After working as a lecturer and assistant professor at the Private University of Kitakyushu and associate professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, he has been in his current position since 2015. He was appointed by the UN Secretary-General as one of the 15 independent scientists to write the 2023 edition of the Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), an assessment report on the SDGs published every four years by the UN. He is also a member of the Roundtable on the SDGs Promotion Headquarters of the Government of Japan, a member of the Cabinet Secretariat for Regional Development Promotion's Expert Group on Municipal SDGs Promotion, and a member and ambassador of the Earth Commission, among many other international and domestic research and policy-related activities focusing on the SDGs and global environmental issues.

Pashtana Durrani is an international scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She is an Afghan human rights activist and community development expert who focuses on girls’ education. While at WCW, she continues in her capacity as a practitioner to develop models that support Afghan women and girls pursuing education and the health of Afghan mothers and infants. Durrani founded LEARN Afghanistan (@LearnAfg), a grassroots organization established to safely and securely educate girls through a distributed network of tablet computers using an offline platform. Through LEARN, she has educated 7,000 girls and boys in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and trained more than 80 teachers in digital literacy. LEARN also focuses on girls’ health and has trained 700 girls in menstrual hygiene management. Pashtana through LEARN runs six underground secret schools in Kandahar, Helmand, Daikundi, Samangan, Herat and Bamyan. These schools educate 700 girls daily. Pashtana Durrani served as a global youth representative for Amnesty International from 2017 to 2019. In recognition of her exceptional efforts to improve education for Afghan girls, she was named an Education Champion by the Malala Fund in 2020. Durrani's innovative approach to addressing complex global challenges earned her the 2021 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Emerging Leader Prize. She was also honored as one of the BBC's 100 Influential Women in 2021 and participated in #Times100talks in 2022. A graduate of the New Voices Fellowship in 2022, Durrani received the UN Young Activists Award 2022. Her accolades include the CEU Open Society Prize in 2023, the Global Citizen Award for Human Rights in 2023, the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award in 2023, and the Women’s Excellence Award from the World Economic Forum in 2024. Currently, she is pursuing her Master's degree at Harvard University.

Tareq Hadhad is telling his story. He was a Syrian refugee and now living his new life with his entrepreneurial family on Canada’s east coast. He is the founder and CEO of Peace by Chocolate. Passionate about peace and entrepreneurship, his family relaunched the family business to recreate the chocolates they exported across the Middle East and their story turned into an international inspiring phenomenon.Tareq has done over 1000 interviews with news teams across the globe and is a keynote speaker who talks about his family’s compelling story, the positive impact of Syrian newcomers and the spirit of entrepreneurship. Most recently, he was recognized as one of the Top 50 CEOs in Atlantic Canada by Atlantic Business Magazine.

Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1958. Katsuhiko Hibino began his career as an artist in the early 1980s while studying at Tokyo University of the Arts, and has attracted much attention for his expansion of the field of expression that combines social media and art activities. Since then, he has participated in solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, and a variety of cross-disciplinary activities both in Japan and abroad, including the Sydney Biennale and the Venice Biennale. He also continues to promote workshops and art projects that take advantage of the characteristics of local locations. He is currently the director of The Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu and the Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto, and has been engaged in education and research at his alma mater, Tokyo University of the Arts, since 1995, and has served as president since 2022. He has launched the Art Future Research Center, pursues further possibilities for art in the modern world, actively collaborates with companies and local governments, and continues to research and practice the idea that "art is the power to live."