Labeeb M. Abboud is General Counsel and Senior Vice President, Business Development, of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, a non-profit organisation whose mission is to ensure the development of safe, effective, accessible, preventive HIV vaccines for use throughout the world.

Labeeb is a member of IAVI’s Senior Management Team, and is responsible for legal, intellectual property and risk management issues, as well as business development activities. He has experience in negotiating collaborations and licensing arrangements with academic institutions and biotech and pharmaceutical companies in the US, Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as joint ventures with a wide range of partners, including governmental entities. He also advises IAVI’s board of directors on governance issues. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Georgetown University Law Center.

Jonathan is an advocate of the High Court of South Africa and and a member of the Johannesburg Society of Advocates. He is also an honorary research fellow at the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (“Wits University”).

Until recently, he was a senior researcher and head of policy and research at South Africa’s SECTION27 (formerly known as the AIDS Law Project), where he worked from January 2002 to December 2011. After serving as the legal education and advice officer at the National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality from 1997 to 1999, he clerked for Justice O’Regan of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

He holds degrees in architecture and law from Wits University, as well as a masters in law from the University of Toronto that focused on TRIPS, South Africa’s Constitution and access to medicines for treating HIV infection.

From June 2009 to December 2011, Jonathan was a member of South Africa’s Medicines Control Council and chaired its expert legal committee. Until late 2007, Jonathan chaired the board of the Lesbian and Gay Equality Project.

Dr Alexandra Calmy is a medical doctor and head of Clinical Science the HIV/AIDS Unit, Infectious Disease Service, at Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland. She is also an advisor to the Médecins Sans Frontières Access to Medicines Campaign, and has published widely on the treatment of HIV and on issues in access to HIV medicines.

Dr. Shing Chang is the former Research and Development (R&D) Director at “Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative” (DNDi), a non-profit R&D organization based in Geneva. In this position, which he held from Oct 2007 until his retirement in May 2012, he was responsible for building DNDi’s project portfolio and developing partnerships to advance the discovery and development of new treatments for neglected diseases.

Shing has over 30 years of experience in pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, and has held senior management positions overseeing drug R&D in various therapeutic areas including antivirals and antibacterials.

Carlos Correa is a professor and the Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies on Industrial Property and Economics, at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. He was a member of the WHO’s Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation, and Public Health. He was also a member of the WHO’s Consultative Expert Working Group on Research & Development, which assessed innovative ways to finance and coordinate research and development for diseases disproportionately affecting developing countries. He previously represented Argentina as a delegate to international intellectual property negotiations, including during the negotiations of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) at the World Trade Organization, and also served as Under-secretary of State for Informatics and Development in Argentina. He is a lawyer and an economist who has a PhD from the University of Buenos Aires.

Nelson is the National Coordinator and CEO at NEPHAK. The main work at NEPHAK (National Empowerment Network for People living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya) is to provide committed, strategic and accountable leadership for the visibility and voice of people living with HIV and affected communities in health and development initiatives aimed at improving their lives and wellbeing.

Nelson also sits in a number of national health and HIV/TB coordinating bodies/forums and advisory boards (representing people living with HIV (PLHIV) and communities). In Kenya, he is a member of the Technical Working Group on Positive Health, Dignity and Prevention (PHDP), Steering Committee for the Mainstreaming of GIPA in the national response to HIV and AIDS, the National Health Sustainable Financing Committee and member of GFATM (Kenya) Country Coordinating Mechanism (CCM). At the regional and global level, Nelson is member of the Africa Regional Advisory Group (RAG) for the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, working group member for the Civil Society Capacity Building Fund, alternate Board member at UNITAID, as well as member of the Core/Working Group on Global Laboratories Initiative (GLI) at the Stop TB Partnership/WHO. He is trained social scientist and health/research advocate.

Dr Eun-Joo Min heads the Legal Development Section at the Arbitration and Mediation Centre of the World Intellectual Property Organization. Her current area of work covers development and implementation of alternative dispute resolution procedures, best-practices and guidelines, particularly in collaboration with stakeholders to ensure tailored, efficient dispute avoidance and resolution policies that may contribute to encouraging continuity in IP-based project development and management.

Prior to joining WIPO, Eun-joo taught international law and international economic law at the International Division and College of Law at Yonsei University. She holds a Ph.D. in law from Yonsei University in Seoul, a certificate degree in international law from the Graduate Institute of International Affairs in Geneva, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Michigan Law School.

Lita Nelsen is director of the Technology Licensing Office of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she has been for 25 years with a specialty in biotechnology licensing. She is a graduate of MIT and worked as a chemical engineer in industry prior to joining the TLO.

Lita has been an IP advisor to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and was a founding board member of MIHR (the Center for the Management of Intellectual Property for Health Research). She was a co-founder of Praxis, a non-profit company for training in technology transfer, and she received an MBE from Britain for her work on university technology transfer in the UK.

Achal Prabhala is a writer, researcher and activist on issues of intellectual property and access to medicines and knowledge. He previously worked in Johannesburg, South Africa, campaigning for access to educational materials, and currently serves on the board of the Centre for Internet & Society and on the advisory board of the Wikimedia Foundation. Achal received his degree in economics and public policy at Yale University.

Gracia Violeta Ross is an HIV positive advocate from La Paz, Bolivia. Ross studied Anthropology in Bolivia, and completed her master’s training in Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health in Peru. Since discovering her HIV positive status in 2000, she has served in the Bolivian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (REDBOL), including as its national chair for the last 7 years. Thanks to her experience as a rape survivor, she has a strong commitment to gender and AIDS issues. Ross has represented Bolivia and Latin America in global forums such as the UNAIDS Program Coordinating Board and the Developing Countries NGO Delegation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. Currently, Ross is the Community Representative of the TB-HIV Working Group of the Stop TB Partnership and a member of the Civil Society Advisory Group of UN Women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Maximiliano Santa Cruz is the Director of the National Institute of Industrial Property of Chile (INAPI), a position he has held since October 2009. Before assuming leadership of INAPI, he worked in the Permanent Mission of Chile to the World Trade Organization (WTO), in charge, among other things, of intellectual property issues at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in the WTO and in the World Health Organization (WHO). He was President of the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents for two periods (June 2008 – May 2011) and in the course of his duties in Geneva, he acted as Vice-chairman of other WIPO Committees.

From 1999 to 2004, he worked at the General Directorate for International Economic Relations of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs in charge of intellectual property issues, working first in the Trade Policy/WTO Department and then as Head of the intellectual Property Unit. He was the head negotiator of the intellectual property groups for the free trade agreements between Chile and the European Union; Chile and the European Free Trade Area (EFTA); Chile and the Republic of Korea and the agreement between Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. In addition, he also was negotiator in the free trade agreement with the United States and in the agreement with the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). He has given lectures in Chile as well as abroad and has written different papers about intellectual property.

Wim Vandevelde, a native of Belgium, has been a committed advocate for HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and hepatitis C treatment for over a decade. Many of those years have been spent with the European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG), the leading HIV advocacy group in Europe that currently represents treatment activists from over 36 different countries, where Wim served on the Board of Directors from 2004-2009 (including two years as chair) and currently chairs the European Community Advisory Board, a working group of EATG that brings together civil society, researchers and the pharmaceutical industry to address issues of biomedical drug development and access to medicines issues.