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.

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 2021, he was named as a Partner at Solamere Capital. In 2022, he was named Vice Chairman of Teneo, a global CEO advisory firm. 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 and is a member of Paradigm’s Policy Council. 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.

Michael R. Strain

MICHAEL R. STRAIN is Director of Economic Policy Studies and Paul F. Oreffice Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. An economist, Dr. Strain’s research and writing is in a wide range of areas, including labor markets, public finance, social policy, and macroeconomics. He has published over 40 articles in academic and policy journals. He is the author of the book “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It),” which examines longer-term economic outcomes for workers and households, and is the editor or coeditor of four volumes on economics and public policy. He is Professor of Practice at Georgetown University, a research fellow with the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, a research affiliate with the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a member of the Aspen Economic Strategy Group. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He was a member of the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity, which published the report “Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream.” He has written over 300 articles for general audiences, and his essays and commentaries have been published by the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among others. He is a columnist for Project Syndicate. A frequent guest on radio and television, Dr. Strain is regularly interviewed by broadcast news networks, including CNBC and NPR. He has testified before Congress and speaks often to a variety of audiences. Before joining AEI, Strain worked at the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell, and lives in Washington.

Michael Froman

MIKE FROMAN is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. He previously served as vice chairman and president, Strategic Growth at Mastercard and chairman of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth. From 2013 to 2017, Mike served as the U.S. Trade Representative, President Barack Obama’s principal advisor and negotiator on international trade and investment issues. From 2009-2013, he served at the White House as assistant to the President and deputy national security advisor for international economic affairs, coordinating trade and investment, energy and climate and development and democracy policy. In that capacity, he also served was the G8 and G20 Sherpa. Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Mike held several executive positions at Citigroup, including CEO of its international insurance business, COO of its alternative investments business and head of its infrastructure and sustainable development investment business. During the Clinton Administration, he worked at the White House on the National Security Council and National Economic Council staff and at the Treasury Department as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Eurasia and Middle East and Chief of Staff. Mike is a member of the Board of Directors of The Walt Disney Company. He received a bachelor’s degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University, a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University, and a law degree from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.