Honorary Advisory Board Member: Jeffrey Rosen
Jeffrey Rosen is a highly experienced international financier and a top financial executive. He has been a leader in international investment banking for over 40 years, advising corporations in the United States and around the world on mergers, acquisitions, and corporate finance. He is currently a Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Lazard, the world’s leading financial advisory and asset management firm.
Prior to joining Lazard in 2002, Rosen was a Managing Director of Wasserstein Perella which he helped found in 1988, and Chairman of Wasserstein Perella International. The Wasserstein Perella team of the early 1990’s is well known for hosting a dynasty of bankers and executives who went on to lead banks and corporations throughout Wall Street and the country. When the firm merged with Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, he became Deputy Chairman and Head of Continental European Investment Business of the newly enlarged company, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.
Rosen, center left, joins Bruce Wasserstein and other members of Lazard to celebrate the firm’s first appearance on the New York Stock Exchange
Previously, he was Executive Director of Credit Suisse First Boston in London, and subsequently was a Managing Director of The First Boston Corporation in New York. From 2005 to 2015, he was a non-executive Director of WPP plc, a world leader in communications, commerce, and technology.
Rosen is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Economic Club of New York, and the Board of Advisors of Moore Fréres & Company, and serves as the President of the Board of Trustees of the International Center of Photography. He is also a Trustee of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Educational Foundation and of the American Academy in Berlin.
A graduate of Yale College and Harvard Business School with distinction, he is married with two sons and lives in New York City.
He currently serves as a member of The Common Good Honorary Advisory Board.
Rosen with Dr. Hubert Burda, Arianna Huffington, and Dominik Wichmann at the Munich Residence Palace, 2017
Honorary Advisory Board Member: Robert Wolf
Robert Wolf is an expert financier and influential business leader. He is the founder and CEO of 32 Advisors, a boutique consulting and advisory firm, and the Chairman and Co-Founder of Measure, an aerial intelligence company. He has been named to Worth Magazine's 100 Most Powerful People in Finance multiple times, most recently in 2018. He is a regular contributor to Fox News and Fox Business.
Wolf’s firm, 32 Advisors, includes the direct investing arm 32 Ventures, the bi-partisan economic insights platform Strategic Worldviews and the Flint, Michigan accelerator group 100K Ventures. Prior to forming 32 Advisors, Wolf spent 18 years at Union Bank Switzerland, a global financial services firm. There he held several senior positions, including Chairman and CEO of UBS Americas, and President & Chief Operating Officer of UBS Investment Bank. He joined UBS in 1994 after spending approximately 10 years at Salomon Brothers.
Wolf held three Presidential appointments under President Obama; as a member of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, and the Export Council. In 2012, he was on the Homeland Security Advisory Council's Border Infrastructure Task Force. Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Obama Foundation, on the Undergraduate Executive Board of the Wharton School, on the Economic Advisory Council for the Center for American Progress and on the board of the Partnership for NYC. He formerly served as Vice Chairman of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights, on the board of trustees of the Children's Aid Society, and on the Athletics Board of Overseers at UPenn. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and serves on the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy.
Wolf received a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. While at UPenn, he played on the varsity football team that won IVY League Championships in both the 1982 and 1983 seasons. He currently resides in Purchase, NY. He grew up in Marblehead, MA and is in the town's Athletics Hall of Fame. His wife, Carol, is a Director of Events & Strategic Partnerships at Sandy Hook Promise.
The Common Good was pleased to have Wolf moderate the 2019 event Global Challenges: Facts and Fears in Our New Era with Richard Haass. Wolf currently serves as a member of The Common Good Honorary Advisory Board.
Twitter: @robertwolf32
Selected media:
For Some on Wall Street Beating Trump Is More Important Than Money Vanity Fair, 2020
Former Obama Adviser: A Blue Wave Isn't Coming, Townhall, 2018
A Top Fundraiser for Obama Turns From Wall Street to Drones Bloomberg, 2015
What to expect from Biden's stimulus plan Fox Business, 2021
Robert Wolf breaks down 2020 Democrats Fox News, 2019
Will the U.S. and China Have a Trade Deal by the End of the Month?Fox Business, 2019
David Rubenstein
David M. Rubenstein is a Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private investment firms. He is a 1970 graduate of Duke University and a 1973 graduate of the University of Chicago Law School. He served as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments before becoming the Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy during the Carter Administration. He also practiced law in both New York City and Washington, D.C.
Mr. Rubenstein is Chairman of the Boards of Trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Council on Foreign Relations; a Fellow of the Harvard Corporation; a Regent of the Smithsonian Institution; a Trustee of the National Gallery of Art, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Brookings Institution, and the World Economic Forum; a Director of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and President of the Economic Club of Washington, among other board seats.
Mr. Rubenstein is an original signer of The Giving Pledge; the host of The David Rubenstein Show; and the author of The American Story and How to Lead.
David M. Rubenstein participated in "How to Lead" with David M. Rubenstein and Adam Grant, on February 20 2021. Rubenstein and Grant explored the hallmarks of good leadership from our best political leaders, CEOs, founders and other giants, including the understanding of good - and bad - leadership in the U.S. Presidency and the political arena.
Honorary Advisory Board Member: Jon Meacham
Jon Meacham is a much lauded and widely renowned historian with a concentration on American historical subjects who is also a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University.
He is revered for his insightful presidential biographies . Meacham was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling book on Andrew Jackson’s presidency, American Lion in 2009. His 2015 book His Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
Meacham’s other New York Times best sellers include: The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, published in 2018, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power published 2012, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, published 2003, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation published 2006, and most recently His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope; and The Hope of Glory, published in 2020.
Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, he began his journalistic career at The Chattanooga Times, and was the editor of The Washington Monthly before moving to Newsweek in 1995. After serving as Managing Editor of that magazine for eight years, Meacham was Editor-in-Chief from 2006 to 2010. He is a former Executive Editor at Random House, where he published the letters of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and books of many highly regarded authors including Al Gore, John Danforth, Clara Bingham, Mary Soames, and Charles Peters.
Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University, presents the 2009 Biography prize to Meacham.
He is a contributing writer to the New York Times Book Review and a contributing editor of Time. He has written for such varied periodicals as the New York Times op-ed page, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and Garden & Gun. In addition to his written work, Meacham is also a regular guest on “Morning Joe'' and other broadcasts for his sought after commentary on history, politics, and religion in America.
Meacham is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a trustee of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, The McCallie School, and The Harpeth Hall School. Meacham chairs the National Advisory Council of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. He has served on the vestries of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue and of Trinity Church Wall Street as well as the Board of Regents of The University of the South.
The Anti-Defamation League awarded Meacham its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Prize. In 2013 the Historical Society of Pennsylvania presented him with its Founder’s Award; in 2016 he was honored with the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute’s Spirit of Democracy Award. Meacham also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University in 2005 and holds honorary doctorates from Middlebury College, Wake Forest University, the University of Tennessee, Dickinson College, Sewanee, and several other institutions.
A summa cum laude graduate of the University of the South, he lives in Nashville and in Sewanee with his wife and children.
Meacham spoke about The Role of Religion in the 2008 Campaign at The Common Good alongside Amy Sullivan and Steven Waldman, and at The Common Good American Spirit Awards and Forum 2021 where he received The Common Good American Spirit Award for Thought Leadership in 2021.
He is currently a member of The Common Good Honorary Advisory Board.
Selected Media:
Meacham’s Podcasts: “Hope Through History”, a documentary style podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hope-through-history/id1507276251, “It Was Said”, which analyzes important speeches of the past: https://www.history.com/it-was-said-podcast
Alex Henderson, ‘Jon Meacham: How the Founding Fathers anticipated Donald Trump’, Salon, 5 July 2019
‘“Songs of America”: Tim McGraw & Jon Meacham trace history through music’, MSNBC, 16 June 2019
Twitter: @jmeacham
Honorary Advisory Board Member: Douglas Brinkley
Douglas Brinkley is one of the most prominent historians in the U.S. — and CNN's presidential historian - having charted American history and significant figures for decades. He is also the official Presidential Historian for The New York Historical Society, an essayist, and a prolific and renowned biographer. He has published over three dozen highly acclaimed books, including many discerning biographies and shrewdly edited collections of presidents and presidential records. His subjects have ranged from Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, FDR, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon to the life of Rosa Parks, Hurricane Katrina, the space race and American Catholicism.
Currently, Brinkley is an esteemed professor at Rice University as the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History, He is also a member of the Century Association, Council of Foreign Relations and the James Madison Council of the Library of Congress. His early teaching career included positions at the U.S. Naval Academy, Princeton, and Hofstra University. At Hofstra, he spearheaded an acclaimed American Odyssey course which took students across the country in a sleeper bus, visiting historical sites and meeting with cultural icons and is the subject of his travelogue The Majic Bus.
“America’s New Past Master” - The Chicago Tribune
During his tenure at the University of New Orleans as Professor of History and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies, he wrote two books with Stephen E. Ambrose: Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 and The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today. In 2005, he became a Tulane University Distinguished Professor of History and the Director of the Roosevelt Center, where he taught courses on U.S. foreign policy, published several books on American culture, and edited Jack Kerouac’s diaries.
Brinkley is also actively involved in the environmental conservation and historic preservation communities. He has held board or leadership advisory roles in support of the American Museum of Natural History, Yellowstone Park Foundation, National Audubon Society, and the Rockefeller-Roosevelt Conservation Roundtable. In 2015 he was awarded the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks by the National Parks Conservation Association. In 2016 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service honored him with their annual Heritage Award.
Six of his books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year.His most recent book, American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, was a New York Times bestseller. His book The Great Deluge covers more recent history, offering a careful chronicle of Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of its survivors, and received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for writing which reflects RFK’s concern for the powerless and his struggle for even-handed justice. His two-volume annotated The Nixon Tapes won the Arthur S. Link – Warren F. Kuehl Prize. His book, Cronkite, draws upon letters, diaries, and artifacts from the Cronkite Archive to offer a personal portrait of the famed news anchor, won the Sperber Prize for outstanding biographies in the field of journalism. Brinkley has also received a Grammy Award for the Jazz ensemble album Presidential Suite, as well as seven honorary doctorates in American Studies.
[Brinkley with actor Sean Penn (left) helping with relief work in the wake of Hurricane Katrina]
[Brinkley, wife Anne and daughter Cassady, with John Lewis on the Edmund Pettus Bridge]
Brinkley with Author Kurt Vonnegut, 1994
A graduate of The Ohio State University and Georgetown University, Brinkley lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and three children.
The Common Good was pleased to host him on several occasions in the past, including Assessing the Presidency with Lesley Stahl, Douglas Brinkley, Jonathan Alter and Ed Rollins on April 11th, 2013 and in 2018 alongside Roger Cohen, David Frum, Dana Perino, and Ed Rollins at the “Trump – Year One” Panel.
Brinkley currently serves as a member of The Common Good Honorary Advisory Board.
Twitter: @ProfDBrinkley
Selected Media:
Brinkley for The New York Times: President Trump, Please Read 'Desert Solitaire'
Articles Listed: http://douglasbrinkley.com/articles/
Books Published:
American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, 2019
JKF: A Vision For America, 2018
Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America 2016
The Nixon Tapes : 1971-1972 and The Nixon Tapes: 1973, 2015, with coauthor Luke A. Nichter
Cronkite, 2012
The Quiet World: Saving Alaska’s Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960, 2011
The Notes: Ronald Reagan's Private Collection of Stories and Wisdom, 2011
Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 9th edition with Stephen Ambrose, 2010
The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, 2009
Gerald R. Ford, The American Presidents Series, 2007
The Ronald Reagan Diaries, Edited by Brinkley, 2007
Kerouac: Road Novels 1957-1960, selected journals edited by Brinkley, 2007
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 2006
Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism, 2006
Rosa Parks: A Life, 2005
Voices of Courage: The Battle for Khe Sanh, Vietnam, with co-author Ronald Drez, 2005
The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion, 2005
Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War, 2004
Voices of Valor: D-Day: June 6, 1944, words and recorded voices of those who served at D-Day, edited by Brinkley, 2004
Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 2003
The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisiana Purchase to Today, with Stephen Ambrose, 2002
Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist, collected letters of Hunter S. Thompson, edited by Brinkley, 2000
Witness to America: An Illustrated Documentary of the History of the United States from the Revolution to D-Day, 1999
The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House, 1998
American Heritage: History of the United States, 1998
Hunter S. Thompson: The Proud Highway, Saga of a Distemperate Southern Gentleman 1955-1967, collected letters, edited by Brinkley, 1997
FDR and the Creation of the U.N., 1997
The Majic Bus: An American Odyssey 1993
Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953-71 1992
Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal, 1992
More can be found at http://douglasbrinkley.com/all-books/
Mohamad Bazzi
Mohamad Bazzi
Journalist
Mohamad Bazzi is adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is also an assistant professor of journalism at New York University, where he teaches international reporting. He was the 2007-2008 Edward R. Murrow press fellow at CFR. (1)
His articles and commentaries on the Middle East have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Newsweek, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Salon, Washington Times, Newark Star- Ledger, and The National (Abu Dhabi). (1)
Bazzi spoke at a Special Screening of “Letters from Baghdad” and Panel Discussion alongside Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum, moderated by Alex Witt, at The Common Good in 2018.
Twitter: @BazziNYU
(1) Material from the Council on Foreign Relations website.
Felix Rohatyn
Felix Rohatyn
Banker, diplomat
Felix George Rohatyn is an American investment banker known for his role in preventing the bankruptcy of New York City in the 1970’s and for serving as United States Ambassador to France. He was also a long term advisor to the U.S. Democratic Party.
Rohatyn became widely known in the 1970’s for successfully restructuring New York City’s debt and resolving the city’s fiscal crisis. While running MAC for the city of New York, Rohatyn continued his deal making at Lazard, and he completed such deals as Sony’s acquisition of Columbia. Rohatyn was United States Ambassador to France 1997-2000 during the second Clinton Administration and is a Commander in the French Legion of Honor.
In 1990, he received The Hundred Year Association of New York’s Gold Medal Award “in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York.” Rohatyn is also the recipient of The International Center in New York’s Award of Excellence. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Trustee for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Anthony Scaramucci
Anthony Scaramucci
Journalist, businessman
Anthony Scaramucci is the founder of SkyBridge Capital. Mr. Scaramucci was the co-host of Wall Street Week, the iconic financial television show revived in 2015 and currently airing on the Fox Business Network. He is the author of three books: The Little Book of Hedge Funds, Goodbye Gordon Gekko and Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole, a 2016 Wall Street Journal best-seller in the business category. Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman, LLC in 2001. Earlier, Mr. Scaramucci 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. Mr. Scaramucci is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), vice chair of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board, and a board member of the Business Executives for National Security (BENS). 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.
Scaramucci briefly served as the White House Director of Communications in July, 2017. Trump fired him ten days after he began the job at the advice of his Chief of Staff, possibly in response to controversial statements made by Scaramucci within the first week of his work.
Scaramucci was spoke on “Growing the Economy and Jobs – Comments on the Trump Agenda”, moderated by Omeed Malik, at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2017.
Twitter: @Scaramucci
Pete Peterson ✝
Peter Peterson ✝
Investment banker, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce
Peter George Peterson was the founder and chairman of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to raising awareness of America’s long-term fiscal challenges and promoting solutions to ensure a better economic future. Prior to starting the Foundation, Peterson spent more than 50 years working in business and public service. In 1985, he co-founded The Blackstone Group, and over the next two decades he helped grow the firm into a global leader in alternative investments. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Peterson served as chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers and Lehman Brothers, Kuhn, Loeb Inc. Before working in Washington, Pete was Chairman and CEO of audio-visual equipment manufacturer Bell & Howell, and an executive at advertising firm McCann Erickson.
Peterson’s public service began in 1971, when President Richard Nixon named him Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs. One year later, he was named U.S. Secretary of Commerce. At that time, he also assumed the chairmanship of President Nixon’s National Commission on Productivity and was appointed U.S. Chairman of the U.S.-Soviet Commercial Commission. He again took on a public service role from 2000 to 2004, when he chaired the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In addition to his work with the Foundation, Peterson was chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, founding chairman of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, and founding president of The Concord Coalition. Along with former U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow, he co-chaired the Conference Board Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise. He served as a director of numerous corporations and was the author of five books, including the best-selling Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It (2004) and his recently published memoir, The Education of an American Dreamer: How a Son of Greek Immigrants Learned His Way from a Nebraska Diner to Washington, Wall Street, and Beyond.
Peterson passed away at the age of 91 on March 20th, 2018.
He was hosted by The Common Good in 2008: The Crisis We Don't Like to Talk About.
Robert Knake
Robert Knake
Writer
Rob Knake is a Senior Fellow for Cyber Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work focuses on internet governance, public-private partnerships, and cyber conflict.
Knake served from 2011 to 2015 as Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the National Security Council. In this role, he was responsible for the development of presidential policy on cybersecurity, and built and managed federal processes for cyber incident response and vulnerability management. He worked to establish presidential policy that created the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center and Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations.
Before joining government, Knake was an International Affairs Fellow-in-Residence at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he completed the manuscript for Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It and authored the Council Special Report “Internet Governance in an Age of Cyberinsecurity”. Some of his other books include The Fifth Domain and Internet Governance in an Age of Cyber Insecurity.
Twitter: @RobKnake
Joe Klein
Joe Klein
Political columnist
Joe Klein is a longtime Washington, D.C. and New York journalist and columnist, known for his novel Primary Colors, which portrays Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign. Klein is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a former Guggenheim Fellow. Since 2003, he has been a contributor at the current affairs at Time news group. In April 2006, he published Politics Lost, a book on what he calls the “pollster-consultant industrial complex.” He has also written articles and book reviews for The New Republic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, LIFE and Rolling Stone.
Twitter: @JoeKleinTIME
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Jonathan Tepperman
Jonathan Tepperman
Author, journalist
Jonathan Tepperman is a journalist and author. He is currently the Editor-In-Chief of Foreign Affairs and the author of The Fix: How Nations Survive and Thrive in a World in Decline (Crown, September 2016).
In 1998, he joined Foreign Affairs as a junior editor. A few years later, he moved to Newsweek, where he was deputy editor of the international edition. After a short stint as a political risk consultant, he returned to Foreign Affairs in 2011. Tepperman has written for a long list of publications, including Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and others, on subjects ranging from international affairs to municipal politics. He has interviewed more than a dozen world leaders, including Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Enrique Peña Nieto, Indonesia’s Joko Widodo, and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame. He is the co-editor of the books The U.S. vs. al Qaeda (2011), Iran and the Bomb (2012), and The Clash of Ideas (2012). He is vice chairman of the Halifax International Security Forum, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the New York Institute of Humanities.
Tepperman gave an introduction to the “Global Threats & Opportunities” subsection of The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2017.
Twitter: @j_tepperman