Florence Gaub is Director of the Research Division at NATO Defense College in Rome. She was previously foresight advisor at the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU, special advisor to the EU’s Commissioner on Strategic Foresight Maros Sefcovic, as well as deputy director at the EU Institute for Security Studies. Before that, she was the institute’s resident Middle East analyst, and started her career at the NATO Defense College as Faculty Advisor in the Middle East Faculty. Florence also serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Complex Risks and is Vice-President of the European Forum Alpbach, an Austrian non-profit. Her career has taken her from conflict and war in the Middle East and North Africa to institutional change and geopolitical shifts. In her work, she focuses on long-term trends, challenges and opportunities, and how to future proof societies for them. Florence has authored numerous publications, her more recent ones include “Arab Climate Futures”, the EU’s “Global Trends to 2030” report, as well as “The Cauldron: NATO’s Libya Operation”. Her book “The Future: a manual” will appear in September 2023. She holds a PhD from Humboldt University of Berlin, as well as degrees from Sciences Po Paris, the Sorbonne and the University of Munich. She’s a French-German national and served in the French Army as a reserve officer.