Amy Myers Jaffe is a leading expert on global energy policy, energy and sustainability, and geopolitical risk. Prior to joining Tufts Fletcher School, Jaffe was the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations. Jaffe also has served as the executive director for Energy and Sustainability at the University of California Davis and as senior advisor to the Office of the Chief Investment Officer of the University California Regents. Jaffe is currently co-chair of the steering committee of the Women in Energy Initiative at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Prior to joining UC Davis, Jaffe served as founding director of the Baker Institute Energy Forum (now called the Center for Energy Studies) and Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. She was formerly senior editor and Middle East analyst for Petroleum Intelligence Weekly. Jaffe is widely published, including as co-author of Oil, Dollars, Debt and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold with Mahmoud El-Gamal (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and co-editor of Natural Gas and Geopolitics From 1970 to 2040 (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Mahmoud El-Gamal, Ph.D. previously served as chair of the economics department at Rice University from 2008 to 2011. Professor El-Gamal sits on the editorial board of the Review of Middle-East Economics and Finance and serves as a research fellow and on the scientific committee for the Economic Research Forum (Cairo). Before joining Rice in 1998, he was an associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has also worked as an assistant professor at the University of Rochester and the California Institute of Technology; as an economist at the Middle East department of the International Monetary Fund (1995-1996); and as the first scholar-in-residence on Islamic finance at the U.S. Department of Treasury (2004). El-Gamal has published extensively on finance, econometrics, decision science, economics of the Middle East and Islamic transactions law. His recent books include Islamic Finance: Law, Economics and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Oil, Dollars, Debt and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold with Amy Myers Jaffe.

Mark Cutis is Chief Adviser for Finance & Investments at ADNOC, the national oil company. Prior to serving at ADNOC, Mark was Group Chief Financial Officer at the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC). While at ADIC (2008) Mark set up the de novo “Special Situations” unit and left with a documented 10 year track record. This group focuses on investing globally in idiosyncratic and one- off transactions across the capital structure with geographic and asset class flexibility. Prior to his work at ADIC, Mark served as CEO of Unicredito (HVB) and as Chief Investment Officer of Shinsei Bank. At HVB, Mark began in the New York Branch as Treasurer for the Americas, responsible for developing and directing their proprietary allocation to Alternative Investments. Subsequently, he transferred to Tokyo as the CEO of HVB’s Japanese operations. Mark’s core expertise is asset allocation, proprietary trading and ALM. Experience includes both direct “hands on management “of risk and risk takers as well as allocating to external managers in alternatives. He has worked in NY, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo Moscow and now Abu Dhabi. Mark has an MBA from the Wharton School and a BA in Economics from Emory University.

Daniel Freifeld is the founder of Callaway Capital Management, a Washington, DC-based hedge fund specializing in distressed debt. He was previously Senior Advisor to the Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy at the U.S. Department of State, where he was responsible for oil and gas issues in Iraq, Turkey, Russia, and the eastern Mediterranean. Prior to that, he was a foreign policy advisor on Senator Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and a program coordinator for the Near East South Asia Center at the U.S. Department of Defense, working in more than ten Middle Eastern countries. He has also held appointments at the World Bank, Baker Botts, LLP, and the NYU Center on Law and Security. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science summa cum laude from Emory University and a juris doctor from New York University School of Law.