James Appathurai is the Principal Spokesman for NATO, responsible for directing, on behalf of the Secretary General, all NATO press and media activities. Before he took up this post in mid-2004, he had spent four years as Senior Planning Officer and Speechwriter for the NATO Secretary General. He joined NATO in 1998.

Professor Peter Ayton teaches Psychology at the London City University and researches in the fields of human judgment and decision making. He has been published on the subject of the psychological aspects of Risk Assessment and is currently finishing research on the consequences and the handling of the London terrorist attacks.

Philip Dewhurst is the Head of Public Relations for Gazprom Marketing & Trading. He is responsible for communication and public affairs for a Gazprom subsidiary, which is responsible for developing energy marketing and trading in liberalising markets. It is active in most global energy trading markets, including France, the UK and the US.

Vernon Everitt is Mananaging Director of Marketing & Communications at Transport for London. He is responsible for the provision of travel information and customer services for London's transport network on which there are around 27 million journeys every day. Vernon is also responsible for TfL's media relations, customer information campaigns (eg road safety, the Oyster card) and public affairs.

Eleanor Giles is an Associate Director at Text 100 in London. She has been working for Text 100 in London and New York since 2005. Before that, she worked at Lewis PR, the Euro PR Group and also as a Spokesperson for the British Association for Shooting and Conservation. Eleanor is active on Twitter at www.twitter.com/eleanorgi.

Marianne Honkoop works as Head of Corporate Communications at Fortis. Fortis was one of the 20 largest businesses in the world by revenue in 2007. But the company was forced to sell parts of it, with only insurance activities remaining with the original company, after suffering dramatically under the global financial crisis.

Rurik Ingram is one of the Partners at Brunswick. Before joining Brunswick, he worked for Daiwa Europe, BNP Paribas, Nomura, JP Morgan and Salomon Brothers. Rurik grew up in Portugal and France and is a graduate of Yale University and the Wharton School. He speaks fluent French, Spanish, Danish, German and Portuguese.

Birgit Josten-Opladen is the Head of Communications for Nokia Europe, directing all communication activities for the Finnish brand in the European Continent. Before that, she worked as one of the CEOs of Shandwick, a German Public Relations agency. She has been with Nokia since 1998.

Richard O'Brien is one of the founders of Outsights, a company dedicated to scenario planning and future research. Richard has 21 years' experience in international banking with Rothschilds and as chief economist and executive director of American Express Bank. He is the author of Global Financial Integration: The End of Geography.

Jens Schuemann is Marketing and Sales Director at Meta Communication International in Germany. Before joining the agency he worked as Spokesman for the Hamburg international business fair and as a journalist for Interfax News Agency.

Mike Seymour is the International Director of Crisis Communications and Issues Management for Daniel J Edelman. He is a hugely experienced crisis manager and the co-author of Effective Crisis Management - Worldwide Principles and Practice and Global Technology and Corporate Crisis - Strategies, planning and communication in the information age.

Heinz Spremberg is a CEO at Meta Communication International. Before he was active in the fields of Consulting, Business Development and Sales. Meta Communication International is active in communication monitoring and media analysis in over 13 countries.

Marc-Oliver Voigt has been the Editor-in-Chief of the European magazine Commnunication Director since August 2006 . He also heads the monthly German communications magazine Pressesprecher, a position he has held since December 2006. Before joining the publishing company Helios Media, Mr. Voigt worked as a journalist for different newspapers, amongst others for the Financial Times Germany.

Stuart Wilson is one of the CEO's of MS&L Public Relations. He started his career at Glaxo Wellcome, were he was a corporate spokesperson. He has led the Corporate Communications Division at Hill & Knowltonand worked for Cohn & Wolfe both in the Chicago office and in Europe, were he helped found the Paris, Madrid and Geneva offices.