i mentioned ambassador richard the vice president here at the council and director of the rafik haririenter for the middle east. prior to joining the council frank was a long time career foreign service officer, has been ambassador to turkey, egypt. philippines. a very distinguished career. finally, dr. jean francois who is teaching at the mcdonough school of business at georgetown. also at johns hopkins at the psych school at johns hopkins. he's an expert on energy based industries in the gulf. he has over 25 years experience in international banking and finance. and i'm also happy to announce very happy to announce, that as of officially last night, dr. seznek has joined the global energy center as a senior fellow. we couldn't be happier to have such an esteemed expert. so let me just finally say that for the audience, for the audience here and those watching the live webcast, you can contribute to the conversation on twitter by utilizing the hashtag a.c. energy and a.c. middle east. i extend a warm welcome to the panel. the panel will come up on stage and i will turn it over to our

we are involved in this program, but also the rafik hariri center for the immediate, and frank richard former ambassador to turkey and to egypt is the director. will be part of the panel. and the focused on things like education or many other areas that really matter in the kingdom. but what i have seen is an awful lot of structural consistency. and you do have very powerful institutions. you have budgets. you have plans that have a drive impact on a lot of what the kingdom does. and i think that the shift here frankly it was time, really time that you had a younger prince, and it's not really that young made crown prince. you needed a figure that could handle the transition, handle the security issues, that was strong enough to lead and provide some degree of bridging. so i think in the case of muhammad you have somebody who had proven his capability in what today in the kingdom may be the most critical focus, which is its immediate concern with security rather than internal development or the structural problems i think that frank will get into. the most serious shift had already tak