WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Council on International Law, Order, and Security (CILOS) announces the inaugural members of its Board of Advisors. The Board brings together former U.S. ambassadors, senior defense officials, government advisers, legal scholars, and international policy leaders with careers and experience extending across regions and institutions around the world.

Collectively, the advisers bring decades of experience at senior levels of government, diplomacy, defense, international institutions, academia, and the private sector. Their service includes institutions central to the conduct of international affairs and the development of the international order.

CILOS was founded in response to changes taking place across the international system and the growing pressures they place on the rules and institutions that govern international affairs. The Council seeks to contribute to how these changes are understood and managed by advancing ideas and approaches that support responsible statecraft and international stability. The Board will provide counsel on that mission and how the Council can best advance it.

Members of the Board of Advisors

Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian served for 32 years in the U.S. Foreign Service across eight presidential administrations, including as U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Syria and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs. He also served at the White House as Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and Deputy Press Secretary for Foreign Affairs. During his diplomatic career, he played key roles in the Arab-Israeli peace process, U.S. efforts surrounding the Gulf War, efforts to end the civil war in Lebanon and secure the release of U.S. hostages, and the development of security arrangements in the Persian Gulf. He is a leading authority on U.S. foreign policy, national security, and the Middle East.

Ambassador Richard D. Kauzlarich served for 32 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, including as U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan and Bosnia and Herzegovina. His senior State Department assignments included Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs, Deputy Director of the Policy Planning Staff, and Senior Deputy to the Special Representative to the Newly Independent States. Following his diplomatic service, he served as Director of the Special Initiative on the Muslim World at the United States Institute of Peace and as National Intelligence Officer for Europe. He later joined George Mason University, where his work has included energy security, transnational threats, and European and Eurasian affairs.

Colonel James S. Overbye (Ret.) is a national security, counterproliferation, and biodefense expert with more than three decades of experience in military operations and international threat reduction. During a 29-year U.S. Army career, he served in command and senior staff assignments across several regions and saw combat service in Afghanistan, where he commanded and advised multinational organizations. Following his military service, he held senior responsibilities supporting the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and U.S. Department of State on countering weapons of mass destruction, biodefense, CBRN preparedness, and international security cooperation. His work has included advising senior military and civilian leaders and strengthening allied and partner-country capabilities against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats.

Colonel David B. Des Roches (Ret.) is an Associate Professor at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, specializing in Gulf security, defense cooperation, weapons transfers, missile defense, and counterterrorism. He previously held a series of senior positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, including Director for the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, Senior Country Director for Pakistan, NATO Operations Director, Deputy Director for Peacekeeping, and spokesman for the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. During a 30-year active and reserve U.S. Army career, he commanded conventional and special operations parachute units and served on the Joint Staff and U.S. Special Operations Command staff. His deployments included service in Afghanistan, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Dr. Iulia-Sabina Joja served as an adviser to the President of Romania and as a deputy project manager at NATO Allied Command Transformation. Her experience also includes work with Romania’s delegation to the United Nations, the European Parliament, and the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and George Washington University, with a focus on European and Black Sea security, defense, strategic culture, and transatlantic relations. She has also held academic positions with the German Armed Forces’ Center of Military History and Social Sciences and the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Héctor Yépez Martínez is a legal scholar, public policy expert, and former member of Ecuador’s National Assembly, where he chaired committees on Regional Governance and Citizen Participation and served as the primary sponsor of major national legislation. He was twice appointed by Ecuador’s National Electoral Council to the official Presidential Debates Committee. He is the Founding Director of the School of Government and Director of the Arbitration and Mediation Center at Universidad Espíritu Santo, as well as a partner at M&MP Legal. His work spans constitutional governance, public policy, strategic negotiation, institutional reform, arbitration, and dispute resolution.

Adel Hamaizia is Managing Director of Highbridge Advisory, advising governments and companies working across the Middle East, Balkans, and Africa, and is a Research Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and Senior Advisor at the Milken Institute. He previously served as a Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and MENA Futures Lab and as an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. His advisory work has included political risk, public diplomacy, economic development, and policy development and implementation for governments and private-sector organizations. He also regularly convenes and contributes to Track 1.5 and Track II dialogues and has been involved in economic initiatives across the Middle East and North Africa.

In announcing the Board of Advisors, CILOS Founder and President Omer Niazi said, “There is often a considerable distance between an idea that is sound in principle and one that can work in practice. CILOS works on problems where what should be done and what can be done do not always align. Understanding these problems is one thing. Knowing what can work under real constraints requires judgment acquired through experience. Our advisers bring decades of that experience. Their counsel will help us test our ideas against the conditions in which they must work and judge whether they remain sound once they meet the realities of practice.”

The international order is entering a period in which established rules and institutions are being tested by changes in the distribution of power and in how states compete and cooperate. CILOS was created not simply to study that transition, but to contribute to the ideas and approaches that can help manage it peacefully. The Board’s counsel will help guide the Council as it advances that purpose.

Biographies of all members of the Board of Advisors are available at cilos.org/people.