Marco Arcieri is an Officer of the Southern Italy Hydrographic District Authority - MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT. Earlier to that, he has been working for the National Institute of Agriculture, a research institute of the MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE. In his professional experience he visited more than 40 Countries worldwide, in order to implement international research projects and attend various Workshops and Meetings, both as a key note speaker and/or as an invited guest. During his scientific career he produced various papers for peer reviewed Journals, dealing with issues regarding sustainable agriculture, water resources management and control of desertification. His research interests are focused on ET and crop water requirements assessment, water saving techniques and drought prediction by means of climatic data. He’s Vice President Honoraire of ICID and Chair of the ICID PERMANENT FINANCE COMMITTEE. Also, on behalf of ICID he’s a member of the Steering Committee of UN FAO Program WASAG - GLOBAL FRAMEWORK ON WATER SCARCITY and is a PERMANENT OBSERVER to UN Agencies FAO, IFAD and WMO.

Sasha has nearly 35 years of experience in international assistance and policy development in agriculture water and environment/natural resource management. Currently, she is the Deputy Director and Head of Water at the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), leading programs on sustainable land and water management and governance, data and information, One Health and anti-microbial resistance (AMR) in the environment, and integrated water resources management with linkages to climate, health, and food and nutrition security. She formerly served as Senior Advisor to the Minister (Administrator) at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and as Secretariat of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where she directed and managed international environmental health and water programs, strategized in the development of rules and guidelines on point-source and diffuse pollution controls for protecting health and the environment through the GEF Caribbean Wastewater Revolving Fund and the Millennium Challenge Corporation Cabo Verde Compact on sustainable water infrastructure financing. She is now on the Governing Boards of the World Water Council and the CGIAR’s Water Land Ecosystems, and UNEP Global Partnerships on nutrient and wastewater management, circular economy, and is implementing and supervising a substantial set of country projects. She published, sponsored and peer-reviewed extensively on international water issues, such as the UN World Water Development Reports, FAO-WHO Wastewater Reuse Guidelines for Agriculture, FAO reports on Agriculture-Nature Based Solutions, Wealth of Waste: The Economics of Wastewater Reuse, Desalination and Agriculture, Agriculture Water Quality Guidelines for China, and the OECD country Water Governance reviews.

An Italian and Swiss national, Volli Carucci is, since September 2021, the new Director for the Resilience & Food Systems Service of the Policy and Programme Division in WFP HQ. Volli has 30 years of working experience with the UN (25 with WFP) in the area of livelihood assets creation and resilience building. Volli is an Agronomist by background with consolidated experience in natural resources management, soil conservation and water harvesting, particularly in dry lands and degraded ecosystems. Volli has managed a major WFP livelihoods & resilience building programme for ecosystems rehabilitation in Ethiopia (the MERET programme) for over a decade and has been a contributor to the design of the Ethiopia Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). He worked as a Sr. Advisor in the Eastern and Central Africa regional bureau from 2006 to 2008, and then to HQ from mid-2008 to mid-2016 as the Chief of the Livelihood Assets Creation & Resilience Unit, contributing to reposition WFP in the area of Food Assistance for Assets, livelihoods, resilience, and partnerships with the RBA. From mid-2016 to mid-2021 he has been heading the Resilience & Livelihoods Unit in the West and Central Africa Regional Bureau – responsible for scaling up a major integrated resilience programme for the Sahel.

James joined IUCN in 2009 as the Water Management Advisor.  Previously he was based in Fiji at the Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission (SPC-GSD) as the Integrated Water Resource Management Adviser.  As Director of IUCN’s Global Water Programme, James is focused on working with a wide range of partners and stakeholders to advance water governance and management for people and nature.

He is an irrigation engineer with degrees in rural development, science and politics, irrigation engineering, and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering focussing on groundwater management in the Aral Sea Basin.  He has worked on water management for 20 years in over 25 countries worldwide and sits on the governance committee of the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol, the Board of the Alliance for Water Stewardship, the Board of the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, as a Technical Advisor to the Climate Bonds Initiative, serves on CDP’s Water Security Advisory Council and is a member of the Advisory Board to the Dutch Governments Valuing Water Initiative. In October 2020 he was selected as a Member of the European Commission's Platform on Sustainable Finance.

Marianne Kjellén (PhD) serves as Senior Water Advisor at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Working with the Water & Ocean Governance Programme in the Nature, Climate and Energy Team of the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, Marianne provides technical support to UNDP Country Offices and UNDP’s overall positioning on water issues.

Marianne has over twenty years of experience with water policy, development, and research, with field experience from Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Trained in economic geography, her research has focused on informal water provisioning, public-private partnerships, integrated water resources management, and stakeholder relations.

Mariet Verhoef-Cohen is President of Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) since 2014 and Past President of Soroptimist International. Recognised as an expert on the topic of water and how it impacts the lives of women and girls globally. She has represented WfWP at the World Water Council; at UN Water; in the Dushanbe International Advisory Committee for the Decade of Water and Sustainable development; in five World Water Fora; presented at Stockholm World Water Weeks and CSW’s in New York. Mariet is Vice-Chair of WASAG, the Global Framework on Water Security and Agriculture (FAO) and Board Member of Human Rights 2 Water. In her capacity as President of WfWP Mariet joined the SC for the ‘Water Dialogues for Results’ the Bonn conference, and organised 8 webinars and 2-day virtual conference held from Oct - Nov 2020 on the theme Women, Water, Climate: Tackling the Challenges”. Mariet was granted the Royal distinction of Officer in the Order of Orange Nassau in recognition of her ground-breaking voluntary work for Soroptimist International and WfWP and in January 2020, she was honoured with the Evolutionary Business Council Global Impact Award 2019.

Mohamed Manssouri is the Director of the FAO Investment Centre. He is an agricultural economist and an expert in agricultural and rural development, food security and poverty reduction. Mohamed was also Service Chief for Europe, Central Asia, North Africa, Near East, Latin America and the Caribbean. He first joined the FAO Investment Centre as a senior adviser in charge of quality enhancement, knowledge sharing and learning. He also coordinated FAO’s “Renewed Commitment to a Hunger-Free Horn of Africa” and led the development of resilience-building strategic plans and investment programmes in the Horn of Africa.

Prior to joining FAO, he was Country Director with IFAD, where he led the development and management of various country investment strategies and programmes in West and Central Africa, including Cape Verde, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Ghana, Niger, Republic of Congo. He also led several regional strategies and programmes in rural finance, community-driven development, conservation agriculture and policy development and dialogue (West Africa Rural Hub).

Within the scope of IFAD reform to enhance its development effectiveness, he led the preparation of IFAD’s Knowledge Management Strategy and other organizational change initiatives. He also served on the United Nations High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis, chaired by the UN Secretary-General. He also performed as a trainer in agricultural economics and gave lectures on University Roma III’s Master’s on Human Development and Food Security. He holds a BSc and an MSc from the Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environment Sciences in France (AgroParisTech) and native speaker of Arabic and French, with a working language of English, Spanish and Italian.