Dr. Kerem Kınık

Türk Kızılay Başkanı

IFRC Başkan Yardımcısı

Prof. Dr. Mehmet Tanyaş

LODER Başkanı

Dr. Simon Missiri

Dr. Simon Missiri joined the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in 1987 as a Field Delegate in Sudan, and has since served in a variety of management functions including Desk Officer for Africa; Deputy Director and later Director of Asia & Pacific Region; Director of Preparedness and Response Department; Director of Resource Mobilisation; Chief of Staff of the Under-Secretary General, Programmes; and Head of South Asia Regional Representation.

His duty as Regional Director, Europe, between 2015 and 2019, comprised of setting the strategic direction of the IFRC Regional Office for Europe in Budapest and several sub-regional and Country Offices in providing IFRC support and policy work with National Red Cross Red Crescent Societies in the 54 countries covered by the Europe Region.

Dr. Simon Missiri, appointed as the Special Advisor to the IFRC Secretary General, joined the IFRC Africa Region as the Regional Director on 4 July 2019. As a senior international manager, he has led multi-functional, geographically disbursed and cross-cultural teams.

Dr. Missiri currently acts as the IFRC Director Global Humanitarian Services and Supply Chain since October 2019.

In course of his work with IFRC spanning over 30 years, Dr. Missiri has facilitated high-level negotiations on humanitarian and international affairs with governments, international organizations, and with the corporate sector. He has an extensive network of top-level professionals from Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN Specialized Agencies.

Dr. Missiri holds a Ph.D. in Economics (Russian Academy of Science); Executive MBA in Management (McGill University, Canada, and INSEAD, France); and a Masters in Economic Geography (Moscow State University).

Giuseppe Saba

Appointed as CEO of Dubai’s International Humanitarian City in early March 2017, Giuseppe Saba brings more than 32 years of extensive experience in the humanitarian field with the United Nations and international organizations.

Saba is a leading logistics and support services expert. He is the founder of the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot Network (UNHRD); in 2000, he set-up under the UN World Food Programme (WFP) the first UNHRD in Brindisi, south-east of Italy, as a consortium of UN Agencies, International Humanitarian Organizations, Governmental and Non-Governmental Organization.

Following the lessons learnt from the emergency response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, he developed and expanded UNHRD into the current network by opening hubs and negotiating agreements with various hosting governments in Dubai, Malaysia, Ghana, Spain and Panama. As a result of his efforts, UNHRD became one of the largest humanitarian organizations platform counting around 90 partners operating in emergency preparedness and response.

Saba is an Italian Citizen, born in 1951 in Sardinia. He is married and has two daughters living respectively one in Italy and one in Ireland. Since his retirement from the UN-WFP in 2013, he served as consultant to various humanitarian agencies including the Norwegian Refugee Council and the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre).

Dr. José Holguín-Veras

Dr. José Holguín-Veras is the William H. Hart Professor, and Director of the Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment; and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations’ Center of Excellence on Sustainable Urban Freight Systems at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering, Magna Cum Laude, from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1981; his M.Sc. from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1984; and his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 1996. He has been a faculty member at The City College of New York (1997-2002), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2002-present). His work has received numerous awards, including the 2013 White House Champion of Change Award for his contributions to freight transportation and disaster response research.

Current research activities focus on three major areas: freight transportation demand modeling, sustainable freight policy, and humanitarian logistics. His work on freight demand modeling focuses on enhancing the realism of spatial price equilibrium models, and development of simplified modeling techniques. His work has led to more realistic mathematical models and significant methodological improvements that have challenged long held assumptions in the field. His work on sustainable freight policy studies the interactions between the agents involved in freight activity, to define ways to exploit these interactions to foster sustainable development and operations. His pioneering design of the off-hour delivery project in New York City—using incentives to receivers in exchange of their acceptance of off-hour deliveries—had a huge effect in freight policy. The City of New York adopted off-hour deliveries as part of its sustainability plan, and the US’ Federal Highway Administration decided to create a program to foster off-hour deliveries, based on the one pioneered in NYC, and to replicate it in cities throughout the US. Because of its impacts, TIME magazine identified off-hour deliveries as one of the “10 Ideas that Make a Difference” in traffic congestion. His research in humanitarian logistics has pioneered the multidisciplinary study of post-disaster humanitarian logistic operations. As part of the field work, his research group has conducted detailed analyses of the most prominent disasters of recent times, including: Hurricane Katrina, the Port-au-Prince earthquake, the tornadoes in Joplin and Alabama, Hurricane Irene, and the Tohoku disasters in Japan. The lessons learned are then used to support future disaster response policy and the development of novel analytical formulations.

His contributions to the solution of regional and national problems are numerous. As a member of the Board of the New York State Thruway Authority—the only researcher in the board’s history—he helps oversee toll policy and the replacement of the $5 billion Tappan Zee Bridge, one of the largest construction projects in the US. His contributions also cover disaster response; as a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Disaster Research Roundtable, he advised the federal government in disaster response. He was one of the few researchers appointed as members of USDOT’s National Freight Advisory Committee, and the TRB Review Committee for the Truck Size and Weight study requested by Congress.

His leadership positions have included: President of the Pan-American Society of Transportation Research, which organizes the Pan-American Conferences of Traffic and Transportation Engineering; member of the Scientific Committee of the World Conference of Transport Research, Elected Member of the Council for the Association for European Transport, member of the International Organizing Committee of the City Logistics Conferences, member of technical committees at numerous professional organizations, and member of the editorial boards of the leading journals.

The list of awards he has received includes: the 2013 White House Transportation Champion of Change Award, CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2001-2006); a finalist of INFORMS’ 2017 Edelman Award; the Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award in 1996, from the Council on University Transportation Centers, the Salute to the Scholars Award from the City University of New York (in 2000 and 2001); the 2006 Robert E. Kerker Research Award in recognition of Excellence in Research of Special Importance to Practitioners and Scholars of Public Administration and Policy in New York State; the 2007 School of Engineering Research Award; and a Proclamation from the Council of the City of New York (2001). He is a fellow of: American Society of Civil Engineers (2013), State Academy of Public Administration (2006), International Road Federation (1991), Japanese International Cooperation Agency (1989), and the Organization of American States (1982-1984). According to Google Scholar, he is the most widely published and cited freight researcher in the world.

Jean-Cedric Meeus

Jean-Cedric Meeus work focusses on improving supply chains with UNICEF since 2001. He is currently the Chief of Global Transport at UNICEF Supply Division covering off shore and in land transport. Since 2001, Jean-Cedric performed in different Supply chain functions based in Mozambique, HQ NY (Supply Emergency Response Officer), HQ Copenhagen (Chief Emergency Supply Manager), Dakar Regional office of Western and Central Africa as regional (RO Supply Chain manager) to finally take his current position in Copenhagen. Prior to UNICEF, Jean-Cedric performed as Supply and Program Technical Specialist with MSF for 9 years in different countries.

Jean-Cedric has led and managed emergency operations and Supply chain teams in a wide range of global humanitarian crises and development programs over the past three decades. Constantly seeking new challenges, and through humanitarian and private sector networks, he strives to improve delivery of humanitarian aid by influencing and implementing practical, innovative changes. Through Jean-Cedric’s different positions he managed pharmaceuticals, immunization, health, education and WASH commodities to be delivered from origin to beneficiaries in support to UNICEF and government program activities.

Athalie Mayo

In 2019, Athalie joined the Logistics Cluster as the Global Logistics Cluster Coordinator.  The Logistics Cluster provides coordination and information management to support operational decision-making and improve the predictability, timeliness and efficiency of the humanitarian emergency response. Where necessary, the Logistics Cluster also facilitates access to common logistics services.

Athalie had previously worked in a variety of Supply Chain roles with WFP, supporting partners with their logistics and procurement needs, particularly in the context of humanitarian response to emergencies.

Prior to embarking on the challenges of humanitarian supply chains, Athalie worked for over a decade in security, risk and crisis management.  In these roles she provided proactive and reactive support in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa regions.

Athalie’s professional career began in the British Army, working on in information analysis to support decision making.  She holds degrees in Disaster, Risk and Crisis Management and Modern Languages.

Sophie Gligorijevic

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