About

On July 11-12, the world will watch as heads-of-state and government, military leaders, and senior officials gather at the 2018 NATO Summit in Brussels. Working as a consortium and in partnership with NATO, the Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund (GMF), Munich Security Conference (MSC), and Women in International Security (WIIS), will organize the official high-profile outreach event alongside the official Summit. Featuring a diverse array of experts and leaders from around the world and across a range of sectors, the consortium’s event will be one of the most significant gatherings of international security leaders in 2018. Using a range of unique and engaging formats, this public-facing event will engage stakeholders beyond the traditional security and defense community in a discussion about the future of the world’s most powerful political-military alliance.

International Visibility and Unparalleled Access:
The event – titled NATO Engages: The Brussels Summit Dialogue – will take place inside the official Summit security perimeter on the grounds of the new NATO Headquarters. The close proximity to the Summit will provide unparalleled opportunities to host attending dignitaries and world leaders on the event’s main stage. As the sole public event at the Summit, the outreach event will fuse the consortium’s cumulative resources around a single platform for maximum impact and visibility. It will build on a long history of successful Summit side-programs organized by the partners at the previous eight NATO Summits that have directly engaged thousands of participants from across the alliance, provided a stage for dozens of heads-of-state and government and top NATO Officials, received national and international press coverage in over fifty countries, and directly reached tens of millions through social media.This event will seek to reinforce the connections between the citizens of NATO member and partner nations, their leaders, and the alliance by enabling these constituencies to explore the intersections between security, diplomacy, business, and society. Invited audiences will include senior leaders and opinion shapers in business, tech, media, civil society, and the creative community, as well as traditional thought leaders from the national security community. The consortium anticipates approximately 400 participants.

World-Class Production and Cutting-Edge Thought Leadership:
The consortium’s event aims to create an inclusive, interactive, and accessible platform for key audiences and influencers to directly engage NATO’s leadership, and vice versa. The main stage will feature a theater-in-the-round layout to accommodate TED-style talks, panel discussions, debates, and keynote speeches. The venue will also feature several unique breakout rooms, networking spaces, and lounges designed to connect people in different ways, foster an environment for innovation, and enhance the visibility of the event through activities like Facebook Live, press interviews, and interactive demonstrations.
The event will take on the most pressing challenges facing the NATO alliance in an effort to share insights and perspectives, problem-solve, generate new ideas, and help translate these into policy-relevant recommendations. Key themes for the discussion will include top items on the official Summit agenda, as well as broader transatlantic and global security issues. Some of these include: conventional defense and deterrence; counterterrorism; projecting stability; burden-sharing; maritime security; NATO-Russia relations; NATO-EU cooperation; hybrid threats; cyber defense and security; Alliance adaptation, and more.
The consortium partners will draw on their institutional experience from producing signature international conferences such as the Brussels Forum, Munich Security Conference, Abu Dhabi Global Energy Forum, and Istanbul Summit, among others. Together, they will bring to bear over a century of combined conference planning and thought leadership to pair world-class event production with cutting edge substantive expertise.