Richard Harvey Solomon was an American diplomat and academic who served as Director of Policy Planning from 1986 to 1989, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 1989 to 1992, and U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines from 1992 to 1993. In September 1993, he became president of the United States Institute of Peace, a position he held until September 2012. He subsequently joined the RAND Corporation as a Senior Fellow.

John Dimitri Negroponte is an American diplomat. In 2018, he was a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is a former J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of International Affairs at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Prior to this appointment, he served as a research fellow and lecturer in international affairs at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, United States Deputy Secretary of State (2007–2009), and the first ever Director of National Intelligence (2005–2007).