Clive Bates has had a diverse career in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Starting out with IBM, he then switched career to work in the environment movement. From 1997-2003 he was Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK), campaigning to reduce the harms caused by tobacco. In 2003 he joined Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Strategy Unit as a civil servant and worked in senior roles in the public sector and for the United Nations in Sudan. He is now Director of The Counterfactual, a consulting and advocacy practice focussed on a pragmatic approach to sustainability and public health.  

Dr Roberto A Sussman (PhD University of London) is a full time senior researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Nuclear Sciences of the National University of Mexico. His main research areas are General Relativity and Cosmology, but he has conducted research in other areas of Physics, including peer reviewed publications on e-cigarette aerosols. He is also the founder and Director of Pro-Vapeo Mexico, an association representing Mexican consumers of noncombustible nicotine products and is a member of INNCO. He is actively advocating for an appropriate regulation of Tobacco Harm Reduction products in Mexico. He directs and supervises the effort to spread scientific information on these products, as well as advising consumers on how to counter the gubernmental misinformation and prejudice about them that is rampant throughout Latin America.

Professor Marewa Glover has worked on reducing smoking-related harm for over 25 years. She has worked as a policy analyst, a co-ordinator of a national tobacco control programme, cessation trainer and, for over 17 years, as a researcher. She has chaired numerous committees and organisations including End Smoking NZ, an independent NGO that lobbied for a harm reduction approach even before electronic cigarettes were introduced. Marewa has over 100 publications reflecting her leadership and support of numerous studies. Her primary focus has been reducing smoking during pregnancy and reducing smoking among Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. She has also been a co-investigator on a number of innovative cessation projects and a longitudinal online survey of New Zealand vapers. Dr Glover is the most prominent public commentator on vaping in NZ. She is regularly called by the media and has appeared on NZ’s 60 Minutes in addition to participating in live online and conference debates about vaping. Despite an initial ban on the import and sale of nicotine for vaping imposed by the Ministry of Health, vaping has become established as a common and successful way to reduce or stop smoking in NZ. Marewa, along with a small number of other researchers who early on foresaw the potential of ecigs, have helped make this happen.