In 2003, the Right Honorable Lord George Robertson of Port Ellen completed a stellar career in public service, culminating at the highest levels of the Government of the United Kingdom and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In 2024 UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer named him to lead the Strategic Defence Review. In this role, he headed the review with General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill. The Review provides the first comprehensive review of UK Defence in 25 years and has been praised as a serious overhaul for deterrence and defence in an increasingly complex security landscape.

Lord Robertson began his career as an official of the General, Municipal and Boilermakers' Union, responsible for the Scottish Whisky industry in 1968. After a decade of service, he was elected as a Labor Party representative to the House of Commons for Hamilton and Hamilton South at the age of 32. He earned a reputation as a focused and committed public servant, resulting in his five-time reelection. His service and leadership during the Maastricht Treaty ratification merited his selection as joint Parliamentarian of the Year in 1993. He was elected to the Shadow Cabinet and served as Principal Opposition Spokesman on Scotland (Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland).

After the 1997 UK general election, Prime Minister Blair named Lord Robertson as Secretary of State for Defence. During his tenure, he led the UK's military role in the Kosovo conflict. He also drove a highly regarded series of reforms and modernisations of British forces during his tenure and managed the UK participation in East Timor and in Operation Desert Fox.

In 1999 Lord Robertson was invited to serve as the tenth Secretary General of NATO and Chairman of the North Atlantic Council. In the four turbulent years that followed, he presided over the dramatic restructuring and enlargement of the Alliance to Central and Eastern Europe. He was the first leader of NATO to invoke the Article V mutual defense provision, responding to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. He oversaw the involvement of NATO in Afghanistan, managed the question of providing Turkey with defense assets as the war in Iraq approached, and helped to broker an end to the armed conflict within Macedonia in 2001 through the use of NATO peacekeepers.

In 2003 President George W. Bush presented Lord Robertson with the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor rarely presented to foreign nationals. In 2004 he received one of Britain's highest awards, the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George. In 2005 he was made one of the Knights of the Thistle, chosen personally by Her Majesty The Queen, the highest honor in the UK. He has the highest national honors from several countries, including Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands. Since 1997, he has served as a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council.

He was Joint President of Chatham House for a decade and currently serves on its Panel of Senior Advisors and its North American Committee. He is an Elder Brother of Trinity House, on the Councils of the European Council on Foreign Affairs and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. He is a Prime Ministerial appointee to the World War One Commemoration Advisory Board, a Trustee of the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust, and on the Board of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. He was Honorary Regimental Colonel of the London Scottish Regiment.

Lord Robertson was born in the village police station in Port Ellen, Isle of Islay, Scotland. He attended the University of Dundee and received a Masters Degree with honors in economics in 1968. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by the Universities of Dundee and Bradford, St Andrews, Glasgow Caledonian, Lincoln, Robert Gordon University, Stirling, Cranfield University (Royal Military College of Science), Baku State University of Azerbaijan, the Academy of Science of the Kyrgyzstan Republic, European University of Armenia, and the Romanian National School of Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He resides in Scotland and London.

Lord Peach was the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to the Western Balkans from December 2021 to March 2025.

Previously Lord Peach was the 32nd Chairman of the Military Committee of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the most senior and longest standing military structure in the Alliance.

Air Chief Marshal Peach was NATO’s most senior military officer and the Military Adviser to the Secretary General and the North Atlantic Council. In addition, he was the UK’s most senior serving officer.

He was educated in the West Midlands, attended the University of Sheffield (BA), University of Cambridge (MPhil in International Law and International Relations), RAF Staff College and the Joint Services Command and Staff College (HCSC). He holds 4 honorary Doctorates from UK Universities: Hull, Kingston, Sheffield and Loughborough, in Technology and Letters (DTech, DLitt).

Commissioned into the Royal Air Force in 1974, Lord Peach qualified as a nuclear, weapons and electronic warfare instructor.

Operational service includes Belize, Hong Kong and Germany in the 1980s. After several staff tours he was Air Commander (Forward) in headquarters for the Kosovo Force (KFOR) (NATO) in Kosovo and was Deputy Senior British Military Adviser in US HQ Central Command 2001 to 2002.

Lord Peach was Director General Intelligence Collection in the Ministry of Defence 2003 to 2006 and Chief of Defence Intelligence and Deputy Chairman of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee 2006 to 2009, where he held the UK seat at the NATO Intelligence Board. He held the appointment of Chief of Joint Operations at Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) from March 2009 to December 2011, commanding all UK Force Elements in support of NATO operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

He was then the first Commander of the UK Joint Forces Command from December 2011 to April 2013. He was Vice Chief of the Defence Staff from May 2013 to May 2016 and was responsible for all UK military personnel in NATO. He was Chief of the Defence Staff from July 2016 to June 2018 and assumed the role of Chairman of the Military Committee of NATO in June 2018, his fourth four-star appointment.

Lord Peach is a Fellow of the Royal College of Defence Studies, an Honorary Fellow of the Downing College Cambridge and Royal Institute of Navigation. He was knighted by HM The Queen (KCB) in 2009, became a Knight Grand Cross of the British Empire (GBE) in 2016. Lord Peach was appointed by HM The King as a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (KG) in 2024. He became a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords in November 2022.

Lord Peach is married with 2 children.

Michael Clarke is a visiting professor at King's College London and the University of Exeter. He was founding director of the Centre for Defence Studies, and then the International Policy Institute, both at King's College London, before becoming director general of the Royal United Services Institute.

He has been a specialist adviser to several parliamentary committees continually since 1997, latterly with parliament's Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. He has previously been a member of the Chief of Defence Staff's advisory board and the prime minister's National Security Forum.

He is a distinguished fellow at RUSI, and a fellow of KCL, the University of Aberystwyth and the Royal College of Defence Studies.

His books include The Challenge of Defending Britain (2019), Britain's Persuaders: Soft Power in a Hard World (with Helen Ramscar, 2022), and Great British Commanders: Leadership, Strategy and Luck (2024).

Jay Janzen is a StratCom professional with over two decades of multinational and military experience. Prior to joining SHAPE as the Director of the Communications Division, Jay was a Brigadier-General in the Canadian Armed Forces, where he led efforts to enhance strategic communication and military public affairs capabilities. He has extensive operation experience and in 2012 he became the Chief of Media Operations at SHAPE. He was awarded the NATO Meritorious Service Medal for his role in communicating NATO’s response to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Mark Laity has been involved with the media and StratCom for over four decades, first as a journalist, mostly with the BBC, then in a variety of posts as a spokesman & senior manager for NATO. Within NATO he was a leading driver for the development of StratCom within the Alliance, nicknamed ‘Mr StratCom’. Upon retirement from NATO he co-founded the StratCom Academy, providing training, education and consultancy services within the security area. Until December 2020 he was the first Director of the Communications Division at SHAPE and was largely responsible for the creation of the division that, along with the new military policy of which he was a primary author, represented a step change in the military handling of StratCom.

He joined NATO as Special Adviser to the Secretary General of NATO, Lord Robertson, & NATO’s Deputy Spokesman.

Penny Mordaunt was a British Parliamentarian for 14 years, holding nine ministerial roles, four in Cabinet. She now works with a portfolio of global organisations to promote prosperity and security.

She works with charitable and philanthropic endeavour demonstrating Britain’s capacity as a force for good in the world, and to help people across the UK improve their community.

CAPT (N) Larsson currently holds the position as Defence Attaché to London and Dublin. Before that he served as Chief Strategic Planning Group for NATO Integration at the Swedish Armed Forces HQ and between 2016 and 2020 he was assigned as Naval and Assistant Defence Attaché in Washington DC. During this period he also served as non-resident Defence Attaché in Mexico.

Stefan Larsson was born on the 30th of April 1964 in Helsingborg, Sweden. He joined the Navy in 1984 as a conscript and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1987, to be commissioned as Sub Lieutenant.

His record of education includes the Swedish Naval War College (Lieutenant, 1993), the Swedish Defence University: Staff Officers Programme (Lieutenant Commander, 1998) and Advanced Technical Programme (Commander, 2005). In 2009 he was selected for the US Naval War College, where he graduated from the Naval Command College in June 2010. He also has attended the United Nations Staff Officers Course, UNSOC in 2011.

After graduation from the Naval Academy he served as a Surface Warfare Officer in various positions on different types of Fast Patrol Boats and Fast Attack Crafts for more than a decade. In 1999 he was appointed Commanding Officer on HSwMS Halmstad (Norrkoping class FAC), a position he held for two years.

Following the years at sea, he has served at the Armed Forces Headquarters for many years. At the Naval Department he served as Chief of the Surface Warfare branch, which among other duties included management of the Visby class project. He has also been assigned to the Supreme Commander Staff several times and to the Maritime Component Command as ACOS M5 as well as the Navy Department as Chief of Plans. He served as Chief of Section for Long Term Strategic Planning at the Policy and Plans Department between 2020 and 2023.

In 2011-2012 he was deployed to KFOR as mentor and advisor to the Kosovo Security Forces. 

Stefan Larsson is a member of the Royal Society of Naval Sciences (one of the nine Royal Academies founded in 1771), and has been an active board member where he was in charge of the Strategy, Operations and Tactics Science branch. He is also a member of the Naval Officers Club in Stockholm.

Stefan Larsson is married to Berit and they have two children, Jacob born in 1998 and Julia born in 2001. They live in Stockholm and have a summer cottage in the Stockholm archipelago. When off-duty he enjoys to play golf and spend time with his family in the archipelago including boating and sometimes fishing.

He speaks English fluently and has studied French in school.

Stefan Larsson has the following decorations: - Armed Forces Conscript Medal - 2nd Surface Warfare Flotilla Memorial medal - Armed Forces International Service medal - NATO Non-Article 5 medal for the Balkans (KFOR) - US Legion of Merit Officers Grade

Upon graduation from the US Naval War College he was awarded the Robert E Bateman Award, 1st Honorable Mentioning. 

Simon is Minister-Counsellor for Political and Public Affairs at the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom. He previously held diplomatic postings at the Embassy of Canada to the Netherlands, where he covered bilateral affairs and international courts and tribunals, and at the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations in New York, where he chaired the Friends of Women and Peace and Security, the Friends of Children and Armed Conflict, and drafted the Vancouver Principles on Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers.

At Global Affairs Canada, Simon worked in a range of policy roles spanning human rights, NATO affairs, Afghanistan, continental defence, and non-proliferation and disarmament. Before joining government, Simon worked at the International Policy Institute at King’s College London, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in
Monterey, California.

He earned his PhD in Political Science at Columbia University as a Trudeau Scholar and was a pre-doctoral fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He
holds an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and undergraduate degrees in Political Science from McGill University and Sciences Po Paris. Outside work and school, he is a poor skier, a lousy surfer, a terrible runner, and an amateur photographer

James Langan is the military strategist for the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and a serving Royal Air Force officer with operational experience in Afghanistan, Sudan, the Gulf, and Iraq/Syria counter ISIS operations. He previously served as the Ministry of Defence’s Chief Information Operations Instructor, specialising in influence, targeting and StratCom. He deployed as Commanding Officer of the UK Combat Camera Team during the Kabul evacuation; him and his colleague Ben Shread’s work, was later featured in the BAFTA‑nominated Channel 4 three‑part series Evacuation.

Prior to military service, he worked as a commodities trader specialising in European energy markets. His research focuses on geoeconomics, hybrid warfare, deterrence, and the strategic communication consequences of attacks on critical infrastructure. He holds a BA in International Relations from Staffordshire University, an MPhil in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology (SST) Centre and the Lord Palmerston Adjunct Fellow in Grey-Zone Deterrence and Strategic Statecraft at the Council on Geostrategy.