Seán Cleary

GlobCom Trustee

Seán Cleary is Chairman of Strategic Concepts (Pty) Ltd, Managing Director of the Centre for Advanced Governance, Founder and Executive Vice Chair of the Future World Foundation, Chairman of the Compliance and Risk Committee of The Abraaj Group and a Director of Companies.

Current affiliation: Founder and Executive Vice Chair, FutureWorld Foundation; Chairman, Strategic Concepts (Pty) Ltd; Managing Director, Centre for Advanced Governance, Chair of the Compliance and Risk Committee of The Abraaj Group, the and a Director of Companies. Guest Lecturer on global corporate strategy at the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria, Wits Business School, Stellenbosch University, Henley Management College, Georgetown University and the Wharton School. Guest lecturer on the strategic challenges of globalisation and conflict resolution at defence colleges, universities and institutes. He is a Strategic Adviser to the Chairman of the World Economic Forum and a Faculty Member of the Parmenides Foundation.

He studied social sciences and law at the University of South Africa, the University of Cape Town and Pahlavi University in Iran, and holds an MBA from Henley Management College at Brunel University in the United Kingdom.
He served in the South African Navy on the staff of the Commander Maritime Defence before commencing a diplomatic career in the Middle East, USA and Namibia. As Chief Director in Namibia in the mid-1980s, he initiated negotiations between all political parties, the release of political prisoners and the adoption of a Bill of Rights, paving the way for independence.

He is a member of the Faculty of the Parmenides Foundation and lectures on global corporate strategy at the Graduate School of Business at the University of the Witwatersrand, Henley Management College, the Gordon Institute of Business Science of the University of Pretoria, Georgetown University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Stellenbosch University; and on conflict resolution, the challenges of globalisation and development economics at several U.S and European universities and institutes.

He is a lecturer on the National Security Management Course at the South African Defence Staff College, a research associate of the South African Institute of International Affairs, a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and Strategic Adviser to the Chairman, Chairman of the Global Advisory Board of the Global Economic Symposium and Operation Hope, a member of the Board of the Carbon War Room, and a Trustee of the South African Foundation for Conciliation.

He was a member of the Facilitating and Preparatory Committees of the South African Peace Accord and Chairman of the Working Group on the Code of Conduct for Political Parties and Organizations, an EXCO Member of the NEPAD (New Programme for Africa’s Development) Business Steering Group, a Member of the Board of LEAD International; and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, and served on national Advisory Committees in Namibia and as Senior Adviser to the Arab Business Council.
He is a recipient of academic and public service awards and has been published in South African, British, German and U.S. journals. He is the co-author, with Thierry Malleret, of two books on risk, Resilience to Risk (Human and Rousseau, 2006), and Global Risks (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and has contributed chapters to several others, most recently, Learning from Catastrophes (Wharton, 2009).

Joachim Kuss

GlobCom Trustee

Joachim Kuss, born 1970 in Dresden, has been with ZEISS since 2010, first responsible for Executive Board and Leadership Communication at Carl Zeiss AG, since 2012 as Communications Director of the Vision Care Business Group, one of the world’s leading eyeglass lens manufacturers. In this position he oversees the company’s internal and external corporate communication, including media relations, leadership communication, change and issue communication.

2000-2010 Joachim worked for Ketchum Pleon, especially engaged in change and transformation communications. His focus was on technology companies and public sector clients. Prior to Pleon, he worked as conceptioner in an advertising agency and online editor for a German broadcasting network. He holds a university degree in theology and a diploma in marketing communications.
In lectures and publications he dwells on corporate communication topics, e.g. communications and branding in changing times as well as corporate strategy as an organizational challenge.

Susanne Marell

GlobCom Trustee

Susanne Marell oversees the operations of Edelman in the German and Swiss market, which includes more than 200 employees and offices in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and Zurich. She joined Edelman as new CEO Edelman Germany in 2012 and is also a member of the EMEA Executive Committee. Prior to this role, Susanne served as VP of Corporate Brand Management at BASF.

Susanne boasts an extensive career of more than 20 years in communications and marketing within the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, and also as a consultant in the PR industry. The certified economist and trained systemic coach started her career at Kohtes & Klewes (now Ketchum PLEON). Previously she worked at Schering, Hoechst, AgrEvo and Cognis where she oversaw the internal and external communications globally, before being promoted to her position at BASF after the acquisition of Cognis GmbH in 2010.
As a proven expert in corporate communications, Susanne supports several international and German-based Edelman clients in their integrated communications strategy, for example: Unilever, C&A, Styrolution and Bayer.
Susanne’s experience comprises corporate communications for, amongst others, M&A’s, corporate branding and organizational change processes. She is also an acknowledged management expert for employee engagement and sustainability projects, and served as a member of the task force “Sustainability Positioning BASF” within the 2025 strategy process.
Furthermore, she provides C-suite consultancy and coaching to corporate players and product brands on an international level. She focusses on supporting clients to achieve brand management excellence by identification of the brand core, definition of the USP in a shared economy and brand positioning.
In the majority of cases, the well-known Edelman Trust-Barometer provides connecting factors for further strategy development. Since 2001, the international Edelman’s own survey delivers profound data on the current state of trust and credibility on an annual basis.

Lutz Meyer

GlobCom Trustee

Lutz is a senior consultant at Leidar, an international communications and advocacy consultancy headquartered in Nyon, Switzerland. Its network includes communications specialists based at the firm’s offices in London (UK) as well as Oslo and Kongsvinger (Norway).

Large, international companies including Yara, Telenor, MWV, Edwards Lifesciences, and Constellium, retain Leidar’s services to help them develop and execute their stakeholder engagement strategies. Advocacy campaigns in the nexus of the private sector, IGOs and NGOs are a Leidar specialty.
Lutz specializes in developing and managing global communications strategies and programmes corporate clients, government institutions and NGOs. He is responsible for leading international communications programmes at Leidar as well as managing Leidar’s Nyon office.

Currently Lutz directs one of the largest EC-funded communication projects, the ENPI Information and Communications support programme. This involves planning and implementing public relations strategies in the 16 EU Neighbourhood countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan).

Lutz lectures regularly as part of the Executive Certificate in Advocacy in International Affairs at the Graduate Institute of International Studies and Development in Geneva.

Other current clients include medical device specialist Edwards Lifesciences, CERN, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC/US) as well as the Geneva based NGOs Interpeace and the Association for the Prevention of Torture.

A German national, who has lived and worked in Germany, as well as Dubai and Nicosia and operated from London, Brussels and Singapore, Lutz has spent most of his 30+ year career in agency management and client service positions for leading international public relations consultancies.

Lutz spent 25 years in senior management positions at Weber Shandwick, the world’s leading public relations agency, most recently as President of International Operations for the firm, heading up all Weber Shandwick operations outside the United Sates, and working on multi-client and multi-disciplinary programmes

Lutz has also held various senior management positions with Action Global Communications, an independent public relations consultancy that focuses on the world’s most promising and emerging markets. At Action, Lutz was initially responsible for the company’s operations and client service in the Middle East and then became the company’s General Manager, having been based in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Mazen Nahawi

GlobCom Trustee

Mazen Nahawi is the President of News Group International, a company that specializes in communications research, social engagement and content development.

News Group includes several key strategic business units including Media Watch, Social Eyez, Salience Insight and CARMA. The company employs about 500 people in 41 countries and has offices in Washington, London, Dubai, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Casablanca and Cairo.
Mazen is also the President of FIBEP, the world media intelligence association that includes over 120 corporate members who employ over 25,000 people in the filed of monitoring and analysis world-wide.

Further, Mazen has served on the board of the Middle East PR Association since 2009 and is a member of Zayed University’s National Media Advisory Council.

He began his career in 1996 as a journalist at Dar Al Khaleej, the largest private publisher in the UAE before working at Headline PR, a Publicis company, as a senior Account Director from 1997-2000. He later joined Accenture as a full-time contractor working on a variety of Dot.com projects in 2001 before setting up News Group’s first subsidiary (Media Watch) in 2002.

Mazen is married and lives with his wife, six children and stepchildren, in Dubai.

Jean Binder

GlobCom Trustee

Jean Binder is the head of project services and execution oversight at Credit Suisse in Zurich.

Previously, he managed worldwide programmes for the IT department of large companies in Brazil, Portugal, Belgium, England and Switzerland for more than 17 years. These programmes involved managing initiatives of increasing complexity and included creating a project management methodology in a global organization, establishing a virtual community of practice, implementing an international project management and launching an internal educational programme for trainers around the world. He specialises in providing mentoring, health-checks, training and workplace support for project managers and senior managers.
Jean is originally from Brazil and is fluent in English, Portuguese and French and has a solid academic background. He is the author of the book, Global Project Management: Communication, Collaboration and Management Across Borders, which provides corporate guidelines on cross-cultural team management and global communication. He also writes research papers on project management and lectures at conferences, universities and on executive MBA courses.