Ms. Magda Stepanyan

She/ her
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Risk Society consultancy. She holds an MA in Sociology (Yerevan State University, Armenia), MSc in Public Administration (Leiden University, the Netherlands), and The International Certificate in Risk Management from The Institute of Risk Management (UK). Her main areas of expertise include disaster risk reduction, disaster and climate risk governance, civil protection, resilience programming, enterprise risk management (ERM), project/ programme/ portfolio risk management, national risk assessment, risk management of trust funds. She has over 20 years management and consultancy experience, working with organizations such as WB, EC, Red Cross, UN, OSF, IDB, NRC NORCAP, and others in Eastern and Western Europe, Western Balkans, South Asia, Central Asia, South Caucasus, South East Asia, Africa, Arab states, Caribbean region.
Ms. Cecilia Aipira

She/ her
A Disaster Risk Reduction Regional Advisor for Africa based in UNDP Regional Service Centre in Addis Ababa. She brings international development experience from Africa, Asia, and the Pacific region. She has over 18 years’ work experience of providing policy and programmatic support in the area of climate change, disaster risk reduction, renewable energy, gender equality and agricultural development. Ms. Aipira is also a global expert on post-disaster needs assessment (PDNAs) and has conducted and PDNA exercise in more than 20 countries across the globe. Ms. Aipira holds a Master’s Degree on International Development and Management from Lund University.
Mr. Tony Moore

He/ him
A former soldier, police officer and academic, Tony Moore is a former President Emeritus and Fellow of the Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management, an organisation that he was instrumental in setting up in 2009. After service in the Army, in the British Army of the Rhine and Aden, he spent 28 years in the Metropolitan Police, rising from Constable to Chief Superintendent. He served twice on the staff at The Police Staff College, Bramshill. After leaving the Metropolitan Police, he became an academic at Cranfield University, based within the then Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham (now part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom), where he lectured on a number of Masters’ programmes, including the Master of Defence Administration (MDA), the MSc in Global Security and its distance-learning counterpart, the MSc in International Security, and the MSc in Disaster Management. He was also Director of the annual International Disaster Management Course for a number of years and regularly lectured to multi-agency audiences, including the emergency services, military and local government officers, on Tactical Decision-Making Under Stress (TADMUS). He has a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) research degree from the University of Southampton. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) and the Institute of Strategic Risk Management (F.ISRM). He is the co-editor of three editions of Tolley’s Handbook of Disaster Management: Principles and Practice (2002, 2004 and 2006), and the author of Disaster and Emergency Management Systems, published by the British Standards Institution in 2008. Now retired from paid employment, whilst continuing to take a keen interest in civil protection and emergency management, he is also a police historian, and is the author of three books, viz: Policing Notting Hill: Fifty Years of Turbulence (Waterside Press, 2013); The Killing of Constable Keith Blakelock: The Broadwater Farm Riot (Waterside Press, 2015) and Rowan and Mayne: A biography of the first London police commissioners (Mango Books 2021).
Mr. Samuel Akera

He/ him
Senior Resilience Advisor at United Nations Development Programme Ethiopia. A Programme Specialist with 14 years of professional experience in Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change and Development nexus. Holds a MSc in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management, a M.A in Development studies and Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification. A Commonwealth Scholar and winner of prestigious UK’s Adult Learners Award, 2014.
Ms. Pamela Komujuni-Kalule

She/ her
A Senior Disaster Management Officer with the Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Uganda. She is a passionate Disaster Risk Management practitioner, a profession she has enjoyed for over 12 years, working with communities, government and non-government technocrats, policy makers and humanitarian actors to support risk reduction, disaster preparedness and response interventions. She received a Bachelor of Social Science degree from Makerere University Kampala; a Master of Arts in Development Studies from International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, The Netherlands, specializing in Peace and Conflict Studies; and recently graduated with Merit in Master of Science in Risk, Crisis and Disaster Management from the University of Leicester, United Kingdom. When she’s not busy with DRM work, she’s either reading a fiction novel, or struggling to learn French, or arguing and laughing with her husband and three children whom she lives with in Kampala, Uganda.
Mr. Hamdou Raby Wane

He/ him
A retired senior economist from the Untied Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Hamdou is the Founder and Managing Director of Albida International LLC, which is based in Dakar. Hamdou holds advanced degrees in Economics, Development Analysis and Planning and Economic History from Grenoble University, France; Post-graduate and Training of trainers’ diplomas in Environmental Economics, Climate Change, Disaster Management, and Environmental Management, delivered by Harvard University, Brown University, The World Bank Institute, the UN System Staff College.