Bert Koenders, Minister for Development Cooperation of the Kingdom
of the Netherlands
Bert Koenders is Minister without Portfolio of Development Cooperation (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) in the Dutch Cabinet. Koenders was a member of the Tweede Kamer (lower house) for the Labour Party from 1997 until 2007. He was member of the permanent parliamentary committees on foreign affairs and on defence. From 2002 until 2003 he was a member of the parliamentary hearing committee on the Srebrenica massacre. From November 17, 2006 to February 19, 2007 he was president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

Dr Akinrinola Bankole, Director of International Research, Guttmacher Institute
Since starting at the Guttmacher Institute in 1997, Dr Bankole has taken an active part in the Institute's research projects. He was co-investigator in research efforts to examine men’s sexual and reproductive behaviors and service needs worldwide. He is one of the principal staff involved in a research effort examining HIV prevention among young people in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is also currently involved in researching abortion worldwide, focusing particularly on Nigeria, Uganda and Guatemala, and in a study of reasons for unmet need for contraception in developing countries. Prior to coming to the Institute, he was a member of the research staff at Princeton University’s Office of Population Research. His primary research interests include fertility preferences and behavior, contraception, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, and gender roles and differentials. Dr. Bankole has extensive experience in undertaking comparative analyses of sexual and reproductive health in developing countries using large-scale datasets. His work includes multi-country studies of unmet need for contraception, fertility preferences and behavior and contraceptive use. He is a member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Population Association of America and the Union of African Population Studies. He also serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. He has written and co-authored many articles and publications.

Ambassador Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, Vice President for Africa, Ipas
Dr. Brookman-Amissah has served since 2001 as Ipas’s Vice President for Africa and leads the Ipas Africa Alliance for Women’s Reproductive Health and Rights based in Nairobi, Kenya.  Originally from Ghana, she has previously served as Ghana’s Minister of Health from 1996-1998 and Ghana’s Ambassador to the Netherlands from 1998-2001.  She is also Fellow ad eundem of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and is a Fellow of the West African College of Physicians.

Dr Leslie Cannold, medical ethicist, researcher, writer, commentator
Dr Leslie Cannold is a medical ethicist, researcher, writer, commentator, Honorary Fellow at the Philosophy Department at the University of Melbourne, and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Gender and Medicine at Monash University. Leslie is a member of the ethics panel of the Infertility Treatment Authority, the statutory authority responsible for administering Victoria's Infertility Treatment Act 1995, Chair of the Family Planning Victoria ethics committee. and President of grass-roots community activist group Reproductive Choice Australia, a national coalition of pro-choice individuals and organisations that in early 2006 played a key role in removing the effective ban on RU486 and is currently campaigning to prohibit Pro-life Crisis Pregnancy Centres from engaging in deceptive and misleading advertising. 

Leslie is the author of the award-winning The Abortion Myth: Feminism, morality and the hard choices women make and more recently What, No Baby: Why women are losing the freedom to mother, and how they can get it back (which made the Australian Financial Review's top 101 books list for 2005). She is also a regular participant in the Australian media, as a newspaper columnist, radio and TV commentator. In 2005, Leslie was selected as one of Australia's top 20 public intellectuals.

Dr Gill Greer
Director-General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation
Director-General of IPPF since September 2006, Dr Gill Greer is a highly skilled, motivated and deeply committed woman. Dr Greer has contributed to many conferences and visited many of IPPF’s 151 Member Associations as part of IPPF’s role as a leading champion for sexual and reproductive health and rights, implementing a Strategic Framework based on the 5 As of Access, HIV/AIDS, Abortion, Adolescents and Advocacy. Prior to joining IPPF’s Central Office in London, Gill Greer served for eight years as the Executive Director of the New Zealand Family Planning Association, an IPPF member organization with an active international unit, Family Planning Association International Development (FPAID), working in the Pacific and South East Asia. Dr Greer has served as Chair of the New Zealand NGO Ministry of Health Forum (a network of more than 100 NGOs), Chair of the Asia Pacific Alliance for the advancement of ICPD, and a member of the International Development Advisory Committee for the New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Dr Greer holds a PhD in Women’s Literature, and in 2005 she was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to family planning and literature. Dr Greer is currently working on a book jointly authored with Noel Harrison, entitled ‘Sex and Politics: Back to the Future’.

Dana Hovig, Chief Executive, Marie Stopes International
From 1991-2003 Dana Hovig worked for Population Services International (PSI), initially as Executive Director in Pakistan and later as Senior Vice President.  During his time at PSI, he was responsible for building and supporting 35 social marketing programmes across the developing world, focusing on HIV/AIDS prevention, family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition. Dana was Managing Director of Options Consultancy Services between 2003-2004 before his appointment as Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Marie Stopes International. He became Chief Executive of the organisation in 2007.

Jon O'Brien, President, Catholics for a Free Choice
Jon O’Brien has more than 20 years experience working on reproductive and sexual health and rights in the US and around the world. In his 10 years at CFFC, he has played a key role in the development of CFFC’s many international and domestic campaigns, CFFC’s continued high-profile presence at the United Nations and the European Parliament and in the development of the organisation’s media profile.

Marie O'Riordan, Editor of Marie Claire UK magazine
Marie O’Riordan began her career in magazines in 1986 at more! magazine as production editor.  She then went on to become deputy editor and editor.  In 1996 she left more! to become editor of Elle magazine until 1999 when she took the role of group publishing director of Emap Youth Market (Bliss, J17, more!, Looks and minx). In May 2001 she left Emap to join IPC Media as Editor of marie claire.

Elizabeth Maguire, President & CEO, Ipas
Elizabeth Maguire has served since 1999 as President & CEO of Ipas, an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to reduce deaths and injuries caused by unsafe abortion and increase women’s ability to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights.  She was previously in the Office of Population of the U.S. Agency for International Director for 22 years, serving as its first woman director from 1993-1999. 

Christine McCafferty MP
Chris McCafferty has been Labour Member of Parliament for Calder Valley since 1997.  In Parliament she has pursued her long standing interests in women’s issues and equality. She sat on the Select Committee on International Development from 2001 to 2005. She was the first woman to be elected Chair of the All-Party Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health.  The Group is well respected and very active in Parliament and has recently produced a hearings report entitled Return of the Population Growth Factor: its impact upon the MDGs. As a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Western European Assembly, Chris regularly speaks on women’s and health issues and recently wrote the Parliamentary Assembly’s Sexual Health Strategy for Europe and the HIV/AIDS Strategy for Europe.

Professor Malcolm Potts
Prior to the 1967 Abortion Act, Professor Potts was the physician on the Executive Committee of the Abortion Law Reform Association and served as the medical voice for the Committee, arguing for abortion reform in the British press and on television. He provided insights into safe abortion from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.  He was the first western doctor to do outpatient vacuum aspiration abortions.  After 1967, Dr Potts helped found the London Pregnancy Advisory Service, later becoming its chair.  In 1969 he was appointed as the first Medical Director of the IPPF. With Harvey Karman in 1972 he published in The Lancet the first account of manual vacuum aspiration. In the same year he led the IPPF team offering safe abortions to women raped in the Bangladesh War of Liberation, and he played a major role in disseminating MVA in Bangladesh and other parts of the world.

Dr Potts introduced IUD use and vasectomies to Marie Stopes House in central London. He was a founder of Ipas and of Family Health International, where he was president and CEO for 12 years. Dr Potts has published over 200 scientific papers and 12 books, including Abortion (1977).  In 2000 he was made an honorary Fellow to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.  He was appointed as the Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning at the University of California, Berkeley in 1992, and currently is working on the obstetric and gynaecological uses of misoprostol in developing countries.  

Anne Quesney, Director, Abortion Rights
Anne Quesney has been the director of the only national pro-choice campaign group in the UK since it was formed in 2004. Prior to this she was an international campaign coordinator for Landmine Action, campaigns coordinator for the National Abortion Campaign, and an education development officer for Education for Choice.

Dr. Fred Sai, MBBS, FRCPE, MPH
Dr. Sai is a former President of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, a recipient of the UN Population Award (1993), and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.  He has held important positions both in Ghana and internationally, including as Professor at the University of Ghana Medical School, Director of Medical Services for Ghana, Nutrition Advisor to the Food and Agriculture Organization, and Senior Population Advisor to the World Bank.  Dr. Sai is world renowned for his leadership at global conferences, including his memorable roles as chair of the Main Committee of the International Conference on Population in Mexico in 1984 and the Main Committee of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994.  As an internationally recognized authority on health, nutrition, population and family planning, Dr. Sai continues to serve as an advisor to international organizations as well as the government of Ghana.

Stephanie Schlitt - Reproductive Rights Coordinator, International Secretariat of Amnesty International
Since 2004, Stephanie has supported Amnesty International's movement-wide consultation process leading to the adoption of a policy on sexual and reproductive rights (including aspects of abortion), drafting and revising policy statements throughout that process. Stephanie provides policy and methodology advice and support on gender issues to AI researchers and campaigners and has researched and is currently writing a report on unwanted pregnancy and women's prosecution for 'reproductive crimes' in Northern Nigeria.

Arnoldo Benito Toruño, MD, MPH
Arnoldo Toruño is a Nicaraguan physician and public health specialist. He has served the health sector in Nicaragua in a number of academic and administrative positions since 1972, including instructor in the Department of Public Health of the School of Medicine of the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua; Departmental Health Director in the city of León; President of the Medical Society of Leon; and Dean of the School of Medicine. His international experience includes participation on a Swedish-Nicaraguan research team for reproductive and child health and reproductive health consultant for UNFPA. His abortion-specific experience includes research, public awareness, and advocacy. He is currently an advisor to the Ministry of Health on the reduction in maternal mortality.