Basil Gavalas is a Forbes 30 Under 30-listed entrepreneur who has worked with heads of state, senior government leaders and investors across three continents on geopolitics, corporate diplomacy and defence technology.

Committed to strengthening the West’s strategic agency, Gavalas has sought to translate that conviction into institutions and networks. Towards this end, he has founded various initiatives, including the Athens Defence Summit, the first high-level defence-only forum in South East Europe backed by a NATO government. He is also the Founding Strategic Adviser of the Slemani Strategic Forum, where he serves on and directs its International Advisory Committee, comprising former heads of government, chiefs of defence and captains of industry.

He also serves on several other boards alongside former heads of state, thought leaders and business leaders, including the Leadership Council of the New York Times-affiliated Democracy & Culture Foundation, the Advisory Board of the Platform for African Democrats, and the Strategic Council of DIKTIO–Network for Reform, one of Greece’s leading public-policy institutes, where he began his career as an intern. He is also an elected member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He is co-author, with strategist Dr Greg Mills, former Estonian intelligence chief Eerik Kross and General Sir Ralph Wooddisse, of War of the Machines: How Ukraine Reinvented War, and the People and Systems Behind It (Hurst, 2027).

He has published articles, inter alia, in The National Interest and Newsmax, as well as analysis with RUSI — the Royal United Services Institute.

Previously, Gavalas was one of the youngest political advisers within the Government of the Hellenic Republic and worked with leading policy institutions. A corporate lawyer by training, he is a published poet and was trained as an armoured combat soldier.