Tammy Duckworth
Tammy Duckworth
American politician, former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel
Tammy Duckworth is an Iraq veteran who lost both legs and partial use of her right arm in 2004. She won her Congressional seat in 2012, and her Democratic seat in the Senate began in 2017. She is also the first Asian American woman elected to Congress in Illinois, the first disabled woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and the first member of Congress born in Thailand. She is fluent in Thai, Indonesian, and English.
Senator Duckworth was born in Bangkok Thailand. in 1989 she graduated from the University of Hawaii with a Bachelor of Arts in political science, and later received a Master of Arts in international affairs from George Washington University. In 1992 she joined the United States Army Reserve and chose to fly helicopters, citing it as one of the few combat positions open to women at the time. Senator Duckworth was working towards her P.H.D. in political science when she was drafted in 2004 to fight in the Iraq war. in November of that year, her UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in combat, where she sustained injuries and had to have her legs amputated. She received the Purple Heart for her injuries, and was promoted to Major.
In 2006, Senator Duckworth became the director of the Illinois Department of Veteran affairs, and held the position until 2009. While in the position, she was credited with starting a program to help veterans with PTSD and veterans with brain injuries.
Twitter: @SenDuckworth
Lindsey Graham
Lindsey Graham
U.S. Republican Senator of South Carolina
Lindsey Graham has earned a reputation as a conservative problem-solver and one of the strongest proponents of national defense. Graham is also a leader in cutting spending, reforming entitlements, and reducing government interference in businesses.
Prior to serving in the Senate, Graham was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. Before being elected to Congress, Graham compiled a distinguished record in the United States Air Force, retiring at the rank of Colonel in June 2015, having served his country in uniform for 33 years. Graham was elected to the United States Senate in 2002 and was re-elected in 2008 and 2014. Since 2019, he has been the Chair of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
Senator Graham spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @LindsayGrahamSC
Ian Bremmer
Ian Bremmer
President and Founder of Eurasia Group
Ian Bremmer is the President and Founder of Eurasia Group, a leading global political risk research and consulting firm as well as founder of GZERO Media tasked with public coverage for global affairs.. Bremmer is also a foreign affairs columnist and editor at large for Time Magazine as of December 2014. In 2013, he was named professor at New York University, and in 2019, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs announced that Bremmer would teach an Applied Geopolitics course at the school. He is the author of The J Curve, Every Nation for Itself, and the New York Times bestselling Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism.
He is a prolific thought leader and author, regularly expressing his views on political issues in public speeches, television appearances, and top publications. Dubbed the “rising guru” in the field of political risk by The Economist, he is a Global Research Professor at New York University and a Foreign Affairs Columnist and Editor at Large for TIME magazine. His latest book, Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World, was published in May 2015. Bremmer is credited with bringing the craft of political risk to financial markets—he created Wall Street’s first global political risk index (GPRI)—and for establishing political risk as an academic discipline.
Bremmer spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @ianbremmer
General David Petraeus
General David Petraeus
Former U.S. Army General and public official
General (Ret.) David H. Petraeus is one of the most prominent U.S. military figures of the post-9/11 era. During his 37-year career in the United States Army, General Petraeus was widely recognized for his leadership of the Surge in Iraq, which reduced violence in Iraq by over 85%; for his oversight of the organization that produced the U.S. Army’s counterinsurgency manual and overhauled all aspects of preparing U.S. Army leaders and units for deployment to combat; and for his command of coalition forces in Afghanistan as they reversed the momentum of the Taliban and enabled the commencement of the transition of tasks to Afghan forces and institutions.
General Petraeus’ military career was distinguished by significant achievements during assignments in Cold War Europe, Central America, the United States, Haiti, Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the greater Middle East. His career culminated 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.
After General Petraeus’ retirement from the military, he served as Director of the CIA. General Petraeus is now a Partner with the global investment firm KKR and the Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, a position he has held for over two years. He is also a Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College, a Judge Widney Professor at the University of Southern California, a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Co-Chairman of the Woodrow Wilson Institute’s Global Advisory Council, and a member of the boards of seven veterans service organizations and several think tanks.
General Petraeus received the American Spirit Award for Distinguished Public Service at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Abby Huntsman
Abby Huntsman
American journalist, television personality
Abby Huntsman currently serves as a co-host of ABC's The View. She was previously a general assignment reporter for Fox News Channel (FNC), providing coverage of the news of the day across the network’s daytime and primetime programming.
Prior to joining FNC, Huntsman served as co-host of MSNBC’s The Cycle and was a host/producer for The Huffington Post’s streaming network HuffPost Live. Huntsman was named one of Forbes “30 under 30” in media in 2013 and received a B.A. in political science and communications from the University of Pennsylvania.
Huntsman spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @HuntsmandAbby
Ret. General Ronald Keys
Ronald Keys
Retired Air Force General
General Ron Keys retired from the Air Force in 2007 after completing a career of over forty years and commands of eight different organizations including operational, staff, and international units. His last assignment was as Commander of Air Combat Command, at the time the Air Force’s largest major command, consisting of more than 1,200 aircraft, 27 wings, 17 bases and 200 operating locations worldwide with 105,000 personnel.
Under his leadership, ACC organized the Air Force’s first Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Wing and first Network Warfare Wing. In September of 2007, he received the Air Force Association’s most prestigious annual award, The H. H. Arnold Award. General Keys is a command pilot with more than 4,000 flying hours in the F-4, A-10, F-16 and F-15, including more than 300 hours of combat time.
General Keys spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Seth Flaxman
Seth Flaxman
Co-founder of Democracy Works
Seth co-founded Democracy Works (and the nonprofit’s flagship site, TurboVote.org) while receiving a Master’s in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He previously worked as a researcher on the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In 2011, he was honored as one of Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30” in the field of law and policy. Seth is also a Draper Richards Kaplan entrepreneur and Ashoka Fellow.
Flaxman spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @Sethflaxman
Joel Benenson
Joel Benenson
Founder and CEO of Benenson Strategy Group
Joel Benenson is the founder and CEO of Benenson Strategy Group, and the only Democratic pollster in history to have played a leading role in three winning presidential campaigns. Joel has been the chief pollster and chief campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, a senior strategist for President Barack Obama beginning with his 2008 campaign, and has worked on President Bill Clinton’s polling team during the 1996 race.
Joel’s corporate clients have included top executives at the Campbell Soup Company, HBO, Toyota, the NFL, Procter & Gamble, Panera Bread Co., Hearst, Blue Star Energy, and MSNBC. In the advocacy and nonprofit sector, he has worked with leading institutions including AARP, League of Conservation Voters, SEIU, Clean Energy Works, and Grocery Manufacturers of America.
Before becoming a pollster in 1995, Joel was a political journalist for the Daily News in New York and served as communications director for Governor Mario Cuomo’s 1994 campaign. He was also previously a vice president at the New York ad agency FCB.
Benenson spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @benesonj
Read more:
Evelyn Doskoch, ‘Former Obama, Clinton pollster Joel Benenson talks campaign strategy ‘,The Daily Princetonian, 3 October 2019.
‘Joel Benenson Named Burson-Marstellar Worldwide Vice Chair’, PR News Wire, 12 January 2017
Sandy Fitzgerald, ’Joel Benenson: Race, Comey Played Into Clinton’s Loss’, Newsmax, 2 December 2016
Jacob Weisberg
Jacob Weisberg
American political journalist
In 2018, Jacob Weisberg co-founded Pushkin Industries, an audio content company, with Malcolm Gladwell. The two CEOs produce several well-known podcasts under the company, including Revisionist History and Broken Record.
Before founding Pushkin, he worked as a writer and editor at The New Republic and covered politics for New York Magazine before joining the new internet magazine Slate, where he covered the 1996 and 2000 presidential campaigns as Chief Political Correspondent and served as Editor from 2002 to 2008. Weisberg also became Chairman of The Slate Group, whose roster includes Slate magazine and Panoply, a podcast network.
He has been a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, and a reporter for Newsweek in London and Washington. Weisberg is also the author of several books, including The Bush Tragedy, a 2008 New York Times bestseller, and In an Uncertain World (2003), written with former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin.
Weisberg spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @jacobwe
Stephanie Cutter
Stephanie Cutter
Founding Partner of Precision Strategies
Stephanie Cutter is a founding partner at Precision Strategies, a communications, digital and data targeting consulting firm in Washington D.C. and New York City. Her political and communications experience spans two decades in public service and the private sector, and she has crafted communications and crisis-management strategies for the White House, US Senate, and the nation’s leading political campaigns and corporations. After helping to elect President Obama in 2008, Stephanie was the President’s 2012 Deputy Campaign Manager in charge of communications, media, policy, and research, as well as being part of the senior strategy team. Stephanie sits on the boards of Organizing for Action, the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, and in 2013, she was appointed to the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities.
Cutter spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @stefcutter
Read more:
Christy Gren, ‘Most Influential Business Leaders in PR’, Industry Leaders Magazine, 13 July 2019
Tim Hains, ‘Stephanie Cutter: Trump "Politicizing" Terror Attack By Retweeting Drudge Report, Quoting Mayor Of London’, RealClear Politics, 4 June 2017
Marian Bothner,’ Communications and Campaigning: An Interview with Stephanie Cutter’, Harvard Political Review, 22 October 2018
Ambassador Ryan Crocker
Ambassador Ryan Crocker
Former U.S. Ambassador
Ryan Crocker is Dean and Executive Professor at the George Bush School of Government & Public Service at Texas A&M University where he holds the Edward and Howard Kruse Endowed Chair. He retired from the Foreign Service in April 2009 after a career of over 37 years, but was recalled to active duty by President Obama to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan in 2011. He has served as U.S. Ambassador six times: Afghanistan (2011-2012), Iraq (2007-2009), Pakistan (2004- 2007), Syria (1998-2001), Kuwait (1994-1997), and Lebanon (1990-1993). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Association of American Ambassadors. In August 2013, he was confirmed by the United States Senate to serve on the Broadcasting Board of Governors which oversees all U.S. government-supported civilian international media. He is also on the Board of Directors of Mercy Corps International.
Ambassador Crocker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, in 2009. In July 2012, he was named an Honorary Marine, the 75th civilian so honored since the founding of the Corps in 1775.
Ambassador Crocker spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Heidi Crebo-Rediker
Heidi Crebo-Rediker
Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations
Heidi Crebo-Rediker is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the CEO of International Capital Strategies. Prior to this, she served as the State Department’s first chief economist. providing advice and analysis to the secretary on foreign policy issues with a significant economic or financial component. Crebo-Rediker was also the Chief of International Finance and Economics for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, following nearly two decades in Europe as a senior investment banker. In the Senate, she advised then-chairman John Kerry on a range of international and domestic economic and financial issues. She has had an extensive career in investment banking, and on returning to Washington, D.C., she was the founding Co-Director of the Global Strategic Finance Initiative at the New America Foundation. During her time in the Senate, she was the architect of the bipartisan National Infrastructure Bank legislation (BUILD Act) introduced in March 2011 and included in President Barack Obama’s JOBS Act.
Crebo-Rediker spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
American economist
Douglas Holtz-Eakin has a distinguished record as an academic, policy adviser, and strategist. He is the President of the American Action Forum and most recently was a Commissioner on the Congressionally chartered Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Since 2001, he has served in a variety of important policy positions. He was the 6th Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2003 to 2005. Following his tenure at CBO, Dr. Holtz-Eakin was the Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and the Paul A. Volcker Chair in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. During 2007 and 2008 he was Director of Domestic and Economic Policy for the John McCain presidential campaign. Dr. Holtz-Eakin serves on the Boards of the Tax Foundation, National Economists Club, and the Research Advisory Board of the Center for Economic Development.
Holtz-Eakin spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @djheakin
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David Miliband
David Miliband
President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee
David Miliband is President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), where he oversees the agency’s humanitarian relief operations in more than 30 war-affected countries and its refugee resettlement and assistance programs in 25 United States cities.
Under Miliband’s leadership, the IRC has expanded its ability to rapidly respond to humanitarian cries and meet the needs of an unprecedented number of people uprooted by conflict, war and disaster. The organization is implementing an ambitious global strategy to bring clear outcomes, strong evidence and systematic research to the humanitarian programs through collaborative partnerships with the public and private sectors.
From 2007 to 2010, Miliband was the 74th Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Kingdom, driving advancements in human rights and representing the U.K. throughout the world. In 2006, as Secretary of State for the Environment, he pioneered the world’s first legally binding emissions reduction requirements. He was Member of Parliament for South Shields from 2001 to 2013.
Miliband spoke at a Meet & Greet at The Common Good in 2016.
Twitter: @DMiliband
Paul Beirne
Paul Beirne
National Managing Director with AllianceBernstein
Paul Beirne is a National Managing Director with AllianceBernstein, a global investment management firm based in New York that manages over $500 billion for individuals, families, pension plans, unions, foundations, public funds and other entities.
Beirne has been active on several charitable boards including the Municipal Art Society, World Monuments Fund, Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, PS 1 for Contempory Art (MOMA), God’s Love We Deliver, Santa Clara University and the Alliance for the Arts (Chairman 2000-2005). .
Beirne introduced Raymond Kelly at a Lunch and Discussion with: NY Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly at The Common Good in 2009.
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Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett
Author and Host of “The Dick Cavett Show”
The host of The Dick Cavett Show (which aired on ABC from 1968 to 1975 and on public television from 1977 to 1982), Dick Cavett is the author of Brief Encounters: Conversations, Magic Moments and Assorted Hijinks (2014). He is also the co-author of Cavett (1974) and Eye on Cavett (1983) and author of Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets (2011).
Dick Cavett was born in Gibbon, Nebraska in 1936. Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, Cavett won local fame as a teenage magician. In 1954, he earned a scholarship to Yale University where he majored in English and drama. At Yale he appeared in numerous radio and stage productions- while spending his summers working at the Oregon and Stratford, (Connecticut), Shakespeare Festivals.
In 1968 ABC signed Cavett as the host of a morning talk show, which eventually lead ABC to give Cavett his own late night program opposite The Tonight Show. The Dick Cavett Show ran on ABC until 1975. From 1977 until 1982, The Dick Cavett Show appeared five times a week on Public Television. In 1986, he hosted the first two seasons of Faces of Japan, a thirteen part series for PBS. The Dick Cavett Show was aired for six seasons on CNBC.
He made his Broadway debut in 1977 playing the leading role in Otherwise Engaged, a British comedy by Simon Gray. During the summer of 1988, Dick Cavett returned to Broadway in the role of the narrator in Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. From October 2000 through January of 2002 Cavett appeared as the narrator in the Broadway production of The Rocky Horror Show. He has made guest appearances on television programs as Cheers, The Edge of Night, and The Simpsons, as well as in Beetlejuice and Forest Gump.
Cavett spoke at The Common Good alongside Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, with moderator Alex Witt, in 2015: Screening and Discussion on "Best of Enemies" - July 13, 2015.
Twitter: @TheDickCavett
Robert Gordon
Robert Gordon
Author, producer, director
Robert Gordon is the author of Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters. He produced and directed “Best of Enemies” with filmmaker Morgan Neville, a documentary based on the televised debates of William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal.
Gordon is the writer and Associate Producer of “The Road To Memphis”, an episode in Martin Scorsese’s 7-part series The Blues. His other filmmaking credits include the 1990 documentary “All Day and All Night”, featuring B. B. King and Rufus Thomas, and music videos that have aired on MTV, BET, and CMT. Gordon is also the author of It Came From Memphis, a book about Memphis music and culture. He produced the book’s two companion CD’s. His other two books are Elvis: The King on the Road (St. Martin’s), and The Elvis Treasures (Random House). Among his awards is a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to the Al Green box set, Anthology, which he produced.
Gordon spoke at a Screening and Discussion on "Best of Enemies" alongside Morgan Neville and Dick Cavett, moderated by Alex Witt, at The Common Good in 2015.
Robert Zimmerman
Robert Zimmerman
Zimmerman/Edelson Inc.
Co-founder and partner of Zimmerman/Edelson, Inc., Robert Zimmerman has extensive experience in national and international media relations, branding communications and crisis management. Robert oversees all of the agency’s public relations, crisis management and branding communications activities, while personally leading account teams servicing some of the agency’s largest clients.
Most recently, Robert was appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo to the New York State SAGE Commission, charged with the most extensive restructuring of state government since the 1920’s. He served as member of the Board of the American Museum of Natural History representing Speaker of the New York City Council Christine Quinn, and was recently appointed to the Board of Directors of the Center for an Urban Future located in New York City. In 1995, Robert was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Presidential Commission on the Arts. He held that position through June of 2001. A Democratic National Committeeman from New York, Robert appears regularly on CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business News, and MSNBC discussing a wide range of public policy issues. In 2013, he was the recipient of the lifetime achievement award by the Public Relations Professionals of Long Island.
Zimmerman participated in The Common Good Forum 2015 on May 14th, 2015, on the “Lead Up to 2016 and Beyond: US Politics Now” panel alongside Jim McLaughlin and Margaret Hoover, moderated by Dana Bash.
Kenneth Rogoff
Kenneth Rogoff
Economist, academic
Kenneth Rogoff is an economist at the International Monetary Fund. His widely-cited 2009 book with Carmen Reinhart, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, shows the remarkable quantitative similarities across time and countries in the run-up and aftermath of severe financial crises. Rogoff is also known for his seminal work on exchange rates and central bank independence. Together with Maurice Obstfeld, he is co-author of Foundations of International Macroeconomics, a treatise that has also become a widely-used graduate text in the field worldwide. Rogoff’s 2016 book The Curse of Cash looks at the past, present and future of currency from standardized coinage to crypto-currencies. His monthly syndicated column on global economic issues is published in over 50 countries.
Rogoff is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Group of Thirty. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Rogoff is among the top ten on RePEc’s ranking of economists by scholarly citations. He is also an international Grandmaster of chess.
The Common Good hosted Rogoff in May of 2015: The Common Good Forum 2015.
Twitter: @krogoff
J.M. Berger
J.M. Berger
Author, Non-resident Fellow with the Brookings Institution Project
With roots in newspaper journalism, J.M. Berger is an author and analyst studying online extremism, homegrown terrorism, advanced social media analysis, and countering violent extremism. His book Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam (Potomac Books, 2011), is the only definitive history of American involvement in jihadist movements. He is also co-author of ISIS: The State of Terror (Ecco, 2015) with Jessica Stern, a book that “should be required reading for every politician and policymaker,” according to The Washington Post.
Berger has written extensively on the evolution of al-Qaeda and the rise of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). He interviewed American al-Shabab member Omar Hammami at length and published a widely read account of their interactions after the jihadist was killed by his former allies in 2013. Berger is especially known for his research into the tactics of extremists on social media. In addition to important articles on the subject for The Atlantic and Foreign Policy, he co-authored the 2013 study “Who Matters Online: Measuring influence, evaluating content and countering violent extremism in online social networks,” which introduced new analytical techniques for understanding extremist social networks. He expanded on these techniques in 2015 with “The ISIS Twitter Census”, published by the Brookings Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World. In 2004, Berger founded Intelwire.com, a website publishing investigative journalism, analysis, and primary source documents on terrorism and international security, including exclusive declassified documents on the September 11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing.
Berger has written for Politico, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Daily Beast Nature, and the CTC Sentinel, and previously worked as a producer for National Public Radio and Public Radio International. He also trains and consults for law enforcement and government agencies on issues related to countering violent extremism and advanced social media analysis.
Twitter: @intelwire
Read more:
J.M. Berger, ‘The New Strategy of Violent White Supremcy is Evolving’, NPR, 7 August 2019.
J.M. Berger, ‘The Dangerous Spread of Extremist Manifestos’, NPR, 26 February 2019
Sheera Frenkel, ‘Facebook Will Use Artificial Intelligence to Find Extremist Posts’, The New York Times, 15 June 2017
Jessica Stern & J.M. Berger, 'State Of Terror: Where ISIS Came From And How To Fight It’, NPR, 15 March 2015