Ms. Collins brings over 20 years of experience in communications, advocacy, and development, having served in several UN offices including New York, Geneva, Bangkok, and Vienna. She has worked as a gender focal point for the Department of Global Communications (DGC) and has experience with issues related to youth engagement, sustainable development, human rights, and peacebuilding.

Prior to joining the UN, Ms. Collins was an award-winning television and radio producer in New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Berlin, Türkiye and Iraq. She has also worked as a strategic partner manager for news partnerships at Facebook, where she focused on news integrity, news literacy, and building sustainable revenue models for media organizations.

Ms. Collins holds a Master of Science degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and a degree in political science and mass communications from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Mr. Stéphane Dujarric is the Spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary-General Mr. António Guterres. He was appointed as Spokesperson in February 2014 by then Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Stéphane had previously served as Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan from 2005 to 2006 and then Deputy Communications Director for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from 2006 to 2007.

Prior to his current appointment, Stéphane was Director of News and Media for the United Nations Department of Global Communications, a position that he held from 2011 to 2014. In that role, he oversaw all of the UN’s television, radio and photo operations, and coordinated the work of the main United Nations news sites, operating in eight languages. His division was responsible for the international press corps, as well as coverage of official UN meetings, producing written coverage for the media, delegations and the general public. Prior to this assignment, Stéphane was Director of Communications for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Stéphane was named Chief Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2005, after joining the United Nations in 2000 as an Associate Spokesman. Following Annan’s departure, Stéphane worked as Deputy Communications Director for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Prior to joining the United Nations, Stéphane worked for ABC News television for close to ten years in various capacities in the network’s New York City, London and Paris news bureaus. He traveled extensively on assignment to cover major stories throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Born in France, Dujarric has been living in the United States for the most part of the last 40 years. He is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and an alumnus of the CPD Summer Institute in Public Diplomacy.

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Wolfgang Petritsch is the President of the Austrian Institute of International Affairs and of the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation as well as Chair of the Herbert C. Kelman Institute for Interactive Conflict Transformation, Vienna-Jerusalem. In 2016 Wolfgang was a visiting professor at the universities of Vienna and UC Berkeley; 2013/14 he was the Joseph A. Schumpeter Fellow at Harvard University where he conducted research on humanitarian intervention. Wolfgang received his PhD in Southeastern European history from the University of Vienna. He was a post-Doc Fulbright scholar at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

From 1977 to 1983, Wolfgang was press secretary and deputy chief of cabinet, respectively, to Federal Chancellor Bruno Kreisky of Austria. In the 1980s, he was director of the Austrian Press and Information Service in New York and diplomatic Councilor at his country’s UN Mission. From 1993 to 1995, Wolfgang was charged by his government with the information campaign for Austria’s accession to the European Union.

In 1998/99, Wolfgang was the European Union’s Special Envoy and Chief Negotiator at the Kosovo peace talks in Rambouillet and Paris. Between 1999 and 2002, he was the International Community’s High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina in charge of the civilian implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords which ended the 1992–95 Bosnian war.

From 2002–2008 he was Austria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, the WTO, and the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva. As president of the UN Mine Ban Treaty from 2004 to 2006, Wolfgang chaired the 2005 Nairobi Summit for a Mine Free World. He co-negotiated the UN Cluster Munitions Ban Treaty 2007/08. From 2008 to 2013, he represented Austria at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Wolfgang has extensively published in domestic and international media. He is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, with an emphasis on the post-conflict region of Southeastern Europe, the EU and on humanitarian intervention. Wolfgang is i.a. the recipient of the European Award for Human Rights, Strasbourg 2007.

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