Adrian Fenty, Former Mayor of Washington DC
Adrian Fenty has become a national leader in the area of urban education reform after changing the city’s public schools structure in his first months in office.  One of the youngest mayors of a major metropolitan U.S. city, rising political figure Adrian Fenty captured the nation’s attention during his term as Mayor of the District of Columbia. Celebrated for his leadership in urban education reform, the public school system in the D.C. had been troubled for years with poor student test performance scores and graduation rates among the lowest in the nation.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, "Team of Rivals: Leadership Lessons from Abraham Lincoln"
Doris Kearns Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, which was a bestseller in hardcover and trade paper. She is also the author of the bestsellers Wait Till Next Year, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. Ms. Goodwin lectures around the world, and is often called upon by the media to comment upon and analyze presidential issues. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband Richard Goodwin.

Peggy Noonan, Author and Wall Street Journal columnist
Peggy Noonan is a widely admired columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the best selling author of eight books on American politics, history and culture. Forbes Magazine has called her column "principled, perceptive, persuasive, and patriotic." Noonan's essays have appeared in TIME, Newsweek, The Washington Post and other publications.

David Brooks, Author and New York Times columnist
David Brooks is one of America's most prominent political commentators. He writes a bi-weekly OpEd column for the New York Times, and is the author of the books On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense and Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. Watch Video

Alex Counts, President and CEO, Grameen Foundation and author, "Small Loans, Big Dreams"
Alex Counts leads the Grameen Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit that enables the poor to create a world without poverty using the tools of microfinance and technology. He trained under and worked directly with 2006 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Watch Video

Dr. Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health, and author, "The Language of God"
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. led the successful effort to complete the Human Genome Project, a complex multidisciplinary scientific enterprise directed at mapping and sequencing all of the human DNA, and determining aspects of its function. Watch Video

Cynthia Cooper, WorldCom Whistle Blower and 2002 Time Person of the Year
In 2002, Ms. Cooper and her team identified the corporate fraud at WorldCom – to date the largest corporate fraud in history.  She is the the author of "Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower."

FW de Klerk, former president of South Africa and Nobel Peace Prize Winner
F. W. de Klerk was president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994. He pointed his country in a new direction and was awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end apartheid (an official policy that virtually eliminated black African participation in government in South Africa). Watch Video

Janet L. Robinson
CEO, The New York Times Publishing Co.
Speaker Biography
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Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns ’78
"America's Challenge of Global Leadership in the 21st Century"
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David McCullough
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The BC Chronicle 
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General Anthony Zinni (Ret.)
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