Edward (Ed) Rawson grew up in NYC and was educated at Kent School, Harvard University (cum laude) and Yale Law School. After three years as a special assistant to the executive director of the largest NASD office in the country in New York, he moved to Washington to serve during W.W.II as a trade intelligence analyst in export control for Central America and the Caribbean, prior to becoming licensing officer for all exports to the Middle East. Ed then moved to UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) as procurement coordinator for machinery and miscellaneous items for Albania, Italy, Poland and the Dodecanese Islands. After short stints with intelligence agencies where he prepared a study on East/West trade, he became director for implementation of the 1947 Special Relief Act for Yugoslavia and subsequently served as economic attaché at the embassy in Belgrade. In 1955, Ed began a career in international economic assistance, serving in Korea as small business advisor and in the Philippines as program operations officer. In 1958 he returned to the US to become special assistant to the deputy director of the International Cooperation Administration, primarily responsible for the $100 million Asian Economic Development Fund. As an appointed representative of President Eisenhower, Ed coordinated the rehabilitation and launching of a former naval hospital ship for Project Hope. With the establishment of AID in 1961, he became program officer for the central office for research and development. In the mid-sixties and until retirement, he was head of the office for special operations, which was responsible for implementing administrative support for AID interagency programs. Ed was a consultant for the Department of Labor’s program in Saudi Arabia in 1979. After retirement, he served as treasurer/administrative officer of The World Federalist Association and on the boards of The International Center, Citizens for Global Solution, Streit Council, Association to Unite Democracies and International Action. He was also president of Capital Investment Association and Rawson Enterprises.

Active on the front lines of the struggle to help oppressed people achieve democracy in the Middle East, China, North Korea, and beyond, Ambassador Palmer brings an unusual set of skills, experience, and passions to the task. Through the years of the Cold War up to the present, he has been a respected foreign policy innovator both inside and outside the U.S. government. He served in policy positions in the State Department under the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and first Bush Administrations, helping found the National Endowment for Democracy. From outside the government, he helped persuade the Clinton and present Bush Administrations to initiate new democracy policies, including the Community of Democracies and abolishing the so-called Arab exception to promote, for the first time, democracy in the Arab world. He is also the author of Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World’s Last Dictators by 2025. He has lived in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and served as Ambassador to Hungary.

Mr. Alkhamis was born, raised, and educated in the Nejd (central) region of Saudi Arabia. He worked as a journalist for many years and was elevated to become the editor of the largest Saudi Magazine, Majlet Almajalah. He has written and published many articles on and about social and human rights issues in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Alkhamis is the founder and director of the Saudi Center for Human Rights in London.

Mr. Mattison is the Executive Director of International Action, a Washington DC based independent foreign policy group, located on Capitol Hill. He started his political career working for the non-governmental organization Nuclear Information in 1964. He later became the Executive Director of Business Executives for Vietnam Peace, the assistant to Admiral LaRocque at the Center for Defense Information, and the Director of the International Center. He has worked with leaders and opposition figures in the former Soviet Union, South Korea, the Philippines, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

Mr. Siddiq is a native of Saudi Arabia and a resident of Nebraska where he completed his Ph.D. studies in Political Science at the University of Nebraska. Mr. Siddiq spent sixteen years working for the Saudi government, serving as Private Aide to the Chief Academic Executive Officer, Acting Secretary to the Board of Trustees at the College of Petroleum and Minerals, and Administrative Assistant to the Director of Research and Development Center at the College of Economics & Administration, King Abdulaziz University. He spent his last few years in Saudi Arabia as a Public Affairs lecturer at King Abdulaziz University. Here in the US, Mr. Siddiq is a freelance writer (the author of four books) and human rights activist. He is personally committed to exposing the degree of inequality and injustice in the Saudi governmental system and to establishing a new democratic system. Mr. Siddiq has also lived in Pakistan and Lebanon.

Mr. Jack Pearce has served the United States government as an attorney in and Assistant Chief of the Public Counsel Section of the United States Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, an Assistant General Counsel and Capital Projects Loan officer for the Agency for International Development, and Deputy General Counsel of the White House Office of Consumer Affairs. In private law practice he helped found and coordinate coalitions of commercial transportation buyers, consumer groups, economists, consumer and environmental groups supporting the successful reform of transportation regulation in the United States. He and his partners also served clients in the computer, agriculture, and electricity segments of the economy, in activities consistent with the antitrust policies of the nation. He founded and remains the President of O.S.I. Management, Inc., an office services firm servicing attorneys and others in Washington DC. and has served on the boards of civic organizations.

Colonel B. Wayne Quist, USAF (Ret), Director. Colonel Quist has a B.A. degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota plus advanced degrees from the University of Southern California and The National War College in Washington, D.C., specializing in the Middle East. While serving in Washington, DC, he worked in The Pentagon, later directed the Air Force AWACS program, and led the first deployment of AWACS into Saudi Arabia in 1980 following the Iranian revolution. After retiring from the Air Force as a full colonel (O-6), he headed a Fortune 500 company’s Europe and Middle East operations from Brussels, Belgium. Colonel Quist is currently a partner with an investment banking firm specializing in the sale and recapitalization of privately held companies and serves on several boards of directors. He is the author of several publications and articles in the field of radical, militant Islamism, national security policy, and American history, and coauthored Winning the War on Terror: A Triumph of American Values with Dr. David Drake in 2005 and The Triumph of Democracy Over Militant Islamism in 2006. Colonel Quist has been featured as a popular speaker on the ideology of al Qaeda and recently lectured at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum.

Prior to founding CDHR, Dr. Alyami served as a Senior Fellow at the Saudi Institute in Washington, D.C., as the Director of the educational peace program for the American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco, and as a Representative for the Arab Organization for Human Rights (a Cairo-based group) in North America. He has spoken at conferences throughout the U.S., Egypt, Sudan, Israel, and London. Dr. Alyami has offered expert testimony before Congress, and has advised senior officials at the Pentagon, National Security Counsel, and Department of State. He has a Ph.D. in Government and Diplomacy from Claremont Graduate University, a Master’s in International Relations a Bachelor’s in Political Science from California State University. He is also fluent in Arabic.