J Simon Rofe is a world-leading expert in Sports Diplomacy. One of the founders of the field, Simon currently serves as the special advisor to the United Kingdom’s Sports Diplomacy Working Group; a standing member of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Physical Education and Sport (CIGEPS) and was a member of LOCOG, the Organising Committee for the London Olympic Games in 2012. He has worked with numerous stakeholders from across the sporting and diplomatic realms offering education, training and consultancy, and is widely published including the foundation text: "Sport and Diplomacy: more than a Game"

David Grevemberg CBE is the Games Delivery Executive for Deloitte Technology (D.TEC), leading the integration and delivery of technology services in support of the LA28 Olympic & Paralympic Games, and is an independent sports advisor. He previously worked as Chief Innovation and Partnerships Officer at the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, and CEO of the Commonwealth Games Federation, after his role as CEO of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. 

Earlier, from 1999 to 2009, he was the Executive Director of Sport and International Federation Relations at the International Paralympic Committee in Bonn, Germany – and, amongst several responsibilities, oversaw the administration of IPC Alpine and Nordic Skiing disciplines. A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, Grevemberg was an international competitive wrestler and is now a competing masters-level Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. With a 29-year career in sports management, he has served as an athlete agent, team manager, coach, consultant, and board director for numerous charities. He has received several international recognitions, honours, and awards for his service to global sport.

Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi is the founding director of the City Diplomacy Lab and a lecturer in City Diplomacy at Sciences Po, École Polytechnique, and Columbia in Paris. He regularly advises international organizations, national governments, city networks, and municipalities on how to fully unfold the added value of city diplomacy. Author of City Diplomacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), he holds a dual PhD in Political Theory from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris) and Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali (LUISS, Rome).

Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff is a globally-recognized sports diplomacy expert specializing in Franco-United States relations through sports. Author of Basketball Empire: France and the Making of a Global NBA and WNBA (Bloomsbury, 2023) and The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010 (Lexington Books, 2013), her work on global sports has appeared with outlets like TIME, CNN International, The Athletic, The Washington Post, The New Yorker. Outside her consulting practice, she directs the FranceAndUS project and is an Adjunct Instructor at New York University’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport.  A veteran of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Historian, Krasnoff holds a B.A. from George Washington University; M.A. from NYU; PhD in History from The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Etsuko Yamada serves as the Head of International Sport for Development at the Japan Sport Council, where she focuses on integrating Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) into national and local policies. She provides strategic recommendations to Japanese government entities to enhance the impact of SDP initiatives. Together with the Swiss Academy for Development (SA4D) and sportanddev, they developed the guidebook "Bridging the Divide in Sport and Sustainable Development: A Guide for Translating Policy into Practice and Effective Programme Management," which aims to build capacity for policymakers and practitioners in using sport as a tool for sustainable development. Additionally, she is a member of the supervisory committee evaluating the impact and legacy strategy for the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Prior to her current role, Ms. Yamada worked as a Programme Officer at the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace (UNOSDP) in Geneva, where she promoted SDP policies and projects on a global scale.