Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is one of the world's leading historians of the global economy and author of such internationally-acclaimed works as The Ascent of Money, The Pity of War, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order, Lessons for Global Power, and The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. His new book, Civilization: The West and the Rest, is an international bestseller and basis for a multi-part television documentary.
Amy Myers Jaffe
Amy Myers Jaffe is a leading expert on the geopolitics of oil, energy, security and risk. Associate director of the Energy Program at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, she is a frequent keynote speaker at major energy industry and investment conferences. Her latest book is “Oil, Dollars, Debt and Crises.A widely quoted commentator on oil and energy policy in the international media who has provided testimony on Capitol Hill on energy matters, Jaffe appears regularly on a variety of television news stations and programs including CNN, "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer," FOX, MSNBC, and National Public Radio. Her writings have been featured by the The New York Times, Dow Jones International, Mideast Report.
Paul Collier
Paul Collier is one of the world's leading experts on developing markets and financial opportunities within the poorest countries. Director for the Centre of the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, Collier is currently Advisor to the Strategy and Policy Department of the IMF and advisor to the Africa Region of the World Bank, where he previously served as Director of the Development Research Group.
E.J. Dionne, Jr.
E.J. Dionne Jr. employs his passions for people and politics and his keen intellect to deliver reasoned analysis that is followed by a wide circle of policy-makers nationwide - on the left, right and center. In his columns as well as his appearances as a commentator for National Public Radio, ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" and NBC's "Meet the Press," Dionne demonstrates that he "knows the present with the keen sense of a beat reporter and the past with the perspective of a scholarly historian" (America Magazine, 2008). William Safire, writing in The New York Times, said in 2008 that Dionne is "emerging as one of the most insightful of the liberal columnists."
David Weinberger's status as one of our foremost interpreters of technology's impact on business and society continues to grow. His latest book, Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest People in the Room Is the Room, gets to the heart of what we need to know, and too often don't, about how the network world's flood of information is transforming business and society.
His earlier book, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, reveals new principles for taking advantage of the onrushing flood of information in order to help us pull ourselves together now that we've blown ourselves to bits.
David has been called a "marketing guru” by the Wall Street Journal, he is co-author of the influential bestseller The Cluetrain Manifesto (1999), and author of the critically acclaimed book Small Pieces Loosely Joined (2002), a highly original and accessible reflection on the human impact of the internet.
Sean Carroll
SEAN CARROLL is the acknowledged leader of the exciting new biological field known as Evo Devo. His most recent book, "Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species", was a finalist for the National Book Award. It is an account of some of the most dramatic adventures and important discoveries in two centuries of biological exploration - from the epic journeys of pioneering naturalists to the expeditions making headlines today - and how they gave birth to and nourished the science of evolution.
Robert Barro
Robert J. Barro is one of the world's foremost economists and an influential commentator on our financial turmoil. He is widely respected for his insights into the role of the government and private markets in the current recession, and the behavior of the Federal Reserve. His views on the federal stimulus package, financial regulation, the troubles besetting the European Union, and the intensifying competition with Asia often appear in in the Wall Street Journal, where he served as contributing editor, the Economist, Bloomberg, and Business Week, where he has been a viewpoint columnist. He is a Professor of Economics at Harvard Univesity.
Matthew Crawford
Matthew B. Crawford is a philosopher and mechanic. His New York Times best-selling book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work brings alive an experience that was once quite common, but now seems to be receding from society— the experience of making and fixing things with your hands. Those of us who sit in an office often feel a lack of connection to the material world, a sense of loss, and find it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For anyone who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing. For anyone who feels thwarted by their own material stuff, Crawford makes a case for reclaiming some measure of self-reliance.
Marvin Zonis
Mark Zonis is a leading expert on the global economy and political risk. Professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Zonis' insights into the intersection of politics, economics and emerging technologies make him a valuable and always timely keynote speaker for a vast range of businesses and organizations.
Ian Morris
Stanford Historian IAN MORRIS is interested in understanding why the west has dominated the earth for the last few centuries, and his latest book, "Why the West Rules . . . For Now" has bolstered his reputation as one our most important, and interesting, historians. Why the West Rules … For Now, asks how geography and natural resources have shaped the distribution of wealth and power around the world across the last 20,000 years and how they will shape our future. A professor of history at Stanford University, Morris has written or edited eleven other books. He has appeared on numerous television shows and his prizes and awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. His teaching includes classes on world history, ancient Greece, slavery, and archaeology.
David Daokui Li
David Daokui Li is a prominent Chinese economist, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the People’s Bank of China, and director of the Center for China in the World Economy at the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and speaks fluent English. He is quoted frequently in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and financial media throughout the world. Before joining Tsinghua, he served on the faculty of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the University of Michigan.