ROB PORTMAN’s career in public service spanned three decades and included service in three presidential administrations as well as two terms in the United States Senate and six terms in the United States House of Representatives.
In the George W. Bush administration he served in two cabinet-level jobs, as Director of the Office of Management and Budget as well as United States Trade Representative. Under President George H.W. Bush, he served as Associate Counsel to the President and Director, White House Office of Legislative Affairs.
Known for his civility, successful bipartisan policymaking, work ethic, and grasp of a broad range of complex issues, more than 200 of Portman’s bills were signed into law by Presidents Biden, Trump and Obama during his tenure in the Senate. He served as the lead Republican negotiator on the bipartisan infrastructure law that is making historic improvements to our nation’s roads, ports, rails, bridges, broadband and more.
He played a key role in U.S. foreign policy through his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as co-chair and founder of the Senate Ukraine Caucus. He made ten trips to Ukraine since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and is a key advocate for congressional support of Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression.
Rob was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he still lives today with his wife, Jane. Together they have three adult children: Jed, Will, and Sally.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN is an award-winning journalist for The New York Times and a co- anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box. Sorkin is also the founder and editor at large of DealBook, a news site published by the Times. He is the author of the best-selling book Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System and Themselves, which chronicled the events of the 2008 financial crisis. Sorkin co-produced an HBO adaptation of the book, which was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards. He is also co-creator of Showtime’s drama series Billions. He has won numerous journalistic honors, including two Gerald Loeb Awards, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and recently won an Emmy Award for “Outstanding Live Interview” for his interview with Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in 2021. He started writing for the Times in 1995, while still in high school.
VIRGINIA M. (GINNI) ROMETTY is the former Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of IBM. Ginni became CEO of IBM in 2012 and retired form the company on December 31, 2020. During her tenure she made bold changes to reposition IBM for the future, investing in high value segments of the IT market and optimizing the company’s portfolio. Ginni also established IBM as the model of responsible stewardship in the digital age. She was the industry’s leading voice on technology ethics and data stewardship, working relentlessly to safely usher new technologies into society. Ginni is the co-chair of OneTen, an organization that will combine the power of committed US companies to upskill, hire and promote one million Black Americans over the next 10 years into family-sustaining jobs with opportunities for advancement. She serves on the Board of Directors of JPMorgan Chase, the Board of Directors of Cargill, the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University, where she is a Vice Chair, the Board of Trustees of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Board of Trustees of the Brookings Institute, and on the Council on Foreign Relations. Ginni is a member of the Singapore Economic Development Board International Advisory Council, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Advisory Board and the BDT Capital Advisory Board. Ginni also serves as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Visiting Innovation Fellow. Ginni has a Bachelor of Science degree with high honors in Computer Sciences from Northwestern University, where she later was awarded an honorary degree. She also has honorary degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and North Carolina State University.
ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He also is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor by Courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Department of Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
One of the most-cited authors on the economics of information, Brynjolfsson was among the first researchers to measure productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. He has done pioneering research on digital commerce, the Long Tail, bundling and pricing models, intangible assets and the effects of IT on business strategy, productivity and performance.
Brynjolfsson speaks globally and is the author of nine books including, with co-author Andrew McAfee, best-seller The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, and Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future as well as over 100 academic articles and five patents. He holds Bachelors and Masters degrees from Harvard University in applied mathematics and decision sciences and a PhD from MIT in managerial economics.
ADENA FRIEDMAN became President and Chief Executive Officer of Nasdaq on January 1, 2017, and is Chair of the Board of Directors. She brings more than 20 years of industry leadership and expertise, and is credited with significantly shaping Nasdaq’s transformation into a leading global exchange and technology solutions company with operations across six continents.
Prior to being named CEO, Adena served as President and Chief Operating Officer throughout 2016 and was responsible for overseeing all of the company’s business segments with a focus on driving efficiency, product development, growth and expansion.
She rejoined Nasdaq in 2014, after serving as Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group from March 2011 to June 2014 and playing a critical role in taking the company public in May 2012.
Before Carlyle, Adena was a key member of Nasdaq’s management team for over a decade, serving in a variety of roles, including head of the company’s data products business, head of corporate strategy and Chief Financial Officer. She played an instrumental role in Nasdaq’s acquisition strategy, overseeing the acquisitions of INET, OMX, and the Philadelphia and Boston Exchanges. She originally joined Nasdaq in 1993 as an intern.
Since December 2018, Adena has served as a Class B director to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She was elected to the Board of Directors of FCLTGlobal, a non-profit organization that researches tools to encourage long-term investing, in January 2020. Adena began her term as a member of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust on July 1, 2020.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Williams College in Massachusetts and a Master of Business Administration from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.
BRAD SMITH, as Microsoft’s vice chair and president, leads a team of more than 1,900 business, legal and corporate affairs professionals located in 54 countries and operating in more than 120 nations. He plays a key role in spearheading the company’s work on critical issues involving the intersection of technology and society, including cybersecurity, privacy, artificial intelligence, environmental sustainability, human rights, immigration and philanthropy. He has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress and other governments on these key policy issues.
Smith joined Microsoft in 1993, first spending three years in Paris leading the legal and corporate affairs team in Europe. In 2002, he was named Microsoft’s general counsel and spent the following decade leading work to resolve the company’s antitrust controversies with governments around the world and companies across the tech sector.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Smith was an associate and then partner at the law firm of Covington and Burling, where he is still remembered as the first attorney in the long history of the firm to insist (in 1986) on having a personal computer on his desk as a condition for accepting a job offer. In addition to his work at Microsoft, Smith is active in several civic organizations and in the broader technology industry. He has served on the Netflix board of directors since 2015 and chairs the board of directors of both Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) and the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship program.
Smith grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin, where Green Bay was the big city next door. He attended Princeton University, where he met his wife, Kathy. He earned his J.D. from Columbia University Law School and studied international law and economics at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland.
DARIUS ADAMCZYK is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Honeywell. Before being elected Chairman in 2018 and named President and CEO in 2017, Darius served as President and Chief Operating Officer. His focus in these roles has been on accelerating Honeywell’s organic growth, expanding margins, creating a premier technology company, deploying capital effectively and building a high-performance culture. He joined Honeywell in 2008 when Metrologic, where he was Chief Executive Officer, was acquired. He served as President of Honeywell’s Scanning and Mobility business for four years, doubling the size of the business, before leading a turnaround over two years as President of Process Solutions. In 2014, Darius was promoted to President and Chief Executive Officer of Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies. Before joining Honeywell, Darius held several leadership positions with Ingersoll Rand and Booz Allen Hamilton. He began his career as an electrical engineer at General Electric in 1988. Born in Poland on February 8, 1966, Darius emigrated to the United States at age 11. He earned his MBA from Harvard University, a master’s degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University, and a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Michigan State University. Darius is Vice Chair of the U.S.-China Business Council, a member of the Business Roundtable Board of Directors, and a member of the Business Council and Aspen Economic Strategy Group. In addition, he was elected to the Board of Directors for Johnson & Johnson in 2022.
KAREN DYNAN is a Professor of the Practice in the Harvard University Department of Economics and at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She previously served as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2014 to 2017. From 2009 to 2013, Dynan was vice president and co-director of the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. Before that, she was on the staff of the Federal Reserve Board, leading work in macroeconomic forecasting, household finances, and the Fed’s response to the financial crisis. Dynan has also served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers (2003-2004) and as a visiting assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University (1998). Her current research focuses on fiscal and monetary policy, consumer behavior, and household finances. Dynan received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and her A.B. from Brown University.
KAYE HUSBANDS FEALING is Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology, formerly the Chair of the School of Public Policy, Georgia Tech. She specializes in science of science and innovation policy, the public value of research expenditures, and the underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM fields and workforce. Prior to her position at Georgia Tech, Husbands Fealing taught at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, and she was a study director at the National Academy of Sciences. Prior to the Humphrey School, she was the William Brough professor of economics at Williams College, where she began her teaching career in 1989. She developed and was the inaugural program director for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Science of Science and Innovation Policy program, co-chaired the Science of Science Policy Interagency Task Group, and served as an Economics Program director. Husbands Fealing was also a visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Technology Policy and Industrial Development. Husbands Fealing became an Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. She also is an Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and serves on the AAAS Executive Board. She was awarded the 2017 Trailblazer Award from the National Medical Association Council on Concerns of Women Physicians. She currently serves on NSF’s Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering, NSF’s Education and Human Resources Directorate’s Advisory Committee, the General Accountability Office’s Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics Polaris Council, and the Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance. She is a board member for the Society for Economic Measurement. Husbands Fealing holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and a B.A. in mathematics and economics from the University of Pennsylvania.