Who We Are

Robert Rosenkranz is Chairman of Delphi Capital Management, an investment concern with more than $35 billion in assets under management, and the founder of a group of investment and private equity partnerships. From 1987 until 2018 he served as the Chief Executive Officer of Delphi Financial Group, an insurance company with some $20 billion in assets. Delphi grew from one of his acquisitions and increased its value 100-fold under his leadership.

He is the Founder and Chairman of Open to Debate, a public policy debate series that provides a forum for reasoned public discourse. He serves on the board of directors for the Manhattan Institute and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California; and the Serpentine Galleries and Policy Exchange, the center-right think tank, in London. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Visiting Committees for the Departments of Photography and Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A graduate of Yale University (A.B. summa cum laude 1962) and Harvard Law School (J.D. 1965), he was a tax lawyer with the New York law firm of Cahill, Gordon & Reindel and an economist with The RAND Corporation, where he was engaged in research on foreign policy issues and municipal finance. In 1969, he joined Oppenheimer & Company where he was a General Partner when he left to form Rosenkranz & Company, a private equity firm, in 1978. Mr. Rosenkranz is a longstanding art collector, with prominent collections of Asian art, modern design, and time-based media. He resides in East Hampton, New York and Aspen, Colorado with his wife Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D., Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim Museum. He has two adult children, Nicholas and Stephanie, both constitutional law scholars.

Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, which he established in 1998 with just $25,000. The company is the leading global political risk research and consulting firm, with offices in New York, Washington, and London, as well as a network of experts and resources in 90 countries. Eurasia Group provides analysis and expertise about how political developments and national security dynamics move markets and shape investment environments across the globe. Bremmer created Wall Street’s first global political risk index (GPRI). He is the founding chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geopolitical Risk and is an active public speaker. He has authored several books including the national bestsellers Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World and The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? Bremmer is a contributor to the Financial Times A-List and Reuters.com. He has written hundreds of articles for publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. Bremmer earned a PhD in political science from Stanford University in 1994 and was the youngest-ever national fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is a global research professor at New York University and has held faculty positions at Columbia University, the EastWest Institute, and the World Policy Institute.

Edward “Ed” Conard is the author of two New York Times top-ten bestselling books: Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong (2012) and The Upside of Inequality: How Good Intentions Undermine the Middle Class (2016); and a contributor to Oxford University Press’ United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality (2020). He is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Previously, he was a founding partner of Bain Capital, where he worked closely with his friend and colleague, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In May of 2012, Conard published Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong. The book was featured on the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine and went on to become a New York Times top ten non-fiction bestseller. Because of the publicity surrounding the publication of his book, Conard was the tenth most searched author on Google in 2012. Since its publication, Mr. Conard has made over 250 television appearances in which he has debated leading economists including Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Alan Kruger, Austen Goolsbee, and Jared Bernstein; journalists including Jon Stewart, Fareed Zakaria, Chris Hayes, and Andrew Ross Sorkin; and politicians such as Barney Frank, Howard Dean, and Eliot Spitzer. Prior to Bain Capital, Conard worked for Wasserstein Perella & Co., an investment bank that specialized in mergers and acquisitions, and Bain & Company, a management-consulting firm, where he led the firm’s industrial practice. Conard has a master of business administration degree from Harvard Business School and a bachelor of science degree in engineering from the University of Michigan.

Clea Conner is CEO of Open to Debate. Clea has produced more than 150 award-winning public policy programs spanning technology, culture, economics, law, and global affairs, convening the world’s most influential voices on the most provocative questions of our time. Named one of Crain’s New York “40 Under 40,” Clea developed “Up For Debate” and “That’s Debatable” as television programs on Bloomberg, PBS, and Newsy, and produced the first debate between artificial intelligence and a human debater in partnership with IBM’s historic Project Debater. She holds more than two dozen awards for excellence in public affairs programming in radio, television, and podcasting. Her full bio is available here.

Domenico De Sole is an Italian-American businessman and recently retired chairperson of TOM FORD International, a role he held since the company was founded. Mr. De Sole is the former President and CEO of Gucci Group and former Chairman of the Board of Sotheby’s. Mr. De Sole graduated from the University of Rome law school in 1966 and received an L.L.M. from Harvard University in 1972. He became a partner at the Washington DC firm Patton, Boggs & Blow. One of his clients in the early 1980s was Rodolfo Gucci, the son of Gucci’s founder, Guccio Gucci, who asked Mr. De Sole to join the company as CEO of Gucci America in 1984.

In 1994 Mr. De Sole became President and CEO of the Gucci Group, appointed Tom Ford as Creative Director, and guided Gucci from near bankruptcy to become one of luxury fashion’s largest conglomerates which would include Yves Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Boucheron, Sergio Rossi, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and Balenciaga. Following his departure from Gucci, Mr. Ford and Mr. De Sole founded TOM FORD International in 2006 which quickly became a leading luxury company and was successfully sold to Estee Lauder in April 2023.

Mr. De Sole serves on the boards of Ermenegildo Zegna, Thom Browne and Pirelli. Prior, he served on the boards of Bausch & Lomb, Procter & Gamble, GAP, Telecom Italia, Delta Airlines, Newell Brands, Sotheby’s and Conde Nast. He is currently a member of the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art and is on the Board of the Aspen Art Museum. He also is a member of the Advisory Board of Harvard Law School, his alma mater.

The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) in 2001 recognized Mr. De Sole as a gala honoree for his contribution to “Fashion and Industry”. In 2004 he was presented with the Harvard Law School Association Award, and that same year was named the Georgetown University’s Wall Street Alliance Honoree. He received an honorary degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2015. And in 2016, along with his wife, he received the Service to the Arts Award from the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado. In 2023 he received the Founder’s Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) for his lifelong contribution to fashion.

Mr. and Mrs. De Sole live between Hilton Head Island, South Carolina and Snowmass Village, Colorado. They have two adult children who live in New York where they also spend time.

Kelly Posner Gerstenhaber, widely recognized for her commitment to education, is a renowned philanthropist, and a leading international expert in suicide prevention and depression. She is the director of the Center for Suicide Risk Assessment at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and a recipient of the New York State Suicide Prevention Award in 2013. Among her notable achievements, the FDA commissioned Dr. Posner Gerstenhaber to establish methods of suicide identification, which are now required across the U.S and many countries. She continues to work with the FDA, CDC, NIMH, military health care agencies, the U.S. Department of Education, and other international agencies. In a lead article in The New York Times, her work was characterized as “one of the most profound changes of the past 16 years to regulations governing drug development.” Dr. Posner Gerstenhaber serves on the board of Hereditary Disease Foundation and SmartTots, an FDA/private foundation addressing the safety of pediatric anesthesia. She is the founding chairman of the board of Turnaround for Children, the groundbreaking model that has been proven to fix failing schools in high-poverty communities, and is co-founder of The Speyer Legacy School and Institute, the first independent school and education reform approach for advanced learners.

Merit Janow is an internationally recognized expert in international trade and investment, with extensive experience in academia, government, international organizations, and business. In addition, she has had a life-long involvement with Asia and is an expert in that region. Janow has been a Professor of Practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and an affiliated faculty member at Columbia Law School since 1995. She teaches graduate courses in international trade/WTO law, comparative antitrust law, and China in the global economy, among others.

In addition to serving as dean of SIPA, Janow is also co-director of the APEC Study Center. She has served as chair of the Faculty Oversight Committee of Columbia’s Global Center East Asia. Previously, Janow was director of the Masters Program in International Affairs and chair of Columbia University’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing. Janow has written several books and numerous articles, and she frequently speaks before business, policy, and academic audiences around the world.

Janow is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. In 2003, she became the first woman to serve as one of the seven members of the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body. From 1997 to 2000, Janow served as executive director of the first international antitrust advisory committee of the U.S. Department of Justice that reported to the attorney general and the assistant attorney general for antitrust. Prior to joining Columbia’s faculty, she was deputy assistant U.S. trade representative for Japan and China (1989–1993). Early in her career, Janow practiced law at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Before becoming a lawyer, she worked at a think tank focused on U.S.-Japan trade and economic relations. She grew up in Tokyo and is fluent in Japanese.

Vanessa Mendoza is the executive vice president of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a domestic public-policy think tank. She joined the Institute in 2006 as a policy analyst for its legal policy division. She was recruited to work with the development team, was named vice president for development in 2009, and in 2012 was named executive vice president of the Institute. As executive vice president, Vanessa works with MI’s president to develop and manage the Institute’s strategic focus and projects. Additionally, she focuses her time on the Institute’s next-generation leadership initiatives including the Institute’s Young Leaders program and Adam Smith Society. She has broad oversight of the Institute’s development team. Prior to joining the Manhattan Institute, she worked at a New York City-based lobbying firm, for the 2004 Republican National Convention, and for a private-practice attorney. Vanessa earned her J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and her B.A. from New York University with a concentration in the fields of political science, history, and election law. She serves on the board of Teneo, an organization of young professionals committed to advancing ideas that promote human freedom and flourishing, and on the advisory board of Open the Books, a nonprofit that works to make government spending transparent to all. Vanessa lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. with her husband and two children.

Alexandra Munroe, Ph.D is the co-founder of Open to Debate and the Samsung Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. She has led the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Program since its founding in 2006 and has organized several award-winning and top-attended scholarly exhibitions of modern and contemporary Asian art. Munroe is former Vice President of Japan Society, New York, and former director of its museum. She is a trustee of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and the United States-Japan Foundation, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, New York.

Ben Nelson is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Minerva Project. In 2012, Minerva Project received a $25 million seed investment from Benchmark Capital and has since launched the Minerva Institute for Research and Scholarship and the Minerva Schools, a reinvented university experience for the brightest and most motivated students that provides an interdisciplinary curriculum using an advanced interactive learning platform. Prior to Minerva, Ben spent more than 10 years at Snapfish, an online photo sharing and storage service, where he served as CEO from 2005 to June 2010. During his tenure as CEO, he lead Snapfish’s sale to Hewlett Packard for $300M. Previously, Ben was president and CEO of Community Ventures, a network of locally branded portals for America’s communities. Ben holds a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with honors. It was at Penn that Ben first realized his passion for reforming undergraduate education.

Gerry Ohrstrom is a private investor in New York City and former chairman of the Ohrstrom Foundation. He is or has been a director of various corporations and nonprofit organizations, including the Reason Foundation, the Santa Fe Institute, Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Gruter Institute, the Property and Environment Research Center, Africa Fighting Malaria, the International Policy Network, the Booker T. Washington Learning Center, the Museum of the Rockies, and the Yellowstone Park Foundation. He has been Co-Chairman of the President’s Council at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and is a member of the New York Academy of Science.

Philippe Selendy is a general trial lawyer and the Chair of Securities and Structured Finance at Quinn Emanuel.  His practice covers many areas of complex civil litigation at both trial and appellate levels, with an emphasis on financial products, securities, energy, and insurance.  Lauded by the Financial Times as “The Man Who Took on Wall Street,”  Selendy is nationally ranked in Chambers, named a Top 100 Trial Lawyer in America by Benchmark Litigation, and named a “Leading Lawyer” in America by LawDragon 500.  Described as “outstanding” by The Legal 500, Selendy is a multiple Law360 MVP,  a National Law Journal “Trailblazer,” and a three-time AmLaw “Litigator of the Week,” which reported that the Federal Housing Finance Agency “hit the jackpot” by hiring him as its lead lawyer for its “litigation assault” on the world’s largest banks. In 2016, The American Lawyer named him “Litigator of the Year” and awarded him its first Grand Prize in Litigation.

Daniel Shuchman is a New York-based investor. Most recently, he managed investment funds at MSD Capital, L.P., the investment office of Michael S. Dell, for almost 20 years. Previously he worked at Goldman Sachs & Co. and Gotham Partners, L.P. Mr. Shuchman was a board member of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) from 2007-18, Chairman of the Board from 2016-18, and is currently on its Advisory Council. He is the Chairman of Let Grow, a nonprofit group he co-founded with Jonathan Haidt and Lenore Skenazy, dedicated to enhancing and promoting resilience, self-reliance, and independence in America’s kids, and is a board member of the Institute for Free Speech. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Reason, Forbes, Real Clear Politics, Commentary and other publications. Daniel is a graduate of the Horace Mann School in New York and the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied history and philosophy. He is married to Lori E. Lesser, an intellectual property attorney, and has a son and a daughter.

Edward Stern is the founder and President of Hartz Capital, the investment arm of The Hartz Group, Inc. Together with his father, Leonard, Edward helps to oversee the corporate activities of The Hartz Group, Inc.

The Hartz Capital portfolio is managed opportunistically, with investments across a wide range of asset classes including debt and equity securities, financial and physical commodities, and direct equity investments.

Prior to forming Hartz Capital, Mr. Stern served as President and Chief Executive Officer of The Hartz Mountain Corporation, then America’s largest manufacturer and distributor of pet supplies. Mr. Stern oversaw the successful reorganization and sale of this business, The Hartz Group’s core, legacy operating business.

Mr. Stern holds a B.A. from Haverford College (1987) and is a Thomas J. Watson Fellow (1988).

Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and the Los Angeles Times, and a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and other publications. He is author of the bestselling book, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (2013).

Nicholas Burns is Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is faculty chair of the school’s Middle East Initiative, India & South Asia Program, and is the director of the Future of Diplomacy Project. He writes on foreign policy for the Boston Globe and Global Post and is director of the Aspen Strategy Group. During his career in the State Department, he served in a variety of positions, including as under secretary of state, ambassador to NATO and Greece and at the National Security Council.

Devon Cross is director of The Policy Forum on International Affairs. She was founder and president of The Donors Forum on International Affairs, was executive director of the Gilder Foundation in New York City, and president of the Donner Canadian Foundation in Toronto. From 1984-1993, she was director of the Smith Richardson Foundation in New York. Cross served on the Defense Policy Board, a civilian advisory board to the Pentagon, from September 2001-2008.

Mickey Edwards, a Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma for 16 years (1977-92), is a vice president of the Aspen Institute and director of the Institute’s Aspen-Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership program. He was a member of the House Republican leadership and served on the House Budget and Appropriations committees. He has taught at Harvard, Georgetown, and Princeton universities and has chaired various task forces for the Constitution Project, the Brookings Institution, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Richard Falkenrath is a senior manager at Bridgewater Associates and an adjunct senior fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was deputy homeland security advisor and deputy assistant to President George W. Bush. From 2006 to 2010, he served as the deputy commissioner for counterterrorism of the New York City Police Department. He was formerly a principal with The Chertoff Group and a contributing editor at Bloomberg LP.

David Frum, a senior editor at The Atlantic, is a contributing editor at The Daily Beast and a CNN contributor. He is the author of eight books, including Why Romney Lost, Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, and Dead Right, described as “the most refreshing ideological experience in a generation” by William F. Buckley. In 2001-2002, he served as a special assistant to President George W. Bush, and in 2007-2008, he served as senior foreign policy adviser to the Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign.

Doug Hecox is a nationally recognized public relations expert and currently leads the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Media Relations. He teaches journalism at American University and is an author, columnist and nationally touring comedian. Doug has worked for members of Congress, the White House, and the U.S. Departments of Justice, Transportation and Treasury.

Margaret Hoover is a CNN political contributor and the bestselling author of the book, American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives Can Save the Republican Party, published by Crown Forum in July 2011. She is also president of the American Unity Fund, an organization that marshals GOP financial and political support to pass marriage and other LGBT rights at the state and federal level. Hoover is a veteran of the Bush Administration White House, two presidential campaigns, and a former staffer on Capitol Hill.

Simon Johnson is the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, a member of the FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee, and a member of the private sector systemic risk council founded by Sheila Bair. In 2014, he joined the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research (OFR). From 2009 to 2015, he was a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Economic Advisers. Johnson has published more than 300 high impact pieces in New York Times, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and many other outlets. He is the co-author of several books, including White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You (2013). Previously, he was the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist and director of its research department.

Andrew Keen is one of the world’s best known and controversial commentators on the digital revolution. He is the author of three books: Cult of the Amateur, Digital Vertigo, and The Internet Is Not the Answer. He is executive director of the Silicon Valley innovation salon FutureCast, the host of the popular Internet chat show “Keen On,” a Senior Fellow at CALinnovates, a columnist for CNN and a much acclaimed public speaker around the world. In 2015, he was named by GQ magazine in their list of the “100 Most Connected Men.”

Michael Levi served as a special assistant to President Obama for energy and economic policy on the National Economic Council. Previously, Levi was the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, and director of the CFR program on energy security and climate change. He is an expert on climate and energy, technology, and nuclear security.

Larissa MacFarquhar has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. Her Profile subjects have included John Ashbery, Barack Obama, Noam Chomsky, Hilary Mantel, Derek Parfit, David Chang, and Aaron Swartz, among many others. She is the author of “Strangers Drowning: Grappling with Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help” (Penguin Press, 2015). Before joining the magazine, she was a senior editor at Lingua Franca and an advisory editor at The Paris Review, and wrote for Artforum, The Nation, The New Republic, the Times Book Review, Slate, and other publications.

Ben Nelson is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Minerva Project. In 2012, Minerva Project received a $25 million seed investment from Benchmark Capital and has since launched the Minerva Institute for Research and Scholarship and the Minerva Schools, a reinvented university experience for the brightest and most motivated students that provides an interdisciplinary curriculum using an advanced interactive learning platform. Prior to Minerva, Ben spent more than 10 years at Snapfish, an online photo sharing and storage service, where he served as CEO from 2005 to June 2010. During his tenure as CEO, he lead Snapfish’s sale to Hewlett Packard for $300M. Previously, Ben was president and CEO of Community Ventures, a network of locally branded portals for America’s communities. Ben holds a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with honors. It was at Penn that Ben first realized his passion for reforming undergraduate education.

Gerry Ohrstrom is a private investor in New York City and former chairman of the Ohrstrom Foundation. He is or has been a director of various corporations and nonprofit organizations, including the Reason Foundation, the Santa Fe Institute, Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Gruter Institute, the Property and Environment Research Center, Africa Fighting Malaria, the International Policy Network, the Booker T. Washington Learning Center, the Museum of the Rockies, and the Yellowstone Park Foundation. He has been Co-Chairman of the President’s Council at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and is a member of the New York Academy of Science.

James Piereson is president and trustee of the William E. Simon Foundation. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute where he is director of the Institute’s Center for the American University. From 1985 to 2005, he was executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation. Previously, Piereson served on the political science faculties of Iowa State University, Indiana University, and the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught government and political thought. He serves on the boards of the Pinkerton Foundation, Thomas W. Smith Foundation, Center for Individual Rights, Philanthropy Roundtable, Foundation for Cultural Review, American Spectator Foundation, Hoover Institution, and DonorsTrust.

Andrew Roberts is the bestselling author of Napoleon: A Life, The Storm of War, Masters and Commanders, Napoleon and Wellington, and Waterloo. A Fellow of the Napoleonic Institute, he has won many prizes, including the Wolfson History Prize, the British Army Military Book Award, and the Fondation Napoleon’s Jury Prize, writes frequently for The Wall Street Journal, and has written and presented a number of popular documentaries.

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and chief executive officer of the National Constitution Center. He is a professor at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught since 1997, and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he explores issues involving the future of technology and the Constitution.

Gail Saltz is clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, psychoanalyst with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, columnist, bestselling author, and television commentator, including frequent contributing to the Today Show, CNN, and MSNBC. She is the emotional wellness contributor to Health Magazine and Health.com, chair of the 92nd Street Y 7 Days of Genius Advisory Committee, and consultant and event moderator for the Clinton Foundation’s Health Matters Initiative

Peter Schuck is the Simeon E. Baldwin Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School. His most recent books include Targeting in Social Programs: Avoiding Bad Bets, Removing Bad Apples; Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics; Immigration Stories; Foundations of Administrative Law; Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance; and The Limits of Law: Essays on Democratic Governance. He is also co-editor, with James Q. Wilson, of Understanding America. He is a member of the American Law Institute’s advisory committee for the Restatement of Torts (Third), Basic Principles, and a contributing editor to The American Lawyer. He was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Jonathan Soros is chief executive officer of JS Capital Management LLC, a private investment firm. He is also a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank based in New York City, and co-founder of Friends of Democracy, a Super PAC and advocacy organization dedicated to reducing the influence of money in politics. Soros is a member of the board of the New America Foundation and holds several board positions affiliated with the Open Society Foundations.

Bret Stephens is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. He previously worked at the Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial page editor and, for 11 years, a foreign affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. At The Post he oversaw the paper’s news, editorial, and digital operations and its international editions, and also wrote a weekly column. He has reported from around the world and interviewed scores of world leaders. Stephens is the author of “America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder,” released in November 2014. He is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, including two honorary doctorates and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

John Tierney is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s quarterly publication, City Journal, and a contributing science columnist to the New York Times.  His work has been published in The Atlantic, Esquire, New York, Reason, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. Tierney’s latest book, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, was a New York Times best-seller and has been translated into 20 languages.  His website is JohnTierney
JOHN DONVANNYC.com.