Toronto 2025 Featured Speakers

Justice Abella was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004. She is the first Jewish woman appointed to the Court.

She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1997, to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and to the American Philosophical Society in 2018. In 2020, she was awarded the Knight Commander‘s Cross of the Order of Merit by the President of Germany.

She attended the University of Toronto, where she earned a B.A. in 1967 and an LL.B. in 1970. In 1964 she graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music in classical piano. She was called to the Ontario Bar in 1972 and practised civil and criminal litigation until 1976 when she was appointed to the Ontario Family Court at the age of 29, the first pregnant person appointed to the judiciary in Canada. She was appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1992.

She was Chair and author of the Ontario Study on Access to Legal Services by the Disabled in 1983 and the sole Commissioner of the 1984 federal Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, creating the term and concept of “employment equity”. The theories of “equality” and “discrimination” she developed in her Royal Commission Report were adopted by the Supreme Court of Canada in its first decision dealing with equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1989. The report has been implemented by the governments of Canada, New Zealand, Northern Ireland and South Africa.

She subsequently served as Chair of the Ontario Labour Relations Board (1984 to 1989), Chair of the Ontario Law Reform Commission (1989 to 1992), and Boulton Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of McGill University (1988 to 1992). She also served as a commissioner on the Ontario Human Rights Commission; as a member of the Ontario Public Service Labour Relations Tribunal; as Co-Chair of the University of Toronto Academic Discipline Tribunal; and as a member of the Premier’s Advisory Committee on Confederation.

She has written over 90 articles and written or co-edited four books. She was made a Senior Fellow of Massey College in 1989, has given, among others, the Harlan Lecture at Princeton, the Ryan Lecture at Georgetown, the Winchester Lecture at Oxford, the Anderson Lecture at Yale, the Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture at Fordham Law School, the Diane Markowicz Memorial Lecture at Brandeis University, and the David J. Bederman Lecture in International Law at Emory University School of Law. She was the first Bullock Chair at the Hebrew University, the Mackenzie King Distinguished Visiting Professor at Harvard, the Floersheimer Distinguished Jurist in Residence at Cardozo Law School, a Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the University of Toronto Law School, and Bright International Jurist in Residence at the University of Hawaii School of Law.

She was a judge of the Giller Literary Prize; Chair of the Rhodes Selection Committee for Ontario; director of the Institute for Research on Public Policy; moderator of the English Language Leaders’ Debate in 1988; a member of the Canadian Judicial Council’s Inquiry on Donald Marshall, Jr.; Program Chair of the Governor General’s Canadian Study Conference; Chief Rapporteur in Halifax and Co-Chair in Vancouver of the 1992 Renewal of Canada Conferences; Trustee of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada; Governor of the International Board of Governors of the Hebrew University; and Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors of the National Judicial Institute.

Justice Abella has been active in Canadian judicial education, organizing the first judicial seminar in which all levels of the judiciary participated, the first judicial seminar in which persons outside the legal profession were invited to participate, the first national education program for administrative tribunals, and the first national conference for Canada’s female judges.

She has 42 honourary degrees. She was also awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law; the Alumni of Influence Award from University College; the Distinguished Service Award of the Canadian Bar Association (Ontario); the International Justice Prize of the Peter Gruber Foundation; the Human Relations Award of the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews; the Honourable Walter S. Tarnopolsky Human Rights Award; the Bora Laskin Award for Distinguished Service in Labour Law; the Global Jurist of the Year from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; the Ethical Leadership Award from the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University; the Calgary Peace Prize; the Women in Law Lifetime Achievement Award; the Goler T. Butcher Medal for International Human Rights from the American Society of International Law; the Gunther Plaut Humanitarian Award; the Rose Wolfe Distinguished Alumni Award; an Honourary Bencher of Middle Temple; a Harvard Law School Honoree on International Women’s Day; the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Award, World Jurists Association; the Council of Canadian Administrative Tribunals Medal; the Canadian Freedom of Association Award; the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice 2023 Justice Medal; the President’s Medal, Canadian Bar Association; and was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame, receiving the Humanitarianism Award.

Upon retirement from the Court, she became the Samuel and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. She is also a Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School and Distinguished Visiting Jurist at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. In the spring of 2022, she was the William Hughes Mulligan Distinguished Visiting Professor in International Studies at Fordham Law School.

Justice Abella was born in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Stuttgart, Germany on July 1, 1946. Her family came to Canada as refugees in 1950. She is the first refugee appointed to the bench in Canada. In 1968, she married Canadian historian Irving Abella (1940-2022) and they have two sons, Jacob and Zachary, both lawyers.

On a bright, 20-degree afternoon in January, US Airways Flight 1549 accelerated down New York La Guardia Airport’s main runway, loaded with 155 passengers and crew, headed skywards for Charlotte, NC. Everything was normal until First Officer Jeff Skiles spotted a formation of Canada geese almost directly ahead. In a matter of seconds, he heard numerous thunks as the birds impacted the aircraft. Both engines immediately failed. Captain Chesley Sullenberger took over flying the plane and lowered the nose down to retain airspeed. Within seconds, the pilots made the decision that returning to LaGuardia was simply not possible—they’d have to fly over densely populated areas and there was no guarantee that they’d make it. Surrounded by nothing but skyscrapers and neighborhoods, they decided to head to the only open, flat space available—the Hudson River. Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, Jeff Skiles details the lessons, training, and scenarios that led to the “Miracle on the Hudson” and what businesses can take away from it with a great sense of humor and natural storytelling ability.

Crisis Management at 3,200 Feet. Skiles tried to restart the engines. But the manuals are written for failures that happen at 30,000 feet, and the only training pilots receive for water landings is focused on ditching in the open ocean. Skiles and Sullenberger were truly in uncharted territory. As the passengers and flight attendants braced for impact, the plane descended 3,200 feet toward the river. Eye-witnesses in the surrounding buildings said it looked like a perfect three-point landing.

News of plane crashes and airline disasters usually hits the public hard. Yet those same accidents become the training tools and examples that help pilots avoid repeating those mistakes. But the exploits of the flight crew of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 are a rare example where future pilots learn from a resounding success rather than a failure.

Adapt, React, and Don’t Fear a Change of Course. The son of two pilots, Skiles started flying at the age of 16 and has logged over 23,000 hours in the sky. Skiles has spent the last 30 years as a US Airways pilot and his lifetime of experiences contributed to the astounding outcome. The perfect landing was not a fluke; it was the result of intense training, preparation, and the lessons learned from other pilots’ successes and failures.

Skiles believes that life changes all around you, and if you can’t adapt and change with it, you can’t succeed. He attributes the success of the emergency landing on the Hudson to the extensive training that all members of a flight crew experience. From the mechanics and the maintenance workers to the people who write the emergency protocols and the flight attendants, he believes that every level of the US Airways organization is responsible for the outcome on January 15, 2009. While he and Captain Sullenberger piloted the plane to a safe landing, the success was a group effort representing the contributions of an entire organization.

Yulia Navalnaya, freedom fighter and human rights activist from Russia, was born in Moscow in 1976. She graduated from the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Faculty of International Economic Relations. Along with her husband, the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, she was actively involved in the fight for democratic changes in Russia. After Alexei Navalny's death, she announced that she will continue his work.

Today, Yulia Navalnaya is one of the key figures in the Russian protest movement. She serves as the Chairwoman of the Human Rights Foundation and the Chairwoman of the Advisory Board of the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Sir William (Bill) Browder KCMG was once the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia until being declared “a threat to national security” in 2005 for exposing corruption in Russian state-owned companies.

In 2008, Bill’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a massive fraud committed by Russian government officials stealing US $230 million of state taxes and was subsequently arrested, imprisoned without trial and systematically tortured.

Sergei Magnitsky died in prison on November 16, 2009. Ever since, Sir William has led the Global Magnitsky Campaign for governments around the world to impose targeted visa bans and asset freezes on human rights abusers and highly corrupt officials, introducing the passage of the Sergei Magnitsky Accountability Act in 2012, & the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act 2016. Which has since been adopted by 35 countries, including USA, UK, EU, Canada and Australia.

For his exceptional service to the UK abroad and internationally, in recognition of his significant and sustained contribution to human rights and anti-corruption, he was appointed by King Charles in the 2024 Birthday Honours List a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG).

Bob Woodward gained international attention when he and Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal in 1973. Since then, he’s worked to shine a light on the inner-workings of secret government. Woodward’s factual, non-partisan revelations to readers and speech audiences provide a view of Washington they’ll never get elsewhere. Woodward has written about the last ten U.S. presidents and chronicled how the power of the presidency has evolved. He is author of 23 bestselling books – 17 went to #1 – more than any contemporary nonfiction writer. In his speeches, Woodward looks at the expanding powers of the presidency and the important lessons that can be learned from the presidents he’s covered. He can also assess the role of the media and how well it is (or isn’t) doing its job. Audiences will be awe-struck by insights from this living journalistic legend. Currently associate editor for The Washington Post where he’s worked since 1971, Bob Woodward has won nearly every American journalism award including two Pulitzers.

Former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he wished he’d recruited Woodward into the CIA, “He has an extraordinary ability to get otherwise responsible adults to spill [their] guts to him…his ability to get people to talk about stuff they shouldn’t be talking about is just extraordinary and may be unique.” Therein lays the genius talent of Bob Woodward.

No one else in political investigative journalism has the clout, respect, and reputation of Woodward. He has a way of getting insiders to open up in ways that reveal an intimate yet sweeping portrayal of Washington and the political infighting, how we fight wars, the price of politics, how presidents lead, the homeland security efforts, and so much more. His work is meticulous and draws on internal memos, classified documents, meeting notes and hundreds of hours of recorded interviews with most of the key players, including the president. This is why Fear: Trump in the White House sold more than 1.1 million copies in its first week in September 2018 – breaking the 94-year first-week sales record of its publisher Simon & Schuster – and nearly 2 million copies in hardback, ebook, and audio in the first four months.

In October 2022, Woodward did something he’d never done before; he released the complete recordings of his 20 interviews with Donald Trump in audiobook form titled, The Trump Tapes. The audiobook is unique in that the listener gets the opportunity to hear his lengthy and raw interviews as well as exclusive commentary during some of the interviews – to provide vital context or clarification. The Trump Tapes is considered by Simon and Schuster “…as historically important as the Frost/Nixon interviews.”

As a speaker, Woodward pulls the curtain back on Washington and its leaders to captivate audiences with stories that are sometimes surprising, at times shocking, and always fascinating. He blends stories that are both up to the minute and from the past (to provide historical context). Woodward helps people get behind the spin to understand what’s really going on in the halls of power in an age of 24-hour news, social media, and snarky politics.

Professionally, Bob Woodward is currently associate editor for The Washington Post where he’s worked since 1971. He has won nearly every American journalism award, and the Post won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for his work with Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal. In addition, Woodward was the main reporter for the Post’s articles on the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks that won the National Affairs Pulitzer Prize in 2002.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News said "Woodward has established himself as the best reporter of our time. He may be the best reporter of all time." Lloyd Green wrote in a review for The Guardian that Fear “depicts a White House awash in dysfunction, where the Lord of the Flies is the closest thing to an owner’s manual.” The Weekly Standard called Woodward “the best pure reporter of his generation, perhaps ever.” In 2003, Al Hunt of The Wall Street Journal called Woodward “the most celebrated journalist of our age.” In listing the all-time 100 best non-fiction books, Time magazine has called All the President’s Men, by Bernstein and Woodward, “Perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history.”

Woodward has co-authored or authored 17 #1 national best-selling non-fiction books. They are: All the President’s Men (1974) and The Final Days (1976), both Watergate books, co-authored with Bernstein; The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court (1979) co-authored with Scott Armstrong; Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi (1984); Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-87 (1987); The Commanders (1991); The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House (1994); Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (1999); Bush at War (2002); Plan of Attack (2004); State of Denial: Bush at War Part III (2006); Obama’s Wars (2010); Fear: Trump in the White House (2018); Rage (2020); Peril (2021) co-authored with Robert Costa; The Trump Tapes (2022); and War (2024). Woodward’s other national bestselling books are: The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat (2005), The Choice (1996), Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American Boom (2000), The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 (2008), The Price of Politics (2012), and The Last of the President’s Men (2015). Newsweek magazine has excerpted six of Woodward’s books in headline-making cover stories; “60 Minutes” has done pieces on eight of his books; and three of his books have been made into feature films.

In November 2017, the online learning portal MasterClass released “Bob Woodward Teaches Investigative Journalism.” In it, Woodward reveals the lessons he’s learned during his career, teaching students what truth means, how to uncover it, and how to build a story with it.

Woodward was born March 26, 1943 in Illinois. He graduated from Yale University in 1965 and served five years as a communications officer in the U.S. Navy before beginning his journalism career at the Montgomery County Sentinel (Maryland), where he was a reporter for one year before joining the Post.

Irwin Cotler is the International Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, an Emeritus Professor of Law at McGill University, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and longtime Member of Parliament, constitutional and international human rights lawyer and counsel to Prisoners of Conscience. Feature articles refer to him as “Counsel for the Oppressed”, while the Oslo Freedom Forum characterized him as “Freedom’s Counsel.”

He is a member of the Organization of American States (OAS); Independent Panel of Legal Experts on Venezuela; member of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom; Canada’s first Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism; and Special Envoy of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Community of Democracies on the case and cause of imprisoned Russian democratic leader, Vladimir Kara-Murza, who in 2023 was named Canada’s newest honorary citizen.

As parliamentarian from 1999 to 2015, Professor Cotler was at the forefront of the struggle for justice and human rights, both domestically and internationally. He served as chair of the first-ever Parliamentary Assembly for the International Criminal Court; chair of the Parliamentarians for Global Action (Canada); chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Group for Human Rights in Iran; chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Group of Justice for Sergei Magnitsky; chair of the All-Party Save Darfur Parliamentary Coalition; co-chair from Canada of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance for China; and co-chair of the International Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism. He was elected 2014 Canadian Parliamentarian of the Year by his colleagues.

As Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada from 2003 to 2006, Irwin Cotler launched Canada’s first National Justice Initiative Against Racism and Hate; initiated the first-ever prosecution for the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda under Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act; initiated the first-ever law on human trafficking; crafted the Civil Marriage Act, the first-ever legislation to grant marriage equality to gays and lesbians; quashed more wrongful convictions in a single year than any prior Minister; initiated the first-ever comprehensive reform of the Supreme Court appointment process and helped make it the most gender-representative Supreme Court in the world; appointed the first-ever Indigenous and visible minority justices the Ontario Court of Appeal; and made the pursuit of international justice a government priority.

An international human rights lawyer, Professor Cotler has served as counsel to high profile Prisoners of Conscience including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov and leading human rights dissident, Nathan Sharansky (former Soviet Union); Nelson Mandela (South Africa); Jacobo Timmerman (Argentina); Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim (Egypt); and was a Member of the International Legal Team of Chinese Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo. More recently he has served as international legal counsel to imprisoned Saudi blogger Raif Badawi; Venezuelan political prisoner Leopoldo López; imprisoned Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh; and Swedish-Eritrean Dawit Isaak, the longest-imprisoned journalist in the world.

A constitutional and comparative law scholar, Professor Cotler is the author of numerous publications and seminal legal articles and has written upon and intervened in landmark Charter of Rights cases in the areas of free speech, freedom of religion, minority rights, peace law and war crimes justice.

He is the recipient of seventeen honorary doctorates, where he has been recognized as “a scholar and advocate of international stature” (as cited in his various honorary doctorates). He is a Privy Councillor, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the National Order of Quebec, and is the recipient also of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. He has been awarded the Canadian Bar Association’s President’s Award; was the first Canadian recipient of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation’s Centennial Medal; the first recipient of the Romeo Dallaire Award for Human Rights Leadership; the recipient of the Sir Zafrullah Khan Award for Distinguished Public Service; the recipient of the Dalhousie University 2015 Ethical Leadership Award; and was the first recipient of the 2015 Sergei Magnitsky Global Human Rights Award.

In 2015, Professor Cotler received the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Inaugural Human Rights Award. In its citation, the Law Society recognized “The Honourable Irwin Cotler’s tireless efforts to ensure peace and justice for all. In his varied roles as law professor, constitutional and comparative law scholar, international human rights lawyer, counsel to prisoners of conscience, public intellectual, peace activist, Member of Parliament, and Minster of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Mr. Cotler has been a leader and role model. Through his advocacy work both in Canada and internationally, he has transformed the lives of many."

In 2022, Professor Cotler was honored by the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy when they bestowed upon him their Award for Excellence. In the summer of 2023, The Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice recognized him as one of the world’s foremost human rights lawyers, and will award him their highest honor, the Lantos Human Rights Prize in October in Washington DC. In September of 2023, Israeli President Isaac Herzog conferred upon Professor Cotler the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor in a ceremony in Jerusalem, characterizing him as “a world-renowned human rights advocate who has made a special contribution in the field of the struggle for human rights, and in the fight against antisemitism, hate crimes, and racism.”

Judge Kimberly Prost is a judge of the International Criminal Court. Prior to her election as judge of the ICC, Judge Prost served as Chef de Cabinet for the President of the International Criminal Court for a two year term. Before joining the Court, she was appointed in 2010 as the first Ombudsperson for the Security Council Al Qaida Sanctions Committee.

In July 2006, after election by the United Nations General Assembly, she was appointed to sit as an ad litem judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on a multi-accused trial (Popovic et al) related to events at Srebrenica and Zepa.

Earlier in her career, Judge Prost worked for the Canadian Department of Justice for 18 years appearing before all levels of the Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court. For 7 years she served as Director of the International Assistance Group which is responsible for extradition and mutual legal assistance matters for Canada. She participated in negotiating over 40 extradition/mutual legal assistance treaties and was a member of the Canadian delegation for negotiating the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and related documents, as well as the UN Conventions against Transnational Organized Crime and Corruption.

Judge Prost also held managerial positions with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime delivering a range of programmes for States on international cooperation, money laundering and asset forfeiture, counter terrorism, implementation of the Rome Statute, and combating organized crime and corruption.

Judge Prost graduated as a gold medallist from the University of Manitoba Law School.

John Bellinger is a partner at Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC, and co-head of the firm’s Global Law and Policy Practice. He is also Adjunct Senior Fellow in International and National Security Law at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Bellinger served as the Senate-confirmed Legal Adviser for the U.S. Department of State under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to 2009. Mr. Bellinger represented the United States before the International Court of Justice in Mexico v. United States (Medellin) and the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal and negotiated a number of treaties and international agreements, including the Third Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions.

Mr. Bellinger served from 2001 to 2005 as Senior Associate Counsel to the President and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council at the White House, where he was the principal lawyer for the National Security Adviser and the NSC staff. He previously served as Counsel for National Security Matters in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, as Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as Special Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William Webster.

He is a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on International Law, one of four members appointed by the United States to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, and a member of the U.S. "National Group," which nominates judges to the International Court of Justice. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Executive Council of the American Law Institute, and the boards of the Stimson Center, the Salzburg Global Seminar, the American Ditchley Foundation, and Foreign Affairs magazine. He serves as Counselor for the preparation of the ALI Fourth Restatement of Foreign Relations Law. Mr. Bellinger testifies regularly before Congress, has lectured at numerous U.S. and foreign universities and law schools, and is the author of many articles and op-eds on international law and national security issues in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. He is a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog.

Mr. Bellinger received his A.B. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Prior to returning to Stanford, Dr. Van Schaack served as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice in the U.S. State Department office where she once served as Deputy. GCJ advises the Secretary of State and the Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Prior to returning to public service, Dr. Van Schaack was the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor in Human Rights at Stanford Law School, where she taught international criminal law, human rights, human trafficking, and a policy lab on Legal & Policy Tools for Preventing Atrocities. In addition, she directed Stanford’s International Human Rights & Conflict Resolution Clinic. Earlier in her career, she was a practicing lawyer at Morrison & Foerster, LLP; the Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights law firm; and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Dr. Van Schaack is a graduate of Stanford (BA), Yale (JD) and Leiden (PhD) Universities.

In 2024, Michael Scharf returned to serving as Associate Dean for Global Affairs at Case Western Reserve University School of Law after leading the law school as Co-Dean for eleven years. He is also the Joseph C. Hostetler—BakerHostetler Professor of Law and serves as Managing Director of the Public International Law & Policy Group, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated NGO. Before becoming a law professor 30 years ago, Scharf served in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State, where he held the positions of Attorney-Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, Attorney-Adviser for United Nations Affairs and delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In 2004, Scharf trained the judges for the trial of Saddam Hussein and during a sabbatical in 2008, he served as Special Assistant to the Prosecutor of the Cambodia Genocide Tribunal. In February 2022, Scharf presented an Amicus Argument before the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court in The Hague on the question of who has the burden of proof on the insanity defense in a case involving a former child soldier. Scharf is the author of 21 books, five of which have won national book of the year honors. Since 2012, Scharf has been the producer and host of "Talking Foreign Policy," a radio program broadcast on Cleveland’s NPR station and other NPR affiliates across the country, which is also available as a podcast. Scharf is currently the President of the American Branch of the International Law Association and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law.

Alberto J. Mora’s career includes broad experience in the law, government, industry, and academia.

Prior to his retirement in 2022, Mora was the American Bar Association’s Associate Executive Director for Global Programs. In this capacity he directed the ABA’s global Rule of Law Initiative, oversaw the ABA’s Human Rights Center, and coordinated he ABA’s relationship with the United Nations and specialized agencies and functions. These responsibilities entailed the management of approximately 500 staff members based in Washington, D.C. and in more than 50 countries.

He joined the ABA from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a resident Senior Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights policy from 2015 to 2018, a relationship he maintained as a non-resident fellow from 2018 to 2020. At the Kennedy School, Mora led a three-year research program to assess the policy costs and consequences of the U.S. use of torture in the war on terror and taught a graduate-level course on this subject. In 2014, Mora was an Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard.

A practicing attorney since 1982, Mora served as the General Counsel of the Department of the Navy from 2001 to 2006. As the chief legal officer for both the Navy and Marine Corps, in this capacity he managed more than 640 attorneys and personnel across 146 offices throughout the United States and overseas and supervised elements of the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps and the Marine Corps Staff Judge Advocates. Additionally, he served as the Reporting Senior of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, as the Department’s Chief Ethics Officer and, on (brief) occasions, as Acting Secretary of the Navy.

In addition to his service with the Navy, Mora’s other government service includes service in the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer, as General Counsel of the United States Information Agency in the George H.W. Bush administration, and as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors in the Clinton administration.

Prior to his Harvard fellowship, Mora was employed as the General Counsel Walmart International and of Mars, Incorporated, the world’s third largest food company. A private, family-owned company founded in 1911, at the time of Mora’s tenure Mars employed more than 73,000 associates located at over 230 sites, operated 135 factories in 68 countries, and generated global revenues of more than $33 billion annually. At both companies, Mora designed, deployed, and managed the company’s international compliance systems.

Mora began his legal career in Miami, Florida, as a civil trial lawyer. He was a partner in Holland & Knight and, before joining the Navy, was of counsel to Greenberg Traurig.

Mora holds a bachelor’s degree and Honorary Doctorate from Swarthmore College and a law degree from the University of Miami School of Law. A member of the Council of Foreign Relations, he sat on the Board of Directors of Human Rights First and Freedom House. He currently sits on the Boards of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and the International Law Institute, and is on the advisory boards of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and the Center for Victims of Torture. He is the author of multiple op-eds, articles, and speeches, among which is “The Strategic Costs of Torture”, Foreign Affairs (Sept/Oct 2016).

Among other honors and recognitions received by him, in 2006 Mora was awarded the John F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation’s Profile in Courage Award in recognition of his consistent opposition while serving as Navy General Counsel to the cruel interrogation of detainees in the post-9/11 period. His detainee-related activities at the Navy have been widely reported in periodicals, books and documentaries. In 2013, he was included in Mariana Cook’s book Justice as one of 99 individuals who have made a significant contribution to human rights.