Barbara Weekes

BARBARA WEEKES

Barbara Weekes is a strategic problem solver and team leader who assists various clients to assess and manage global challenges, with a particular focus on cyber security and on the use of ICTs in crisis response, crisis management and peace building. She also provides strategic advice on the organization and implementation of conferences and high-level symposiums.

Over the past 20 years she has worked on scores of projects with some of the world’s most successful international advisers and analysts, including 4 years at the World Economic Forum as a leading member of the team planning and implementing the Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. She has partnered with other leading figures in this field including, Claude Smadja (President, Smadja & Associates based in Nyon, Switzerland and a former Managing Director of the World Economic Forum), Maria Cattaui, former Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce and a former Managing Director of the World Economic Forum), and Dr Daniel Stauffacher (Dr Stauffacher, President, ICT for Peace Foundation, Switzerland, and a former Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation). She developed a broad network of strategic thinkers who are recognized global thought leaders in their fields, who participated in conferences and are regular contributors in writing to the development of thinking in their areas of expertise.

In cooperation with Smadja & Associates, Barbara was a senior program advisor for various annual fora on topics of global business interest including The Growth Net (New Delhi 2013- 2015); the FutureChina Global Forum, Singapore; (2010-2016); the Global Automotive Forum, Chengdu (2010) and the Future of Europe Summit, Andorra (2006-2009).

Barbara served as CEO of the Geneva Security Forum, which held its first two meetings in Geneva, June 2007, and at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) World Telecom October in 2009. In this capacity she also organized the Geneva Dialogue on Protecting Critical Infrastructure against Cyberattacks in January 2012 in cooperation with the Swiss Ministry of Defence. She was a member of this ITU Forum’s Advisory Committee, a co-author of Cybersecurity: The Road Ahead (published in cooperation with DCAF- the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces), and was a speaker at the International Security Forum (ISF) 2011 in Zurich.

Barbara is a Senior Advisor of the ICT4Peace Foundation, Switzerland and the Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology. She was a co-editor and writer for the Foundation’s Paper Series, Peacebuilding in the Information Age, a cooperative effort with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was also a key person in the organization and implementation of the 3rd International Conference of Crisis Mappers, Geneva, 2011 in cooperation with the Swiss Confederation and the Joint Research Council of the European Commission.

Barbara participated in the UN discussions in Geneva on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), and analyzed for the Foundation the role of artificial intelligence and its role in peace-time threats such as surveillance, data privacy and fake news. Among other activities, she also organized and chaired for the ICT for Peace Foundation in Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Governmental Group of Experts (GGE) a series of informal workshops in 2018 with leading thinkers on the impact of Artificial Intelligence cooperation with the Zurich Hub for Ethics and Technology (ZHET). A link to the resulting paper published in December 2018 can be found here:
https://ict4peace.org/activities/new-ict4peace-paper-digital-human-security-human-beings-need-to-be-the-core-focus-of-the-it-and-security-agenda-going-forward/

In 2019, Barbara was active in preparing the Foundation’s response to online terrorism and extremism for the Christchurch Call for Action Summit, following the mosque shootings in New Zealand.

Barbara has advised clients on content for high-level symposiums and recommended conference presenters who will be able to contribute to the discussion in a way that will respond to the client’s objectives for the meeting. She has provided such advice to various clients including Transport Canada (the government of Canada’s transport department); the United Nations Capital Development Fund; and the Schulich School of Business, Toronto. In partnership with the International Chamber of Commerce, Paris, she conceived and executed the business roundtable: Building strategic relationships with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), Geneva, February 2005.

At the World Economic Forum as a member of the global affairs team she was a team leader in the development and execution of the program for the annual meeting in Davos from 1995 to 2000. She also designed the programs for the World Economic Forum ́s Southern Africa Economic Summits in Capetown, Windhoek and Harare.

Prior to her work at the World Economic Forum, Barbara was a member of the policy staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada responsible for the preparation of the G-7 Summit in Halifax in 1995.

Barbara is a graduate of the University of Toronto, is a Canadian citizen based in Heidelberg with an unlimited visa for Germany, and travels frequently to Geneva, Zurich Toronto, Ottawa and other global centres in the course of her work. She is mother tongue English and has fluent spoken German and French.