- Nathan Law (Kwun Chung), exiled leader of the Movement for Hong Kong Democracy. Nathan is an internationally recognized advocate for democracy and human rights who came to prominence as a college student while leading the pro-democracy “Umbrella Movement” in Hong Kong. Now living in exile in London, he continues to advocate for freedom in Hong Kong and other nations with repressive governments. He has testified before the United States Congress and was a speaker at the December 2021 White House Summit for Democracy. In 2020, Time named him one of the “100 Most Influential People in The World” and its readers’ poll ranked him No. 1 on the list. He was nominated in 2018 for the Nobel Peace Prize by U.S. congressmen and British parliament members, conferred the Magnitsky
Human Rights award in 2020, and awarded the Democracy Medal by the International Association of Political Consultants in 2017. In his new book, Freedom: How We Lose It and How We Fight Back, he argues that the threat to democracy in Hong Kong is a threat to democracies all over the globe. He earned his bachelor’s degree in cultural studies/critical theory and analysis in 2018 at Lingnan University and a master’s degree in East Asian Studies at Yale University, In 2021 he was named as a Pritzker Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and in 2022 he was awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters degree, honoris causa, by Washington & Jefferson College.
- Dame Helen Ghosh, Master, Balliol College, University of Oxford. Helen became Master of Balliol in 2018 following a long career as a ciivil servant. She was previously Director-General of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty from November 2012 to April 2018. From 1979 to 2012 she was a British civil servant. She was Permanent Secretary at the Home Office from January 2011 to November 2012, and prior to that was Permanent Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) from November 2005 to the end of 2010. At that time, she was the only female permanent secretary to head a major department of the British Government. She read Modern History at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1976 and was a Senior Scholar at Hertford College, where she completed her MLitt on the cultural history of sixth-century Italy.
- Elizabeth Kiss, Warden of Rhodes House and CEO of the Rhodes Trust, University of Oxford. Elizabeth was appointed in 2018 to oversee the world’s oldest graduate scholarship, the Rhodes Scholarship, and its partnership programs. Her 125th Anniversary Strategic plan for the Rhodes Trust will expand the annual number of Scholars from 100 to 125 with a wider global profile. She also is a Professorial Fellow at Balliol College. Previously, she served for twelve years as president of Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA, during which time the college broke records for enrollment and retention and was named the second ‘Most Diversified College in America’ by Time and the No.1 Most Innovative National Liberal Arts College by U.S. News and World Report. Earlier, she was founding director of Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, and has taught at Randolph-Macon College, Deep Springs College, and at Princeton University. She received her BA in philosophy from Davidson College, becoming Davidson’s first female Rhodes Scholar and earning a BPhil and DPhil in philosophy at the University of Oxford.