Emma Sky is the founding Director of Yale’s International Leadership Center. She is a lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs where she teaches great power competition and cooperation, global affairs, grand strategy and refugees, and Middle East politics. She is the author of the highly acclaimed The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq (2015) and In a Time of Monsters: Travelling in a Middle East in Revolt (2019).


Sky served as political advisor to the Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Iraq; as development advisor to the Commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan; as political advisor to the U.S. Security Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process; and as Governorate Coordinator of Kirkuk for the Coalition Provisional Authority. She also worked in the Palestinian territories for a decade, managing projects to develop Palestinian institutions and promoting co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Sky has also provided technical assistance on poverty elimination, human rights, justice public administration reform, security sector reform, and conflict resolution in the Middle East, South Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Jun Ma is a renowned environmentalist who is igniting critical conversations and change across China and serves as a director at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. This influential organization developed the first public database of water pollution information in China and brought together a coalition of Chinese NGOs to promote a global green supply chain by pushing large corporations to focus on the environmental performance of their suppliers. His book published in 1999, China’s Water Crisis, was China’s first major book on the subject of that nation’s environmental issues. In 2006, Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Dr. Binbin Wang is a well-respected climate activist and social scientist in China and was selected as Yale World Fellow in 2023. She is now the Associate Dean and Research Professor of Institute of Carbon Neutrality at Peking University and sitting in the core leadership team of the Institute. As a stubborn optimist, Dr. Wang has tracked the UNFCCC process since 2009 as a trusted witness, passionate advocate, creative expert, and multi-talented actionist. She brings extensive experience and cross-cut expertise on global climate governance and climate policy, strategic communication and multi-stakeholders cooperation working across media, NGO, UN, academia and private sectors. As the well-known influencer and super connecter, she is now accelerating bottom-up actions and joint efforts from China to the world for the global net-zero transition.

Zhouwei Diao is currently the network strategy execution manager of BP Pulse. An an environmental and climate practitioner, she possesses 10 years of experience in the energy sector, focusing on strategy development and implementation at global corporates. Over the past two years, she has been leading strategic partnership development with Chinese OEMs, developing internal operational management programs, and has led the development of BP Pulse’ EV public charging network strategy execution in UK. Zhouwei graduated from Yale School of the Environment with a Master of Science degree.