Directors' Bios

Piet Biesheuvel

Libra Director Piet Biesheuvel has recently returned from leading the UK’s Rule of Law Section in the Provincial Reconstruction Team Helmand, Afghanistan, where he led in the creation of a more co-ordinated and cohesive approach to supporting the security and justice sectors. The Rule of Law team consists of a number of specialist advisers and inter alia sets policy guidelines for UK funded support to the police, provides support to the formal courts structure, informal justice systems and a variety of community groups involved with access to justice and community security issues.

Piet Biesheuvel has a wide range of developmental experience in the justice and security sector, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where he operated in the field for over ten years. He has managed long-term Safety Security and Access to Justice (SSAJ) programmes in Uganda, Malawi and South Africa. As former Police and Justice Adviser to the British Government’s Security Sector Development Advisory Team (SSDAT) he has advised on, designed, implemented and reviewed security and justice sector reform programmes in a wide variety of countries, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa, Sierra Leone, DRC, Lebanon, Iraq, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bolivia, Guyana, Sri Lanka, East Timor and Vietnam. He has also conducted a number of sector-wide reviews in post-conflict countries for the UK Government’s Conflict Prevention Pools. He is a regular speaker on security and justice development issues.
Piet is a former Superintendent in the UK police, with strategic experience in public order policing, firearms operations and media relations.

Rohan Burdett

Libra Director Rohan Burdett is an Australian lawyer and national security specialist who is based in Istanbul, Turkey. He currently runs a major security sector reform project in a conflict zone and from 2005 until recently advised the Iraqi Ministry of Interior on legal and internal governance issues. Other consulting experience in recent years has included managing Iraqi judicial reform and governance projects and rule of law projects in Nepal and Thailand; and advising the Solomon Islands Government on forestry law and governance. Rohan was formerly a senior official in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, where he focused on national security issues and had long term postings as a Counsellor (Political) in South Korea and as a Political/Economic Officer in Papua New Guinea. In 1999-2000 he undertook a military deployment to East Timor as an Army Reserve Officer.

Rohan has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government; and Law and Politics/Philosophy degrees from the University of Melbourne. He is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia.

Alex Martin

Libra Director Alex Martin currently leads Libra’s implementation of an extensive UK-funded programme to build the managerial, governance and operational capacity of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior (MOI). Alex leads a team providing institutional development services to the Ministry, whilst working with a range of partners including the Coalition military, European Commission, UNDP and NATO; and which has been instrumental in connecting the MOI to its peers in the Arab world and Europe, hence providing a basis for the diffusion of experience.

Alex is a security professional with operational, policy and management experience on a wide range of regional and global security issues including counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and political relations in Central and South East Asia, Central Europe, the Middle East and Russia. Alex spent his early career as an officer in the British Diplomatic Service, working on European and Central Asian security issues; policy and analysis on South East Asia; and counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and organised crime. This included long-term assignments in Jakarta and Prague. Alex has expertise in security policy, strategic planning and the institutional reform and management development of security organisations; and experience in training, personnel and recruitment in the security sector.

Alex holds a First Class Bachelor’s Degree in English from Nottingham University.

Andrew Rathmell

Libra Director Andrew Rathmell is a practitioner and scholar who has led cross-government national security strategy work, managed security sector development programmes, planned and reviewed stabilisation and reconstruction missions, led interdisciplinary research projects and developed new perspectives on corporate risk management.

Andrew has just returned to Libra from a year spent serving as a Deputy Director of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office's (FCO) Strategy Unit At the FCO, Andrew led cross-government strategy work on international norms and international conflict, international institutional reform, and Pakistan. Andrew’s previous assignments have included serving as the Chief Planner for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq; Director of a UK-funded programme to rebuild the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior; lead consultant on a World Bank review of governance capacity building in Iraq; an Advisor to the UK’s Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit; and member of the US Government’s Iraq Joint Strategic Assessment Team.

While his recent work has focused on stabilisation and reconstruction in the Middle East and South Asia, Andrew’s research and consultancy career began with a focus on Middle Eastern security issues and terrorism and has included applied analysis in areas such as space-based surveillance systems, computational fraud detection, intelligence management models, and performance measurement for post-conflict stabilisation missions. His work on corporate risk included founding and leading the Information Assurance Advisory Council, a UK public-private partnership dedicated to improving management of information risks. Until 2006, Andrew was director of RAND Europe’s Defence and Security research programme. Before he joined RAND in 2001, Andrew was Senior Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London and Director of the International Centre for Security Analysis.

Andrew holds a PhD, in War Studies, from London University and a Master’s in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Balliol College Oxford. He also studied at George Washington University and in Damascus. In 2004, he was awarded the United States Medal for Valor and in 2007 received a US Department of the Army Commander’s Award for Public Service. Click here to view a list of his published articles.

Peter Wilson

Libra Director Peter Wilson has worked as Intelligence and Security Adviser to the UK Government’s Security Sector Development Advisory Team (SSDAT) since 2004. He advises on the ability of national security structures to deliver legitimate human security in a wide variety of developing and post-conflict countries, including Bosnia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Sudan. He wrote the Intelligence and Security chapter of the OECD-DAC Handbook on Security System Reform and has published in a wide variety of peer-reviewed journals on the connections between conflict, security and development.

Peter is a former strategy consultant at McKinsey and then Strategos, advising multinational companies on international business development, corporate social responsibility and innovation. He is co-author of Make Poverty Business, which examines how multinational companies can contribute more to economic development. His early career was spent as an officer in the British Diplomatic Service, specialising in national security issues. He is a member of the “Media and Democratic Participation” Research Cluster at the Advanced Research and Assessment Group, British Defence Academy; and a speaker at a range of conferences including King’s College’s “International Intelligence Directors’ Course” and the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on “The Changing Face of Intelligence” at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He is a visiting senior lecturer in Business Strategy at the University of Manchester.

Peter has an MBA with Distinction from INSEAD and an MPhil in Economics, specialising in development, from the University of Oxford. He has a First Class Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics from the University of Manchester.

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