Jamil Salmi is a global tertiary education expert providing policy advice to governments, universities, and development agencies, with experience working in more than 105 countries all over the world. Until January 2012, he was the World Bank’s tertiary education coordinator. Dr. Salmi is Emeritus Professor of higher education policy at Diego Portales University in Chile and Research Fellow at Boston College’s Center for Higher Education. His latest book, on Tertiary Education and the Sustainable Development Goals, was published in August 2017. In 2020, he wrote a report on the impact of Covid on higher education through the equity lens for the Lumina Foundation.

Deborah Everhart serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at Credential Engine, leading the expansion of credential transparency initiatives that enable more effective connections between education and career opportunities. Previously she has served as a strategic advisor with the American Council on Education, leading research groups of nationally-recognized experts authoring “Quality Dimensions for Connected Credentials,” “Communicating the Value of Competencies,” and “Clarifying Competency Based Education Terms: A Lexicon.” She has long been a leader in the development of open technology standards, including leading IMS Global workgroups for competency-based education, comprehensive learner records, and digital credentials. She chaired the Badge Alliance workgroup that defined a conceptual framework and technical standards for Open Badge endorsements. Her business expertise includes leadership roles in technology architecture and product strategy at Cengage and Blackboard. Deborah’s thought leadership has evolved through numerous white papers, book chapters, presentations, and blogs on innovations in education, emerging technologies, portfolios, badges, digital credentials, and competency-based learning. Deborah holds a Ph.D. in English, critical theory, and interdisciplinary medieval studies from the University of California, Irvine. She teaches as an adjunct at Georgetown University. She lives and works in Washington, DC, where she contributes to federal strategy papers and national initiatives. 

Esther Huertas is the Head of the Quality Assurance Department at AQU Catalunya, the Catalan University Quality Assurance Agency. Previously, she served as a researcher at the University of Barcelona and followed her professional activity as an assistant professor at the same University. Huertas is an Agronomist Engineer and has a degree in Food Science and Technology. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Barcelona. Huertas has a broad experience in the accreditation of programmes and institutions with special focus on e-learning. She was the chair of ENQA’s working group on quality assurance and e-learning and the work package leader of quality assurance in online higher education in TeSLA project – Trust-based authentication & authorship e-assessment analysis (https://tesla-project.eu/). Besides, she is a member of ENQA working group on microcredentials and their quality assurance. She is also involved in international activities, participating in different groups of discussion focused on quality assurance. Nowadays she is a member of the Agency Review Committee of ENQA. 

Dr. Susanna Karakhanyan is employed by the Abu Dhabi Government as Higher Education Policy & Regulation Director at the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge in the United Arab Emirates. She consults governments on policymaking, governance as well as external and internal QA systems in a diversity of contexts globally. Dr. Karakhanyan’s expertise evolves around tertiary education in general and policymaking, governance and quality assurance in particular. She authors and delivers capacity building events and external reviews of governance structures, legal frameworks and QA systems worldwide. She has authored, initiated and has been implementing a variety of projects under the auspices of the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, Open Society Institute, IREX, to name some. All the projects address higher education reforms in general and diversity of aspects in legal frameworks, governance and quality assurance, in particular (e.g. Tajikistan, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan). One of the most recent achievements is leading development of INQAAHE International Standards and Guidelines 2022, which make a first attempt to introduce quality assurance standards for micro-credentials, both formal and non-formal provisions. Dr. Karakhanyan holds M.S.Ed in Educational Administration/Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, the USA and PhD in Social Sciences from Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research interests focus around higher education governance and administration, reforms, policymaking, policy diffusion and transfer, and external and internal quality assurance. Her research background has helped her tremendously in the establishment of new and evaluation/review of existing tertiary education systems, including, but not limited to external and internal (both quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions) quality assurance systems in a diversity of contexts at the global level.