Cristina Alesci

Correspondent, CNN

Cristina Alesci is a business and politics correspondent for CNN, covering financial markets, economic policy and campaigns.

Alesci reports on how average Americans, big business and Wall Street are impacted by the Trump administration's trade and tax policies. Her most recent work tells the story of workers who are coping with large scale layoffs in the Midwest, the stock market turbulence, global growth and the trade war between the US and China. Her background covering the financial industry for over a decade led her to break news that shed light on the inner workings of the administration, including its decision to impose tariffs on China and formation of outside business councils that helped burnish the "CEO White House."

Alesci has interviewed some of the world's most influential policymakers, investors and executives, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, highlighting his efforts to stave off climate change and exploring his potential presidential ambitions. Other recent interviews for CNN have included Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

Alesci has also reported extensively on government ethics. During the 2016 Presidential election, Her stories highlighted the potential conflicts of interest faced by each of President Trump and Secretary Clinton. Since the election, she has reported on the conflicts posed by the family businesses of both the President and his son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner. Her stories on the continuing ties between senior members of the administration and their financial interests are featured regularly on The Lead with Jake Tapper, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and OutFront with Erin Burnett.

She joined CNN from Bloomberg Television, where her coverage of high-profile deals made headlines and moved markets. Cristina was responsible for breaking news on some of the biggest deals of the decade, including Facebook's initial public offering, the buyout of Neiman Marcus and the fight to take Dell private. While at Bloomberg, she also covered the sports, music and entertainment industries, and contributed to Businessweek and Bloomberg Markets Magazine.

She received an M.A. in Journalism with honors from The City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, a B.S. in Criminal Justice (magna cum laude) from Pace University, and a post-baccalaureate certificate in business from Columbia University. She serves on the board of Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and lives in New York City.

Nadhmi Al Nasr

Chief Executive Officer, NEOM

Nadhmi A. Al-Nasr started his career at Saudi Aramco in 1978, shortly after graduating from King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals. He spent his first three years in engineering services before moving on to the execution of the Kingdom's Master Gas System - the largest industrial project of its kind at the time. Until the program was completed in 1984 Al-Nasr divided his time between Houston and on-site at the Uthmaniyah Gas Plant.

Al-Nasr then worked on the Refinery Program, Southwest Refinery and later Ras Tanura Refinery until he was promoted to Project Manager with responsibility for all Ghawar oil field capital programs. This included the 1991 crude expansion program in the Ghawar oil field. This entire program was commissioned and completed in 1993.

Eng. Al-Nasr was then promoted to be the Manager of Saudi Aramco's oil and gas pipeline projects, and in 1995, became Manager of the Shaybah Development Program which came on stream, under budget and a year ahead of schedule, in 1998.

After the completion of the Shaybah project, Al-Nasr became Manager of the Facilities and Planning Department, before becoming the Manager of the Long Range Planning Department in 2001, where he was responsible for preparing company strategy and business plans. In 2003, he became Managing Director of Saudi Petroleum Overseas Ltd. (based in London) and the following year was named Executive Director of Community Services.

In 2006, Al-Nasr was named Vice President of Engineering Services and in the same year, became Vice President of the KAUST Development Program. Since 2008, Al-Nasr has served as KAUST Executive Vice President of Administration and Finance.

In 2013, Al-Nasr stepped down from Saudi Aramco to devote all his energy to KAUST in his role of Executive Vice President of Administration and Finance. A year later, Al-Nasr was appointed by a Royal Decree to serve on the Advisory Board of the Supreme Economic Council.

In March 2017, in addition to his role as KAUST, Al-Nasr was appointed Interim President of King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC). Shortly after that, he was appointed Interim President of KAUST.

In July 2018 His Royal Highness, Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, the Chairman of NEOM’s Founding Board, appointed Eng. Nadhmi Al-Nasr to lead the most ambitious project on earth as NEOM’s Chief Executive Officer.

Joshua S. Friedman

Co-Founder, Co-Chairman & Co-Chief Executive Officer, Canyon Partners

Joshua S. Friedman is Co-Founder, Co-Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Canyon Partners, LLC, a leading global alternative asset management firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Canyon specializes in value-oriented investments for endowments, foundations, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and other institutional investors. Its investment strategies focus on distressed loans, corporate bonds, convertible bonds, securitized assets, direct investments, real estate, arbitrage, and value equities. Canyon Partners’ flagship fund, the Canyon Value Realization Fund, twice received Institutional Investor’s “Credit-Focused Hedge Fund Manager of the Year” Award. Additionally, the Canyon Structured Asset Fund received Institutional Investor’s “Hybrid Hedge Fund of the Year” Award. Mr. Friedman has also received Institutional Investor’s “Lifetime Achievement” Award.

Mr. Friedman is a graduate of Harvard College (1976) (B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Physics), Oxford University (1978) (M.A., honors, Politics and Economics, Marshall Scholar), Harvard Business School (1980) (M.B.A., Baker Scholar) and Harvard Law School (1982) (J.D., magna cum laude). Prior to forming Canyon, Mr. Friedman was Director of Capital Markets for High Yield and Private Placements at Drexel Burnham Lambert. Prior to working at Drexel, he worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Goldman Sachs in New York.

Mr. Friedman is a member of the Board of Directors of Harvard Management Company. He is also a member of Harvard’s Committee on University Resources; the Harvard Business School Board of Dean’s Advisors; the Harvard University Campaign Executive Committee; the Southern California Leadership Council for Harvard Law School; and the Harvard University Task Force on Science and Engineering. Mr. Friedman serves as a Trustee for the California Institute of Technology (Caltech); the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Mr. Friedman is a member of the Investment Committees for the Broad Foundation and the J. Paul Getty Trust and chairs the Caltech Investment Committee and the LACMA Finance Committee. Mr. Friedman also serves on the Boards of Advisors of the UCLA Hospital Department of Neurosurgery and the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Mr. Friedman and his wife, Beth, live in Los Angeles and have three sons.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Social Capital

Chamath Palihapitiya is Founder and CEO of Social Capital, whose mission is to advance humanity by solving the world’s hardest problems. Social Capital is a technology holding company that backs breakthrough companies in areas including healthcare, artificial intelligence, climate change and space. Before founding Social Capital, Chamath was a member of the senior executive team at Facebook and a key driver in making it one of the most important companies in the world. Prior to Facebook, Chamath held leadership positions at Mayfield Fund, AOL and Winamp. He was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in Canada, and graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. Chamath is also Owner and Director of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

General David H. Petraeus

U.S. Army, Retired

General David H. Petraeus is one of the most prominent U.S. military figures of the post-9/11 era. He has been described as a leading warrior-intellectual and “one of the great battle captains” in American military history. Following his military service, he served as Director of the CIA. He is now a Partner with the global investment firm KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute.

During his 37-year career in the United States Army, General Petraeus served in Cold War Europe, Central America, the United States, Haiti, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the greater Middle East and central Asia. He was most widely recognized for: his oversight of the organization that produced the

U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency manual and overhauled all aspects of preparing leaders and units for deployment to combat; for his leadership of the Surge in Iraq; and for his command of coalition forces in Afghanistan. He culminated his military career with six consecutive commands as a general officer, five of which were in combat, a record believed unmatched in the post-World War II era.

A graduate with distinction from the United States Military Academy, General Petraeus is the only person in U.S. Army history to be the top graduate in both the U.S. Army’s challenging Ranger School and the year-long U.S. Army Command and General Staff College course. He also earned a Ph.D. in an interdisciplinary program of international relations and economics from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and later completed a fellowship at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He taught both economics and international relations at the United States Military Academy in the mid-1980s and, after leaving government in late 2012, he was Co- Chairman of a Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on North America and a visiting professor of public policy at the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College for 3-1/2 years.

After General Petraeus’ retirement from the military, following confirmation by the Senate by a vote of 94-0, he served as Director of the CIA as the Agency played the central role in a number of achievements in the global war on terror, established a strategic campaign plan for the Agency, and pursued initiatives to invest additional resources in the Agency’s most important element, its human capital.

General Petraeus has been Chairman of the KKR Global Institute for over five years and a Partner with the firm for more than three-and-a-half years. He is also a member of the board of Optiv (a global provider of cyber security services), a Judge Widney Professor at the University of Southern California, a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, the Senior Vice President of the Royal United Services Institute, the Co-Chairman of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Global Advisory Council, and a member of the boards of several other think tanks and over a dozen veterans service organizations.

Over the past dozen years, General Petraeus has been named one of America’s 25 Best Leaders by the

U.S. News and World Report, a runner-up for Time magazine’s Person of the Year, the Daily Telegraph man of the year, Prospect magazine’s Public Intellectual of the Year, a Time 100 selectee, one of Foreign Policy magazine’s top 100 public intellectuals, and the recipient of the Madison Medal at Princeton University. He is a frequent commentator on global security and economic issues. In recent years, his pieces have been published in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy, and he has also appeared frequently on various TV news programs and documentaries.

General Petraeus has been awarded numerous U.S. military, State Department, NATO, and United Nations medals, including four awards of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze Star

Medal for Valor, two awards of the NATO Meritorious Service Medal, the Combat Action Badge, the Ranger Tab, and Master Parachutist Wings. He has also been decorated by 13 foreign countries. And he is believed to be the only individual who, while in uniform, threw out the first pitch of a World Series game and did the coin toss at a Super Bowl.

Jim Breyer

Chief Executive Officer, Breyer Capital

Jim is the Founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, a premier venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA. Jim has been an early investor in over 40 technology companies that have completed highly successful public offerings or mergers. As a lead investor and Director, many of these investments returned well over 100 times their cost, and over a dozen more have returned well over 25 times their cost.

Jim is also the Co-Chairman of IDG Capital based in Beijing, with offices in Beijing, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. IDG Capital was the first firm to bring venture capital into China, and Jim has been passionate and has a long track record of successfully investing in China and partnering with leading Chinese entrepreneurs.

Over the past several years, Jim has developed a deep personal and investment interest in long-term oriented entrepreneurs and teams working in artificial/augmented intelligence (AI) and human assisted intelligence (HAI) and he has made numerous investments in this space.

Jim currently serves on the board of directors of Blackstone (BX), and has previously served as a investor/lead Director at 21st Century Fox, Dell, Etsy, Facebook, Marvel Entertainment, Wal-Mart, and many other highly successful technology companies. Jim is currently the Chairman of the Advisory Board at the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management. He is a Fellow of Harvard Corporation, Harvard’s senior governing board; a member of Harvard Business School’s Board of Dean’s Advisors, a member of Harvard University’s Global Advisory Council since inception; a founding member of the Dean’s Advisory Board at Stanford’s School of Engineering and a Chairman of the Stanford Engineering Venture Fund as well as a founding member of The Stanford University Human Assisted Intelligence (AI) Program which was launched in March, 2019.

In addition, Jim is a long-time active volunteer as a Trustee of SFMOMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles, and Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS).

Sam Zell

Founder & Chairman, Equity Group Investments

Sam Zell is a global, industry-agnostic entrepreneur and investor. He has a long track record of turning around troubled companies and assets, leading industry consolidations, and bringing companies to the public markets. His current investments are in: energy, logistics, manufacturing, communications, healthcare, and real estate.

Sam is the Chairman of Equity Group Investments, the private investment firm he founded more than 45 years ago. He also chairs five companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange: Equity Residential, the largest apartment REIT in the country; Equity LifeStyle Properties, a manufactured home community and resort REIT; Equity Commonwealth, an office REIT; Covanta Holding Corporation, an international owner/operator of energy-from-waste and power generation facilities; and Anixter International Inc., a leading global provider of communications, security, and wire and cable products.

Sam also founded and chaired Equity Office Properties Trust, the largest office REIT until its 2007 sale for $39 billion in the largest leveraged buyout at the time. In addition, he introduced the first Brazilian and Mexican real estate companies, respectively, to the New York Stock Exchange through Equity International, a second private investment firm he founded to focus on real estate-related businesses in emerging markets.

Sam is an active philanthropist with a focus on entrepreneurial education. Through the Zell Family Foundation, he has led the sponsorship of several leading entrepreneurship programs, including: the Zell/Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business; the Zell Fellows Program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management; and the Zell Entrepreneurship Center at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC). The Zell Global Entrepreneur Network (ZGEN) unites the students and alumni of these programs and actively provides them with connections, opportunities, mentorship and support. Sam also sponsors the Samuel Zell/Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Real Estate Center. He holds a JD degree and a BA from the University of Michigan.

Sam represents the REIT industry on the New York Stock Exchange’s “Wall of Innovators.” He was recognized in 2017 by Forbes as one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds. Also in 2017, Sam debuted his book, Am I Being Too Subtle? (Penguin RandomHouse), in which he shares fundamentals and philosophies that made him a self-made billionaire.

Tulsi Gabbard

Former U.S. Presidential Candidate

Since Tulsi was young, she’s had an innate passion to protect the environment and empower other young people to do the same.

At the age of 21, she stepped up to serve in the Hawaii State Legislature, followed by two deployments to the Middle East as a soldier in the Hawaii Army National Guard, and then returned to serve on the Honolulu City Council.

Today, she continues to serve as a fourth-term United States Congresswoman and a Major in the National Guard, being one of the first female combat veterans elected to Congress.

She has served for over six years on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Armed Services Committee and now she is offering to serve as president of the United States, calling for an end to America’s disastrous policy of regime-change wars, the new Cold War and nuclear arms race, and a renewed commitment to protecting our planet and rebuilding our communities here at home.

Tulsi’s campaign is 100% people-powered and PAC-free, she doesn’t accept any donations from PACs or lobbyists.

Peter H. Diamandis, MD

Founder & Executive Chairman, XPRIZE Foundation; Executive Founder & Director, Singularity University

Fortune Magazine recently named Peter Diamandis as one of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders.

Diamandis is the Founder & Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions. He is also the Executive Founder and Director of Singularity University; a global learning and innovation community using exponential technologies to tackle the world's biggest challenges and build a better future for all.

As an entrepreneur, Diamandis has started over 20 companies in the areas of longevity, space, venture capital, and education. He is also co-founder of BOLD Capital Partners, a venture fund with $250M investing in exponential technologies.

Diamandis is a New York Times Bestselling author of two books: Abundance & BOLD. He earned degrees in Molecular Genetics and Aerospace Engineering from MIT and holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

Peter’s favorite saying is “the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.”

Ambassador Susan Rice

Former National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama

Ambassador Susan E. Rice is currently Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the School of International Service, American University, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She is also a Contributing Opinion Writer for the New York Times.

Previously, Ambassador Rice served President Barack Obama as National Security Advisor and U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In her role as National Security Advisor from July 1, 2013, to January 20, 2017, Ambassador Rice led the National Security Council Staff of approximately 400 defense, diplomatic, intelligence and development experts. She chaired the Cabinet-level National Security Principals Committee, provided the President daily national security briefings, and was responsible for coordinating the formulation and implementation of all aspects of the Administration's foreign and national security policy, including all diplomatic, intelligence, homeland security and military efforts.

As U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obama's Cabinet (2009-2013) to which she was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, Rice worked to advance U.S. interests, defend universal values, strengthen the world's security and prosperity, and promote respect for human rights. In a world of 21st Century threats that pay no heed to borders, Ambassador Rice helped rebuild an effective basis for international cooperation that strengthened the United States’ ability to achieve its foreign policy objectives and made the American people safer.

From 2002-2008, Rice was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she conducted research and published widely on U.S. foreign policy, transnational security threats, weak states, global poverty and development.

Ambassador Rice served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1997-2001. In that role, she formulated and implemented U.S. policy towards 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and was responsible for the management of all of the U.S. Embassies and more than 5,000 U.S. and Foreign Service national employees. Rice was co-recipient of the White House's 2000 Samuel Nelson Drew Memorial Award for distinguished contributions to the formation of peaceful, cooperative relationships between states. From 1993-1997, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House, as well as Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping on the National Security Council staff.

Rice began her career as a management consultant with McKinsey and Company where she served natural resource, industrial and some consumer companies.

She is currently on the boards of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Ambassador Rice previously served as an independent Director of the Bureau of National Affairs (now Bloomberg BNA) and on many non-profit boards. Rice received her Master's degree (M.Phil.) and Ph.D (D.Phil.) in International Relations from New College, Oxford University, England, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She was awarded the Chatham House-British International Studies Association Prize for the most distinguished doctoral dissertation in the United Kingdom in the field of International Relations in 1990. Ambassador Rice received her B.A. in History with honors from Stanford University in 1986, where she was junior Phi Beta Kappa and a Truman Scholar. In 2017, French President Francois Hollande presented Ambassador Rice with the Award of Commander, the Legion of Honor of France, for her contributions to Franco-American relations.

A native of Washington DC, Ambassador Rice is married to Ian Cameron, and they have two children. She is an avid tennis player and retired basketball player.

Michael Novogratz

Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Galaxy Digital

Michael Novogratz is the Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital. He was formerly a Partner and President of Fortress Investment Group LLC. Prior to Fortress, Mr. Novogratz spent 11 years at Goldman Sachs, where he was elected Partner in 1998. Mr. Novogratz served on the New York Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets from 2012 – 2015. Mr. Novogratz serves as the Chairman of The Bail Project and has made criminal justice reform a focus of his family’s foundation. He also sits on the Board of Overseers at NYU Langone Medical Center and is a board member of Princeton Varsity Club and Jazz Foundation of America. Mr. Novogratz received an AB in Economics from Princeton University and served as a helicopter pilot in the US Army.

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.