About us

Karl P. Sauvant, PhD, is Senior Fellow, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) and Lecturer-in-Law, Columbia Law School, New York. In 1998, he began championing the establishment of a facility to help developing countries negotiate large-scale contracts with international investors (during 2011-2016 in co-operation with Peter Eigen). In 2006, he established a Program that became the CCSI, serving as its Executive Director until 2012. During 2006-2011, he was Co-Director of the Millennium Cities Initiative, to assist African medium-sized cities attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). As Director of UNCTAD’s Investment Division, he founded the annual World Investment Report (lead author until 2004). Throughout his career, he has focused on issues related to FDI and development. He has published extensively on these issues.
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Natty B. Davis II has more than 15 years of experience in distinguished public service at the highest level of the Liberian Government. He has served, inter alia, as Chairman of the National Investment Commission (NIC), Chair of the Inter-Ministerial Concession Committee, Minister of State without Portfolio and Head of the Liberia Reconstruction and Development Committee (LRDC), Founder and Lead of Liberia’s Philanthropy Secretariat, Deputy Minister of Commerce and Industry, and Acting Minister of Transport and Coordinator of Liberia’s Economic Financial Management Committee (EFMC). Since 2014, he has held the position of senior partner at Devin Corporation, which he co-founded in 1992. He has also consulted extensively outside Liberia, for example in the United States and in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Jorge Chamot is an energy executive advising governments on policy and business development across Latin America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He served as Peru’s Minister of Energy and Mines from 1999 to 2000. He has worked for a state-owned company, a Texan independent energy conglomerate and a private European shipping and trading firm. His understanding of the intricacies of policy-making and implementation allows him to adopt a comprehensive approach to national and regional development programs. Jorge Chamot holds Petroleum Engineering and MBA degrees with further studies in Oil Planning and International Development.

Boris Dolgonos is a partner at the international law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and has advised on a wide range of mining issues, investment and financing transactions, including initial public offerings, high-yield and investment-grade debt offerings, and privatizations. His mining practice has focused on government representation and capacity development, including negotiating mining concessions, drafting model mining agreements and financing transactions. Boris serves on the Board of Directors of the International Senior Lawyers Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing legal services for human rights and economic development throughout the world. He received a Law degree from the University of Virginia and a bachelor’s degree from Harvard.

Stefan Hanselmann has been employed by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) in multiple roles over the years. He first joined the organization in 1993 and worked there until 1999, where he was involved in investment and export promotion in Latvia and India. He then ventured back into the private sector before returning to GIZ in 2009. He currently serves as the Director of the program “Improved Competitiveness of National Enterprises” in Cambodia, and previously acted as the Program Director for the Integrated Mineral Resource Initiative in Mongolia from 2009 to 2018, where he was responsible for Germany’s Resource Partnership Agreement with Mongolia. Throughout his career, Stefan Hanselmann has focused on strategic planning, business development, and investment promotion and has extensive experience in the private sector.

Marcelina Joel has more than 10 years of professional experience in the mineral resources oil and gas and energy sector. Since 2021, she holds the role of legal advisor at the Kimberly Process Unit Mozambique. Previously, she has worked for more than 9 years for the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy in Mozambique. Part of her responsibilities at the ministry role were the licensing of small-scale mining activities and other infrastructure installations as well as the negotiation of resource concession contracts, administrative litigation and legal advising processes. Marcelina Joel started off as Legal advisor from 1999-2003, served as Deputy National Director of Mines from 2013-2015 and from 2015-2016 as Provincial Director of Mineral Resources and Energy.

Sheila Khama is a non-executive director of listed companies, an independent mineral, oil and gas policy advisor, author, and podcast host with more than two decades’ work experience in extractives. She is a non-executive director of Tullow Oil, a Financial Times Stock Exchange Group (FTSE) 250 company, The Metals Company listed on the NASDAQ stock market, and the Chair of the Audit Committee of the UN Office of Operations. She is a former CEO of De Beers Botswana and served as a non-executive director of several companies including Debswana. She worked for the World Bank and African Development Bank’s mineral, oil and gas policy advisory units, leading teams of experts advising governments in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia.

Premila Nazareth Satyanand has 35 years of experience with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) matters, including advising Governments how to deal with foreign investors. She has worked with the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations, New York, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, New Dehli, facilitating the Government-Multinational Companies dialogue on FDI liberalization and advising foreign investors on India strategy. She helped to advise Rio Tinto when entering India and kept Anglo-American updated on evolving Indian mining regulation. She also worked on the role of women in mining in India and has a keen interest in grassroots development issues, having lived in Satoli and volunteered with Aarohi since the mid-1990s. Premila Nazareth Satyanand has a bachelor’s degree in history from St. Stephen’s College, New Dehli, and a master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University, NY.

Andreas Proksch has served as Director General of German Agency for International Cooperation’s (GIZ) newly established Sector and Global Programmes Department (GloBe) from 2015 until his retirement in 2020, his department has been in charge of all global programmes of GIZ. Previously, he headed the company’s Africa Department from 2007 until 2015 and led the German Technical Cooperation’s (GTZ) Corporate Development Unit from 2001 until 2007. He has a total of 17 years’ experience working abroad, in Nepal, Pakistan, Ecuador and Vietnam. During this period, he held management and senior programme director’s positions. Besides, he was a founding member and for many years international coordinator of the ‘Learning Network on Capacity Development’ (LenCD) and is an Africa and Asia expert with a proven track record.

Derya Thompson’s background in civil and structural engineering includes more than 30 years of experience in both large infrastructure and transportation projects. Her local and international transit and mobility experience includes working on key Infrastructure projects in USA, Canada, UK, Singapore, Malaysia and Turkey including recent projects in California on the design and management of California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR), Gerald Desmond Replacement Bridge and other LA Metro, Orange County Transport Authority, Los Angeles City and County projects. She has considerable experience in designing bridges, guideways, elevated/aerial stations, cut and cover tunnels and stations and other major civil structures. From 2016-22, Derya served as a Chief Engineering Council Member for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. Based in Los Angeles, she currently serves as Group Director, HNTB.

Sandra Vergara Dávila has more than 12 years of professional experience in inter-institutional projects of sustainable development with the application of renewable energies (thermal solar energy, photovoltaic solar energy, hydraulic energy, and wind energy); and appropriate technologies for social and environmental development. She is the Coordinator of the Rural Sector Support Group (GRUPO PUCP) at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) managing and executing a number of research projects related to water pumping, rural electrification, thermal comfort and productive uses (from 2014-present). She has led and supervised initiatives during various stages of formulation, design, implementation, management, and monitoring of projects with public and private entities Concytec Peru, INIA Peru, Innovate Peru and Grand Challenges Canada, Technical University of Munich, among others.

Louis T. Wells is the Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management (Emeritus) at Harvard Business School, where he taught courses and conducted research on international business, largely on investor-host government relations. He advised governments and international organizations on foreign investment policies and negotiations with foreign investors, particularly for mining. He served as an expert for governments in more than a dozen investor-state arbitrations. Back in 1975, he and David N. Smith of Harvard Law School wrote Negotiating Third World Mineral Agreements: Promises as Prologue.