Virginia “Ginni” Rometty

GINNI ROMETTY is a leader, innovator, and convener who believes that how we work and lead is as important as what we achieve. As the ninth Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM, Ginni transformed the 100-year-old company, reinventing 50 percent of its portfolio, building a $25 billion hybrid cloud business, and establishing IBM’s leadership in AI and quantum computing. She drove record results in diversity and inclusion and supported the explosive growth of an innovative high school program, P-TECH, to prepare the workforce of the future in more than twenty-eight countries. Through her work with the Business Roundtable, she helped redefine the purpose of the corporation.

Today, she is a champion of SkillsFirst learning, hiring, and advancement—a movement to connect more people without college degrees with good jobs. In 2020, she co-founded OneTen, a coalition of companies and educators committed to upskilling, hiring, and promoting one million Black Americans without four-year degrees by 2030 into family-sustaining jobs and careers.

She is the author of the bestselling book Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World (Harvard Business Review Press), a moving combination of memoir, leadership lessons, and big ideas. The book shares milestones from her life and career while redefining power as a way to drive meaningful change in positive ways for ourselves, our organizations, and for the many, not just the few—a concept she calls “good power.”

Ginni serves on multiple boards, including JPMorgan Chase and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and was named Fortune’s #1 Most Powerful Woman three years in a row. She has been honored with the designation of Officier in the French Légion d’Honneur and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Her bestselling book, Good Power: Creating Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World, offers leadership lessons through the lens of her life and career.

Erik Brynjolfsson

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 T. Friedman

ADENA FRIEDMAN became President and Chief Executive Officer of Nasdaq on January 1, 2017, and has served as Chair of the Board of Directors since January 2023. 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

BRAD SMITH, as Microsoft’s vice chair and president, is responsible for spearheading the company’s work and representing it publicly on a wide variety of critical issues involving the intersection of technology and society, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, privacy, environmental sustainability, human rights, digital safety, immigration, philanthropy, and products and business for non-profit customers. He leads a team of roughly 2,000 business, legal and corporate affairs professionals located in 54 countries and operating in more than 120 nations. In Smith’s bestselling book, coauthored with Microsoft’s Carol Ann Browne, Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age, he urges the tech sector to assume more responsibility and calls for governments to move faster to address the challenges that new technologies are creating. In his podcast by the same name, Smith and his guests expand on the themes in the book, exploring potential solutions to the digital issues shaping the world today. The New York Times has called Smith “a de facto ambassador for the technology industry at large” and The Australian Financial Review has described him as “one of the technology industry’s most respected figures.” 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. Smith grew up in Appleton, Wisconsin. 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. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn and find the Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith podcast wherever you like to listen.

 

Edward L. Glaeser

EDWARD GLAESER is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught microeconomic theory, and occasionally urban and public economics, since 1992. He has served as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He has published dozens of papers on cities economic growth, law, and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1992. His books include Cities, Agglomeration, and Spatial Equilibrium (Oxford University Press, 2008), Rethinking Federal Housing Policy (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2008), Triumph of the City (Penguin Press, 2011), and Survival of the City: Mass Flourishing in an Age of Social Isolation (Penguin Press, 2021).

Craig Garthwaite

CRAIG GARTHWAITE is the Herman R. Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services, a Professor of Strategy, and the Director of the Program on Healthcare at Kellogg (HCAK). He is an applied economist whose research examines the business of healthcare with a focus on the interaction between private firms and public policies. His recent work in the payer and provider sectors has focused on the private sector effects of the Affordable Care Act, the impact and operation of Medicaid Managed Care plans, the responses of non-profit hospitals to financial shocks, and the economic effects of expanded social insurance programs such as Medicaid and Medicare for All. Professor Garthwaite also studies questions of pricing and innovation in the biopharmaceutical sector. In this area he has examined the effect of changes in market size of investments in new product development, the evolving world of precision medicine, expanded patent protection on pricing in the Indian pharmaceutical market, the innovation response of United States pharmaceutical firms to increases in demand, and the relationship between health insurance expansions and high drug prices. His research has appeared in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the American Economic Review, the Annals of Internal Medicine, and the New England Journal of Medicine.  Garthwaite received a B.A. and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan and his PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland. Prior to receiving his PhD, he served in a variety of public policy positions including the Director of Research for the Employment Policies Institute. He has testified before the United States Senate, United States House of Representatives and state legislatures on matters related to the healthcare markets, prescription drugs, the minimum wage, and health care reforms.

Paul Ryan

PAUL RYAN was the 54th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In office from October 2015 to January 2019, he was the youngest speaker in nearly 150 years. Prior to becoming Speaker of the House, Paul served as the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He also served as Chairman of the House Budget Committee from 2011-2015. In 2012, he was selected to serve as Governor Mitt Romney’s Vice-Presidential nominee. Paul was first elected to Congress at age 28 and represented Wisconsin’s First District for two decades. In 2019, he launched the American Idea Foundation, a non-partisan, not for profit organization that expands economic opportunity by partnering with local organizations and academics to advance evidence-based public policies. In 2020, Paul was named as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Executive Network Partnering Corporation and in 2021, he was named as a Partner at Solamere Capital. In 2022, he was named Vice Chairman of Teneo, a global management consulting company. Paul is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fox Corporation, of SHINE Medical Technologies LLC, and of Xactus. He also serves on the Advisory Board of Robert Bosch GmbH. Paul serves as a Professor of the Practice at the University of Notre Dame and a visiting fellow in the practice of public policy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is on the Board of Trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute and on the Board of Directors for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Paul and his wife Janna have three children: Liza, Charlie, and Sam. He holds a degree in economics and political science from Miami University in Ohio and was also awarded an honorary doctorate by the University.

Raphael W. Bostic

DR. RAPHAEL W. BOSTIC took office June 5, 2017, as the 15th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He is responsible for all the Bank’s activities, including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. In addition, he serves on the Federal Reserve’s chief monetary policy body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which covers Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The Bank has branches in Birmingham, Jacksonville, Miami, Nashville, and New Orleans.

Susan M. Collins

SUSAN M. COLLINS is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, which is part of the U.S. central bank. She is a participant on the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets U.S. monetary policy. Since taking office in July 2022, Collins oversees all of the bank’s activities – including economic research and analysis; banking supervision and financial stability efforts; community economic development activities; and a wide range of payments, technology, and finance initiatives. Collins is an international macroeconomist with a lifelong interest in policy and its impact on living standards. She has published widely and served as a provost, dean, professor, research scholar, and board member at a variety of universities and organizations, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago where she served as a director for nine years. Earlier in her career Susan spent 16 years living in Massachusetts – as an assistant then associate professor at Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and as an undergraduate at Harvard.