The Council focuses on awareness, education, research, and building resilience for lawyers, businesses, and governments who are responding to increasing threats presented by hybrid warfare.
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Leadership Team
Andrea Kupfer Schneider
Andrea Kupfer Schneider is a Professor of Law and has taught Dispute Resolution, Negotiation, Ethics, and International Conflict Resolution for 25 years. In 2022 she joined Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York as the director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution. She previously served as the inaugural director of the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Marquette University and as the Director of the nationally ranked Dispute Resolution Program at Marquette University Law School. Professor Schneider is the author or co-author of numerous books, including leading textbooks on dispute resolution generally, negotiation, mediation, and dispute resolution in the criminal context. She has also edited multiple volumes focusing on interdisciplinary approaches to negotiation, including Negotiation Essentials for Lawyers and The Negotiator’s Desk Reference, both co-edited with Chris Honeyman. She has published articles on negotiation, ethics, pedagogy, gender, and international conflict. Professor Schneider was named 2009 Woman of the Year by the Wisconsin Law Journal and, in 2016, gave her first TEDx talk, entitled Women Don’t Negotiate and Other Similar Nonsense. She was the 2017 recipient of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work. She received her A.B. cum laude from Princeton University and her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School.
Calvin Chrustie
Calvin Chrustie, B.A., B.A. (Honors), LL.M. is a senior security and critical risk consultant. He has successfully advised and coached executives, law offices, diplomats, politicians, community leaders, in these fields for several decades. He specializes in negotiations (ransom), intelligence, investigations, crisis response, and management. His work in this area is often described as ‘asymmetrical problem solving’ and often touches on national security related issues, transnational crime actors and / or geopolitical dynamics. Calvin served 33 years with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a Senior Operations Officer. He specialized in complex transnational organized crime investigations, kidnap/extortion negotiations, illicit finance, crisis, and conflict management. He has extensive experience in intelligence operations and international investigations with transnational organized crime networks, including those affiliated with state actors. He holds a Masters in Law (LL.M.), specializing in Alternate Dispute Resolution – Conflict and Negotiations. He also holds a B.A. in Justice and Law Enforcement and a B.A. (honours) with a Major in Law. Calvin is a graduate of the FBI Academy’s and Scotland Yard’s international hostage negotiation programs. He has extensive experience in the design and delivery of scenario-based and simulation training for crisis-related incidents. Calvin was the Team Leader of Canada’s International Negotiation Group, a group of highly specialized negotiators tasked with terrorist and hostage situations. He now works with a boutique group of ‘tier-one’ risk and security advisors with backgrounds in military, intelligence, policing, cyber, indigenous matters, NGO’s and law.
Janice Fischer
Janice Fischer is a seasoned transformation executive with decades of experience driving organizational change and delivering strategic initiatives in multiple industries. As a trusted advisor who can navigate complex challenges and turn them into opportunities, she has a strong background in organizational redesign, technology adoption, cultural change, and strategic realignment. Her keen understanding of the interconnectedness between people, processes, and technology, allows her to implement holistic transformations that deliver sustainable results and client excellence. Janice has a BSc and a post-graduate Diploma of Business. She has led digital transformations using emerging technologies to drive innovation and competitive advantage. With a future-ready mindset, she ensures that organizations not only adapt to current trends but also anticipate and embrace future disruptions. She has expertise in Profit & Loss management, Strategy and Transformation, Complex Initiative Leadership, and effective relationship stewardship. She also has deep Risk, Cybersecurity, and Compliance experience, such as implementing industry-first controls for global Financial Institutions in a public cloud; serving as the CISO for a public cloud; leading IT operations for an outsourcing portfolio that covered nation-critical capabilities for the majority of financial institutions, governments, airlines, and telcos; and leading a +40,000 international delivery team for Technology Services, growing capacity by 30%. She is a skilled leader who can build and lead high-performing teams. She fosters a culture of collaboration and innovation, and empowers her teams to drive change and exceed expectations. Her leadership style emphasizes transparency, inclusivity, and a commitment to continuous improvement. She now splits her time between Interim Management & Consulting, and Not for Profit, applying her experience and passion for creating and renewing businesses.
Cynthia Alkon
Cynthia Alkon is a law professor and the Director of the Criminal Law, Justice & Policy Program at Texas A&M University School of Law. Professor Alkon teaches Criminal Law, Advanced Criminal Procedure, and Negotiation. Professor Alkon’s scholarship focuses on plea bargaining, criminal dispute resolution, comparative criminal procedure, and rule of law reform. Before joining academia, Professor Alkon was a deputy public defender in Los Angeles County handling cases ranging from misdemeanors to first degree murder. Professor Alkon then joined the American Bar Association Central and East European Law Initiative, working as a Rule of Law Liaison in Belarus for two years (1998-2000). After Belarus, Professor Alkon was the head of the legal department for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Albania. From 2002-2006 Professor Alkon was the Head of the Rule of Law Unit for the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR). In that position Professor Alkon supervised the OSCE/ODIHR Rule of Law Unit’s criminal justice reform assistance projects in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe.
Adrian Borbély
Adrian Borbély is an Associate Professor of Negotiation at Emlyon Business School in Lyon, France. As a negotiation theorist, he is curious about how to apply or tweak negotiation theories to scenarios involving Hybrid Warfare. He is passionate about experiential learning, which led him to coordinate the drafting and publishing of a series of case studies on Hybrid Warfare (a book whose publication is pending with DRI Press). A litigation lawyer by training, he contributed to the Indiana Conflict Resolution Institute (IU Bloomington), then the Institute for Research and Education on Negotiation at ESSEC Business School, before launching his career in Academia. He has been teaching and practicing negotiation, mediation, and conflict management since 2008, teaching in French business, law, and public administration schools and in various professional settings.
Sanda Kaufman
Sanda Kaufman is Professor Emerita of Planning, Public Policy and Administration at Cleveland State University’s Levin School of Urban Affairs. Her research spans negotiations and intervention in environmental and public conflicts; decision analysis; dynamic modeling of conflicts and of social polarization; social-environmental systems resilience; disaster preparedness; and negotiation pedagogy. She conducts interdisciplinary research with scholars in law, physics political science, sociology, management, statistics, and geography. Her recent publications include: a feature article with social scientists on “Applying conflict resolution insights to the hyper‐polarized, society‐wide conflicts threatening liberal democracies” (Conflict Resolution Quarterly 2022); “How Should the Whole-of-Society Respond to Hybrid Warfare?” (On track, Canada’s global defence and security e-magazine 2023); with a law scholar, “A Theory of Interests in the Context of Hybrid Warfare: It’s Complex” (Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution, Special Melnick Symposium Issue 2023); with physics scholars, “An Agent-based Statistical Physics Model for Political Polarization” (Entropy 2023, Special issue: Statistical Physics of Opinion Formation and Social Phenomena) and “Social Depolarization: Blume-Capel Model.” (Physics 2024 Special Issue in honor of Professor Serge Galam). Her articles have also appeared in the Journal for Conflict Resolution, the Negotiation Journal, International Journal for Conflict Management, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, Revue Négociations, Journal on Policy and Complex Systems, and others. She has contributed chapters to numerous books, including Negotiation Essentials for Lawyers and The Negotiator’s Desk Reference (Honeyman & Schneider eds). She holds degrees in B. Arch. (cum laude) and M.S. in Planning (Technion) and Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis (Carnegie Mellon University); she is a trained mediator (Harvard Program on Negotiation).
ASSOCIATES
CHRISTOPHER A. CORPORA
Fellow & Security Director
Christopher A. Corpora, Ph.D. currently serves as a Domain Expert with Hala Systems and Board Member with the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies (ICAIE). He is an international security expert with over 30 years of experience in the field and classroom – serving in various positions, ranging from Department Director though Subject Matter Expert to Assistant Professor. He served as a senior manager and advisor with multiple U.S. government agencies and private companies, focused on conflict stabilization and countering transnational threats – global illicit trafficking, transnational organized crime, corruption, and violent extremism. Most of his work and research focuses on conflict regions and at-risk populations. His career accomplishments are highlighted by multiple awards, authorship of over a dozen peer-reviewed book chapters and articles, and many opportunities to work with great teams in the service of promoting democracy, peace, security, and education around the world. He received his Ph.D. from American University’s School of International Service and is an alumnus of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Junior Scholars Seminar. Most importantly, he is the proud father of three creative and remarkable daughters.
ROBERT DINGWALL
Fellow
Robert Dingwall is a consulting sociologist in private practice with Emeritus Professor status at both the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University. He has wide international experience in teaching and research, particularly in the interdisciplinary study of law, medicine, science, and technology. This has included extensive studies of mediation, particularly in family disputes, and civil justice, particularly in relation to personal injury and medical negligence. He is also interested in the application of ideas from conflict resolution to issues of public engagement and the interactions between science and society. His recent work has been particularly focused on policy, practice, and management of the Covid-19 pandemic. The public and private conflicts over what counts as knowledge and what counts as disinformation have many echoes in Hybrid Warfare. More here.
NOAM EBNER
Fellow
Noam Ebner is a professor of negotiation and conflict resolution at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business. Previously an attorney and a mediator, he has taught mediation and negotiation in a dozen countries around the world. He was among the first teachers to engage in online teaching of negotiation and conflict studies, and to explore the potential for Massive Open Online Courses in these fields. Noam’s research interests include online negotiation and dispute resolution, trust and its role in dispute resolution, negotiation pedagogy, and the future of the negotiation and conflict fields. He is co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Cross-Cultural Business Negotiation (2019) and Star Wars and Conflict Resolution (2022). Noam can be contacted at NoamEbner@creighton.edu; his work can be found here.
VÉRONIQUE FRASER
Fellow
Véronique Fraser served on the project’s Steering Committee from 2020-2023, and hosted the project’s first in-person meeting. She is a Law Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), and she most recently held the position of Vice-Dean for Strategic Development for the Faculty. She specializes in negotiation, cross-cultural dispute resolution, conflict avoidance, and the psychology of conflict. She holds a doctorate in law (Ph.D.) from the University of Ottawa, and is a lawyer called to the bars of the provinces of Québec (civil law) and Ontario (common law) in 2009, as well as an accredited mediator. She is the President of the Institute for Negotiation Innovation, a not-for-profit corporation whose mission is to promote the development of innovative negotiation tools and mobilize knowledge derived from an international body of credible negotiation science in order to make them freely accessible. She sits on the Executive Committee of the International Task Force on Mixed Mode Dispute Resolution, a combined effort of the College of Commercial Arbitrators, the International Mediation Institute, and the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. She has been a visiting professor at the Faculty of the University of Toulouse (France) in 2018, at the Faculty of Law of the University Lyon 2 (France) in 2021, and a Scholar-in-Residence at Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, Pepperdine University School of Law (California) between 2016 and 2018, one of the leading dispute resolution programs in the United States. She has published over 20 articles and books in dispute resolution and negotiation and has given more than 30 lectures to academic and professional audiences.
JOHN GILMOUR
Fellow & Security Advisor
John Gilmour retired from Canada’s federal government after a career of thirty-seven years, most recently serving in the counter-terrorism unit of one of Canada’s national security agencies. His expertise lies in strategic and policy advice in counter-terrorism (CT), counter-insurgency (COIN) and asymmetric warfare, and the geopolitical implications of terrorism threats and risk. Experience in managing CT capacity-building assistance to partner countries or other recipients and the assessment of government policy (domestic and international) on the conduct and delivery of national security mandates. Post-retirement, he has been retained as an advisor/analyst within Canada’s national security agencies and by private sector companies to provide specialized training both domestically and abroad. John currently serves as an instructor at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (Ottawa) on subjects related to terrorism, counter-terrorism, and intelligence, and has contributed to peer-reviewed journals on the subject of national security. He serves as a Fellow with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, an advisor to the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (Vancouver), and is a Director for the Canadian Intelligence Network. John graduated with a BA from Carleton University (Ottawa) and a Masters and Ph.D. from the Royal Military College of Canada’s War Studies Program (Kingston).
ART HINSHAW
Fellow
Art Hinshaw is the John J. Bouma Fellow in Alternative Dispute Resolution, the Director of the Lodestar Dispute Resolution Program, and a Clinical Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Professor Hinshaw’s research bridges dispute resolution theory and practice, and he has co-authored or co-edited 3 books as well as co-authored 25 articles and book chapters. He is a 3-time winner of prestigious CPR awards from the International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution: the 2021 Award for Best Book (Discussions in Dispute Resolution: The Foundational Articles), the 2017 Award for Best Professional Article (Regulating Mediators), and the 2012 Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement (Foreclosure Mediation Project). Professor Hinshaw is active in the dispute resolution community, having served on several academic and professional committees at the state and national levels, and he is a regular contributor to Indisputably, the ADR law professor blog. Outside of the ADR realm, he has served as a member of the Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct.
BARNEY JORDAAN
Fellow
Barney Jordaan served on Project Seshat’s steering committee from 2020-2023, and hosted the project’s second in-person meeting. He holds a doctorate in law from Stellenbosch University and, since 2014, has been a professor of management practice at Vlerick Business School, Belgium, focusing on negotiation, conflict management, and the resolution of disputes impacting organizations. Prior to this he held appointments as professor of law at Stellenbosch University and as professor in negotiation at two leading business schools in South Africa (universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch). Apart from his academic involvement, Barney has also been involved in private practice since 1985, first as associate in a human rights law firm in South Africa, thereafter as co-founder and director of a consulting practice with offices in Cape Town and Johannesburg which specializes in negotiation, mediation, and dispute resolution and currently as negotiation trainer, coach, and mediator. He is a senior mediator, having been involved in the field since 1989. He is certified by the International Mediation Institute as well as by the ADR Group (UK), the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR, UK), and the Africa Centre for dispute Settlement (ACDS). Until June 2014 he was also consultant to the World Bank Group’s Office of Mediation Services. He has been listed annually in the International Who’s Who of Commercial Mediators since 2011.
MIRON KAUFMAN
Fellow
Miron Kaufman is Professor (Emeritus) of Physics at Cleveland State University. His statistical physics research covers topics in critical phenomena, complex systems, hierarchical and fractal lattices, and sociophysics—the use of physics models to describe complex social phenomena, including social polarization. He has devised a dynamic model of conflicts between several groups, such as the Bosnia-Herzegovina ethnic conflict (“Sociophysics of intractable conflicts: Three-group dynamics,” Physica A 2019). Other models also exhibiting emergent behavior and chaos include “Statistical Mechanics of Political Polarization.” (Entropy 2022, Special issue: Statistical Physics of Opinion Formation and Social Phenomena—feature article), “An Agent-based Statistical Physics Model for Political Polarization” (Entropy 2023, Special issue: Statistical Physics of Opinion Formation and Social Phenomena) and “Social Depolarization: Blume-Capel Model.” (Physics 2024. Special Issue in honor of Professor Serge Galam). Sociophysics could also be used to model aspects of Hybrid Warfare. For the past two decades, he has collaborated on several National Science Foundation- and National Institutes of Health-funded research projects at the interface of statistical physics with cognitive science, health science, urban studies, and engineering. His 200 publications have been referenced 3000 times (Hirsch index 27).
DAVID KLIEMANN
Security Advisor
David Kliemann is a Cloud Risk and Controls Leader who helps drive the security of IBM’s Cloud for Financial Services. Prior to joining IBM, he held several cybersecurity roles at Fiserv, a Fortune 500 Fintech, including VP, Cyber & Technology Risk and VP, Cyber Threat Management. Dave was also a 20-year U.S. Naval Officer whose assignments included Information Operations Planning and Director, Navy Cyber Red Team roles. Among his efforts to increase the financial sector’s cybersecurity posture, he has been involved in the development and execution of cyber-related tabletop exercises at both the organizational and sector level. Dave also serves as an adjunct instructor teaching cybersecurity at Marquette University and an advisory board member of MU’s Center for Cybersecurity Awareness and Cyber Defense.
MICHELLE LEBARON
Fellow
Michelle LeBaron is a conflict transformation scholar/practitioner at the University of British Columbia Allard School of Law whose work is animated by creativity, culture, and interdisciplinarity. She has done seminal work in many types of conflicts including intercultural, international, family, organizational, and commercial, exploring how arts help shift intractable conflicts. She was for a number of years a fellow at the Trinity College Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute in Dublin, and holds a Wallenberg Fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, South Africa. Her books include The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement and Neuroscience; Conflict Across Cultures: A New Approach for a Changing World; Bridging Cultural Conflicts; and Bridging Troubled Waters.
ANNE LESLIE
Fellow & Security Advisor
Anne Leslie is Cloud Risk and Controls Leader for EMEA at IBM Cloud for Financial Services. She has over 15 years of experience in international roles in banking and related technology businesses, spanning the intersection of financial services, international regulatory policy, cybersecurity, and the Cloud. Bilingual in French and English, Anne holds an Executive MBA from HEC Business School in Paris and the CCSP in Cloud Security from (ISC)² in addition to multiple security platform certifications. Since joining IBM Cloud, her focus has been on accompanying major financial institutions in securely accelerating their journey to the cloud and transforming their cybersecurity operations to keep pace with a dynamic business, regulatory, technology, and threat landscape, using human-centered approaches and Design Thinking to address some of the most wicked problems facing cybersecurity practitioners. Widely known for her public speaking, Anne regularly contributes her thought leadership to industry publications and conferences, and provided the keynote address to the 2022 Melnick Symposium: Negotiation Strategies for War by Other Means. A recognized, trusted advisor on cybersecurity strategy, she has a proven ability to orchestrate outcome-oriented dialogue on complex industry issues by convening diverse stakeholder groups and cultivating positive relationships between them. Irish by nature and French by design, Anne was born and raised in the Republic of Ireland and lives happily with her three children in Paris, France which has been her home now for over twenty years. More here.
SCOTT MCGREGOR
Fellow & Security Advisor
Scott McGregor is Principal of Closehold Intelligence Inc., and co-author of The Mosaic Effect: How the Chinese Communist Party Started a Hybrid War in America’s Backyard (Optimum 2023). Previously he was an officer in Canadian military intelligence, and subsequently was Intelligence Advisor for Federal and Serious Organized Crime at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
KAMIL MIKULSKI
Fellow & Security Advisor
Kamil Mikulski is a senior OSINT analyst at IN2, a PhD student at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid and a PhD fellow at NATO StratCom CoE. He was a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Tackling Disinformation and Promoting Digital Literacy through Education and Training, and acts as an expert within the European Digital Media Observatory’s Task Force, working in Structural Indicators to assess the impact of the Code of Practice on Disinformation. He is a policy expert of the European Academy of Democracy and an external expert of the Kosciuszko Institute. Kamil can be contacted at K.mikulski.2021@alumnos.urjc.es.
DEBBIE PEROULI
Fellow
Debbie Perouli is an assistant professor in the department of Computer Science at Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA. Her research lies in the broad areas of cybersecurity and privacy, focusing on Internet protocols and cyber-physical systems. She has been awarded cybersecurity grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Security Agency (NSA) to study social robots, conduct summer K-12 camps, and, more recently, train students as part of a scholarship for service opportunities. She received her doctoral degree in Computer Science from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, and her diploma (5-year degree) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Athens, Greece. More information here.
SHARON PRESS
Fellow
Sharon Press is Director of the Dispute Resolution Institute and Professor of Law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, MN. Press currently serves as Co-President of Community Mediation Minnesota and is on the board of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. The press is a Florida Supreme Court-certified county and family mediator and on Minnesota’s Rule 114 Roster of Civil Facilitative and Hybrid Neutrals. She mediates regularly in Conciliation, Housing, and Harassment Courts and for the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. Prior to joining Mitchell Hamline Law, Press served as director of the Florida Dispute Resolution Center where she was responsible for the ADR programs for the Florida state court system during its formative years. Press is the recipient of numerous professional awards, including the Mary Parker Follett Award for Excellence and Innovation in Dispute Resolution presented by the Association for Conflict Resolution and CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution’s Special Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Field and Future of Dispute Resolution. She received her B.A. from The George Washington University School of Public and International Affairs and her J.D. from The George Washington University National Law Center.
NANCY A. WELSH
Fellow
Nancy A. Welsh is the Frank W. Elliott, Jr. University Professor, Professor of Law and Director of the Dispute Resolution Program at Texas A&M University School of Law. She was previously the William Trickett Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law at Penn State University, Dickinson School of Law. Professor Welsh is a leading scholar and teacher of dispute resolution and procedural law. She examines negotiation, mediation, arbitration, judicial settlement, and dispute resolution in U.S. and international contexts, focusing on self-determination, procedural justice, due process, and institutionalization dynamics. Professor Welsh presents nationally and internationally and has written more than 70 articles and chapters that have appeared in law reviews, professional publications, and books. Professor Welsh is also co-author of the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of Dispute Resolution and Lawyers and co-editor of Evolution of a Field: Personal Histories in Conflict Resolution. She has served as co-chair of the Editorial Board of the Dispute Resolution Magazine, conducted research as a Fulbright Scholar in the Netherlands, and served as Chair of both the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution and the AALS Alternative Dispute Resolution Section. She is a member of the American Law Institute and an American Bar Foundation Fellow. Before joining the legal academy, Professor Welsh was the executive director of the Mediation Center in Minnesota and practiced law with Leonard, Street, and Deinard. She has advised state legislatures, federal and state agencies, and courts regarding the institutionalization of dispute resolution, conducted empirical research, convened roundtables and symposia on various dispute resolution topics, and served as a mediator, facilitator, and arbitrator. Professor Welsh earned her B.A. magna cum laude from Allegheny College and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
STEVEN PIERRE DESJARDINS
Fellow & Security Advisor
Steven Pierre Desjardins (BSc. EE, Dipl.T Civil, CPP) is an internationally recognized defense executive who brings to the team his background as a senior military strategist in the fields of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, information security, and counter-intelligence. Holding various executive, management, and special assignments, both within Canada and internationally, Steven’s diversified career has allowed him to develop expertise in helping senior public and private decision-makers identify and exploit opportunities and in detecting, understanding, and defeating threats and risks to organizations’ equities. At the strategic level, he led and coordinated Canadian and NATO intelligence and counter-intelligence activities and programs. Throughout his career, he successfully advised all levels of government, National Defence as well as NATO strategic commands and NATO Nations in the design and employment of Intelligence, Influence Operations and Counter-intelligence capabilities across Maritime, Land, Air, Space, and Cyber domains. His extensive experience has provided Steven with expertise in strategic planning, and establishing and leveraging strategic partnerships. Steven holds a Bachelor of Arts and is based in Ottawa Ontario.