Larry Kudlow
Larry Kudlow
Director of the United States National Economic Council
Larry Kudlow is an American financial analyst and former television host serving as Director of the National Economic Council under President Donald Trump since 2018. (1)
Kudlow began his career as a junior financial analyst at the New York Federal Reserve. In 1981, Kudlow joined the administration of Ronald Reagan as associate director for economics and planning in the Office of Management and Budget. After leaving the Reagan Administration during the second term, Kudlow returned to Wall Street and Bear Stearns, serving as the firm's chief economist from 1987 until 1994. In the late 1990s, Kudlow left Wall Street to become an economic media commentator – first with the National Review, and later hosting several shows on CNBC. (1)
Larry Kudlow spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.
(1) Material from Wikipedia.
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
Andrew McAfee
Andrew McAfee
Scientist
Andrew McAfee is co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and the associate director of the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, studying the ways information technology affects businesses and business as a whole. His latest book written with Erik Brynjolfsson is Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future. Their 2014 book The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Financial Times McKinsey business book of the year award. He writes academic papers, a blog for the Financial Times, and articles for publications including the Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He’s talked about his work on The Charlie Rose Show and 60 Minutes, at TED, Davos, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and in front of many other audiences.
Twitter: @amcafee
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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Katie McGinty
Katie McGinty
American politician
Kathleen Alana McGinty is a retired American politician and former state and federal environmental policy official. She served as an environmental advisor to Vice President al Gore and President Bill Clinton. Later, she served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in the cabinet of Governor Ed Rendell.
McGinty was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania in 2014. After Democrat Tom Wolf won Pennsylvania's 2014 gubernatorial election, he appointed McGinty as his Chief of Staff. On August 4, 2015, she officially announced her candidacy for the United States Senate in 2016. McGinty won the Democratic nomination on April 26, 2016, but lost in a close election, with 47.34% of the vote, to incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Pat Toomey, who garnered 48.77% in the general election. McGinty now serves as the Senior Vice President of the Oceans Program for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Mrs. McGinty was hosted by The Common Good in March of 2016; Meet & Greet: Katie McGinty.
Twitter: @McGintyCampaign
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
Norton Garfinkle
Norton Garfinkle
Economist, businessman
Norton Garfinkle is chairman of Princeton Scientific Capital Management, a financial investment company. He is also chairman of Princeton SciTech, an investment company that specializes in building new internet based technology companies.
Garfinkle was the founder of Brand Rating Research Corporation, a public opinion research company that provided a syndicated service to many consumer product companies including Proctor & Gamble, Bristol Myers and Colgate, television networks, national magazines and newspapers. The company also created RADAR, the first national radio ratings service.
Garfinkle served as chairman of Electronic Retailing Systems International which provided technology solutions to supermarket chains including the widely used self checkout supermarket systems. The company was sold to IBM in 2003. He founded Advanced Retail Marketing Corporation, an in-store marketing company, which was sold to News Corporation in 1996.
Mr. Garfinkle was hosted by The Common Good in January of 2016: Creating a Great Economy: Lincoln’s Surprising Relevance Today.
Melanne Verveer
Melanne Verveer
U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues
Ambassador Verveer is the Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security. She also serves as the Special Representative on Gender Issues for the OSCE Chairmanship.
Amb. Verveer previously served as the first U.S. Ambassador for Global Women’s Issues, a position to which she was nominated by President Obama in 2009. She coordinated foreign policy issues and activities relating to the political, economic and social advancement of women, traveling to nearly sixty countries. She worked to ensure that women’s participation and rights are fully integrated into U.S. foreign policy, and she played a leadership role in the Administration’s development of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. President Obama also appointed her to serve as the U.S. Representative to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
From 2000-2008, she was the Chair and Co-CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership, an international NGO that she co-founded to invest in emerging women leaders. During the Clinton administration, she served as Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady. She also led the effort to establish the President’s Inter-Agency Council on Women, and was instrumental in the adoption of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. She is the co-author of Fast Forward: How Women Can Achieve Power and Purpose.
She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, and she serves on the Boards of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council, as well as the World Bank Advisory Council on Gender and Development. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Secretary of State’s Award for Distinguished Service. In 2008, the President of Ukraine awarded her the Order of Princess Olga.
The Common Good hosted Melanne Verveer in Decemeber of 2015: Empowering Half the World.
Twitter: @MelanneVerveer
Jason Kander
Jason Kander
Former Missouri Secretary of State
Jason David Kander is an American attorney, author, veteran, and politician. He served as the 39th Secretary of State of Missouri, from 2013 to 2017. He had previously served as a member of the Missouri House of Representatives from 2009 to 2013. Before entering politics, he was an intelligence officer in the Army National Guard, achieving the rank of captain.
He was the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate for Missouri in 2016, narrowly losing the election to Republican incumbent Roy Blunt. After the election, Kander founded an organization called Let America Vote, a campaign dedicated to ending voter suppression. He declared himself a candidate in the 2019 Kansas City mayoral election, but dropped out on October 2, 2018, after revealing that he suffered from PTSD and depression.
The Common Good hosted Kander in November of 2015: Meet & Greet: Jason Kander.
Twitter: @JasonKander
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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Mark Mellman
Mark Mellman
Political strategist
Mark Mellman is one of the nation’s leading public opinion researchers and communication strategists. He is President of the American Association of Political Consultants and CEO of The Mellman Group, a polling and consulting firm whose clients include leading political figures, Fortune 500 companies, and some of the nation’s most important public interest groups. Mellman, who counts among his clients Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and House Whip Steny Hoyer, has helped guide the campaigns of twenty-nine U.S. Senators, ten Governors, over two dozen Members of Congress, and numerous state and local officials.
Internationally, Mellman was chief strategist and pollster for Yair Lapid’s stunning rise from zero seats in the Israeli parliament to the country’s second largest party in just one year. Earlier he helped Cesar Gavira become President of Colombia and Luli Basha defeat the international Mayor of the Year in Albania. He has been honored twice for running the Best Campaign outside the U.S. The New York Times’ Nate Silver cited The Mellman Group as the most accurate campaign pollster in the country. As a consultant to the Democratic Leadership, Mellman plays a central role in developing strategies on a variety of issues.
He served as a consultant to CBS News and as a presidential debate analyst for PBS and The Wall Street Journal. Mellman’s op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal among others, and he writes an influential weekly column for The Hill.
The Common Good hosted Mr. Mellman in October of 2015: “The Campaign 2016: What the Numbers Reveal”.
Twitter: @MarkMellman
Ari Berman
Ari Berman
Writer
Ari Berman is a former senior contributing writer for The Nation magazine and a Fellow at The Nation Institute. His book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, was published in August 2015 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He has written extensively about American politics, civil rights, and the intersection of money and politics. His stories have also appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian, and he is a frequent guest and commentator on MSNBC and NPR. His first book, Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics, was published in 2010 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Berman was hosted by The Common Good in 2015: “Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America” - October 7, 2015.
Twitter: @AriBerman
Davis Guggenheim
Davis Guggenheim
Film director
Philip Davis Guggenheim is an American film and television director and producer. His credits include NYPD Blue, ER, 24, Alias, The Shield, Deadwood, and the documentaries An Inconvenient Truth, The Road We've Traveled, Waiting for 'Superman' and He Named Me Malala. (1)
Guggenheim was hosted by The Common Good in 2015 for a Special Screening of "He Named Me Malala" - September 23, 2015.
(1) Material from Wikipedia.