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.

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.  

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.

Yumiko 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 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".