Board of Directors & Leadership

Chairman

As a passionate sports fan following a career in the armed forces, Mohammed Hanzab established the ICSS in 2010 and since then has overseen the growth of the organisation, leading the Centre to become a globally-renowned and respected reference in sport safety, security and integrity. [read more]

After graduating from the British Royal Air Force College, Cranwell, he has served as Lieutenant Colonel in the Qatar Armed Forces, Commander of the Qatar Air Defence School and worked at the Qatar Air Defence Project and the Qatar Information Agency. Mr Hanzab is a former President of the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies (QIASS).

In his role as the Chairman of the ICSS, he has endorsed several agreements with governmental, non-governmental, sport organisations and the scientific academic community – all as part of his commitment to fulfilling his mission for the ICSS to be a service to sport and to play a central role in keeping sport safe, secure and fair.

In 2013, under his leadership, the ICSS launched Save the Dream, a global initiative designed to promote and protect the core values of sport for the good of youth and future generations.

In 2014, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations endorsed the appointment of Mohammed Hanzab as member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), a role he held until 2019.

Since 2015, Mr Hanzab holds a Vice-Chairman position in the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA), a coalition of international private-public organisations co-founded by the ICSS to tackle the numerous and urgent governance challenges facing sport. The group includes sports bodies, governments, anti-corruption NGOs, inter-governmental organisations, and commercial partners.

Mohammed Hanzab’s work to drive integrity in sport was recognised in 2015 when he was named as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics, an annual, internationally recognised list that defines and advances the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust, and business success.

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Vice-Chairman

Mohammed Hajjaj Al Hajri holds the position of the Vice-Chairman at the ICSS and has been with the organisation since its inception. Over the course of his career, Mr Al Hajri has served as the Senior Air Force Officer in Qatar Emiri Air Force and as the Director of the Cooperation and Leadership on the C4IS project, among other senior leadership appointments.

Board Member

Michael Hershman, an internationally recognised expert on matters relating to transparency, accountability, governance, litigation and security, held the position of CEO of the ICSS Group from 2016 – 2018. [read more]

After serving as CEO for two years, Mr Hershman returned to his previous role as the Senior Advisor to the Chairman and rejoined the ICSS Board of Directors. In 2012, Mr Hershman was asked to serve on the Independent Governance Committee for FIFA, the global governing body for football. He founded The Fairfax Group in 1983 and since then has been retained by governments, corporations, law firms and international financial institutions to assist and advise on matters relating to the conduct of senior-level officials and/or the entities with which they do business.

In 1993, along with Peter Eigen, Michael Hershman co-founded Transparency International, the largest independent, not-for-profit coalition promoting transparency and accountability in business and government.

For 12 years, he served as an advisor to the Secretary-General of INTERPOL on matters pertaining to police ethics and accountability. He is the Founder and Chair of the International Advisory Board of the International Anti-Corruption Academy (IACA) – the first global institution of its kind that is dedicated to enhancing and sharing knowledge and best practice in the field of anti-corruption. The Academy is an international organisation recognised by the United Nations.

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Board Member

Lord Stevens was educated at St. Lawrence College, Ramsgate, the University of Leicester where he took an LL.B and the University of Southampton, where he did his MPhil. [read more]

Prior to becoming a Member of the ICSS Board of Directors, Lord Stevens held the position of Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police (2000 – 2004) and has served as the Senior Advisor on International Security to the British Prime Minister in 2007.

Lord Stevens is also the Chairman of Quest, a global advisory firm that enables private and public sector clients to respond to a range of security and integrity issues. He has led major investigations in equine doping, corruption in Premier Football League transfers and F1 racing.

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Board Member

Karen Webb Moss is the Chair of British Swimming, becoming the first woman to hold the position on a permanent basis.  With less than two years to go until the Olympic and Paralympic Games of Paris 2024, Webb Moss will be responsible for leading the British Swimming board and its focus on organisational strategy and development.

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Mrs. Webb Moss held the role of Chief Operating Officer at the ICSS prior to joining the Board of Directors. Having started her career in journalism and then moving on to work in the beverage and broadcast industries, Mrs. Webb Moss has worked across the world, in the public and private sector and on some of the world’s leading events and brands.

She has an extensive background in strategic communications, marketing and media across highly diverse and dynamic fields.

Mrs. Webb Moss has worked on ten Olympic Winter and Summer Games since her first sport business role as Head of Marketing Communications for the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Then recruited by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), she served as Vice President, Brand and Marketing Communications, for nearly nine years. She has advised multiple organisations and brands including the Mayor of London’s Office, various UK regional governments, Lloyds Banking Group, Westfield, BT and EDF.

Throughout her career, Mrs. Webb Moss has held numerous executive and non-executive board roles. She was a member of the UK Sport Major Event Board, the Mayor of London’s Major Event Advisory Committee and a member of the London 2012 Government Communications Committee. She was a founder of Women in Sport UK and has established the initiative ‘Women in Sport Qatar’.

Mrs. Webb Moss also served as a Senior Advisor at the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy in Qatar.

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Board Member

Ambassador Stelzer has been a long-serving member of the foreign service of the Republic of Austria. He has served as Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations Office in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Preparatory Commission; and more recently as Ambassador to Portugal. [read more] He also served as Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs at the United Nations, and as the Secretary of the United Nations Chief Executives Board.

At the Austrian Permanent Mission in New York, he has worked in the areas of international security and disarmament issues, as well as development cooperation. He was also Special Assistant to the Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban-Treaty Organization (CTBTO PrepCom).

Among his various other professional activities, Thomas Stelzer has also held a position of Deputy-Director of the Austrian Cultural Institute in New York. Before joining the Foreign Service, he worked as a free-lance journalist and political science researcher in Latin America. He has extensively lectured on the international system.

Thomas Stelzer holds degrees from Vienna University and Stanford University and a Diploma from the Johns Hopkins University, School for Advanced International Studies.

He has been the president of Klangforum Wien, a leading ensemble for contemporary classical music. [/read]

Board Member

Ambassador Douglas Lute is the former United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s standing political body. Appointed by President Obama, he assumed the Brussels-based post in 2013 and served until 2017. [read more]

During this period, he was instrumental in designing and implementing the 28-nation Alliance’s responses to the most severe security challenges in Europe since the end of the Cold War. He received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award.

A career Army officer, in 2010 Lute retired from active duty as a lieutenant general after 35 years of service. In 2007 President Bush named him as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor to coordinate the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2009 he was the senior White House official retained by President Obama and his focus on the National Security Council staff shifted to South Asia. Across these two Administrations, he served a total of six years in the White House.

Before being assigned to the White House, General Lute served as Director of Operations (J3) on the Joint Staff, overseeing U.S. military operations worldwide. From 2004 to 2006, he was Director of Operations for the United States Central Command, with responsibility for U.S. military operations in 25 countries across the Middle East, eastern Africa and Central Asia, in which over 200,000 U.S. troops operated.

In earlier assignments, he served as Deputy Director of Operations for the United States European Command in Stuttgart, Germany; Assistant Division Commander in the 1st Infantry Division in Germany; Commander of U.S. Forces in Kosovo; and Commander of the Second Cavalry Regiment. Through his military career, he received numerous honours and awards, including three awards of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal.

General Lute holds degrees from the United States Military Academy at West Point and from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a charter member of the Flag Officer Advisory Group of the United States Institute of Peace.

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Board Member

Fausto Pocar is a professor emeritus of International Law at the University of Milan, where he also taught Private International Law and European Law, and where he served many years as Faculty Dean and Vice-Rector. [read more]

From 1984-2000, he was an elected member of the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations, serving as the committee’s chair from 1991-92.

Pocar served in the Italian delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York and to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva several times. He also served as Italian delegate in the UNCOPUOS (UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space) and its Legal Subcommittee.

In 1999, he was appointed as a judge to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and was Vice-President of the tribunal from November 2003 to November 2005, and President from November 2005 to November 2008. He was also a member of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from 2000 until the ICTR’s closure in 2015, where he presided over many cases, including the one whereby the ICTR was closed.

In 2017, Pocar was appointed Judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. As of 2012, Pocar is President of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law (Sanremo, Italy). Pocar is a doctor honoris causa of the University of Antwerpen and of the Kennedy University of Buenos Aires. In 2014 he was made Cavaliere di Gran Croce (Great Cross Knight, the highest Italian honour) by the President of the Italian Republic.

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Board Member

Liu Xiaohong is a Professor and PhD supervisor of law and the President of the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.
She served as the Vice Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Commission on Arbitration & ADR between 2016 and 2019. [read more]
Prof. Xiaohong is currently a member of the Commission of the ICC International Court of Arbitration on the Belt and Road Initiative, Vice Chairman of ICC China Commission on Arbitration & ADR, China Society of Private International Law and Shanghai Law Society, President of the Institute for the Belt and Road Initiative of Shanghai Law Society, and chief expert of Collaborative Innovation Center of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone.
She also serves as an arbitrator in a number of main arbitration institutions in China and abroad, and as a mediator in Shanghai-Rhone-Alpes International Mediation Center.

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Chief Executive Officer

Massimiliano Montanari is an international civil servant who holds over eighteen years of experience in international affairs, diplomacy and social innovation. Prior to assuming his current role as ICSS Group CEO, Massimiliano served in various roles at the ICSS, including as Chief Executive Officer of the ICSS INSIGHT (2018-2020), Chief of Cabinet (2014 – 2016) and Executive Director of Save the Dream, a role he still holds.[read more]

Before joining the ICSS in 2012, Massimiliano spent twelve years working for different United Nations bodies, including the UNHCR, UNODC and UNICRI, as well as taking part in the UN Task Force addressing violent extremism, war crimes prosecution and security in post-conflict zones.

His most recent assignment at the UN was as Head of the Center on Public-Private Partnership for the Protection of Vulnerable Targets and the International Permanent Observatory on Major Events Security.

He holds a Master’s Degree in International Advanced Legal Studies, a University Degree in Political Sciences and a Postgraduate Degree in International Relations.

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