Adam was born in London. He grew up between England and Heidelberg Germany. Having received his BA in Economics from King’s College Cambridge in the summer of 1989, he had the good fortune to witness the end of the Cold War in Berlin, where he began his postgraduate studies. He went on to take his PhD from the London School of Economics. From 1996 to 2009 Adam taught at the University of Cambridge, where he was Reader in Modern History and Gurnee Hart fellow in History at Jesus College. After Cambridge, Adam was appointed to the Barton M. Biggs Professorship at Yale University, where he succeeded Paul Kennedy as the Director of International Security Studies. Adam joined Columbia’s history department in the summer of 2015. In February 2011 Adam served as Thomas Hawkins Johnson Visiting Professor in Military History at West Point. 

Adam is the author of several books. His first book, Statistics and the German State: the Making of Modern Economic Knowledge appeared in 2001, Wages of Destruction: the Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy was published in 2006, Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order 1916-1931 in 2014 and Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy in 2021. For these books Adam won the Leverhulme prize fellowship, the H-Soz-Kult Historisches Buch Prize, the Longman History Today Prize, the Wolfson Prize and the LA Times History Prize. He was shortlisted for the Kirkus review, Duff Cooper and Hessel Tiltman prize and his books have featured in the book of the year lists of the Financial Times, LA Times, Kirkus Review, Foreign Affairs and The Economist. Adam’s books have been translated into eleven languages. 

Adam has appeared on PBS Television, BBC Radio, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, the History Channel, Swiss and French television. 
He has written and reviewed for numerous publication including the Financial Times, The Guardian, the New York Times, Die Zeit, Spiegel, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

From 2001-2010, Dewi Fortuna Anwar was Deputy for Social Sciences and Humanities, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI). From 2010-2017, she served as a Deputy Secretary to the Vice President of the Republic of Indonesia. She was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), NTU, Singapore in 2017/2018, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University in 2007. She has written widely on Indonesias foreign policy, and ASEAN regional political and security issues. 

Dewi Fortuna Anwar sits and has sat in a number of national and international advisory boards i.a. Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) since 2019, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) from 2010-2020, and the UN Secretary General Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters from 2008-2012. She obtained her PhD from Monash University, Melbourne, while her M.A. and B.A. (Hons) were from SOAS, University of London.

James' book The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age, was named an Amazon book of the year and short-listed as FT / McKinsey business book of the year. He is a distinguished visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He was previously the Singapore-based Executive Director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in Asia, where he led the organisation of the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit, the region's most important annual meeting of defence leaders. He was also an Associate Professor in Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School, Asia's leading school of public policy.

James spent ten years as a journalist and foreign correspondent, notably for the Financial Times, where he was both Mumbai Bureau Chief and Comment Editor. He is currently a columnist for Foreign Policy, and writes for publications ranging from the Financial Times to the New York Times. He previously worked as a senior advisor in the UK Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, under Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. He has worked for various think tanks in London and Washington DC, and spent several years living in America, initially as a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.  

Alicia is currently Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and member of the advisory board of Berlin-based China think-tank MERICS. Finally, she is advisor to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s research arm (HKIMR) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as well as a member of the board of the Hong Kong Forum and co-founder of Bright Hong Kong.

In previous years, Alicia held the following positions: Chief Economist for Emerging Markets at Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), Member of the Asian Research Program at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), Head of the International Economy Division of the Bank of Spain, Member of the Counsel to the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, Head of Emerging Economies at the Research Department at Banco Santander, and Economist at the International Monetary Fund. In addition, Alicia has always combines her professional career with academia, having served as visiting Professor for John Hopkins University, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai and Carlos III University in Madrid.

Alicia holds a PhD in Economics from George Washington University and has published extensively in refereed journals and books. Alicia is also very active in international media (Bloomberg and CNBC among others) as well as social media (Twitter, LinkedIn and Weibo). As recognition of her leadership thoughts, Alicia has recently been nominated TOP Voices in Economy and Finance by LinkedIn . 

Dr. Kang is the first woman appointed to this post in the nation's history, endeavoring to garner global support for South Korea's initiative to engage with North Korea towards lasting peace and complete denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. She previously held key leadership roles at the United Nations, including as Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, and Senior Advisor on Policy to Secretary-General António Guterres.

Before joining the United Nations, Dr. Kang held various positions in South Korea's Foreign Ministry, specializing in multilateral affairs and intergovernmental organizations. Among others, she served as Minister at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations, during which she chaired the 48th and 49th sessions of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Furthermore, she spearheaded efforts to highlight women with disabilities in the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Dr. Kang graduated from Yonsei University in Korea, with a BA degree in political science and diplomacy, and holds MA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the United States. Her doctorate work was in the field of international and intercultural communication. Dr. Kang served as Distinguished Professor Emeritus from Ewha Womans University and is currently Distinguished Professor at the Institute for Global Engagement & Empowerment, Yonsei University.

He has published four books since 2018, mostly focused on geopolitics, China, Russia, and technology. Bruno holds a doctorate in Political Science from Harvard University and has recently held fellowships at Renmin University in China and the Hudson Institute. Since 2020, he is a fellow at the Wilfried Martens Centre in Brussels, and, since 2022, a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. His latest book, Geopolitics for the End Time, was published in September 2021. He specialises in technology policy, the European Union, and Chinese and Russian foreign policy.

Prior to joining GMF, she was the acting team leader and coordinator for the EU's Asia-Pacific Research and Advice Network (APRAN), which supports EU policymakers on issues concerning the Asia-Pacific. She also led the Global Orders program at the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. Mohan holds a PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin and received her master's degree from the London School of Economics. She was a non-resident fellow at Carnegie India, an Asian Forum for Global Governance Fellow, and a 2017 Raisina Young Fellow. She has published widely on Indian foreign and security policy, EU-Asia relations, Germany-India ties, and maritime security in the Indo-Pacific, and is a frequent commentator for European and Indian media including NZZ, The Hindu, The Wire and Deutsche Welle.

She is a leading authority on a wide range of economic policy issues such as corporate governance, tax guidelines, diversity, education, trade and innovation. She sits on several Government advisory panels, including Prime Minister Kishida's panel on "the New Form of Capitalism". Yumiko Murakami has an MBA from Harvard Business School, MA from Stanford University and BA from Sophia University.

Qing has 10 years' experience covering political and economic stories with a cross-border perspective and a human-centered approach. She currently leads The Weirdo Podcast, a popular Chinese language podcast founded in 2019 and has attracted millions of young subscribers. She is also an active participant in Chinese debates on social justice, feminism and globalization. She currently has one million followers on Weibo, the equivalent of twitter in China, where her influence is recognized her influence with multiple awards, including "top 100 young thinkers" and "top 10 young women influencers".

Before joining CCG in October 2022, he worked, in China and Europe, for 11 years at Xinhua News Agency, China's state news agency. He received many internal awards from Xinhua and the Chinese authorities. While at Xinhua, he founded Pekingnology, a China newsletter, as a personal project that he now continues to edit at CCG. Pekingnology now has over 14,000 subscribers and amassed over one and a half million page views in the year to date. He also edits The East is Read, another China newsletter with 10,000 subscribers, at CCG. The newsletters translate, contextualize, interpret, and summarize Chinese leaders' speeches, China's policy documents, and substantive and technical policy discussions mostly from within China.