Admiral William H. McRaven, USN (Ret.)

U.S. Navy Four-Star Admiral

Admiral William H. McRaven is a retired U.S. Navy Four-Star admiral and the former Chancellor of the University of Texas System. During his time in the military, he commanded special operations forces at every level, eventually taking charge of the U.S. Special Operations Command. His career included combat during Desert Storm and both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He commanded the troops that captured Saddam Hussein and rescued Captain Phillips. McRaven is also credited with developing the plan and leading the Osama bin Laden mission in 2011.

As the Chancellor of the UT System, he led one of the nation’s largest and most respected systems of higher education. As the chief executive officer of the UT System, McRaven oversaw 14 institutions that educated 220,000 students, and employed 20,000 faculty and more than 80,000 health care professionals, researchers, and staff.

McRaven is a recognized national authority on U.S. foreign policy and has advised Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and other U.S. leaders on defense issues. He currently serves on the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the National Football Foundation.

McRaven has been recognized for his leadership numerous times. In 2011, he was the first runner-up for TIME magazine’s “Person of the Year.” In 2012, Foreign Policy magazine named McRaven one of the nation’s “Top 10 Foreign Policy Experts.” In 2014, Politico magazine named McRaven one of the “Politico 50,” citing his leadership as instrumental in cutting though Washington bureaucracy. In 2015, he received the Intrepid Freedom Award for his distinguished service in defending the values of democracy. In 2016, McRaven was named the recipient of the Ambassador Richard M. Helms Award by the CIA Officers’ Memorial Foundation. This year, 2018, he will be receiving the Judge William H. Webster Distinguished Service Award for a lifetime of service to the nation.

McRaven graduated from The University of Texas at Austin in 1977 with a degree in Journalism, and received his master’s degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey in 1991.

McRaven is the author of two books, SPEC OPS: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare and Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life and Maybe the World, based on his 2014 UT Commencement Speech that received worldwide attention.

He met his wife, Georgeann, while they were students at UT Austin, and they have three grown children. McRaven is now a leadership consultant and stays active with his writing, speaking, and board commitments.

Mark Cuban

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, AXS TV; Owner, Dallas Mavericks

Since the age of 12, Mark has been a natural businessman. Selling garbage bags door to door, the seed was planted early on for what would eventually become long-term success. After graduating from Indiana University - where he briefly owned the most popular bar in town - Mark moved to Dallas. After a dispute with an employer who wanted him to clean instead of closing an important sale, Mark created MicroSolutions, a computer consulting service. He went on to later sell MicroSolutions in 1990 to CompuServe.

In 1995, Mark and long-time friend Todd Wagner came up with an internet based solution to not being able to listen to Hoosiers Basketball games out in Texas. That solution was Broadcast.com - streaming audio over the internet. In just four short years, Broadcast.com (then Audionet) would be sold to Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars.

Since his acquisition of the Dallas Mavericks in 2000, he has overseen the Mavs competing in the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history in 2006 - and becoming NBA World Champions in 2011. They are currently listed as one of Forbes' most valuable franchises in sports.

In addition to the Mavs, Mark is chairman and CEO of AXS tv, one of ABC's "Sharks" on the hit show Shark Tank, and an investor in an ever-growing portfolio of businesses. He lives in Dallas with wife Tiffany, daughters Alexis and Alyssa, and son Jake.

Ben Horowitz

Co-Founder & General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz

Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and The New York Times bestselling author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which is now available in 19 languages. He also created the Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund, which aims to connect the greatest cultural leaders in the world to the best new technology companies, and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.

Prior to a16z, Ben was cofounder and CEO of Opsware (formerly Loudcloud), which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007, and was appointed vice president and general manager of Business Technology Optimization for Software at HP. Earlier, he was vice president and general manager of America Online’s E-commerce Platform division, where he oversaw development of the company’s flagship Shop@AOL service. Previously, Ben ran several product divisions at Netscape Communications. He also served as vice president of Netscape’s widely acclaimed Directory and Security product line. Before joining Netscape in July 1995, he held various senior product marketing positions at Lotus Development Corporation.

Ben has an MS in Computer Science from UCLA and a BA in Computer Science from Columbia University.

Ben serves on the board of the following Andreessen Horowitz portfolio companies: Caffeine, Capriza, Databricks, Foursquare, Genius, Lyft, Magnet Systems, Medium, NationBuilder, Okta, SignalFx, Sisu, Tanium, TripActions, United Masters, and Usermind. He is also on the board of CODE2040.

Jeffrey J. Sherman, CFA

Deputy Chief Investment Officer, DoubleLine

Jeffrey Sherman, CFA, Deputy Chief Investment Officer As DoubleLine’s Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Jeffrey Sherman oversees and administers DoubleLine’s Investment Management sub-committee coordinating and implementing policies and processes across the investment teams. He also serves as lead portfolio manager for multi-sector and derivative-based strategies. He is a member of DoubleLine’s Executive Management and Fixed Income Asset Allocation Committees. He can be heard regularly on his podcast “The Sherman Show” (@ShermanShowPod) where he interviews distinguished guests, giving listeners insight into DoubleLine’s current views. In 2018, Money Management Executive named Jeffrey Sherman as one of “10 Fund Managers to Watch” in their yearly special report. Prior to joining DoubleLine in 2009, he was a Senior Vice President at TCW where he worked as a portfolio manager and quantitative analyst focused on fixed income and real-asset portfolios. Mr. Sherman was a statistics and mathematics instructor at both the University of the Pacific and Florida State University. He taught Quantitative Methods for Level I candidates in the CFA LA/USC Review Program for many years. He holds a BS in Applied Mathematics from the University of the Pacific and an MS in Financial Engineering from the Claremont Graduate University. He is a CFA charterholder.

Jose Minaya

Chief Investment Officer & President, Nuveen

As executive vice president, chief investment officer and president of Nuveen Global Investments, Jose is accountable for setting and driving strategy across Nuveen’s investment affiliates.

Since joining the firm in 2004, Jose also served as president of TIAA’s Global Real Assets division, where he was responsible for building businesses including real estate, agriculture, timber, infrastructure, energy and alternative credit. Jose has held a variety of roles within the investment industry at other firms including AIG, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan.

Jose graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Finance from Manhattan College and a master’s degree in Business from Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business. He serves on the board of the Robert Toigo Foundation, an organization that fosters career advancement and increased leadership of underrepresented talent. Jose also co-chairs the TIAA Military and Veteran’s Employee Resource Group.

Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D.

17th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

On March 2nd, 2017, Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D., was sworn in as the 17th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. For nearly 30 years, Secretary Carson served as Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, a position he assumed when he was just 33 years old, becoming the youngest major division director in the hospital’s history. Dr. Carson received dozens of honors and awards in recognition of his achievements including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. The U.S. News Media Group and Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership named him among “America’s Best Leaders” in 2008. Born in Detroit to a single mother with a 3rd grade education who worked multiple jobs to support their family, Secretary Carson was raised to love reading and education. He graduated from Yale University and earned his M.D. from the University of Michigan Medical School. He and his wife are the proud parents of three adult sons and three grandchildren.

John Graham

Senior Managing Director & Global Head of Credit Investments, CPPIB

John is responsible for leading Credit Investments globally.

In his ten years at CPPIB, John worked in both the Total Portfolio Management group and in Private Investments. John took on leadership of Principal Credit Investments in 2015 as Managing Director and Global Head of the group. Prior to joining CPPIB, John spent nine years at Xerox Innovation Group in research and strategy roles.

John holds an MBA from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, a PhD from the University of Western Ontario and is a CFA charter holder.

Kara Swisher

Host, Sway

Kara Swisher is the host of “Sway,” the new twice-weekly interview podcast about power by New York Times Opinion. She has been a contributing Opinion writer since 2018.

Over her career, Ms. Swisher has hosted hundreds of newsmaking interviews, going head-to-head with prominent figures including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch, Stacey Abrams, Kim Kardashian and President Barack Obama. Her early and no-holds-barred coverage of the technology industry earned her a reputation as “Silicon Valley’s most feared and well-liked journalist.”

Ms. Swisher studied at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she wrote her first technology story for the school paper (it was in 1980 -- and the technology was pay phones). She subsequently received a graduate degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism, became an editor at The City Paper in Washington, D.C., and interned at The Washington Post, where she worked her way up to reporter and covered nascent digital companies like America Online (a.k.a. AOL).

Ms. Swisher moved to the San Francisco bureau of The Wall Street Journal in the 1990s as one of the first reporters on the internet beat and eventually began her popular “Boom Town” column. With her longtime collaborator Walt Mossberg, she was a co-producer of the technology conference “D: All Things Digital,” where they interviewed major tech figures including Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The duo later founded Recode, which was sold to Vox in 2015.

In addition to her contributions to The Times, Ms. Swisher is an editor-at-large at New York Media, host of the “Pivot” podcast and executive producer of the Code Conference. She is also the author of “aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web” and co-author of the sequel, “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere.”

She currently lives in Washington with her fiancée, various cats and dogs, and her three children, one of whom just left to start college in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Sinovation Ventures

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and President of Sinovation Venture’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures, managing US$2 billion dual currency investment funds, is a leading venture capital firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Dr. Lee was the President of Google China. Previously, he held executive positions at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. Dr. Lee received his Bachelor degree from Computer Science from Columbia University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Honorary Doctorate Degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong Kong. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Times 100 in 2013, WIRED 25 Icons, Asian Business Leader 2018 by Asia House, and followed by over 50 million audiences on social media.

In the field of artificial intelligence, Dr. Lee built one of the first game playing programs to defeat a world champion (1988, Othello), as well as the world’s first large-vocabulary, speaker-independent continuous speech recognition system. Dr. Lee founded Microsoft Research China, which was named as the hottest research lab by MIT Technology Review. Later renamed Microsoft Research Asia, this institute trained the great majority of AI leaders in China, including CTOs or AI heads at Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Lenovo, Huawei, and Haier. While with Apple, Dr. Lee led AI projects in speech and natural language, which have been featured on Good Morning America on ABC Television and the front page of Wall Street Journal. He has authored 10 U.S. patents, and more than 100 journal and conference papers. Altogether, Dr. Lee has been in artificial intelligence research, development, and investment for more than 30 years. His New York Time and Wall Street Journal bestselling book AI Superpowers discusses US-China co-leadership in the age of AI as well as the greater societal impacts brought upon by the AI technology revolution.

Michael Milken

Chairman, Milken Institute

Mike Milken’s career has mirrored his four main professional passions: medical research, education, access to capital and public health. In each, he has been uniquely successful in creating value, whether measured in lives saved (Fortune magazine called him "The Man Who Changed Medicine"), students inspired (Forbes said he is an “education visionary”) or jobs created. Between 1969 and 1989, he revolutionized capital markets by pricing and rewarding risk more efficiently and democratizing access to capital. He financed thousands of companies that collectively created millions of jobs.

Mike’s philanthropy began in the 1970s and paralleled his business career. In 1982, he co-founded the Milken Family Foundation. He also chairs the Milken Institute, an economic “action tank” whose centers include FasterCures, a Washington-based organization that works to remove barriers to progress against all life-threatening diseases. The 22nd annual Milken Institute Global Conference in April brought more than 5,000 leaders from 60 nations to Los Angeles. The Institute hosts more than 250 events each year around the world, and major annual conferences are held in New York, London, Washington, Tokyo, Singapore and the Middle East. The Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University was renamed in recognition of a gift from the Institute.

Mike is also the founder and chairman of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, the largest private funder of prostate cancer research, and helped launch the Melanoma Research Alliance. In addition, the Milken Scholars program, which was established by Mike and his wife, Lori, has provided support and lifetime mentoring for more than 450 outstanding college-bound students who have excelled academically, served their communities, and triumphed over obstacles.

Mike graduated with highest distinction from Berkeley and earned his MBA at the Wharton School. He and his wife Lori are members of the Giving Pledge and Founding Donors of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. They’ve been married since 1968 and have three children and 10 grandchildren. More information is at www.mikemilken.com.

Steve Case

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Revolution; Chairman, Case Foundation; Co-Founder, AOL

Steve Case is one of America’s best-known and most accomplished entrepreneurs and philanthropists, and a pioneer in making the Internet part of everyday life.  Case co-founded AOL in 1985 and under his leadership and vision, AOL became the largest and most valuable Internet company, driving the worldwide adoption of a medium that has transformed business and society.

Case is Chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, a Washington, D.C.- based investment firm that backs entrepreneurs at every stage of their development. Revolution Growth has invested nearly $1 billion in growth-stage companies including Sweetgreen, Tempus, DraftKings, and Clear. Revolution Ventures has backed more than two dozen venture-stage companies, including Framebridge and PolicyGenius. The Rise of the Rest Seed Fund has invested in more than 200 startups in over 100 U.S. cities, in partnership with many of America’s most successful entrepreneurs and investors. 

Steve’s passion for helping entrepreneurs remains his driving force. Recently named co-chair of the National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the Council will advise on the development of a National Entrepreneurship Strategy and continue to support policies that will ensure America’s competitiveness globally. In 2011, he was the founding chair of the Startup America Partnership—an effort launched at the White House to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation—and member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness where he chaired the subcommittee on entrepreneurship. 

He is also the author of the forthcoming book Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream as well as New York Times bestselling book The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur’s Vision of the Future.

Nikki Haley

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2017-2019)

Nikki R. Haley is the former United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations. She served as a member of President Donald Trump's Cabinet and the National Security Council.

At the United Nations, Ambassador Haley ensured the American people saw value for their investment -introducing reforms that made the organization more efficient, transparent, and accountable. In a two-year period, she negotiated over $1.3 billion in savings, including rightsizing UN peacekeeping missions to make them more effective and targeted, while improving their ability to protect civilians.

In the UN Security Council, Ambassador Haley worked to defend Americans' interests and keep our country safe. She spearheaded negotiations for the passage of the strongest set of sanctions ever placed on North Korea for its nuclear weapons program, cutting off the regime's exports by 90 percent and its access to oil by 30 percent.

As UN Ambassador Haley championed human rights. She challenged human rights violators across the globe, standing up to oppressive regimes in Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia. During the U.S. presidency of the UN Security Council, she hosted the first-ever session devoted solely to promoting human rights. She traveled the world visiting people oppressed by their own governments to see firsthand the challenges they face and to work with them directly on life-improving solutions—from Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey, to internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, and Venezuelan migrants walking miles every day to cross the Colombian border for food and medicine.

During her time as ambassador, the United States stood proudly with its allies, repeatedly taking a strong and principled stand against the chronic anti-Israel bias at the United Nations. In the UN Security Council, she proudly issued the first American veto in six years defending the United States’ sovereign right to move our Embassy to Jerusalem—Israel’s true capital.

Prior to becoming the twenty-ninth U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Haley was elected in 2010 as the first female and first minority Governor of South Carolina. Reelected in 2014, she served as Governor until confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in January of 2017.

Under Governor Haley’s leadership, South Carolina was a national leader in economic development. Known as the “Beast of the Southeast,” South Carolina’s unemployment rate hit a 15-year low, saw over $20 billion in new capital investment, and her administration announced new jobs in every county in the state, over 85,000 total.

Governor Haley also ushered in the state's largest education reform in decades—making education funding more equitable for schools in the state's poorest communities, prioritizing reading in early grades, and equipping classrooms with the latest technology.

Born in Bamberg, South Carolina, she is the daughter of Indian immigrants and a proud graduate of Clemson University. In her first job, Ambassador Haley kept the books for her family's clothing store—at the age of 13.

Ambassador Haley and her husband, Michael, a Captain in the South Carolina Army National Guard and combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan's Helmand Province, have two children, Rena, 20, and Nalin, 17.

Anthony Scaramucci

Founder & Managing Partner, SkyBridge

Anthony Scaramucci is the Founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge Capital. He is the author of four books: The Little Book of Hedge Funds, Goodbye Gordon Gekko, Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole (a 2016 Wall Street Journal best seller), and Trump: The Blue-Collar President.

Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman, LLC in 2001. Earlier, he was a vice president in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs & Co.

In 2016, Scaramucci was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year – New York” Award in the Financial Services category. Anthony is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), vice chair of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board, a board member of both The Brain Tumor Foundation and Business Executives for National Security (BENS), and a Trustee of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Foundation. He was a member of the New York City Financial Services Advisory Committee from 2007 to 2012.

In November 2016, he was named to President-Elect Trump’s 16-person Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee. In June 2017, he was named the Chief Strategy Officer of the EXIM Bank. He served as the White House Communications Director for a period in July 2017.

Scaramucci, a native of Long Island, New York, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

David Rubenstein

Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, The Carlyle Group

David M. Rubenstein is Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest and most successful private investment firms. Established in 1987, Carlyle now manages $276 billion from 27 offices around the world.

Mr. Rubenstein is Chairman of the Boards of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Economic Club of Washington; a Fellow of the Harvard Corporation; a Trustee of the National Gallery of Art, the University of Chicago, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Constitution Center, the Brookings Institution, and the World Economic Forum; and a Director of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mr. Rubenstein is a member of the American Philosophical Society, Business Council, Harvard Global Advisory Council (Chairman), Madison Council of the Library of Congress (Chairman), Board of Dean’s Advisors of the Business School at Harvard, Advisory Board of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University (former Chairman), and Board of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community.

Mr. Rubenstein has served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Duke University and the Smithsonian Institution, and Co-Chairman of the Board of the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Rubenstein is an original signer of The Giving Pledge, a significant donor to all of the above-mentioned non-profit organizations, and a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, and the MoMA’s David Rockefeller Award, among other philanthropic awards.

Mr. Rubenstein is a leader in the area of Patriotic Philanthropy, having made transformative gifts for the restoration or repair of the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Monticello, Montpelier, Mount Vernon, Arlington House, Iwo Jima Memorial, the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, the National Archives, the National Zoo, the Library of Congress, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Mr. Rubenstein has also provided to the U.S. government long-term loans of his rare copies of the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, the first map of the U.S. (Abel Buell map), and the first book printed in the U.S. (Bay Psalm Book).

Mr. Rubenstein is the host of The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations on Bloomberg TV and PBS and Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein on Bloomberg TV; and the author of The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians, a book published by Simon & Schuster in October 2019, and How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers, a book published by Simon & Schuster in September 2020.

Mr. Rubenstein, a native of Baltimore, is a 1970 magna cum laude graduate of Duke University, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa. Mr. Rubenstein graduated in 1973 from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of the Law Review.

From 1973-1975, Mr. Rubenstein practiced law in New York with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. From 1975-1976, he served as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments. From 1977-1981, during the Carter Administration, Mr. Rubenstein was Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. After his White House service and before co-founding Carlyle, Mr. Rubenstein practiced law in Washington with Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge (now Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman).

Adam Rilander

Portfolio Manager & Head of Agency MBS Trading, The Galton Team at Mariner Investment Group

Mr. Rilander is a Mariner employee and serves as the Head of Agency MBS Investing for the Galton Team. He has spent the past 15 years focused on investing in, trading and researching Agency Mortgage Backed Securities. Most recently, from 2015 through 2016, Mr. Rilander was running a team overseeing the Agency derivative and mortgage option position at Premium Point Investments. From 2006-2015, he was trading Agency Mortgage Backed Securities at JPMorgan, becoming a Managing Director and the senior secondary trader on the Agency MBS desk. Prior to joining JPM, Mr. Rilander began his career in 2003 at Bear Stearns as a research analyst focused on Agency Mortgage Backed Securities. Mr. Rilander co-authored a chapter in Fabozzi’s “The Handbook of Mortgage Backed Securities, Sixth Edition” titled “Uncovering the Risk-Adjusted Carry in MBS.” Mr. Rilander graduated with an A.B. in Economics from Princeton University in 2003.

Deborah Quazzo

Managing Partner, GSV AcceleraTE Fund

Deborah is the Managing Partner of GSV Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund investing in education and workforce technology entrepreneurs disrupting the $6 trillion sector. She is the Co-founder of the ASU GSV Summit, an event that attracts over 5,500 attendees annually. Previously Deborah co-founded ThinkEquity Partners, a boutique technology focused investment bank, which was acquired in 2007. Prior to ThinkEquity Partners, she was a Managing Director in Investment Banking and head of the Global Growth Group at Merrill Lynch & Co. She currently serves on the boards of Aakash Educational Services Ltd (a leading tutoring and test preparation company in India), Ascend Learning (a portfolio company of Blackstone and CCCP), Degreed, The Educational Testing Service (ETS), Intellispark, Mighty, Remind, and Turnitin (an Advance Communications company). Deborah graduated cum laude with a BA in history from Princeton University, and an MBA from Harvard University.

Ketan Patel

Chairman, Force for Good: Chief Executive Officer & Founder, Greater Pacific Capital

Ketan is the founder and chairman of ‘Force for Good’, established in support of the UN Secretary General’s roadmap for sustainable development, examining and engaging 100 leading global financial institutions.

He leads Greater Pacific Capital, investing in high growth enterprises making an impact, sustainably and profitably, and leading GPC’s research on peace, prosperity and freedom.

Ketan was formerly a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, heading the Strategic Group, providing strategic counsel to selected leaders worldwide.

Previously, he was a partner, board member at KPMG, leading the Strategy and Business Transformation business. Prior to which, he worked at Hewlett- Packard.

Ketan is a fellow, and board member of the World Academy of Art and Science, member of the working groups of the UN SDSN Senior Working Group on the EGD and SDGs and the Lancet Commission COVID 19 Green Recovery Task Force on Sustainable Finance.

He is the author of ‘The Master Strategist’ (Random House, 2005). He studied Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and has an MBA and ACMA.

Douglas Monticciolo

Founder, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer, Brevet Capital Management

Douglas Monticciolo is Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer and Co-Founder of Brevet Capital Management. He is an entrepreneur and investment manager with deep data analytics and technology experience developed over three decades while providing credit financing and advisory services.

Mr. Monticciolo founded Brevet Capital Management in 1998 and has established the firm as a leader in helping government agencies solve complex problems – and drive positive social impact – by creating innovative financing products and services. This “finance as a service” approach provides direct lending and other financing to private middle market companies that enable them to effectively serve the government sector as contractors – a low credit risk strategy with highly competitive barriers to entry.

Mr. Monticciolo’s years of experience working in start-up environments as a software entrepreneur and within asset-backed securities, fixed income, and investment banking helped him identify a gap in the market where traditional lenders failed to provide the innovative financing and forward-looking advisory services needed for the private contractors government contractors rely on to deliver services.

Mr. Monticciolo has a passion for technology and approaches investing and credit financing with a problem-solving mindset. He began his career at Goldman Sachs in the financial institution’s industry resource group where he specialized in investment banking and principal finance trading and helped create numerous serviced-marked products and services to address the unmet needs of clients. He later joined Lehman Brothers as a senior vice president in the company’s strategy group, a principal investment joint venture between investment banking and fixed income. He left Lehman Brothers to become director and co-head of asset-backed securities in North America at Deutsche Bank and head of proprietary fixed income in the merchant banking/principal finance group.

Mr. Monticciolo’s career took a turn from academics to finance when he was studying at Columbia University and working with Fischer Black, creator of the Black–Scholes model, on complex mathematical formulas. He was encouraged to apply his skills to financial problem-solving instead of academia and he decided to put aside his pursuit of a PhD to join Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Monticciolo received a Master of Engineering Sciences degree in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University. He graduated from the State University of New York at Stony Brook with an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and earned a B.S. in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. Mr. Monticciolo is a Level III certified member of the National Association of Rocketry (NAR High Power Rocketry) and a member of the Randonneurs USA (long distance road biking organization).

Mr. Monticciolo also coaches robotics and innovation and has led teams to numerous regional awards. He led one of his teams to a worldwide 2nd place finish (runner-up) for the FLL Global Innovation Award season sponsored by Edison Nation and XPRIZE Foundation, in cooperation with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (an agency of the United States Department of Commerce).

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Hope for New York and is a Board Member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) Gotham Chapter.

Omeed Malik

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Farvahar Partners

Omeed Malik is the Founder and CEO of Farvahar Partners, a boutique merchant bank and broker/dealer which invests partner capital into growth businesses and acts as a liquidity provider of private placements on behalf of companies and institutional investors. The Firm also offers advisory, investment banking and capital raising services to its clients.

Prior to starting his own firm, Omeed was a Managing Director and the Global Head of the Hedge Fund Advisory Business at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Omeed was also the founder and head of the Emerging Manager Program within the Global Equities business. In this capacity, Omeed was charged with selecting both established and new hedge funds for the firm to partner with and oversaw the allocation of financing/prime brokerage, capital strategy, business consulting and talent introduction resources.

Before joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Omeed was a Senior Vice President at MF Global where he helped reorganize the firm's distribution platform globally and developed execution and clearing relationships with institutional clients. An experienced financial services professional and securities attorney, Omeed was a corporate lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP working on transactional matters in the capital markets, corporate governance, private equity and bankruptcy fields.

Omeed has also worked in the United States Senate and House of Representatives. Omeed received a JD, with Honors, from Emory Law School (where he serves on the Alumni Board) and a BA in Philosophy and Political Science, Cum Laude, from Colgate University.

Omeed is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

General John F. Kelly

U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)

Secretary Kelly was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1970, and was discharged as a sergeant in 1972, after serving in an infantry company with the 2nd Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Following graduation from the University of Massachusetts in 1976, he was commissioned an Officer of Marines.

As an officer, Secretary Kelly served in a number of command, staff and school assignments to include sea duty, instructor duty at The Basic School, the Infantry Officer Course, command of the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, attendance at the National War College, and duty on Capitol Hill as the Commandant’s liaison to the U.S. Congress. He also served as the Special Assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, in Mons, Belgium.

He returned to the United States in 2001, and was assigned duty as the Assistant Chief of Staff G-3 with the 2nd Marine Division. In 2002, selected to the rank of Brigadier General, Secretary Kelly again served with the 1st Marine Division, this time as the Assistant Division Commander. Much of the next two years was spent deployed fighting in Iraq. He then returned to Headquarters Marine Corps as the Legislative Assistant to the Commandant from 2004 to 2007. Promoted to Major General, he returned to Camp Pendleton as the Commanding General, I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward). The command deployed to Iraq in early 2008 for a year-long mission as Multinational Force-West in Al Anbar and western Ninewa provinces. After rotating home and being confirmed as a Lieutenant General he commanded Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces North from October 2009 to March 2011. He then served as the Senior Military Assistant to two Secretaries of Defense, Messrs. Gates and Panetta, from March 2011 to October 2012 before being nominated for a fourth star and command of the United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), a position he held until January 2016.

During his 39 months in command of SOUTHCOM he worked closely with the remarkable men and women of U.S. law enforcement, particularly the FBI and DEA. He also worked intimately with Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and the equally remarkable men and women of the Department of Homeland Security, particularly in dealing with the flow of drugs, people and other threats against the U.S. homeland that flow along the trans-national criminal networks into the U.S. from the south. This relationship was a model of interagency cooperation and effectiveness.

After less than a year in retirement Secretary Kelly was offered the opportunity to serve the nation and its people again, now as the Secretary of Homeland Security. After he and his family served a lifetime in service to the nation—and knowing no other life—the opportunity to serve again was welcomed. The U.S. Senate gave him and his family the great honor of confirming him on January 20, 2017 and he was immediately sworn in as the fifth Secretary of Homeland Security. After six months, he was selected to serve as White House Chief of Staff, a position he held until January 2019.