Professor Gordon Flake is the founding Chief Executive Officer of the Perth USAsia Centre at The University of Western Australia.

Professor Flake is one of world’s leading authorities on strategic developments in the Indo-Pacific. Having spent twenty-five years in the US foreign policy community focused on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia and now seven years in Australia’s Indian Ocean capital he is an expert on key strategic relationships in the broader Indo-Pacific. He has authored many scholarly and policy studies on security developments in the region, and their policy implications for the US and its regional partners.

Since establishing the Centre in 2014, Professor Flake has worked to build stronger international relationships between Australia, the US and the broader Indo-Pacific. He has led the growth of several major international conferences in Australia and the region; and established a range of high-level diplomatic and policy dialogues on issues of shared concern for the Indo-Pacific.

Professor Flake is a sought-after media commentator, particularly on issues to do with US politics and foreign policy and strategic developments in the Indo-Pacific. His work has appeared in many leading international outlets, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, as well as across the Australian media landscape.

Professor Flake holds a number of strategic leadership roles. He is a Governor of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia (AmCham), and serves on the board of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He is Co-Chair of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a member of the international advisory board of the David M. Kennedy Centre at Brigham Young University, and on the Board of the Australia Korea Business Council WA.

Prior to joining the Centre, he was the Executive Director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, an Associate Director of the Program on Conflict Resolution at The Atlantic Council of the United States, and Director for Research and Academic Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Korean) and Master of Arts (International and Area Studies) from Brigham Young University. He speaks both fluent Korean and Laotian.

Katrina Lantos Swett attended Yale University, graduating with a degree in Political Science. She received her Juris Doctor in 1976 after attending the University of California, Hastings College of Law. In 2006 she earned her Ph.D. in History with a Focus on Human Rights and United States Foreign Policy from the University of Southern Denmark. She is the wife of Ambassador and former Congressman Richard Swett and daughter of the late Congressman Tom Lantos, vice president of Swett Associates, Inc., a consulting firm.

John Despres has worked as a consultant on international financial and strategic affairs since his retirement from the U.S. government in 1997. From May 1999 to March 2000, Mr. Despres assisted Bill Bradley in developing foreign defense and international economic policies for his presidential campaign. From 1993 to 1997, Mr. Despres served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement under President Clinton. From 1985 to 1993, Mr. Despres served as Senator Bill Bradley’s principal staff advisor on national security policy and served as his designated assistant on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In President Reagan’s administration, from 1982 to 1985, Mr. Despres served as the founding Director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, and as Assistant to the Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs in 1981. From 1977 to 1979, Mr. Despres served in President Carter’s administration as Director of Strategic Assessments at the Department of Energy and as National Intelligence Officer for Nuclear Proliferation.

Suzanne Scholte is President of the Defense Forum Foundation (DFF), a non-profit educational foundation that sponsors programs on national security, foreign affairs and human rights issues. She is also Co-Vice-Chair of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. Human rights in North Korea has been a major focus for the DFF since 1996, when Scholte launched a project to bring defectors from North Korea to the United States to speak out publicly for the first time about conditions in North Korea. Since 1996, DFF has hosted over 57 defectors including North Korea’s highest ranking defector, Hwang Jang-yop, Colonel Choi Joo-hwal, diplomats Ko Young-hwan, as well as survivors of the political prison camps Kang Chul-hwan and Ahn Hyok. Ms. Scholte organized and testified before the first hearing ever held on North Korea’s political prison camps in 1999 and continues to work closely with Members of Congress on hearings to address North Korea human rights issues. Scholte also chairs the North Korea Freedom Coalition and North Korea Freedom Week in Seoul and Washington, D.C. to promote awareness and encourage action on this issue.

Kevin C. McCann is General Counsel of SHI International Corp, one of North America’s top 15 largest IT solutions providers. Before joining SHI, Mr. McCann practiced for nearly 30 year as an attorney in private practice with major law firms in San Francisco, handling a broad range of complex business litigation matters, principally representing defendants in antitrust, unfair competition, trade secret, patent, and commercial disputes, and as a Resident Foreign Legal Consultant at Lee & Ko, a leading law firm in Seoul, Korea. Mr. McCann is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and all state and federal trial and appellate courts in California. He was selected by peers in the Antitrust bar as a “Super Lawyer” for Northern California in the area of antitrust litigation. A Korean language speaker, Mr. McCann holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an A.B. (maxima cum laude) from Carroll College in Helena, Montana.

Ambassador Andrew S. Natsios, Co-chair Emeritus of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, is Executive Professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University. From January 13, 2006 to June 2012, Andrew S. Natsios served on the faculty of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. From May 1, 2001 to January 12, 2006, he served as Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the leading US government agency conducting international economic development and humanitarian assistance. During this period he managed USAID’s reconstruction programs in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan, which totaled more than $14 billion over four years. President Bush also appointed him Special Coordinator for International Disaster Assistance and Special Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan. Natsios also served as U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan from October 2006 to December 2007. Natsios has served previously at USAID, first as director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 1989 to 1991 and then as assistant administrator for the Bureau for Food and Humanitarian Assistance (now the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance) from 1991 to January 1993. After serving 23 years in the U.S. Army Reserves as a civil affairs officer, Natsios retired in 1995 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is a veteran of the Gulf War.

Morton Abramowitz is a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation. He retired in 1997 as President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and from the State Department in 1991. Dr. Abramowitz also served recently as Acting President of the International Crisis Group, a multinational, nongovernmental organization headquartered in Brussels and Washington, focusing on crisis prevention. Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment in August 1991, he was Ambassador to Turkey. He has also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, United States Ambassador to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction Negotiations in Vienna, Ambassador to Thailand, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Inter-American, East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, and Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State. He also served in Hawaii as political advisor to the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific. He is the author of numerous books and articles.

Thomas Barker has been a partner at Foley Hoag since March of 2009. Tom focuses his practice on complex federal and state health care legal and regulatory matters with a special expertise in Medicare and Medicaid law including coverage, reimbursement, and regulatory oversight. In May of 2019, he was appointed as a commissioner of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC), an advisory body that provides policy advice to Congress and the states on the Medicaid and CHIP programs. He is one of the authors of the firm's Medicaid & the Law blog, www.medicaidandthelaw.com, which highlights and explains current legal and policy issues in the Medicaid program.

Prior to joining the firm, he was acting General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and General Counsel of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

In addition to his work as a health care attorney Mr. Barker has developed expertise in representing refugees from North Korea and non-government organizations serving North Korean defectors living in the United States and the Republic of Korea. He provides counsel and advice to these organizations, as well as legal advice and immigration counsel to individual North Korean defectors. He has represented over 35 North Korean refugees in becoming United States citizens, obtaining asylum, or in obtaining permanent residence in the United States (green cards). His practice includes representing North Korean refugees before The Department of Homeland Security, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and United States Immigration Court.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish human rights organization with over 400,000 family members. Born in New York in 1950, Abraham Cooper has been a longtime activist for Jewish and human rights causes on five continents. For three decades, Rabbi Cooper has overseen the Wiesenthal Center’s international social action agenda ranging from worldwide anti-Semitism and extremist groups, Nazi crimes, to Interfaith Relations and the struggle to thwart the anti-Israel Divestment campaign, to worldwide promotion of tolerance education. He is widely recognized as a pioneer and international authority on issues related to digital hate and the Internet. Rabbi Cooper’s trailblazing work in Asia has helped counter negative stereotypes about Jews and open new venues in dialogue and intergroup relations in Japan, South Korea, The People’s Republic of China, India, and Indonesia. He was a leader of the Center’s mission to China that brought the first Jewish-sponsored exhibition to the world’s most populous nation. He also arranged national prime-time broadcasts of the Center’s documentary, Genocide, on Chinese and Russian TV to estimated audiences of ½ billion and 80 million, respectively. Rabbi Cooper brought the Center’s special Anne Frank and the Holocaust to tour Japan, which has been viewed by two million Japanese in each of Japan’s 47 prefectures. He brought the Center’s Courage to Remember Holocaust Exhibit to the Gandhi Cultural Center in New Delhi. He recently traveled to Jakarta, Indonesia to meet with former president Wahid and other religious leaders in the world’s most populous Moslem nation. Rabbi Cooper has his BA and MS from Yeshiva University and a Ph.D. from the Jewish University of America. He is a recipient of Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Community Service Leadership Memorial Award and of the Orthodox Union’s National Leadership Award.

Jack David is a Senior Fellow and Member of the Board of Trustees at Hudson Institute as well as a manager his own investments. Additionally, he is an independent consultant on national security matters, especially combating weapons of mass destruction. Mr. David has had long involvement with international human rights issues, serving several years as a delegate to a working group of the UN Human Rights Commission. For many years, he was a director of the International League for Human Rights; he was one of the founders of the Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, on the board of directors of which he served in its initial years. His publications include numerous articles on issues of federal or US constitutional law, which he authored or edited. His articles relating to U.S. foreign and U.S. national security policy have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Forward and The New York Sun, National Review Online, and other media outlets. He has written many privately distributed analyses of foreign and security affairs. He is also the editor of The Blessings of Liberty (Random House, 1989).

Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky is a foreign policy expert and former diplomat specializing in national security affairs. She is a Senior Fellow in the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard University’s JFK Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and is Vice Chair of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security (Atlantic Council). Over 25 years, she has held high level government positions such as Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, the President's Envoy to Northern Ireland (receiving the Secretary of State’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal for her contributions), Director of European and Soviet Affairs at the National Security Council, the White House, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. She was the first George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  A former member of the Defense Policy Board, she is Chair of EXIM Bank’s Chairman’s Council on China Competition and is on the Advisory Board of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Ambassador Dobriansky received a B.S.F.S. summa cum laude from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. 

Nicholas Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in demographics, foreign aid, poverty, Korea, East Asia, Russia and other former Soviet republics. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Population and Developmental Studies (1980-present); a Consultant to the World Bank, the U.S. Department of State; the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Bureau of the Census. Dr. Eberstadt is the author of Korea’s Future and the Great Powers, co-editor (2001); Comparing the Soviet and American Economies, co-editor (2000); Prosperous Paupers and Other Population Problems (2000); The End of North Korea (1999); Korea Approaches Reunification (1995); and The Tyranny of Numbers: Mismeasurement and Misrule (1995).

Ambassador Robert Joseph is a Senior Scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy. Until March 2007, Ambassador Joseph was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. In this capacity, he reported directly to the Secretary of State as the principal State Department officer for non- and counterproliferation matters, arms control, arms transfers, regional security and defense relations, and security assistance. His management responsibilities included oversight of three major bureaus headed by Assistant Secretaries of State: International Security and Nonproliferation; Political and Military Affairs; and Verification, Compliance and Implementation. 

Previously, from January 2001 through November 2004, Dr. Joseph served on the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation and Homeland Defense. In this capacity, he was responsible, under the supervision of the National Security Advisor, for developing and coordinating U.S. policies and strategies for preventing, deterring and defending against threats to the United States from weapons of mass destruction. Earlier, he was Principal Deputy Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control.

Dr. Joseph was also the founder and Director of the Center for Counterproliferation Research at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.  His awards include the National Defense University President’s Award for Individual Achievement and the National Nuclear Security Administration Gold Medal for Distinguished Service. He also received the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service (and Bronze Palm), and multiple Senior Executive Service Meritorious Achievements citations. In 2006, he was the recipient of the annual Ronald Reagan award for his contributions to U.S. missile defense.

Stephen Kahng is President of the Kahng Foundation. Formerly, he was a General Partner of 4C Ventures, an early stage high technology venture capital firm. Prior to this, he was a co-founder, chairman and CEO of Power Computing Corporation. Mr. Kahng has been a consultant for many major U.S. and international computer companies including Digital Equipment Corp, Compaq Corp and Motorola. Prior to this, he was a Senior Vice President of Chips and Technologies, a leading semiconductor supplier to the computer industry. During the 1980s, he was a consultant to major Korean electronics companies, including Samsung, LG and Daewoo Electronics. Mr. Kahng has received many awards, including a finalist of Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year, Lifetime achievement award by Mac User Magazine and Businessman of the year by the Korean American Chamber of Commerce.

Robert King served as Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues from November 2009 until January 2017 following confirmation by the United States Senate. Ambassador King led U.S. efforts regarding human rights and humanitarian affairs in North Korea. 

Prior to his appointment as Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, Ambassador King worked on Capitol Hill for 25 years – 24 of those years as Chief of Staff to Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California). He was concurrently Staff Director of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U. S. House of Representatives (2007-2008), Democratic Staff Director of the Committee (2001-2007) and held various professional staff positions on the Committee since 1993. Ambassador King holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Boston, Massachusetts. He has authored five books and more than 40 articles on international relations.

Jung-Hoon Lee was the Republic of Korea government’s inaugural ambassador for North Korean human rights. Before his appointment in September 2016, he served for three years as ambassador for human rights. He is also the Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS) at Yonsei University, where he founded the Yonsei Center for Human Liberty (YCHL). The YCHL has played an active role in raising global awareness of North Korean human rights violations. His former positions include research and teaching at University of Tokyo, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Keio University, and University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a senior member of South Korea’s National Unification Advisory Council and policy adviser at the Ministry of Unification. He received his B.A. from Tufts University, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School, and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford.

Winston Lord was sworn in as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He was announced for this position by then President-elect Clinton and Secretary of State-designate Christopher and confirmed by the Senate. Among the awards Ambassador Lord has received are the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award and the Defense Department’s Outstanding Performance Award. After graduating magna cum laude from Yale University in 1959, Ambassador Lord obtained an M.A. at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1960. He has received several honorary degrees. 

David Maxwell is Vice President at the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy. He is a 30-year veteran of the United States Army, retiring in 2011 as a Special Forces Colonel with his final assignment serving on the military faculty teaching national security strategy at the National War College.

He has served in various command and staff assignments in the Infantry in Germany and Korea as well as in Special Forces at Ft. Lewis, Washington; Seoul, Korea; Okinawa, Japan; and the Philippines, with total service in Asia of more than 20 years. He served on the United Nations Command / Combined Forces Command / United States Forces Korea CJ3 staff where he was a planner for UNC/CFC OPLAN 5027-98 and co-author of the original ROK JCS – UNC/CFC CONPLAN 5029-99 (North Korean Instability and Collapse) and later served as the Director of Plans, Policy, and Strategy (J5) and the Chief of Staff for Special Operations Command Korea (SOCKOR). From 2000 to 2002 he commanded 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Okinawa, Japan. He has been the G3 and Chief of Staff of the US Army Special Operations Command. He commanded the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines in 2006-2007.

He is a fellow at the Institute of Corean-American Studies (ICAS) and on the Board of Advisors for Spirit of America. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK), the International Council of Korean Studies (ICKS), the Council of US Korean Security Studies (CUSKOSS), the Special Operations Association, the Small Wars Journal, and the OSS Society.  For the past five years he taught a graduate course in Unconventional Warfare and Special Operations for Policy Makers and Strategists. He previously served as Associate Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University.

He is a graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and holds MMAS degrees from the US Army Command and General Staff College and the School of Advanced Military Studies and an MS degree in National Security Studies from the National War College of the National Defense University.

Marcus Noland, vice president and senior fellow, has been associated with the Peterson Institute since 1985. He was educated at Swarthmore College (BA) and the Johns Hopkins University (PhD). He was a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President of the United States. He has held research or teaching positions at Yale University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Southern California, Tokyo University, Saitama University (now the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies), the University of Ghana, the Korea Development Institute, and the East-West Center. He won the 2000 Ohira Memorial Award for his book Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas. Noland is the author of Korea after Kim Jong-il (2004), Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas (2000), Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (Columbia University Press, 2007), and numerous other books on Asian economic issues; and editor of Economic Integration of the Korean Peninsula (1998). He has served as an occasional consultant to organizations, such as the World Bank and the National Intelligence Council, and has testified before the US Congress on numerous occasions.

Jacqueline Pak is an intellectual historian of Korea and East Asia who teaches the subjects of modern and pre-modern Korean and East Asian history, literature, North-South relations, human rights, women, film, and art. She is best known for her work on Korean nationalism and the independence quest during the colonial rule, including the preeminent nationalist leader, Ahn Changho (1878-1938). Her study caused one of the most enduring controversies in the field of Korean Studies for the past decades. She feels a special kinship with her subject of study, Ahn Changho, with whom her nationalist and artist great-grandfather, Charles Park, studied and lived together with his family at the Young Korean Academy (Hungsadan) headquarters in Los Angeles, established by Ahn Changho in 1913, for more than fifteen years as a nascent member. The Young Korean Academy was a revolutionary leadership-training society established by Ahn Changho in 1913 in California. Her forthcoming biography, Ahn Changho and the Origins of Modern Korea: Quest for Democracy, Unification, and Globalization is based on the private papers of Ahn Changho and Dr. Seo Jaepil (Philip Jaisohn) for the first time, in addition to the sources on Ahn Junggun.
 
She currently teaches at and George Mason University. Previously, she taught at Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and UCLA. At Seoul National University in 2007, she became the “first non-Korean citizen to teach Korean history”. She also served as a resident faculty at Kyunghee University, Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, in Korea. Born in Korea and educated in America and Britain, she holds a Ph.D. in history from University of London, SOAS; M.A. in Korean Studies from Harvard University; M.A. in politics/political economy from New York University, and B.A. in international relations from the University of Virginia. A recipient of Luce, Korea Foundation, and Dosan Foundation fellowships, her work experiences include the United Nations, Harvard Business School, Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Smithsonian, and Northeast History Foundation.
 
Her subsequent book projects have dealt with the topics at the nexus of Korean history, policy, and diplomacy, including historical interpretations and debates in East Asia, plight of North Koreans, gender, and cultural-esthetic representation, such as Hallyu, History, and Human Rights and Triumph of the Spirit: Comfort Women, Context, and Controversy. She is currently writing a memoir of her family as multigenerational odyssey between Korea and America, including the early leaders of the Korean independence quest, signatory of the Korean Declaration of Independence, pioneering artists, and iconic leaders of women’s movement from late Choson to post-colonial Korea.

General John H. Tilelli, Jr. retired on January 31, 2000 from the United States Army after over 30 years of service. General Tilelli’s last active-duty assignment was Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command, Republic of Korea/United States Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea. During his time in Korea, he commanded the largest standing joint and coalition force in the world comprising over 650,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. In addition, he led the theater’s campaign strategy and revitalized Korea’s automated command-and-control and equipment modernization.

General Tilelli’s military career includes serving as Vice Chief of Staff of the Army and the Army’s Deputy Chief of Operations, during which he led the Army’s vision of the Army of the 21st Century and implemented reforms in acquisition and procurement. He was also the commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. He trained, deployed, and fought with the Division in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

Upon his retirement from the United States Army, General Tilelli was appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer of the USO Worldwide Operations. He had responsibility for the operation of over 122 USOs around the world in support of our servicemen and women and their families. General Tilelli led and served on other senior panels related to defense issues.

Currently, General Tilelli is employed with Cypress International Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia, as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer – Emeritus. He served as the former Vice Chairman for Korea Defense Veterans Association and is currently serving on the Korea Defense Veterans Association's (KDVA) Council of Advisors.