Prior to co-founding CCSI in 2011, she served the United Nations for over three decades, including 15 years as senior political affairs officer and sanctions committee secretary in the Security Council Affairs Division of the Department of Political Affairs, New York, advising sanctions committee chairs and members, supporting teams of sanctions monitors, and participating in reform processes to refine the sanctions tool. She has co-managed sanctions reform processes such as the High-Level Review of UN Sanctions (2015) and the follow-on Assessment of the HLR (2017) and co-implemented the Best Practices Guide for Chairs and Members of UN Sanctions Committees (2018 and 2020). She lectured on United Nations sanctions at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and taught an intensive ten-week course for diplomats at Columbia University (2010-2013). She is the co-author with Enrico Carisch and Shawna Meister of “The Evolution of UN Sanctions: From a Tool of Warfare to a Tool of Peace, Security and Human Rights (2017), and has co-authored other articles and publications on international sanctions.

He graduated from the Department of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, and received a Ph.D. from Sussex European Institute, University of Sussex, England. He has worked in the Fondation pour la recherche stratégique in Paris, France, as assistant researcher, as Associate Professor at the University of Tsukuba from 2000 to 2008, and served as Professor of International Politics at Hokkaido University until 2020. He served as an expert on the Panel of Experts for the Iran Sanctions Committee under the United Nations Security Council from 2013 to July 2015. He currently serves as a member of the National Space Policy Committee of the Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, and President of the Japan Association of International Security and Trade. His research focuses on the conjunction of science/technology and international relations; subjects including space policy, non-proliferation, export control and sanctions. His recent work includes Space and International Politics (2011, in Japanese, awarded the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities), Policy Logics and Institutions of European Space Collaboration (2003) and many others.

He has more than four years of work experience in the Middle East and has carried out work in Asia and Africa as well as in South Korea, where he has had numerous exchanges with North Korean defectors and experts on North Korea which contributed significantly to his work on North Korea at CCSI. He holds a Master of International Affairs degree from Columbia SIPA and is fluent in Korean and English and reads, writes and speaks Arabic.

She has over 20 years of experience in WMD non-proliferation. Previously, she served as an expert on the United Nations Security Council 1540 Committee for five years (2018-March 2023). Prior to joining the 1540 Committee, she served as senior research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), Ministry of Defense, Japan. She also served as an advisor to the Permanent Representation of Japan to the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the Hague from 2005 to 2008, and to the Permanent Mission of Japan to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva from 2009 to 2011. She obtained a Ph.D. in Public Administration from the International Christian University, Tokyo

He has first-hand experience in boarding and searching suspicious North Korean vessels, and monitored the Sea Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) program. Neil co-authored seven reports for the Security Council, and authored the Maritime Sanctions Handbook for the DPRK. He also held positions on the South African National Maritime Security Advisory Committee, the Priority Committee for Maritime Security, and as a member of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Counter-Piracy Assessment Group. He regularly contributes to the news media. His recent work includes Watching Through the Lens of a Long Telescope: Monitoring North Korean sanctions evasion in the maritime domain (2021), Business as Usual, Unusually: North Korea’s Illicit Trade with China and Russia (2020), and many others.