All UHJ members since the 80's are members of the International Teaching Centre

All UHJ members since the 80's are members of the International Teaching Centre which is a body appointed... by the UHJ established in 1973. I think the only exceptions have been Douglas Martin, who was appointed by the UHJ as their international public relations officer prior to being elected, and Paul Lample who was appointed by the UHJ to head their social and economic development body.

A year or so before the UHJ term ends they usually have the ITC members tour the world which in my mind is a fairly transparent way to give them face time with NSA members (who form the electoral college who votes for the UHJ). Prior to this is was usually the Secretary of the US NSA that was elected to fill open slots, since pre 1963 the US NSA was responsible for coordinating the NSA's of Europe and Central & South America.

While it isn't formally spelled out it is fairly obvious the UHJ and ITC members each have a portfolio of a part of the world they are responsible for, given the pipeline is Continental Counsellor, then ITC member, then UHJ member, so active community members are usually at least somewhat familiar with the UHJ member that was Counsellor for their Continent prior to getting elevated up the pipeline. The active community is also incredibly tiny, at least in the west, so if you were at all active a decade ago there's a good chance you will have been in at least one meeting where a current ITC has given a talk or participated in a consultation. Twenty or thirty years ago? Make it a current UHJ member.

Baha'is don't display photographs of UHJ members or anything like that, but verbally I'd say UHJ members have historically been pretty deified by the rank and file Baha'is part of this is because a lot of them were pretty talented public speakers, and it used to be that elevation up the appointed ranks was in part based on existing popularity in the community. On the deification it is noteworthy I think that no UHJ member has ever been voted out of office, they have either died in office or announced their retirement.

Ali Nakhjavani, Adib Taherzadeh, and Peter Khan were especially popular figures. It's a bit of a conspiracy theory but Farzam Arbab (the inventor of the Ruhi system) seems to some to have sort of 'taken over' the UHJ in the mid 2000's and Counsellor/ITC picks became more about adherence to the Ruhi philosophy than popularity in the community so the current crop of administrators is a bit less well known in the community at large (but doubtless they are all very familiar to the people that serve in the Institute Process).

https://old.reddit.com/r/exbahai/comments/1mc8u8p/uhj/