Wing Thye Woo is Vice President for Asia and Head of the Kuala Lumpur Office of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). He holds academic appointments at Sunway University in Kuala Lumpur, the University of California, Davis, Fudan University in Shanghai, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. From 2002 to 2005, he served as Special Advisor for East Asian Economies to the United Nations Millennium Project. In July 2005, he was appointed to the International Advisory Panel to Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi of Malaysia, and in 2008, he became Economic Advisor to Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng of Penang State. Woo is active in the East Asia Economic Association, where he has served as director since 2015, and in the Chinese Economist Association (UK/Europe), where he has been editor of the Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies since 2003. He holds a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Engineering from Swarthmore College, an M.A. in Economics from Yale University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

(https://www.unsdsn.org/about/profile/wing-thye-woo/)

Bustanul Arifin is Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Lampung (UNILA), Senior Economist at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF), and Professorial Fellow at Bogor Agricultural University (IPB). With more than 35 years of experience in research and development policy, he has advised major international institutions including the World Bank, UNDP, and USAID. He earned his Ph.D. in Resource Economics (1995) and M.Sc. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and his Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics from IPB–Bogor. He has also served as a visiting scholar at the University of Kentucky, the University of Sydney, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He currently serves as President of the Asian Society of Agricultural Economists (ASAE) and the Indonesian Society of Agricultural Economics (PERHEPI), and as Food Policy Adviser to the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs. His previous public roles include Adviser to the Executive Office of the President (KSP), the House of Representatives (DPR), and the National Team for International Trade Negotiations, as well as Member of the National Innovation Council (KIN). His research focuses on food and agricultural policy, institutional change, and sustainable development.

(https://fp.unila.ac.id/prof-dr-ir-bustanul-arifin-m-sc/)

Maria Monica Wihardja is a Visiting Fellow and Co-coordinator of the Media, Technology and Society Programme at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore. She previously served as an Economist at the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Global Practice and was awarded the Nikkei Asian Scholar 2023. Maria is a member of the Editorial Board of the East Asia Forum and serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Indonesian Policy Studies (CIPS). In 2017, she was seconded to the Executive Office of the President of Indonesia as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Economic Issues, where she led initiatives on food policy reform and stunting prevention. From 2012 to 2014, she represented Indonesia in the Think20 (T20) meetings at the G20 Summits in Los Cabos, Saint Petersburg, and Brisbane. Her research spans the digital economy, labour markets, food security, agricultural reform, regional economic architecture, and disinformation and electoral propaganda. She holds a Ph.D. in Regional Science from Cornell University, an M.Phil. in Economics from Cambridge University, and a B.A. in Applied Mathematics–Economics from Brown University.

Ani Adiwinata Nawir is a scientist at CIFOR–ICRAF Indonesia, where she coordinates research on landscape governance, equity, and local livelihoods. Her work focuses on forest landscape restoration (FLR), community-based climate adaptation, and resilient institutional arrangements for socio-ecological systems, including those on small islands. Ani holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from the Australian National University (ANU), where her doctoral thesis examined strategies to enhance small-scale commercial tree growing inside state forests in Indonesia. Her research has advanced understanding of the socioeconomic and policy dimensions of community forestry, including the comparative advantages of small-scale forestry plantations, community–company partnerships, and traditional agroforestry systems relative to alternative investments such as smallholder oil palm. She currently leads the policy research component of projects on timber and non-timber forest product market development and integrated watershed management for local livelihoods and biodiversity conservation. Earlier, she contributed to the ODA-funded study “Review of Forest Rehabilitation Projects: Lessons from the Past.” Beyond research, she has extensive experience facilitating private sector forums that foster partnerships between companies and local communities in sustainable forest management.

(https://www.cifor-icraf.org/research-staff/ani-adiwinata/)

Jeffrey Neilson is an Associate Professor of Economic Geography in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney, where he also serves as Indonesia Coordinator for the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) and Program Director for the Environmental Science Program. His research focuses on economic geography, environmental governance, and rural development in Australia and Southeast Asia.

He currently leads an Australian Research Council–funded project examining the growth of horticulture along Australia’s northeastern coast and its implications for sustainable regional development in multifunctional landscapes. His long-term research in Vietnam’s Central Highlands explores how global environmental governance influences development outcomes in coffee- and pepper-producing regions.

Jeff recently completed a five-year study in Indonesia on the livelihood impacts of value chain interventions, contributing to global debates on sustainability certification, Geographical Indications, and direct trade within global value chain theory.

Fluent in Indonesian and conversant in Vietnamese, Jeff has extensive field experience, including ethnographic research in Toraja, Sulawesi. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Sydney, and B.Sc. (Environmental Science) and B.A. (Indonesian Studies) degrees from the University of New South Wales.