Leadership
Meet the dedicated individuals guiding and advising our mission and growth.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Our Board of Directors brings together veteran political analysts, senior diplomats and foreign policy officials, and purpose-driven entrepreneurs. Their collective expertise guides our strategic vision.
Elana DeLozier
FOUNDER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, & TREASURER
Political analyst on Yemen, the Gulf States, and nuclear proliferation
Elana DeLozier is a university educator and international political analyst specializing in Yemen, the Gulf States, and nuclear proliferation. She founded The Sage Institute for Foreign Affairs to make international subject matter expertise more accessible to all. Over her nearly two decade career, she has been a senior fellow at a think tank in Washington D.C., where she regularly engaged with senior U.S., UN, and foreign government leaders as well as key stakeholders from all parties in Yemen; a political analyst and educator in the Middle East, including six years in the Gulf and two years in Lebanon; a counterterrorism analyst in New York City; and a senior research assistant at the Brookings Institution. She currently teaches graduate seminars at the University of Virginia and has previously taught at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. She completed her graduate studies at Virginia Tech.
Dan Myers
CHAIRMAN & PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD
Purpose-driven entrepreneur and venture capitalist
Dan Myers is Co-Founder & Managing Director of 42Phi Ventures, a Silicon Valley based VC firm investing in Seed to Series A companies. Previously, Dan was the Founding Director of Runway, an innovation hub in San Francisco where he led startup incubation yielding more than 50 exits in 5 years. Additionally, Dan has designed and managed nationally recognized startup accelerator programs, supported Fortune 100 companies to identify, engage, and acquire startups, and helped build one of the largest startup competitions in the world with finalists pitching to Sir Richard Branson.
Gary Sick
BOARD MEMBER
Former Senior White House Official and Founder of Gulf/2000
Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of All Fall Down, a personal history of the Iranian Revolution, and October Surprise, an investigative account of the Reagan campaign to interfere with the 1980 presidential election, in addition to many other edited books and articles dealing with U.S. Middle East policy. Mr. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and the Mediterranean. He was the deputy director for International Affairs at the Ford Foundation from 1982 to 1987, where he was responsible for programs relating to U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Sick has a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University, where he has been Senior Research Scholar, adjunct professor of international affairs, and former director of the Middle East Institute (2000-2003). He taught in the School of International and Public Affairs, where he was voted one of the top five teachers. He is a member (emeritus) of the board of Human Rights Watch and founding chair of its advisory committee on the Middle East and North Africa. He was the founding director of Gulf/2000, an international research project on political, economic and security developments in the Persian Gulf, conducted at Columbia University from 1993, with support from the W. Alton Jones, Ford, MacArthur, Carnegie, and Soros foundations and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In September 2024, Gulf/2000 was transferred to The Sage Institute for Foreign Affairs.
Ambassador (ret.) Barbara Bodine is a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and the Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. A member of the Senior Foreign Service, her over 30-year career was spent working primarily on or in the broader Persian Gulf region, including two tours in Baghdad, deputy chief of mission in Kuwait, and ambassador to Yemen. She also served as Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Director of East African Affairs. After leaving State, she has been a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, Wilhem Fellow at MIT, and worked for seven years at Princeton teaching and directing their Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative. She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She currently teaches courses on Leadership and Crisis Management, Negotiations and Mediation, and on the Arab Gulf States. She is an avid albeit rather slow cyclist.
Amb. Barbara Bodine
BOARD MEMBER
Director of Georgetown Institute for the Study of Diplomacy & Former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen
Nicole Price
SECRETARY OF THE BOARD
Education Marketing Specialist & Entrepreneur
Nicole Price is an education marketing subject matter expert with 15 years experience in the field. Over her career, Nicole has launched, relaunched, and reimagined numerous targeted education programs that have reached over 1.5 million learners and 500,000 educators around the world. She is currently the Senior Global Marketing Manager of Amazon Web Services’ Academic Education Programs.
A strong advocate for the revitalization of small towns throughout rural Appalachia, Nicole is also co-founder and Chief People Officer of Eartha Developers, LLC – an organization focused on downtown commercial development projects resulting in job creation, economic development, and a renewed entrepreneurial energy in historic spaces. She resides in Virginia with her husband and five children.
Our Advisory Council brings together talented professionals from the analysis, diplomatic, business, technology, and journalist communities.
ADVISORY COUNCIL
Jonas Horner
Political and security analyst on Sudan, Horn of Africa, and Red Sea
Jonas Horner is a Visiting Fellow of the Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He writes and provides advisory input on conflict, politics, and regional geopolitics in Sudan and the Horn of Africa.
Prior to joining ECFR, Horner was deputy director for the Horn of Africa and senior analyst for Sudan with the International Crisis Group, the Middle East regional conflict advisor for Mercy Corps, coordinator of the UN task team on conflict prevention, and EU technical advisor on stabilisation and peacebuilding in Sudan and South Sudan. He also ran the UN peacebuilding programmes in Sudan’s border areas with South Sudan, was the Africa analyst with Eurasia Group, and Nigeria researcher for the Small Arms Survey.
Horner has a master’s in international policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations from the University of New South Wales.
Nilofar Khatib
UX Strategist & GovTech Consultant
Nilofar Khatib is a UX Design Strategist specializing in digital transformation, AI-driven service design, and government innovation. She has led flagship initiatives across federal and corporate sectors, uniting product strategy, user research, and emerging technologies to deliver measurable impact.
Her work includes integrating large language models into public services, advancing national service platforms, and shaping smart city digital ecosystems. Known for clarity, precision, and forward-looking vision, Nilofar is passionate about building systems that enhance accessibility, efficiency, and public trust at scale.
Garrett Nada
Middle East analyst specializing in Iran and aligned militias
Garrett Nada is an expert on Iran’s politics, economy, military, foreign policy and nuclear program. He also closely monitors the activities and evolution of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias backed by Iran. From 2012 to 2025, he served in various roles at the U.S. Institute of Peace, most recently as a program officer and managing editor of “The Iran Primer” website. Through a partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Nada also managed “The Islamists” website, which surveyed the rise of Islamist groups in the wake of the Arab uprisings as well as jihadist movements. He received his MA from the George Washington University and his BA from Brandeis University.
Peter Salisbury
Director, Beyond the Axis Project, Century International
Adjunct Professor, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
Peter Salisbury is a researcher and writer, and fellow at Century International. An adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, he studies the political economy of war and peace in the Middle East. Formerly an Emmy- and Canadian Screen Award-winning journalist, Peter was also a senior fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (2016–19) and senior analyst for Yemen at the International Crisis Group (2018–22).