Executive Committee

Head of the Center for Democracy and National Security at the Israel Democracy Institute: Chairman of AKIM Israel (the National Association for the Habilitation of Children and Adults with Intellectual Disabilities). Ayalon is one of the founders of Blue White Future (“BWF”), a non-partisan political movement, committed to securing the future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state through facilitating an inclusive discourse to promote a two state solution. Admiral (ret.) Ayalon is a former Director of Israel Security Agency (the Shin Bet) and a former commander of Israel's Navy. He has served as a cabinet minister and a member of the Knesset. Along with Sari Nusseibeh, he has headed the People's Voice peace initiative in 2002. Ayalon holds a BA in economics and political science from Bar-Ilan University (1980); is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island (1982); holds an MA in public administration from Harvard University (1992); and an MA in Law from Bar-Ilan University (2010).

Brian Michael Jenkins is a Senior Adviser to the president of the California-based RAND Corporation, an institution that he has served for over 50 years. Over these years Mr. Jenkins has established himself as one of the leading world experts on international terrorism. Commissioned in the infantry at the age of 19, Mr. Jenkins became a paratrooper and ultimately a captain in the U.S. Green Berets; he served multiple tours in Vietnam. President Bill Clinton appointed Mr. Jenkins to be a member of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security. In addition to presently serving the U.S. Government as a member of the U.S. Comptroller General’s Advisory Board since 2000, he has testified numerous times before committees of both Houses of Congress. Mr. Jenkins is currently the Director of the National Transportation Security Center at the Mineta Transportation Institute. RAND’s website lists 157 separate RAND publications attributable to him since 1970. There are a number of books published as well, including Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves (RAND, 2006) and Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? (Prometheus Books, 2008).

U.S. Admiral Roughead (Retired) served as the U.S. Navy’s 29th Chief of Naval Operations after holding six operational commands and is one of only two officers in the history of the Navy to have commanded both the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific Fleets. As the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Roughead led the Navy through a challenging period of transition in fiscal, security and personnel matters. He accelerated the Navy’s capability and capacity in ballistic missile defense and unmanned air and underwater systems. He reestablished the 4th and 10th Fleets to better focus on the Western Hemisphere and cyber operations respectively and introduced bold programs to prepare for the primacy of information in warfare. In retirement, Admiral Roughead is the Robert and Marion Oster Distinguished Military Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and serves on the boards of directors of the Northrop Grumman Corporation, Maersk Lines, Ltd and the Center for a New American Security. He is a Trustee of Dodge and Cox Funds and serves on the Board of Managers of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He advises companies in the national security and medical sectors.

Fondation pour la recherche stratégique (Foundation for Strategic Research), Paris. Dr. Tertrais graduated from the Institut d'études politiques de Paris in 1984. He also holds a Master’s degree in Public Law of the University of Paris (1985), and a Doctorate in Political Science of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (1994). In 1990-1993, he was the Director of the Civilian Affairs Committee, NATO Parliamentary Assembly. In 1993, he joined the Policy Division of the French Ministry of Defense. In 1995-1996, he was a Visiting Fellow at the RAND Corporation. From October 1996 until August 2001, he was Special Assistant to the Director of Strategic Affairs at the French Ministry of Defense. In September 2001, he joined the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS) as a Senior Research Fellow, working on geopolitics and international security issues, with a special emphasis on transatlantic, Middle East and Asian security, as well as a particular focus on military and nuclear policies. In November 2016, he was appointed Deputy Director of FRS.

Emeritus Professor of Maritime Studies, Previously Dean of Academic Studies at the UK Command and Staff College and Head of the Defence Studies Department of King's College London, Geoffrey Till is now the Emeritus Professor of Maritime Studies of King’s College London and Chairman of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies. Since 2009, he has been Visiting Professor in the Maritime Security Programme at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Before that he taught at the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, the Royal Naval College Greenwich, the City University London and in the War Studies Department of King's College London. Additionally he has been Visiting Scholar at the US Naval Postgraduate School Monterey California. He held the Foundation Chair at the US Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia and was Visiting Professor at the Armed Forces University, Taiwan. In 2007 he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore, and in 2008 the inaugural Sir Howard Kippenberger Visiting Chair in Strategic Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Head of the Mediterranean Sea Research Center of Israel, Founding Director of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa, Professor Emeritus at Tel Aviv University, the Department of Geosciences and Director of Dead Sea Research Center. Ben-Avraham earned his Ph.D. in Marine Geophysics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1973. He has held professional positions in several research institutes and universities worldwide (Stanford University, University of Cape Town, Free University Amsterdam, University of California Los Angeles), and served in editorial positions for several scientific journals of geosciences (Tectonics, Tectonophysics, Annales Tectonicae and more). Prof. Ben-Avraham is a member of several academies of sciences including Academia Europaea, Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded numerous prizes including the prestigious Israel Prize in Science in 2003 and has served as a Scientific Advisor to the President of the State of Israel.

The current Director of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences (Haifa U), Ilana transferred to Haifa University after 15 years at Bar Ilan University (BIU). Ilana completed her BSc. in Biology and Ecology at the University of California, Irvine (USA) and her PhD (joint Bar Ilan University and the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research (IOLR), as well as an initial post-doctoral fellowship from the Hebrew University, at the Kinneret Limnological Laboratory (Sea of Galilee). After 4 years of post-doctoral work at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, NJ (USA), Ilana returned to Israel to head the Aquatic Ecology and Biological Oceanography Laboratory focusing on how global changes and environmental stressors influence the organisms forming the base of the aquatic food-webs with research spanning local to global scales in diverse environments including the Sea of Galilee, the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and the South Pacific Ocean. Prof. Berman-Frank has served as President of the Israeli Association of Aquatic Sciences...

The A. Ephraim and Shirley Diamond Family Chair in International Relations and Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he pursued his Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations. Currently he is a member of the Steering Committe of the Standing Group of International Relations (SGIR) of ECPR. Formerly he was the Director of the Leonard Davis for International relations Associate Professor (201215). He was a postdoctoral fellow at the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International affairs and at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, both at Harvard University. In addition he was the Israel Institute Visiting Professor as well as a Visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University (2015-16), visiting scholar at the New School University in New York (2000-2001), at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) (2012), and at the Institute for the Human Studies (IWM) in Vienna (2001). He is the author of Democratic Peace: A Political Biography (University of Michigan Press, 2013), as well as articles in different scholarly journals. Once upon a time he served as a submarine navigation officer in the Israeli Navy.

Andrew S. Erickson is a professor of strategy in the U.S. Naval War College (NWC)’s China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI). He helped to establish CMSI in 2006, and has subsequently played an integral role in its development. Since 2008 Andrew has been an associate in research at Harvard’s Fairbank Center. He has taught courses at NWC and Yonsei University, and advises student research and provides curricular inputs at NWC and elsewhere. Andrew helped to establish, and to escort the first iteration of, NWC’s first bilateral student exchange in China, which he continues to support. For over a decade, Andrew has managed NWC’s scholarly research relationship with Japanese counterparts.

David earned his undergraduate degree from UCLA in Economics and History and an MSc in Russian Government from the London School of Economics as well as an MA from UCLA in Political Science. He has worked for a variety of financial services firms, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, focusing primarily on taxation matters arising from intra-company transactions of multinational companies. He has also worked on financial issues for a US defense contractor. Presently David’s efforts are focused on public policy interests and philanthropic endeavors. He brought together the RAND Corporation and the Israel Democracy Institute – sponsoring a Washington, DC workshop entitled “The Challenge for Democracies Facing Asymmetric Conflicts.” David currently serves as a board member of the West Coast Steering Committee for the American Society of the University of Haifa and is also a member of the Community Advisory Board of the UCLA Younes & Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. Previously he served on the Board of Governors for the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

Dov Shafir is a retired Israeli naval officer who commanded twice the Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13), first 1960-1965 and again during the Six Day War. Between these periods Shafir completed studies at the prestigious École Supérieure de Guerre Navale in Paris. Later Mr. Shafir became the head of the Manpower Division in the Israeli Navy. Following his service in the Israel Defense Forces in 1975, Shafir co-founded and managed STRATIS, a strategic consulting firm, with co-founder Sam Zax, a Chicago banker. The agency conducted research for Gen. Avraham Tamir that was then shared with Gen. Aharon Yariv at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (then known as the Center for Strategic Studies). Shafir has also served as a board member for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.

Director of the Research Authority in University of Haifa. Tamir holds a B.A. in Business Administration, is a graduate of the U.K. army Officers Course and holds an M.A. in Political Science. Served for many years in the Israeli Defense Forces at officer positions and worked as Senior Director at “ELBIT” Technology Company.

Vice President for Resource Development and External Relations since October 2017. Dr. Tchernov is a Marine Biologist and the founder of the Marine Biology Department at the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences (2010). Dr. Tchernov heads the coastal research facility as part of the Helmsley Charitable Trust Mediterranean Research Center. He also heads the Morris Kahn Marine Research station. His main interests are in Climate Change Biology, Coral Biology, Marine Ecology and Conservation Biology. Dr. Tchernov was born in Jerusalem in 1967. He graduated from the Hebrew University in 1994 with a degree in Biology and completed his PhD in Oceanography at the Hebrew University in 2003. He did his postdoctoral research at the IMCS at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Between the years 2004 -2009 he served as the Administrative Director of the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat and between 2009-2011 he served as the Deputy Director of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences. Dr. Tchernov is married to Dr. Beverley Goodman, has four children and lives in Caesarea.

An entrepreneur wif extensive experience in building large companies. Owner, Chairman and CEO of the Ampa Group, which deals in real estate, finance and industry. Owner and Chairman of the Glod Bond Group, which is traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Dr. Efrat Sopher serves as Chair of the Board of Advisors at the Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf States Research, and serves on the Executive Committee of the HMS Maritime Policy and Strategy Research Centre at the University of Haifa. Dr. Sopher is also a trustee of the University of Haifa U.K. She is an advisor on foreign policy in the Middle East to governments and organisations. She formally practiced as a solicitor in London. Efrat is an active member of the World Jewish Congress Jewish Diplomatic Corps and has represented the WJC worldwide, including at the United Nations Human Rights Council. She is also a Deputy at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and serves on the Board of Elders of the S&P Sephardi Community-the oldest Jewish community in the United Kingdom. Dr. Sopher studied International Relations, earning a B.A. degree from the University of Southern California, her Post-Graduate Diploma in Law from the College of Law, London. She received from the London School of Economics and Political Science, her MSc., her MPhil.