Safeguarding Humanity

Alessia Ardesi is a communications and public-affairs professional with over a decade of experience in domestic and international policy at the highest levels of government. She holds a Master's degree in International Public Policy from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University.

She began her career in television journalism as an anchorwoman for Sky Salute! and as a political commentator on national broadcasting. She then moved into institutional communication, joining the press and communications office of the Prime Minister of Italy and subsequently serving as Chief of Staff to Silvio Berlusconi, former Prime Minister of Italy.

She has been Adviser for International and Institutional Affairs to the President of the Italian Committee of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), and a candidate for the Italian Chamber of Deputies. She currently serves as Vice President for Governmental Affairs of GV Group and sits on the boards of PA Hutchinson Corporation and Lakebook Manufacturing, two of the principal book-printing facilities in the United States.

She has cultivated an extensive network among international leaders, diplomats, religious dignitaries, business owners, opinion leaders and academics. Specialised in European institutions and Vatican affairs, she is a recognised practitioner of back-channel diplomacy — connecting people from different backgrounds and nationalities to prevent and resolve conflict. She has taught Leadership and Communication to international cadets at the Italian Naval Academy in Livorno.

She is the author of a book on the Italian oratorio, the Catholic institution for youth education and community life, published on 3 October 2025 with a preface by His Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Vatican.

She is a member of the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs (WIFA), of the Foreign Policy Discussion Group and of the Women's Foreign Policy Group. She contributes as a volunteer to the work of the Andrea Bocelli Foundation, sits on the board committee of the Washington Opera Society and on the board of the Saving Innocents foundation. She is the founder of the NGO I Bambini di Nassiriya.

Within AEGIS, Alessia Ardesi brings to the Steering Committee a rare combination of media literacy, public-policy expertise and transatlantic institutional networks — a decisive asset in shaping the Foundation's voice on the ethical governance of artificial intelligence at the service of the human person.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has served with distinction in both the private and public arenas including in areas as diverse as AI, crime, faith, finance, workforce development, protection of the elderly, women’s rights, service.

Currently, she is the Chair, Sister Cities, Washington DC, Vice-Chair, Maryland Saves, Maryland’s initiative to facilitate retirement savings. She serves on the Advisory Board on the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, and is a Member of the American Society for AI (ASFAI), Member, National Academy of Social Insurance.

She was Maryland’s first woman Lt Governor where not only did supervise the anti crime efforts of the state government, but she, launched Character Education in public schools.

She also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy, and Senior Advisor at the United States State Deparmetn.

She led the effort to have Maryland be the first state to make Service-Learning a high school graduation requirement and Co-Founded Civic Works—an urban service corps in Baltimore.

After her term as Lt Governor, she focused on finance and became a Managing Director of Rock Creek, one of the largest women owned asset management firm in the US, with states, foundation, unions and corporate pension funds for clients.

That experience led her to see the need for retirement reform as half of all Americans had nothing saved for Retirement. She Chaired the Marland Task Force on Retirement which led to the creation of Maryland Saves (where she is now the vice chair), and Co-founded the Center for Retirement Initiatives at Georgetown to help states enact auto-IRA legislation. When the Center opened not a single state has passed that legislation. Now 18 states have enacted retirement reform. As the Secretary’s Representative on Pensions and Retirement at the Labor under President Biden, she led the retirement reform campaign for Secretary Marty Walsh.

In the mid-1980s, she founded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award which honored Lech Walesa, Bishop Tuto and Co-Madres from El Salvador among many others.

She Chaired the Institute of Human Virology founded by Dr. Robert Gallo, which treats over one million patients in Africa as part of the PEPFAR program, Chaired the Global Virus Network, Chaired the Robert Kennedy Memorial, Chaired the Innovation in Government Awards, at the Kennedy School, Harvard University and served on the Board of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

She was the Vice-Chair of the Future of Science conference held in Venice Italy for over a decade which was part of the effort to make stem cell acceptable in Italy.

Ms. Townsend’s book, Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Mixed God with Politics and Lost Their Way has been published by Warner Books in March 2007.

Ms. Townsend is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Inter-American Dialogue.

She Co-Chaired the Board of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. She has served on a number of boards including the Export-Import Bank, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the Wilderness Society, YMCA, the Points of Light Foundation, the National Catholic Reporter and the Women’s Policy Research, the Baltimore Urban League, Sheppard Pratt Health System Pension Rights Center, Center for American Progress, Why We Vac. She Chaired the Center for Popular Democracy.

Professional Profile

Creative and dynamic professional with over 25 years of experience in institutional and international affairs, strategic leadership, marketing and communications. She has developed strong organisational, relational and management skills, working across multicultural institutional environments with a results-oriented approach, strategic vision and strong problem-solving abilities.

Core Expertise

• Institutional and international relations
• Cultural internationalisation and diplomacy
• Senior project management
• Multicultural leadership
• Marketing and communications direction
• Culture, sustainability and corporate social responsibility projects

Professional Experience

Founder and Director of Invexiart Ltd, she has led more than 120 projects and cultural formats in Italy and abroad, managing all phases from concept to completion. Her work includes institutional projects involving governmental bodies, non-governmental organisations and strategic economic stakeholders.

International & Institutional Relations

Her professional activity includes high-level relations with ministries, embassies and supranational institutions, including the European Union, the United Nations and the OSCE. She has developed collaborations across Europe, the United States, the Middle East, Asia and West Africa.

Culture, Sustainability & CSR

She has directed cultural formats and sustainability projects, working as a recognised contemporary art curator in Italy and Europe, with collaborations connected to major cultural contexts including the Venice Biennale, Manifesta, Cyprus Art Week and Art UAE.

Author & Lecturer

Author of publications, catalogues, interviews and editorial collaborations in Italian, English and French, she has also served as lecturer in Marketing Management and Culture.

Educated at the School of the Sacred Heart and at Columbia University — where she majored in Political Science with a minor in Latin American history — and holder of a Certificate of Studies from the Harvard Business School “Program on Negotiations”, Conchita Sarnoff Woolsey has devoted the past two decades to the defence of human dignity and to the fight against the exploitation of the most vulnerable persons.

She began her career in media as a government-affairs account executive at CNN's first foreign bureau in London, later developing multimedia communications programmes for Fortune 500 companies and serving as crisis-communications adviser in high-level political and corporate contexts. Between 2007 and 2009 she created and produced The Americas Forum (subsequently The Region), a half-hour current-affairs debate programme featuring heads of state, policy experts and CEOs on Western Hemisphere foreign-policy issues, and produced a segment for PBS's Spanish-language Oppenheimer Report.

Since 2006 she has worked extensively on public-policy issues concerning human trafficking. In 2010 she published in The Daily Beast the investigative series that first opened to the world the details of the Jeffrey Epstein case — reporting she continued for almost a decade in the face of repeated threats. Her book TrafficKing: The Jeffrey Epstein Case (Post Hill Press / Simon & Schuster) has become a reference work on the intersection between trafficking, impunity and the abuse of power. In 2010 she was nominated for The Deadline Club Award for best investigative reporting.

She is founder and Executive Director of the Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking (ATRVT), a Washington, D.C. non-profit organisation dedicated to raising awareness of human trafficking and to ending the sexual exploitation of children. In 2019 she co-founded, with Professor Katharine Donato of Georgetown University, the Human Trafficking Research Center and Clinical Program, and she has served as a graduate faculty member at American University, Washington D.C., teaching Human Trafficking in Global Society.

A regular contributor and commentator, she has written for The Financial Times, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, The Latin America Herald Tribune and others, and has appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox, PBS, BBC, Univision, Telemundo and Caracol. She is married to Ambassador R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence of the United States, and lives in Washington, D.C.

Within AEGIS, Conchita Sarnoff Woolsey contributes to the Steering Committee her unparalleled experience in the defence of vulnerable persons, her transatlantic network of policy-makers, journalists and academic institutions, and a moral clarity earned in some of the most difficult investigations of our time — a decisive voice as the Foundation works to place ethics, regulation and human dignity at the very centre of the coming age of Artificial Intelligence.

Born in Rome and raised in Miami, educated at the Marymount School in Rome, at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Coconut Grove and at Manhattan College in New York, Charlotte Maietto is an accomplished luxury real-estate executive with over a decade of experience leading sales and marketing for some of South Florida's most iconic residential developments. Fluent in English, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish and Portuguese, she brings a genuinely international perspective to every transaction and every relationship.

Throughout her career, she has represented globally recognised brands including Four Seasons and the Terra Group, generating more than $1.5 billion in luxury real-estate sales. Her practice is distinguished by an international clientele, a relationship-driven approach and a strategic command of marketing for branded and waterfront residences.

She currently serves as Sales Agent for THE WELL Coconut Grove (Terra Group), one of Miami's premier wellness-focused luxury residential developments, advising domestic and international buyers and driving sales through strategic client relationships and broker partnerships.

From 2021 to 2026 she was Sales Director for Five Park Miami Beach (Terra Group), leading all sales initiatives for one of the city's most anticipated luxury condominium developments — directing sales strategy and broker engagement, managing relationships with ultra-high-net-worth domestic and international purchasers, and collaborating closely with ownership, marketing teams, architects and development leadership to position Five Park as a benchmark development in Miami Beach.

From 2014 to 2021, as Marketing & Sales Director at Fort Partners, she directed marketing and sales for the Four Seasons Hotel & Residences at The Surf Club and the Four Seasons Private Residences Fort Lauderdale — two of South Florida's most prestigious branded developments — overseeing luxury sales, international marketing, broker relations, branding initiatives, VIP client events and strategic campaigns.

Her professional recognition includes the 2025 New Development Award from Douglas Elliman Florida, ranking among the Top 3% of Agents Nationwide in 2026, No. 13 nationwide by sales volume and No. 158 in the RealTrends + Tom Ferry “The Thousand”.

Within AEGIS, Charlotte Maietto contributes to the Steering Committee her international relational capital, her multilingual reach across six languages, and a strategic understanding of the global philanthropic and cultural communities of South Florida and beyond — a decisive asset in building the transatlantic network of patrons, institutions and partners on which the Foundation's mission of ethical AI governance and dignity for older persons depends.

Born in Philadelphia (USA) on 16 February 1942, James M. Crowley is an international lawyer admitted to the New York Bar (1973), to the Southern District of New York, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and to the Supreme Court of the United States (1976). He has been active in the international legal profession since 1972.

He was formed at Saint Charles Seminary in Philadelphia and, chosen by his Archdiocese, at the Pontifical Roman Major Seminary. He earned degrees in Philosophy (Ph.B., 1965) and Theology (S.T.B. 1967, S.T.L. 1969) as well as in Canon Law (J.C.B. 1970, J.C.L. 1973, magna cum laude) at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome; a Certificate in English and American Laws at University College, University of London (1971); and a Juris Doctor at the University of Notre Dame (1972).

From 1972 to 1978 he practised at Shearman & Sterling in New York City. From 1980 to 1997 he served CIGNA Corporation — one of the world's leading insurance groups — as Senior Counsel, then Senior Vice President and Chief Counsel, and finally Senior Vice President for Government and Industry Affairs.

Since 1990 he is Attorney and Counsellor to the Pontifical North American College in Rome. From October 2014 to January 2017 he served as Counsellor to the President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and since January 2017 as Counsellor to the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

He was lead counsel in In re Karen Ann Quinlan — a landmark decision in American law on the refusal of extraordinary means to prolong life and on the primacy of the family in decisions concerning persons unable to express their own will. It was the first time a U.S. civil court articulated its reasoning in dialogue with Catholic moral theology, and it remains a cornerstone reference in the ethics of end-of-life care.

From 1993 to 1996 he was official industry advisor to the U.S. Delegation at the Insurance Committee of the OECD in Paris, contributing to the liberalisation of the insurance systems of Japan and Korea, and he addressed the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council on a framework for insurance protection of integral human development inspired by Centesimus Annus.

A Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Knight Commander of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, he has served as Director of the National Catholic Community Foundation (2014–2024) and of the National Catholic Bioethics Center (2006–2019), and as President of the Saint Thomas More Society of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He is listed in Who's Who in American Law and Who's Who in the World, and profiled in Lions of the Eighties (Doubleday, 1982).

Within AEGIS he brings to the Steering Committee over five decades of experience at the intersection of law, bioethics and international institutions — a decisive contribution to the Foundation's mission of shaping an ethical governance of artificial intelligence rooted in the dignity of the human person.

A graduate in Law from the University of Modena, after classical secondary studies at the Liceo Tito Livio in Padua, Tullio Scanferla has devoted his professional life to international corporate law, cross-border negotiation and the structuring of complex industrial, financial and institutional operations. Fluent in English and at ease in multi-jurisdictional environments, he combines legal rigour, absolute confidentiality and a distinctively adaptive style of counsel.

In the nuclear decommissioning sector he has served as Head of Institutional, Legal, Contractual and Commercial Relations, promoting the adoption of patented technologies for the treatment of low-, medium- and high-level radioactive liquids (LLW, ILW, HLW), conducting negotiations at governmental level, coordinating the Chernobyl / Ukraine project and drafting contracts with global operators including ORANO, AMEC Foster Wheeler, Rosatom and Rotem.

In the field of environmental chemistry and industrial plants he has led the promotion, contracting and implementation of patented technologies for the treatment of industrial and process liquids, including in the oil & gas and pharmaceutical sectors. In the renewable-energy sector he has promoted offshore wind-farm initiatives based on a patented double-deck jack-up installation system, as Director of Alzati Ltd (Cyprus), and has structured a 1 GW solar project in Pakistan.

His international fiduciary practice — spanning Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Oman and Cyprus — has included service as Anti-Money-Laundering Officer registered with the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), as well as responsibility for internal compliance, KYC and due-diligence procedures, and the drafting of national and international contracts under fiduciary administration.

In finance he has structured and managed complex operations with leading international institutions, acting as mandatary of H.R.H. Prince Bandar bin Mohammad bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud for the acquisition of Rupali Bank (Bangladesh) in cooperation with Deutsche Bank London, and has handled receivables assignments with public administrations, financing operations, DTA structuring and environmental certificates. His professional experience further extends to the medical sector — with projects in Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Algeria and Tunisia — to the international art market as mandatary for the sale of major artworks and contractual advisor for large-scale cultural events, and to selected engagements in the metalworking, oil-and-wine and general commercial sectors.

Within AEGIS, Tullio Scanferla contributes to the Steering Committee his rare combination of legal craftsmanship, discretion and transnational network — a decisive asset for the Foundation as it builds partnerships between industry, institutions and civil society in the service of a human-centred governance of Artificial Intelligence and of the rights, dignity and voice of older persons.

Roberto Bortone is a senior public official, researcher and lecturer whose work focuses primarily on the relationship between artificial intelligence and discrimination, as well as on hate speech, antisemitism, antigypsyism, Roma and Sinti inclusion, digital platforms and equality policies.

He currently works within the Secretariat of the Italian National Coordinator for the Fight against Antisemitism, following extensive professional experience at UNAR — the Italian National Office against Racial Discrimination — where he contributed to the development of national and European policies on equality, online discrimination, hate speech, minority protection and data collection. He has also worked with the Council of Europe and other international institutions on anti-discrimination and hate-speech policies.

He is a member of the Centro di Ricerca sulle Relazioni Interculturali — Research Centre for Intercultural Relations — at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. The Centre promotes research and training on intercultural relations, social inclusion, citizenship, civil society and action against discrimination.

His research examines how artificial intelligence, algorithms and digital environments can reproduce, amplify and transform prejudice, but also how technological tools can be used to detect and counter discriminatory phenomena. This perspective is central to his two most recent books. In Molto Social Troppo Dark, he analyses the darker dynamics of social media, online hate, algorithmic amplification and the growing influence of artificial intelligence on public discourse. His latest book, L'ultimo pregiudizio. L'antiziganismo tra storia e attualità, explores the historical and contemporary forms of antigypsyism, including their circulation and reinforcement through digital platforms and AI-driven systems.

For the 2026–2027 academic year, he holds teaching appointments for Social Work Laboratories at Roma Tre University and LUMSA University. At Roma Tre, he has also taught Sociology of Ethnic Relations. His academic and professional activities combine policy analysis, research, teaching and public engagement, with particular attention to the connections between technology, prejudice, democratic institutions and social inclusion.

Within AEGIS, Roberto Bortone contributes to the Steering Committee his unique perspective on the frontier where equality law, human-rights policy and the governance of artificial intelligence converge — a decisive asset in ensuring that the Foundation's work on the ethical governance of AI remains firmly anchored to the protection of the most exposed minorities and to the concrete experience of those who, in Europe and beyond, face the daily reality of digital discrimination.