Akira Kurimoto is a professor of the co-operative program at the Institute for Solidarity-based Society at Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan. He has been a board member/chief researcher of the Consumer Co-operative Institute, Japan since 1998. He served as the Chair of the International Co-operative Alliance Research Committee (2001-2005) and is the Chair of the ICA Asia Pacific Research Committee. He helped to found the of the Asia Pacific Co-operative Research Partnership in 2014. His discipline is in legal science and his main research interests cover co-operative laws, co-operative economics, co-operative history, corporate governance, food supply chain, health and social care co-operatives, and the third sector/social economy. He has published over 30 English papers in co-operative theory/practice and the social economy including International Handbook of Cooperative Law, The Worth of the Social Economy, The Palgrave Handbook of Volunteering, Civic Participation, and Nonprofit Associations, Global History of Consumer Co-operation since 1850. He has edited multiple books including Toward Contemporary Co-operative Studies: Perspectives from Japan’s Consumer Co-ops.

Anthony Jensen is an academic, teacher, and activist with a focus on worker co-operatives as institutions inspiring an equal distribution of wealth, democracy, and opportunity. He is a conjoint lecturer at the University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia, where he was involved in the launch of the Graduate Certificate in Co-operative Management and Organisation, and where he taught business ethics, corporate governance, and social responsibility. He is also the founder of the Asia Pacific Cooperative Research Partnership in 2014. Dr. Jensen's role as a catalyst for societal change and advocate to reform insolvency law took him to Spain, Italy, and the United States to study the worker takeover of insolvent companies, leading to the report "Insolvency, Employee Rights and Employee Buyouts." This was launched at a function at the House of Commons, London, United Kingdom in 2006 and was published in Economic and Industrial Democracy in 2011. It became a foundation document by the Greek Government for the conference on worker buyouts in 2012. Dr. Jensen received his PhD from the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, and his theoretical approach was published in Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory and Labour Managed Firms in 2013. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney and a visiting professor at Mysore University, Mysore, India. Adopting a learning by praxis approach, he has written and worked in the community to form co-operatives, presented papers at conferences, as well as edited, and contributed to books and journals including Waking the Asia Pacific Co-operative Potential in 2020.

Robby Tulus pioneered the Credit Union Movement in Indonesia in the late 1960s, and co-founded the Credit Union Counseling/Central Organization (CUCO) in Indonesia. He started his career as managing director of CUCO Indonesia (Jakarta 1971-80), Training Specialist of ACCU (Seoul, Korea 1981-83), Asia Region Director of the Canadian Co-operative Association (CCA, Ottawa, Canada, 1983-1993), Senior Policy Advisor of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA, New Delhi & Manila - 1993-96), and Regional Director for Asia Pacific of the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA, based in New Delhi and Singapore: 1996-2002). His experience and expertise as a co-operative practitioner led him to a multitude of consultancies with International Development Agencies such as CIDA (Canada), ILO and UNDP, MFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Singapore), and the Asian Development Bank. In the Academic sphere, he engaged himself actively in co-operative research work. He was instrumental in initiating the development of the SANASA Campus in Sri Lanka, the Institute of Co-operative Development Studies in Indonesia, and the Aceh International Society of Micro Finance (AISMIF). He was Associate of the British Columbia Institute of Co-operative Studies (BCICS), and is an Associate of the Center for Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) at the University of Victoria, Canada. He was the Commissioning Editor of the International Journal of Co-operative Management when it was set up under the auspices of Leicester University (UK). Mr. Tulus held various board chairs and memberships in Canada and in Indonesia throughout his professional tenure. Lately, in his voluntary capacity, Mr. Tulus has been appointed as Chief Advisor to the Karl Albrecht Foundation in Indonesia to introduce new generation co-ops with a multi-stakeholder’s concept. More recently he founded and pioneered the establishment of the National Association of Strategic Socio-Economic Cadres (NASSEC in 2012) and the National Federation of People-Based Co-operative Enterprises (INKUR in 2016) in Indonesia.

Yashavantha Dongre is a professor of commerce and the director of the Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Board at the University of Mysore, Mysore, India. He holds masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Mysore and was formerly dean of Faculty of Commerce and acting vice chancellor at the same university. Dr. Dongre has worked as Visiting Overseas Researcher at Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Osaka, Japan and as Japan Foundation Fellow at the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Dongre founded and served as coordinator of the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Mysore, which focuses on research and extension activities in the fields of non-profits, cooperatives, and social enterprises. He served as consultant to the High-Power Committee on Cooperatives set up by Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, the recommendations of which paved the way for constitutional amendments related to cooperatives. Dr. Dongre has published over 50 journal articles and book chapters, most of which are related to cooperatives. He has been part of the editorial team of 5 books – all but one of which are on cooperative movement. As part of extension activity, he serves as Co-Secretary of the ICA Asia Pacific Committee on Cooperatives in Educational Institutions

Mr. Balasubramanian (Balu) Iyer joined as Regional Director for Asia-Pacific in April, 2014. Mr. Iyer has over 25 years’ experience managing international development operations and overseeing multiple country offices including experience building new offices from the ground up. Mr. Iyer worked in India in co-operative development before moving abroad to work on Asian regional concerns for overseas agencies, and in particular in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. He has worked with the Aga Khan Rural Support Program, ActionAid India, International Development Exchange and the Asia Foundation. Mr. Iyer was born in India and educated in India and the United States, receiving a degree in Civil Engineering from the National Institute of Technology at Durgapur, a Post Graduate Diploma in Rural Management from the Institute of Rural Management at Anand, India, and Masters in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at U.C.Berkeley.