Our People

Our Board

Christopher Wills

  • Christopher Wills served in the British Army in the 1970s. He subsequently moved into journalism, as the foreign correspondent for a Washington-based current affairs journal 1983-89, covering conflicts and politics in Afghanistan and Southern Africa. He has maintained an involvement in foreign affairs, as a consultant and a facilitator of political negotiations in both corporate and charitable organisations. His work in these areas led him to co-found Renova Associates LLP, now Earendel Associates Ltd.

    Since 2012, Christopher has chaired a London-based family charitable trust, which supports programmes on a wide range of social issues. He farms in Hampshire, with extensive knowledge of conservation and environmental issues.

Guy Spindler

  • Guy Spindler began his career in the City, specialising in Export Finance to North Africa and then French corporate banking. He joined the British foreign service in 1987. After learning Russian, he was posted to Moscow 1989-1992, where he witnessed at close quarters the transition from the Soviet Union to the CIS; and, from the Economic Section, the FSU states’ foreign debt negotations, and Russia’s successful applications to join the international financial institutions. He specialised thereafter in international risk and security issues, including postings to Pretoria, Warsaw and New Delhi, before a five-year spell heading the African directorate in London.

    Since leaving government service in 2017, Guy has held advisory roles to public and private sector clients both in the UK and overseas. He co-founded an Africa advisory company, and in 2019 Renova Associates LLP, now Earendel Associates Ltd, to make the insights of Earendel’s unique network of experts available to private as well as public sector leaders.

Darrel Sheinman

  • Darrel is an award winning entrepreneur. After a career as a financial and commodities derivatives trader with blue chip banks including Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Societe Generale, as well as an independent trader on various futures exchanges, he founded Pole Star Global, the world’s leading maritime electronic surveillance system. During this time he was a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year (Ernst & Young) and the company was listed in the UK’s Tech Track list of 100 fastest growing companies on four occasions. More recently, he has founded Gearbox Records Ltd, the UK’s leading vinyl record label with technical production house, where he has created a revolutionary turntable which is being recognised as a design icon. His strong entrepreneurial, financial and corporate background, combined with experience in the field as a maritime security professional, has meant he is in demand for advisory and board roles. In this capacity, he has served on the Council of the Royal Geographical Society (where he is a Fellow), The Department for Trade and Industry Energy Board (then BERR), several venture capital trust boards, and a medical vision screening board.

Ian Baharie

  • Ian Baharie spend 34 in the British Foreign Service, most of it deployed in the Middle East and Africa. Following his retirement in 2016 he has worked extensively in international campaigning, including for his own company. He has combined that with a series of roles in the third sector, again focused in the Middle East and Africa. He is director of several companies delivering campaign planning and execution, OSINT or strategic advice.

    An Arabist, Ian served in Egypt, the UAE, Jerusalem, twice in Riyadh and several times in Iraq including a year as head of the British Military Liaison Office and Senior Coalition Representative on the National Security Committee.

Laura Brady

  • Laura Brady read PPE at Oriel College Oxford before joining the Foreign Office in 1989. She initially focussed on Africa, reporting particularly on the Ethiopian Civil War and then the transition to democracy in South Africa, interacting with the ANC as they prepared to take power.

    She then learned Russian, ahead of a posting to Moscow 1993-1996. There she specialised in the Russian economy, specifically agriculture, the military industrial complex and energy, including the growing use of oil and gas exports as an instrument of Russian foreign policy. She maintained her focus on Russia on her return to London before holding a regional southern Africa role from the British High Commission in Pretoria.

    With her family, Laura then lived successively in British Missions in Warsaw and New Delhi. She has since worked in the consultancy sector, focussing on Russian influence in Africa, including the activities of Wagner and the role its information campaigns have played in successful state capture by Russia.

Ian Cohen

  • Ian has held a variety of senior financial markets and third sector roles across the UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

    Previously Ian was Group COO and acting CEO of the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), a UK/US/Canada based charity and UK bank / investment manager charged with distributing charitable funds to 135 nations.  Prior to joining CAF Ian was COO and Deputy CEO of OSTC, a UK financial trading company also operating in China, Hong Kong, Russia, Poland and India.

    Ian spent 15 years with HSBC where he held a variety of roles including Chairman for HSBC Securities in Taiwan and Singapore, as Equities Global Chief Strategy Officer and COO for Asia, and as board director for HSBC Egypt and India.

    He has held a variety of industry wide roles as committee chair for ASIFMA, AFME/LIBA, and as board member of NYSE/Euronext/Smartpool, EOS, LiquidityHub and Quorum 15.

    Ian joined HSBC from BCS Group Plc, where he was a founding member and CEO, and CEO of Jiway, the UK/Sweden joint venture Stock Exchange, and formerly held positions with Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital and Clearstream.

    Ian is presently a trustee, advisor and supporter of several charities.

Chris Donnelly CMG TD

  • As a graduate of Manchester University in Russian Studies and reserve officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps, Chris Donnelly helped to establish, and later headed, the British Army’s Soviet Studies Research Centre at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. From here he educated a generation of officers and, latterly, political leaders to understand the different mentalities of their potential opponents.

    Between 1989-2003, as Special Adviser to four NATO Secretaries General, he was closely involved in dealing with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the reform of the newly emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, helping to bring many of them into NATO and the EU.

    He left NATO in 2003 to set up and run the UK Defence Academy’s Advanced Research and Assessment Group, looking into new security challenges to the UK. In 2010 he left the Senior Civil Service to become co-Founder of the Institute for Statecraft, dealing specifically with how to transform national institutions so that they are fit for today’s rapidly changing global environment. He stepped down as Director of the Institute in February 2020.

    Chris Donnelly has produced three books as well as many articles on questions of defence, security, strategy and statecraft. He has held appointments as Specialist Adviser to three UK Defence Secretaries (both Labour and Conservative) and was a member of PM Margaret Thatcher’s Soviet advisory team from 1983-9. Since leaving government employ, he has served as Specialist Adviser both on the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee and on the Defence Committee. From 2015-8 he sat on the official team responsible for scrutinizing the reform of the UK’s Reserve Forces for the Defence Secretary.

Graham Cundy

  • Graham Cundy brings more than three decades of experience spanning defence, national security, government, and strategic advisory work. His early career was spent in specialist military roles supporting UK and allied strategic objectives, with operational and policy responsibilities in some of the world’s most complex and contested environments. This experience continues to shape his understanding of risk, decision-making under pressure, and the realities that sit behind contemporary security challenges.

    Following his transition from uniformed service, Graham held senior roles within HM Government, working on national security policy, counter-extremism, regulatory intervention, and resilience. He has led multidisciplinary teams combining intelligence, legal, and strategic communications capabilities to address systemic risk in politically sensitive and high-impact contexts, both domestically and internationally.

    Graham now leads in maintaining and developing the network of Associates, relationships and corporate partnerships which enables Earendel's support to corporate leaders, as they confront geopolitical disruption, hybrid threats, and the implications of a rapidly shifting global order.

Dr. Rebecca Harding

  • Dr. Rebecca Harding is CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and a leading authority on international trade economics. She is a Director of Sovereign Resilience Finance and serves in strategic advisory roles including Chief Economic Adviser to the Defence Security and Resilience Bank Development Group.

    Through her strategic advisory business, Rebeccanomics, she specializes in sustainable trade, digital trade and defence and security finance. In 2022 she received the "Net Zero Entrepreneur of the Year" award at the Scale-up Group's Enterprise Awards.

    Harding has built three data-driven technology businesses in digital trade and ESG. Her distinguished academic career includes positions as Senior Research Fellow at the British Foreign Policy Group, Head of Corporate Research at Deloitte, and Senior Fellow at London Business School. She previously served as Chief Economist at the Work Foundation and at UK Finance, and has advised the Treasury Select Committee and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Entrepreneurship. She is a member of the Alphen Group, an Associate at Earendel Associates and an Associate Partner of T3i Partners. She authored "The World at Economic War: How to Rebuild Security in a Weaponized Global Economy" (2025) which was in Martin Wolf’s top books of 2025 list in the Financial Times. Additionally she has co-authored several influential books on trade and geostrategy, including “The Weaponization of Trade: the Great Unbalancing of Politics and Economics” in 2017. Her media presence includes regular appearances on BBC, Bloomberg, Sky News, and CNBC.

Matthew Henderson

  • After 8 years spent studying China and the Chinese language at the Universities of Cambridge, Peking and Oxford, Matthew Henderson joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1986. He worked for 29 years as a career diplomat, including postings in Hong Kong and Beijing, and for much of this time was involved in the advancement of British interests, and those of its allies and partners, in regard to East Asian security and stability. In Hong Kong he was involved in the work of the Joint Liaison Group, a bilateral body set up after the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in order to facilitate the handover of Hong Kong to China. For 4 years in Beijing he worked on China’s external relations, while conducting extensive study travel in remote provincial areas. From university and his time working for the FCO overseas and with senior officials in the UK Government and from partner states, he developed a range of cultural, linguistic, analytical and political skills which have been the basis for his role as an East Asian specialist since leaving government employment in 2015. Since then he has held various consultancy roles, including in corporate security and think tanks, largely focusing on East, Central and South-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific. He has also regularly written and spoken on China and its regional and global ambitions for media in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere. Matthew has a strong interest in Mongolia and its relations with China, Russia and the West, developed through many private visits to northern Mongolia over 30 years.

John Lough

  • John Lough has 35 years’ experience of studying Russia and its neighbourhood. He was the first NATO official to be based in Moscow (1995-98) and is the author of ‘Germany’s Russia Problem’ (2021). He is an Associate Fellow with the Russia & Eurasia Programme at Chatham House and regularly writes and comments on Russian and Ukrainian affairs.

    From 2016 to 2021, he ran his own consultancy business advising clients on a wide range of issues related to Russia and Eastern Europe.

    From 2008 to 2016, he ran the Russia & CIS practice at BGR Gabara (later Gabara Strategies), a London-based public affairs company.

    He is a regular commentator on Russian and Ukrainian affairs and has written extensively on a wide range of security and governance issues in the region.

    From 2003 to 2008, he was as an international affairs adviser at TNK-BP, Russia’s third largest oil company. From 2001 to 2003, he was Managing Director of The PBN Company’s London office.

    He spent six years with NATO (1995-2001) and was the first NATO official to be based in Moscow (1995-1998).

    From 1989 to 1995, he was a senior lecturer at the Soviet Studies (later Conflict Studies) Research Centre.

    He studied Russian and German at Cambridge University and obtained a diploma in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center.

Irene Martínez Fernández

  • Irene is a researcher in international relations and geoeconomics. She is currently senior lecturer at Blanquerna University in Barcelona and guest lecturer at NATO Defence College in Rome. She was previously a lecturer at IBA University in Karachi and the executive coordinator of the Brussels Office of Real Instituto Elcano. She has been a researcher in several think tanks in Europe and Asia and is a regular contributor in media outlets and in international congresses.

    Prior to her work in the public sector, Irene was a consultant for multilateral financing projects in North Africa and Asia, working on European-funded projects. She has experience in the private sector working in internationalisation, strategic development and foreign trade. She has lived in several countries in East and South Asia, the Middle East and Europe, and speaks English, French, Spanish, German and Arabic fluently. She is working on her Persian, Korean and Urdu skills.

Jeff McCausland

  • Jeff McCausland is the founder and CEO of Diamond6 Leadership and Strategy, LLC. He serves as a Visiting Professor of International Security Affairs at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Jeff is a former Distinguished Visiting and Minerva Chairholder at the United States Army War College. He is a retired U.S. Army Colonel, holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and is a West Point graduate. His military assignments included: the Pentagon; command of an artillery battalion during the Gulf War; Dean of the Army War College; and National Security Council Staff, the White House during the Kosovo crisis.

    Since retiring from the military Jeff has served as a Chaired Professor of Leadership at the U.S. Naval Academy and subsequently a Visiting Professor at the Penn State Graduate School of International Affairs. He has been a national security consultant for CBS radio and television since 2003 and is also a Senior Fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the Naval Academy. Jeff has published and lectured broadly—both in the United States and over twenty-five foreign countries—on national security affairs, NATO, the wars in Afghanistan/Iraq, the Ukraine War, and leadership development. He is the author of a recent book, Battle Tested! Gettysburg Leadership Lessons for 21st Century Leaders.

Shiany Pérez-Cheng

  • Shiany Pérez-Cheng is a Bachelor of Law (LLB) graduate at the University of Salamanca in Spain. She holds a master’s degree (MA) in International Relations by the University of Kent in Canterbury, United Kingdom, and an Advanced Studies Diploma (pre-doc) in EU Law and Politics, by the University of Salamanca. She was awarded with Taiwan National Science Council´s Summer Program grant for postgrand researchers at Academia Sinica´s Institute of European and American Studies as hosting institution, and with the Taiwan Fellowship at the National Taiwan University´s Department of Political Sciences as host institution. During her research visits, Ms. Pérez-Cheng has been invited by several Taiwanese academic institutions to discuss issues concerning security and defense in the Indo-Pacific, and China´s cognitive warfare. She has also lectured in, now extinguished, Taiwan Studies at the master program in East Asia Studies, University of Salamanca. And as an analyst on China´s propaganda, disinformation, and influence operations Ms. Pérez-Cheng has worked in projects like Freedom House´s Beijing global media reach out.

Nico de Pedro

  • Nico de Pedro was Head of Research and a Senior Fellow at The Institute for Statecraft. He has contributed to understanding by Euro-Atlantic policy communities of the Russian strategic challenge, Eurasian geopolitics and hybrid threats. Nico has supported Special Committees and Commissions at the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the Parliament of Spain. He has been a member of several EOMs of the OSCE in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Ukraine. Furthermore, Nico has carried out field research throughout the Central Asian region, Xinjiang and India, including a three-years academic stay in Kazakhstan. He was also a member of the Experts Pool on Russia at the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) and of the EU-Russia Experts Network (EUREN). He is an associate lecturer at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) and at the Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid. He is a columnist with El Español.

Paul Schulte

  • Paul Schulte is a former senior British career civil servant, now working in academia.

    After a Social Science degree at the London School of Economics, he joined the UK Defence Ministry, working successively on Northern Ireland Internal Security and Counter Terrorism, Human Rights and Economic Policies, Middle Eastern Defence Commitments, Services Health Policy, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Gulf War Syndrome, followed by Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, and Conventional Arms Control.

    He was MODUK Director of Proliferation and Arms Control, ex officio British Commissioner on the two UN Commissions for Iraqi Disarmament (UNSCOM and UNMOVIC), Director of Defence Organisation for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, founding Head of the U.K.’s Interdepartmental Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit, and Chief MoD Speechwriter for two Defence Secretaries.

    He has also been a member of the Senior Officers Course at the Royal College of Defence Studies, an International Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Centre, Senior Visiting Fellow at the Advanced Research and Assessment Group of the UK Defence Academy and at the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Program, and a practising group psychotherapist.

    After official retirement and various other academic and think tank affiliations, he is now an Honorary Professor at Birmingham University, a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Science and Security King’s College London, and a member of the Alphen Group of multinational strategic experts.

James Sherr

  • James Sherr is a Senior Fellow of the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) in Tallinn and an Associate Fellow (and former Head) of the Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Programme. Between 1993 and 2012, he was a member of the Social Studies Faculty of Oxford University, a Senior Lecturer/Fellow of the Conflict Studies Research Centre of the UK Ministry of Defence (1995- 2008) and Director of Studies of the Royal United Services Institute (1983-85). Additionally, he is a Visiting Fellow of the Razumkov Centre in Kyiv.

    His latest publication (with Igor Gretskiy) is Why Russia Went to War. Other recent ICDS publications include, Nothing New Under the Sun: Continuity and Change in Russia’s Policy Towards Ukraine and (with Kaarel Kullamaa) Russia’s Orthodox Church: Faith, Power and Conquest. Currently, he is writing his third book, Waging War and Friendship: Russia and Ukraine since 1991.

Charles Stewart-Smith

  • Charles Stewart-Smith has been advising leadership teams at the highest level for more than thirty years. Following a career in television news at the BBC and ITN, where he became Editor of News at Ten, Charles set up and grew a series of companies, specialising in high-profile reputation and crisis management, as well as complex behaviour change campaigns.

    His clients have ranged from NatWest and Lloyd's of London to McDonald's, Tesco, Facebook and Google. In government, one of his key roles was with the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, where he developed its use of communications in counter-radicalisation.

    He has also served as a Trustee of a number of international NGOs, most recently as an independent trustee of the Disasters Emergency Committee, where he played a key role in increasing donations from the digital and corporate sectors. This contributed to raising almost half a billion pounds for Ukraine, with 50 per cent coming from corporates, compared with previous levels of around 10 per cent.

Celia Szusterman

  • Celia Szusterman was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and graduated in Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires. She first came to the UK on a British Council scholarship to do an MA in Social Policy Administration at the University of Essex. In 1986 she completed her D.Phil in Politics at the University of Oxford. From 1982 until 2011 she taught Latin American Studies in the School of Social Studies, Humanities and Languages, and at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, and became Course Leader for the MA in Economic and Governmental Reform at the University of Westminster. From 2011 till 2022 she was Director of the Latin American Programme at the Institute for Statecraft. Celia has been an Associate Fellow of the Institute for the Americas, UCL and Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford until 2019. She is a former Associate Fellow at Chatham House and Argentine Research Fellow and Director of the Argentine Studies Programme at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

    Celia has been external academic adviser to UNIDO (Vienna), and worked as an analyst for Dresdner Kleinwort Benson (Wasserstein) and for the Economist Intelligence Unit.

    She is the author of Frondizi and the Politics of Developmentalism in Argentina, 1955-1962 (Macmillan, 1996). Her research interests focus on the links between development and democracy in Latin America, with a specific focus on Argentina and El Salvador. She was on the UK Board of Pro-Mujer, a microfinance organisation helping poor women in Latin America and is a Trustee for the Association of Argentine Professionals in the UK. She has commented on Latin American matters for BBC radio and TV, Al Jazeera and CNN and has contributed on Dutch, French, Austrian, South African and Argentine radio and TV on Latin American matters and US – Latin America relations.

Mike Wigston

  • Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston retired as Chief of the Air Staff in 2023, after a 37 year career in the Royal Air Force.

    Commissioned on a University Cadetship in 1986, studying Engineering Science at Oriel College Oxford, Sir Mike completed his pilot training in 1992 on the Tornado GR1. His frontline experience included: operational deployments enforcing the no-fly zones in Iraq; command of 12(Bomber) Squadron, flying the Tornado GR4; and appointments in operational headquarters in Qatar, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

    In January 2015, he became Administrator of the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia and Commander British Forces Cyprus, responsible for the civil governance of the Sovereign Base Areas and command of British forces based permanently in Cyprus.

    Senior Royal Air Force positions included: Assistant Chief of the Air Staff, responsible for the strategic coherence of the Royal Air Force and oversight of the 2018 RAF100 centenary programme; and Deputy Commander Capability, delivering all aspects of Royal Air Force capability including people, equipment, infrastructure and training.

    As Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Mike set the strategic direction for the Royal Air Force, including oversight of global air and space operations. He led through the pandemic and over a period when the Royal Air Force was more engaged and busier than at any time in a generation: protecting the UK’s skies and space; the air evacuations from Kabul and Sudan; the continuing fight against violent extremists in Iraq and Syria; and bolstering NATO and supporting Ukraine, in the face of Russian aggression.

    Sir Mike is a Visiting Professor at the Freeman Air and Space Power Institute, within King’s College London’s School of Security Studies.