role: International Advisors

J. Alexander-Brien is the Founder of Maritime Frontiers, a forward-looking consultancy providing strategic, technical, and legal advice on maritime affairs. The consultancy supports governments, international organizations, NGOs, and private clients in navigating the evolving global oceans order amid significant social, environmental, and technological change.

His areas of expertise include ocean governance, maritime boundary disputes, maritime delimitation, continental shelf claims, and international law of the sea. In addition to advising on issues involving the Japanese islands, he has issued reports on closures or threatened closures in the Indo-Pacific region from east Africa to the west coasts of the Americas.

Alexander-Brien has worked extensively with the Government of Bangladesh, advising on maritime boundary disputes and delimitation and contributing to the preparation of Bangladesh’s submission to the United Nations concerning its extended continental shelf.
With more than 20 years of experience in maritime affairs, he has spoken at and participated in expert panels on ocean governance across the world, including in Kenya, Tunisia, Oman, India, Mauritius, and Malta.

He is also a speaker at annual editions of the Bay of Bengal Conversation where he contributes his expertise on maritime governance and the changing international oceans framework.

Anna Strumpel is Head of Business Development, Europe at a UK-based stealth defence tech, where she leads European market-entry, partnership development, and growth strategy. She advises leadership on European government engagement, offsets, and cooperation across key NATO markets.

Previously, Anna worked in International Business Development at Shield AI, based in the Abu Dhabi office, where she closed defence contracts across European Army, Navy, and Air Force customers. As the second hire on the European team, she helped establish and scale the company’s regional presence and credibility and led the first European sale of Shield’s AI autonomy software (Hivemind), supporting cross-border deployment and regulatory alignment.

Earlier, she supported strategic partnerships and international cooperation initiatives at Paladin Drones in the drones-as-first responders (DFR) sector.

She holds a BA in Human, Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and is fluent in English and German.

Ben Valk was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Germany. He advises on global strategic issues where the Euro-Atlantic meets the Indo-Pacific.

Ben is CEO Founder of TENET Intelligence and co-leads its DAWN and MERIDIAN platforms, delivering geopolitical intelligence through proprietary multi-agent systems that quantify qualitative strategic problems for defense primes, investors, and allied missions.

Previously, he directed strategic relations as Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, leading cross-industry consulting projects and team management across complex transformation initiatives. He served in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General at the United Nations under António Guterres, contributing to strategic planning and monitoring within the organization’s highest leadership structure.

Ben’s finance and investment experience includes roles at Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions, and Global Founders Capital in growth equity and private equity co-investments. At KfW, Germany’s leading promotional bank, he gained experience working in financial modeling, energy portfolio management, and in the executive office. Earlier in his career, Ben incorporated and led an advisory firm with a team of 50 as the Managing Director.

Ben earned his Master of Management Studies in Global Business and Society from Yale School of Management and his Master in Management from HEC Paris. He speaks Dutch, English, German, and Afrikaans.

Dr. Nanae Baldauff is an Associate Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS (Bruges, Belgium) and Senior Researcher at Keio Research Institute at SFC (Shonandai, Japan). She recently completed a Ph.D. in Political Science (Ghent University, Belgium), and holds a master’s degree in European Governance (University of Luxembourg). She has a certificate of International Law from the Beasley School of Law (Temple University, Japan Campus). Her Ph.D. focused on Japan’s defense cooperation with strategic partners from the perspective of Japan’s national security objectives. The research examined the purposes of Japan’s defense engagement in the areas of defense equipment and technology cooperation, military exercises and capacity building. She is a recipient of the Japan Foundation fellowship. She has been a guest lecturer at the University of Luxembourg, Trier University (Germany), and Ghent University.

In addition to her academic carrier, Nanae has extensive professional experience at the United Nations University headquarters in Tokyo as governing board and legal administrator. She has a wealth of experience in the area of institutional strategy development and partnerships linking government ministries, education/research industries, and commercial companies. She has managed large budgets, off-shore offices, and oversight of a range of portfolios including drafting and negotiating agreements, donor relations, planning and management of board meetings, administration and liaison support. Prior to that she worked for major US investment banks in the compliance and risk management administration.

Her area of interest is Japan’s foreign and defense policy, Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific regional vision and security community, geopolitics and geoeconomics in the Indo-Pacific, defense industry cooperation, cybersecurity and security of the space domain.

Tom O’Suillivan is one of the first originators of ISIC in 2017. As a long-time resident of Japan, he arranged some of the first meetings to explore the defense market.  Originally from Ireland, he is Managing Director of Mathyos Global Advisory, an independent energy and defense consultancy firm established in April 2012 in Tokyo.

Tom is a chartered accountant and a civil engineer, leveraging over 30 years of client-servicing experience within global financial institutions and infrastructure markets. He specializes in providing strategic and independent advice across Asia, with a core focus on energy markets and policy; advising clients on power generation technologies, nuclear energy, fuel usage, and distribution strategies; risk and financial management: infrastructure finance, asset management, and financial due diligence for investments in foreign markets.

For the defense sector, O’Sullivan analyses geopolitical intersections with energy security in east Asia. He built an extensive career in senior operational and management roles within leading global investment banks and asset management funds, primarily located in Japan, most recently as founder of Mathyos Global Advisory. Prior positions include COO of Gartmore Asset Management; COO of Deutsche Bank Japan; Chief Administration Officer of Merrill Lynch Japan; as Vice President of Citicorp Japan; and Associate of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

In addition to his consultancy work, Tomo frequently contributes expert analysis at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (FCCJ), comments on regional energy dynamics for major publications like Reuters and has lectured in business at Saitama University.

Lisa Landau, presently CEO and Co-Founder of an international stealth startup in Cybersecurity solutions, has spent two decades driving startup growth and holding key leadership roles in Strategy, Strategic Planning, Security Services, Professional Services, and Customer Excellence.

She holds degrees in International Relations and South East Asian studies, specializing in Japan, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), where she received several honors awards. Additionally, she completed a specialized Japan studies program at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan under a scholarship.

Prior to her academic pursuits, Lisa served in the Intelligence Directorate of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, she is an Israeli citizen who has been based in Tokyo since 2013.

She was a founding member at Cybereason Japan, where she developed the entire post-sales framework, ranging from SOC to advanced strategic security consulting. Lisa’s most recent role was Cybereason Inc.’s Global EVP of Security Services Strategy & Planning, where one of her missions was the development of their global Incident Response practice while driving growth and profitability.

Passionate about mentoring, Lisa is committed to nurturing talent and helping individuals reach their potential. She is particularly focused on bridging the gap in cybersecurity talent in Japan and allied nations, encouraging and facilitating entry into the field for enthusiastic candidates.

Prannavan Surendran is a graduate of LMU Munich, where he earned a first-class degree in History with a focus on international relations and East Asian security and history. His academic work centres on the political dynamics of the Indo-Pacific region, with particular interest in Japanese and Korean foreign policy, historical memory, and strategic cooperation.

Prannavan has gained practical experience through research and internships at the German Institute for Japanese Studies in Tokyo, the Centre for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr in Potsdam, and most recently with the Japan Chair of the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS) in Tallinn. He has also contributed to the student think tank EPIS and supported the Young Indo-Pacific Forum as a volunteer.

Having studied abroad at Yonsei University in South Korea and Kyushu University in Japan, Prannavan combines academic and intercultural insights to explore security policy in East Asia. He is particularly interested in Japan–Korea relations, the strategic responses of democratic states to China’s rise, and Europe’s evolving role in the Indo-Pacific.

Arnaud Sobrero is an expert in the Aerospace, Defense, and Security industry with more than 13 years of international experience. Arnaud has worked with well-established organizations such as the Dassault Group, Textron, and Raytheon Technologies in various capacities (Sales, Marketing, Strategy). Arnaud is currently based in Paris, France where he serves as International Business Development Director for Embraer’s Defense & Security business unit.

Arnaud has spent 5 years in Japan working closely with Aerospace and Defense entities and he was instrumental in establishing key partnerships between US firms and some Japanese tier 2 firms for Defense related activities.

In addition to his business development activities, Arnaud focused on providing detailed political, military, and economic situational reporting to senior leadership and on deriving new opportunities from geopolitical shift analysis in the North East Asian region.

His analyses have been featured in The Diplomat, and he is a contributing expert on Defense and Cybersecurity for the newly formed think tank ‘ITSS’ (International Team for the Study of Security).

A French citizen, Arnaud has lived more than 12 years in Asia and he is a graduate of the Institut de Relations Internationales et Strategiques (‘IRIS’), a top French think tank specialized in International Relations. He is currently a MA candidate at King’s College London in International Affairs (Cyber Security/Artificial Intelligence specialism).

Rupal Kalebere is a researcher in defence policy and law, currently serving as Senior Researcher at the Society for Aerospace, Maritime and Defence Studies (SAMDeS) and Programming Director at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy (YPFP) Tokyo. She regularly writes on India’s defence developments in national and international contexts, with a particular focus on the Indo-Pacific.