The chairperson of Alert's board of trustees is David Nussbaum, former CEO of The Elders, WWF-UK, and Transparency International.

It involves the same combination of elites as founding members, drawn from the political, legal, and academic fields, and similar areas of expertise (fact-finding missions and reporting).

Alert's distinctive identity reflected its desire to provide a link between research and practice in dealing with armed conflicts on the one hand and human rights, humanitarianism, and development on the other.

[3][4][5] International Alert undertook to advance research on the causes of such conflict and to promote all means of conciliation and resolution, becoming an early advocate of multi-track diplomacy.

Michael Young, formerly with the International Rescue Committee and Mercy Corps led the organization for the year following Lamb's departure.

His final government position was director general - transformation, leading the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development.

International Alert's board of trustees is composed of the following members: David Nussbaum (chair), Lisa L. Rose (vice-chair), Richard Langstaff (honorary treasurer), Emine Bozkurt, Nina Fallentin Caspersen, Abir Haj Ibrahim, Njeri Kabeberi and Erin Segilia-Chase.

"[13] Through the mid-1990s, by applying a combination of manual and automated analysis in conjunction with such systems, researchers collaborating with International Alert performed early data mining research, demonstrating the viability of this approach for predicting conflict outcomes and encouraging the development of a website for the African Union's Continental Early Warning System (CEWS).