Brandon Stanton
Brandon Stanton
Author, photographer, blogger
Brandon Stanton is the author of “Humans of New York”, a photography and storytelling blog. Over the course of five years, “Humans of New York” (HONY) has built a devoted following of close to 20 million fans on several social media pages. Stanton has appeared on Ellen, Good Morning America, Nightline, MSNBC, CNN, has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Mashable, and dozens of other media venues. He has also been named a ‘person of the week’ on the ABC Evening News with Diane Sawyer, and a TIME Magazine “30 Under 30 Who are Changing the World.” He has photographed President Obama in the Oval Office and is the author of two #1 New York Times Bestsellers, Humans of New York, (2013) and Humans of New York: Stories (2015).
Stanton was awarded The American Spirit Award for Citizen Activism at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @humansofny
Representative Greg Stanton
Greg Stanton
Arizona Congressman, U.S. House of Representatives
Greg Stanton is currently Representative for Arizona’s 9th congressional district, having entered the office in 2019.
Stanton served as mayor of Phoenix between 2012 and 2018, when he resigned to run for Congress. Under his mayoral leadership, Phoenix became the first U.S. city to end chronic homelessness among veterans, and Stanton’s H.E.R.O. initiative is emerging as an example for how to match veterans —especially post-9/11 vets —with local employers and good jobs. Stanton attended Marquette University on the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, and earned a law degree from the University of Michigan. Before he was elected mayor in 2011, Stanton served nine years on the City Council and as Arizona’s Deputy Attorney General. He and his wife, Nicole, who is a prominent local attorney, are both working parents of two young children.
Twitter: @gregstantonaz
Cong. (ret) Jim Leach
the honorable Jim Leach
Academic, politician
James “Jim” Leach is a congressman and academic. He served as ninth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2009 to 2013 and was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa (1977–2007).
Leach was the John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. He also served as the interim director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University from September 17, 2007, to September 1, 2008.
Previously, Leach served 30 years (1977–2007) as a Republican member of the House of Representatives, representing Iowa’s 2nd congressional district (numbered as the 1st District from 1977 to 2003). In Congress, Leach chaired the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services (1995–2001) and was a senior member of the House Committee on International Relations, serving as Chair of the Committee’s Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs (2001–2006). He also founded and served as co-chair of the Congressional Humanities Caucus. He lost his 2006 re-election bid to Democrat Dave Loebsack.
Michael Steele
Michael Steele
Politician
When he was elected Lt. Governor of Maryland in 2003, Michael Steele made history as the first African American elected to statewide office, and again with his subsequent chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 2009. As chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele was charged with revitalizing the Republican Party. A self-described “Lincoln Republican”, under Steele’s leadership the RNC broke fundraising records (over $198 million raised during the 2010 Congressional cycle) and Republicans won 63 House seats, the biggest pickup since 1938.
As Lt. Governor of Maryland, Mr. Steele’s priorities included reforming the state’s Minority Business Enterprise program, improving the quality of Maryland’s public education system (he championed the State’s historic Charter School law), expanding economic development in the state and fostering cooperation between government and faith-based organizations to help those in need.
Mr. Steele’s ability as a communicator and commentator has been showcased through his current role as a political analyst for MSNBC. He is the author of Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda, which is a call to arms for grassroots America and co-author of The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis.
Steele spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @MichaelSteele
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Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg
Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg
Photographer, writer, philanthropist, businesswoman
Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg is an esteemed photographer, writer, philanthropist, and businesswoman. Lautenberg has successfully sold and exhibited her photography for a number of years and has received critical praise throughout her photographic career. Lautenberg’s photographs are included in both private and museum collections.
Lautenberg co-hosted Michael Wolff with The Common Good in 2019.
Twitter: @bonnie_lauten
Ted Strickland
Ted Strickland
Psychologist, religious leader, politician
Ted Strickland is a former minister, psychologist, congressman and governor of Ohio. Strickland created one of the nation’s leading advanced energy laws, preventing runaway electricity rate hikes and making Ohio a national leader in green energy jobs. Strickland held tuition increases to the lowest rate in the nation and made Ohio the first state to offer free tuition to veterans from across the country. Under Strickland’s leadership, Ohio’s primary and secondary schools won the nation’s top prize for education innovation from the Education Commission of the States.
In Congress, Ted was instrumental in passing the Children’s Health Insurance Program that provides health coverage to millions of children nationwide. He was a leading advocate for funding the Appalachian Regional Commission and he voiced opposition to the Iraq War.
After serving as governor, Ted was nominated by President Barack Obama to be a public delegate to the 68th U.N. General Assembly. He also served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. Most recently, Ted ran the Center for American Progress Action Fund where he spoke out on behalf of policies to strengthen America’s working families.
Strickland spoke at The Common Good in 2015 for a Meet & Greet.
Twitter: @Ted_Strickland
Jeanne Sullivan
Jeanne Sullivan
Businesswoman
Jeanne is a co-founder of StarVest Partners, a venture capital firm in NYC which was created in 1998 and raised $400 million, investing in technology enabled business services companies.
Sullivan serves on the board of the New York Venture Capital Association, is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at the Harvard Kennedy School, and is an Athena Entrepreneur Fellow for Barnard College. Forbes cited Sullivan as “one of the women VCs changing the world – grooming the next generation of female entrepreneurs.”
Sullivan spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
Twitter: @gianna1212
Dr. Robert Lanza
Dr. Robert Lanza
Scientist, philosopher
Robert Lanza, M.D., is currently Head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, and is Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He was previously Chief Scientific Officer at Ocata Therapeutics. Dr. Lanza has hundreds of publications and inventions, and over 30 scientific books. He is a former Fulbright Scholar, and studied as a student with polio-pioneer Jonas Salk and Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. He also worked closely (and co-authored a series of papers) with noted Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.
Dr. Lanza was part of the team that cloned the world’s first human embryo, as well as the first to successfully generate stem cells from adults using therapeutic cloning. In 2001 he was also the first to clone an endangered species, and recently published the first-ever report of pluripotent stem cell use in humans. Lanza was recognized by TIME Magazine in 2014 on its list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” PROSPECT Magazine named him one of the Top 50 “World Thinkers” in 2015.
Dr. Lanza spoke about the field of stem cell research at The Common Good Forum 2015.
Twitter: @RobertLanza
Brian Sullivan
Brian Sullivan
Anchor of CNBC's Worldwide Exchange
Brian Sullivan is anchor of CNBC's Worldwide Exchange and is the network's Senior National Correspondent. Additionally, he has been co-anchor of CNBC’s Power Lunch and the host of Talking Numbers. He also writes for CNBC.com and the recently re-launched CNBC PRO.
He joined CNBC in May 2011 and is based at the network’s Global Headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Sullivan has more than 15 years of financial broadcasting experience, having served as an anchor at Fox Business Network and prior to that as producer, reporter and anchor at Bloomberg Television.
He has twice been nominated for the prestigious Loeb Award; one for being recognized as among the first financial journalists to highlight the risks of the housing bubble in 2007, and the other for the 2013 CNBC documentary “America’s Gun: The Rise of the AR-15.”
Twitter: @SullyCNBC
Amy Sullivan
Amy Sullivan
Journalist
Amy Sullivan is a Chicago-based journalist who has covered religion and politics as an editor at TIME, Yahoo, the Washington Monthly, and National Journal. She contributes opinion and news analysis to outlets including NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Sullivan co-hosts the podcast "Impolite Company" with Nish Weiseth. Her critically acclaimed first book, The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap, was published by Scribner in 2008.
Sullivan spoke about The Role of Religion in the 2008 Campaign at The Common Good alongside Jon Meacham and Steven Waldman, moderated by Paul Glastris and introduced by Richard Feigen.
Twitter: @sullivanamy
Jesse LaGreca
Jesse LaGreca
Writer, protestor
Jesse LaGreca has worked as a freelance writer for the Daily Kos under the name Ministry Of Truth for the last three years and is one of their most frequent writers. He’s a member of various subgroups on the site, including their Anonymous forum, Environmental Foodies, and the Progressive Policy Zone.
LaGreca was a major activist during the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York and a frequent speaker on behalf of the movement. His introduction into mainstream media came when an unaired Fox News interview with Griff Jenkins was put on YouTube. In the clip, LaGreca spoke articulately and intelligently about the OWS movement and criticized Fox News for marginalizing the movement. He was named the face of “The Budding Stars of Occupy Wall Street,” according to the Atlantic Wire and was featured in various interviews from ABC’s This Week to The New York Observer.
LaGreca spoke at The Common Good on June 20th, 2012, alongside Todd Gitlin: The Power of Protest: Todd Gitlin & Jesse LaGreca.
Twitter: @JesseLaGreca
Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi
Author and Journalist
Matt Taibbi is a multitalented author and journalist who has covered politics, media, finance and sports, and in 2008 received a National Magazine Award for his columns in Rolling Stone. In February of 2014, he penned a goodbye in Rolling Stone magazine and moved to Glenn Greenwald’s First Look Media, where is he assembling a team of top-notch journalists and helping to launch a new magazine.
Taibbi spoke at The Common Good in 2014: Matt Taibbi on Corruption, Fraud and Inequality.
Twitter: @mtaibbi
Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Economist
Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is a best-selling author, columnist, and blogger for the New York Times, and is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes.
His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the “new trade theory,” a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to “that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge.” Krugman’s current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.
Paul Krugman was hosted by The Common Good in 2012: Nobel Prize Economist Paul Krugman on Reigniting the Economy.
Twitter: @paulkrugman
Arun Sundararajan
Arun Sundararajan
Professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business
Arun Sundararajan is a professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Professor Sundararajan’s research program studies how digital technologies transform business and society. His current scholarly research focuses on peer-to-peer markets, the sharing economy, digital trust, social media and brand, digital labor, new institutions, regulation, social networks and online privacy.
He is an advisor to Cisco Systems, OuiShare, the Center for Global Enterprise, and the National League of Cities. Professor Sundararajan’s book The Sharing Economy is about crowd-based capitalism, and was published in the Spring of 2016 by the MIT Press.
Twitter: @digitalarun
Alan Krueger †
Alan Krueger †
Economist
Alan B. Krueger was the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He served as Chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from November 2011 to August 2013, and was a Member of the President’s Cabinet. From 1987 until his death, he held a joint appointment in the Economics Department and Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He was the founding Director of the Princeton University Survey Research Center.
In 2009-2010 he served as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and in 1994-95 he served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor. He wrote for the New York Times Economic Scene column and Economix blog from 2000 to 2009. He was named a Sloan Fellow in Economics in 1992 and an NBER Olin Fellow in 1989-90. Krueger was editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives from 1996 to 2002. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1996, a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists in 2005 and a member of the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association in 2004. Krueger was awarded the Kershaw Prize by the Association for Public Policy and Management in 1997 and the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal by the Indian Econometric Society in 2001. In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2003 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
On March 16, 2019, Krueger was found dead at his home in Princeton.
Alan Krueger spoke at The Common Good Forum 2015.
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Senator Jon Tester
Jon Tester
American Politician
R. Jon Tester is the junior United States Senator for Montana, serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served as President of the Montana Senate.
Tester was first elected to the Montana State Senate in 1998, after his neighbor, a Republican State Senator, decided not to run for re-election. He was elected the minority whip for the 2001 session. In 2002, he won re-election with 71% of the vote. In 2003, he became minority leader. In 2005, Tester was elected President of the Montana Senate, the chief presiding officer of the Montana Legislature’s upper chamber.
His election as President marked a transition for Montana Democrats as they moved into the majority leadership of the Senate for the first time in more than a decade. Term limits would have prohibited Tester from running for state Senate for a third time. While serving as Senate President, Tester supported increased funding for public education and cutting taxes for small business owners and the working poor. He also worked to make health insurance more affordable and require public utilities to use more renewable energy.
He has made government reform a top priority issue. Tester criticized Republicans in Congress for making policy that is designed “for those who write the biggest campaign checks.” He has stated that Washington culture is “controlled by K Street cronies.” He has spoken against gay marriage and flag burning, but sees Constitutional bans on each issue as unnecessary. Instead of avoiding class issues, Tester has also taken them head-on. On Meet the Press, he asserted that “there’s no more middle class” because of Bush Administration policies.
Tester is a more liberal Democrat on other issues. He is pro-choice and supports embryonic stem cell research, and he has also voted to increase funding for Medicare and SCHIP. In the Senate, Tester continues to advocate increased funding for public education, just as he did in the Montana Legislature. Tester supports middle class tax cuts. He has voted against repealing the Estate Tax and Alternative Minimum Tax, policies he sees as favoring only the wealthy. When criticized for being soft on national security, Tester stated that “the Patriot Act has very little to do with the War on Terrorism” and asserted that “I don’t want to weaken the Patriot Act, I want to repeal it.” Tester is also a strong supporter of alternative energy, voting to increase wind and solar power funding and decrease emissions. He states that the Kyoto Protocol needs American support in order to have global legitimization.
Twitter: @jontester
Steve Kornacki
Steve Kornacki
Political journalist
Steve Kornacki is an American political journalist and current national political correspondent for NBC News.
Kornacki previously hosted “Up with Steve Kornacki” from 2011-2016. He also contributed occasionally to Capital New York and Salon, where he served as a senior political writer and politics editor from 2010 to 2013. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Boston Globe and Daily Beast.
Kornacki spoke on the Midterm Elections Panel alongside Patrick Caddell, Carol E. Lee, Anna Greenberg, Jim McLaughlin, and Jefrey Pollock, moderated by John Harwood, at The Common Good in 2014.
Twitter: @SteveKornacki
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Gillian Tett
Gillian Tett
Journalist
Gillian Tett is chairman editorial board and editor-at-large, US of the Financial Times. She writes weekly columns, covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues.
In 2014, she was named Columnist of the Year in the British Press Awards and was the first recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute Marsh Award. Her other honors include a SABEW Award for best feature article (2012), President’s Medal by the British Academy (2011), being recognized as Journalist of the Year (2009) and Business Journalist of the Year (2008) by the British Press Awards, and as Senior Financial Journalist of the Year (2007) by the Wincott Awards. In June 2009 her book Fool’s Gold won Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spear’s Book Awards.
Twitter: @gilliantett
Bill Thompson
Bill Thompson
Politician
As Comptroller of New York City from 2002 through 2009, Bill Thompson was responsible for managing the finances of the nation’s largest municipality and supervised a staff of 700 professionals. Thompson was given the opportunity to run for a third term in 2009, but he chose to run for mayor instead. As the Democratic nominee, Bill came within just a few percentage points of beating Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
As the head of the Board of Education for five terms, he oversaw a school system with 1.1 million students and 130,000 employees. Thompson is also Chair of Governor Cuomo’s Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise Team. In 2012, he stepped down as Chairman of the Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority to focus on his campaign for mayor.
In addition to his eight years of public service, Thompson has private sector experience. He currently serves as the Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Managing Director at Siebert, Brandford, Shank & Co., the nation’s largest minority public finance firm, where he underwrites loans for schools, roads, bridges and infrastructure projects.
Thompson spoke at The Common Good in 2013: NYC Mayoral Candidate Series: Bill Thompson.
Ted Koppel
Ted Koppel
Broadcast journalist
Ted Koppel, a 42-year veteran of ABC News, was anchor and managing editor of Nightline from 1980 to 2005.
New York University recently named Koppel one of the top 100 American journalists of the past 100 years. He has won every significant television award, including 8 George Foster Peabody Awards, 11 Overseas Press Club Awards, 12 duPont-Columbia Awards, and 42 Emmy’s. Since 2005 he has served as managing editor of the Discovery Channel, as a news analyst for BBC America, as a special correspondent for Rock Center, and continues to function as commentator and nonfiction book critic at NPR. He has been a contributing columnist to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and is the author the New York Times bestseller Off Camera.
Koppel spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.