Priscilla Hayner is a writer and independent expert on transitional justice, with a specific interest in justice and accountability in contexts of peace negotiations. She is currently writing a book on peace and justice, including the impact of the International Criminal Court in contexts of conflict and peacemaking. She serves as advisor to the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, the Dialogue Advisory Group, and others. In 2008 she was the human rights advisor to Kofi Annan and the Kenyan National Dialogue. Hayner co-founded the International Center for Transitional Justice in 2001, serving as program director and director of the peace and justice program until 2010.

Marina Gallego National Coordinator of Peaceful Path of Women. She is a lawyer from the University of Antioquia. Currently she is concluding a masters in "Defense of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law before agencies, International Courts and Tribunals." In 1996, along with other women representatives from different organizations, she cofounded the movement Peaceful Path of Women. She currently heads the Strategic Plan at national and regional level and manages the policy and advocacy actions in relation to women's movements, human rights and peace movements.

Fernando Travesí is a Spanish lawyer with extensive international experience in transitional justice and related fields, working with the United Nations, the Red Cross Movement and NGOs. Immediately prior to joining ICTJ, Travesí served as director of the UNDP Transitional Justice Basket Fund in Colombia. As a senior justice advisor for UNDP, he has also conducted and participated in assessment missions on justice sector reform and transitional justice in Tunisia. In Nepal and Colombia, Travesí held regional responsibilities with the ICRC to protect civilian populations affected by the conflict and to document violations of international humanitarian law. In Sierra Leone, he was the country director for the Spanish Red Cross, where he led a project on the rehabilitation of children affected by the war. Travesí holds a master’s degree in conflict resolution and negotiation from the University Pontificia Javeriana in Colombia and a law degree from Complutense University of Madrid, where he has also completed post-graduate courses in international public law. He is a recognized writer, winning awards such as the Spanish National Prize of Theater.