Recent Moderators

2013 Winter Socrates Seminars
February 15-18, 2013
Aspen, CO

Charles Kenny

Charles Kenny is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. He has published articles, chapters and books on issues including the link between economic growth and broader development, the causes of improvements in global health, the history of happiness and the link between economic growth and happiness. He is the author of the book "Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding, and How We Can Improve the World Even More," and co-author, with his father, of the book “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Utility: Happiness in Philosophical and Economic Thought.” He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Happiness Studies, a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine and a regular columnist for Businessweek.

William Powers

William Powers is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Hamlet’s BlackBerry. Widely praised for its insights on the digital future, the book grew out of research he did as a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. It has been selected as the Common Read for 2011-2012 at a number of U.S. colleges and universities, and is being translated into many foreign languages. The New York Times called him an "apostle" of the next wave of digital thinking.

Anne-Marie Slaughter

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009–2011 she served as Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position. Dr. Slaughter is a frequent contributor to both mainstream and new media, publishing op-eds in major newspapers, magazines and blogs around the world and curating foreign policy news for over 40,000 followers on Twitter. She appears regularly on CNN, the BBC, NPR, and PBS, lectures widely, and has served on boards of organizations ranging from the Council of Foreign Relations and the New America Foundation to the McDonald's Corporation and the Citigroup Economic and Political Strategies Advisory Group. Foreign Policy magazine named her to their annual list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

2012 NYC Salon

November 2-3, 2012
New York City, NY

2012goldstone
Jack A. Goldstone is Hazel Professor of Public Policy and a Fellow of the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has won major prizes from the American Sociological Association and the Historical Society for his research on revolutions and social change, and has won grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the National Science Foundation. He recently led a National Academy of Sciences study of USAID democracy assistance, and worked with USAID, DIFD, and the US State and Defense Departments on developing their operations in fragile states. Goldstone’s current research focuses on conditions for building democracy and stability in developing nations, the impact of population change on the global economy and international security, and the cultural origins of modern economic growth. His recent essay in Foreign Affairs, “The New Population Bomb” has received world-wide attention. Goldstone has authored or edited ten books and published over one hundred articles in books and scholarly journals. His latest books are Why Europe? The Rise of the West 1500-1850 (McGraw-Hill, 2008), and Political Demography: Identities, Change, and Conflict (Paradigm, forthcoming).

Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and editor and Emmy award-winning producer/correspondent, has established himself over the past 50 years of his career as one of America’s most distinguished journalists. In 26 years with The New York Times, Mr. Smith covered Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights struggle, the Vietnam War in Saigon, the Middle East conflict from Cairo, the Cold War with stints in both Moscow and Washington, and six American presidents and their administrations. In 1971, as chief diplomatic correspondent, he was a member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that produced the Pentagon Papers series. In 1974, he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting from Russia and Eastern Europe. For PBS since 1989, Hedrick Smith has created 26 prime-time specials and mini-series on such varied topics as terrorism, Wall Street, Soviet perestroika,Wall Street, Wal-Mart, Enron, tax evasion, educational reform, health care, the environment, jazz greats Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck, and Washington’s power game.

2012 DC Salon

October 19-20, 2012
Washington, DC

Jack A. Goldstone is Hazel Professor of Public Policy and a Fellow of the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has won major prizes from the American Sociological Association and the Historical Society for his research on revolutions and social change, and has won grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the National Science Foundation. He recently led a National Academy of Sciences study of USAID democracy assistance, and worked with USAID, DIFD, and the US State and Defense Departments on developing their operations in fragile states. Goldstone’s current research focuses on conditions for building democracy and stability in developing nations, the impact of population change on the global economy and international security, and the cultural origins of modern economic growth. His recent essay in Foreign Affairs, “The New Population Bomb” has received world-wide attention. Goldstone has authored or edited ten books and published over one hundred articles in books and scholarly journals. His latest books are Why Europe? The Rise of the West 1500-1850 (McGraw-Hill, 2008), and Political Demography: Identities, Change, and Conflict (Paradigm, forthcoming).

Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran is the award-winning global correspondent for The Economist. In his two decades on staff at The Economist, he has covered development issues, energy and environment, health care, and innovation. He is an expert advisor to the World Economic Forum/Davos and a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He also teaches at New York University’s Stern Business School. Vaitheeswaran has addressed groups ranging from the US National Governors’ Association and the UN General Assembly to the TED and the American Association for the Advancement of Science conferences. He is the co-author most recently of ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (Twelve, 2007), which was named a Book of the Year by Financial Times.

2012 Socrates Summer Seminars

July 5-8, 2012
Aspen, CO

Seth Goldman is co-founder, President and TeaEO of Honest Tea, the company he co-founded in 1998 with Professor Barry Nalebuff of the Yale School of Management. Over the past fourteen years the company has thrived as consumers have shifted toward healthier and more sustainable diets. In March 2011, Honest Tea was acquired by The Coca-Cola Company, helping to further the reach and impact of Honest Tea’s mission by becoming the first organic and Fair Trade brand in the world's largest beverage distribution system.

An entrepreneur at heart, Seth started with lemonade stands and newspaper routes as a kid, created a non-profit urban service program, and nearly pursued a prize-winning biotechnology idea before he started Honest Tea in his kitchen. Since then, the company has initiated community-based partnerships with suppliers in India, Chinaand South Africa, and has created marketing partnerships with the Arbor Day Foundation, City Year, and RecycleBank. In addition to being named one of The Better World Shopping Guide's "Ten Best Companies on the Planet based on their overall social and environmental record," Honest Tea was also listed as one of PlanetGreen.com's "Top 7 Green Corporations of 2010." In 2010, The Huffington Post ranked Honest Tea as one of the leading "8 Revolutionary Socially Responsible Companies."

In 2008, Seth co-founded Bethesda Green, a local sustainability initiative in Honest Tea's hometown. In its first year, the initiative helped area restaurants convert their grease waste into biodiesel, and collected over 200,000 lbs of electronic waste. Bethesda Green hostsMaryland’s first green business incubator, with fourteen start-ups currently in residence. Seth serves on the boards of Bethesda Green, Happy Baby, The Calvert Foundation, the American Beverage Association, Repair the World, and sits on the Advisory Board of Net Impact. In 2011, Seth was appointed by Governor Martin O’Malley to the Maryland Economic Development Commission.

Before launching Honest Tea, Seth worked at Calvert Group, managing the marketing and sales efforts for the nation's largest family of socially responsible mutual funds. His previous work includes directing an AmeriCorps demonstration project inBaltimoreand serving as Senator Lloyd Bentsen's Deputy Press Secretary. He has also worked in Beijing and Moscow. He is a graduate ofHarvardCollege(1987) and the Yale School of Management (1995), and holds an honorary Doctorate of Laws fromAmericanUniversity. In 2009, Seth was the recipient of Net Impact’s Member Achievement Award. He is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.

Leigh Hafrey has worked as a journalist and a teacher and consultant in international development, communication, and professional ethics. Over the past 20 years, Hafrey has taught courses in communication at the Harvard Business School, Arthur D. Little’s Management Education Institute, and the MIT Sloan School of Management. Since 1992, he has also worked in professional ethics, with a focus on ethics and management, teaching courses at Harvard and MIT Sloan and consulting with professional practitioners in the U.S. and abroad.

Since 1995, Hafrey has been Senior Lecturer in the Behavioral and Policy Sciences at MIT Sloan, teaching regularly in the MBA, MIT-China, and Leaders for Global Operations programs. He has also taught in MIT’s Industrial Liaison, Management of Technology, Nanyang Fellows, Sloan Fellows in Innovation and Global Leadership, and System Design and Management programs. Together with his wife, Sandra Naddaff, Hafrey is also co-Master of Mather House, one of the 12 residential complexes in Harvard College: the Mather community brings together 400 undergraduates, 100 faculty, administrative, and alumni fellows, and 70+ advisory and other staff.

In the late 1990’s, Hafrey served as a core committee member of the Brandeis Seminars in Humanities and the Professions, part of the Brandeis University Int’l Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life. In 1997, he was a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum, participating in panels on leadership and cultural diversity and moderating a seminar in ethics at the WEF Davos Annual Meeting. For more than a decade now, Hafrey has moderated The Aspen Institute’s Seminar in Leadership, Values, and the Good Society, as well as other seminars sponsored by the Institute.

A former staff editor at The New York Times Book Review, Hafrey has published book translations from French and German and reporting, essays, reviews, and interviews in The New York Times and other American and European periodicals. He writes an ethics column for IPA’s Business Today, a quarterly magazine for small to medium-sized businesses, and serves on the editorial advisory board of the journal Philosophy of Management (U.K.) and the Journal of Business Ethics Education (U.S.). His book on how people use story to articulate ethical norms, The Story of Success: Five Steps to Mastering Ethics in Business, appeared in September 2005 with Other Press.

Hafrey holds an A.B. in English from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University.

Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist for The New York Times and the paper’s chief mergers and acquisitions reporter. He is also the editor of DealBook, an online daily financial report he started in 2001. In addition, Sorkin is an assistant editor of business and finance news, helping guide and shape the paper’s coverage. Sorkin wrote the best-selling book, Too Big to Fail, which was made into a movie by HBO. He is a frequent guest host of CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and often appears on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and PBS’s “Charlie Rose.” He won a Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism, in 2004 for breaking news. He also won a Society of American Business Editors and Writers award for breaking news in 2005 and again in 2006. In 2007, the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader.

Brian Trelstad is the Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund, a $60M social investment fund investing in innovative social enterprises in South Asia and East Africa delivering critical health, water, housing and energy services to the base of the pyramid. He also drives Acumen’s work measuring social and financial return and is a founding executive committee member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). Prior to Acumen Fund, Brian was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in their New Jersey office. He has co-founded and advised several early-stage technology companies and social enterprises and was the lead environmental staffer for President Clinton’s Corporation for National Service. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the University of California’s College of Environmental Design. Brian is a member of the 2010 class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute. He is also a Kauffman Fellow (Class 12) and was the first impact investor to participate in the fellowship program.

Robin Wright has reported from more than 140 countries on six continents for The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, TIME, The Atlantic, The Sunday Times of London, CBS News, Foreign Affairs and many others. Her foreign tours include the Middle East, Europe, Africa and several years as a roving foreign correspondent worldwide. She has covered a dozen wars and several revolutions. Until 2008, she covered U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Post.

Wright has also been a fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as well as Yale, Duke, Stanford, and the University of California.

Among several awards, Wright received the U.N. Correspondents Gold Medal, the National Magazine Award for reportage from Iran in The New Yorker, and the Overseas Press Club Award for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative" for coverage of African wars. The American Academy of Diplomacy selected Wright as the journalist of the year for her “distinguished reporting and analysis of international affairs.” She also won the National Press Club Award for diplomatic reporting and has been the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant.

She lectures extensively around the United States and has been a television commentator on morning and evening news programs on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN and MSNBC as well as "Meet the Press," "Face the Nation," "This Week," “Nightline," “PBS Newshour,” "Frontline," “Charlie Rose,” "Washington Week in Review," “Hardball,” “Morning Joe,” “Anderson Cooper 360,” “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer,” “Piers Morgan Tonight,” “The Colbert Report” and HBO’s “Real Time.”

Wright’s most recent book is “Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic world.” Her other books include “Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East” (2008), which The New York Times and The Washington Post both selected as one of the most notable books of the year. She was the editor of “The Iran Primer: Power, Politics and U.S. Policy” (2010). Her other books include “The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran” (2000), which was selected as one of the 25 most memorable books of the year 2000 by the New York Library Association, "Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam" (2001), "Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World" (1991), and "In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade" (1989).

Socrates in Cuba
May 1-5, 2012
Havana, Cuba

Dr. Margaret E. Crahan is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion and Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Latin American studies at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. She received her doctorate from Columbia in history. Until September 2009 she was the Kozmetsky Distinguished Professor and Director of the Kozmetsky Center of Excellence in Global Finance at St. Edward’s University. From 1982-1994 she was the Henry R. Luce Professor of Religion, Power and Political Process at Occidental College and from 1994-2008 the Dorothy Epstein Professor at Hunter College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Dr. Crahan has also held the Marous Professorship at the University of Pittsburgh (1993-94) and the Will and Ariel Durant Chair at St. Peter’s University (1988-89). She is a member of the Board of Trustees of St. Edward’s University and Vice President of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. She was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on Latin America, 2006-08. She has participated in international missions to Bolivia, Chile, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. She has also visited Cuba some fifty times since 1973 for research. Dr. Crahan has published over one hundred articles and books including Human Rights and Basic Needs in the Americas; Religion, Culture and Society: The Case of Cuba; and The Wars on Terrorism and Iraq: Human Rights, Unilateralism, and US Foreign Policy (with Thomas G. Weiss and John Goering).

Elliot Gerson is responsible for the Aspen Institute’s Policy Programs, its Public Programs and its relations with its international partners. The Institute’s Policy Programs focus on many of the most important issues in domestic and international affairs, as well as in topics in art, culture and science. They seek to improve decision-making by providing neutral venues, nonpartisan analysis and candid dialogue among leaders. The Institute’s Public Programs open the Institute’s doors to a broader audience of influential citizens, and include the Aspen Ideas Festival and several more specialized forums. These occur primarily on the Institute’s Aspen and Chesapeake Bay campuses, in Washington, at the Roosevelt House in New York City, and occasionally in other cities and overseas. Aspen has international partners in France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Romania and Spain.

Elliot is a graduate of Harvard, Oxford and Yale Law School. He was a U.S. Supreme Court clerk and has had a career including the practice of law, executive positions in state and federal government and a presidential campaign, president of leading insurance and healthcare companies, executive experience in two internet start-ups, and service on many non-profit boards, especially in the arts and humanities. Also, as American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust, he manages the U.S. Rhodes Scholarships. He is married to Dr. Jessica Herzstein. They have seven children and live in Washington and Aspen. Dr. Herzstein, a physician educated at Harvard and Yale, is global medical director of an international chemical company, a consultant in environmental and occupational medicine, and a member of the U.S. medical/scientific task force that sets standards for preventive health measures, including screening for cancer.

Dean of the School of Public Affairs and a specialist in Latin American politics and U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, William LeoGrande has been a frequent adviser to government and private sector agencies. He has written five books, including Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977 – 1992. Most recently, he was co-editor of A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution. Previously, he served on the staffs of the Democratic Policy Committee of the United States Senate, and the Democratic Caucus Task Force on Central America of the United States House of Representatives. William has been a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, and a Pew Faculty Fellow in International Affairs. His articles have appeared in various international and national journals, magazines and newspapers.

Socrates International
Madrid, Spain
April 19-22, 2012

Clive Crook is senior editor of The Atlantic and a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board, a former chief Washington commentator of the Financial Times, and was previously with The Economist.

Crook was born in Yorkshire, educated at Bolton School; Magdalen College, Oxford (where he was a foundation scholar); and the London School of Economics. After leaving university he was an official in H.M. Treasury and the Government Economic Service and was a consultant to The World Bank. Crook worked for 20 years at The Economist, variously serving as economics correspondent, Washington correspondent, economics editor and deputy editor. He lives in Washington, DC.

jeff rosen photo winter 2011 Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at The George Washington University in Washington, DC and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. The Chicago Tribune has named him one of the “10 Best Magazine Journalists in America” and the LA Times called him “the nation’s most widely-read and influential legal commentator.” Mr. Rosen is the author of numerous books, including his most recent, The Supreme Court: The personalities and rivalries that defined America. He is a Brookings Institution Fellow and is considered one of the leading constitutional scholars in the United States. Mr. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Christine Rosen and two sons.

2012 Socrates Winter Seminars
February 17-20, 2012
Aspen, CO

Stephen Balkam has had a wide range of leadership roles in the nonprofit sector in the both the US and UK for the past 30 years. He is the Founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), an international, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, DC. FOSI’s mission is to make the online world safer for kids and their families. FOSI convenes the top thinkers and practitioners in government, industry and the nonprofit sectors to collaborate and innovate and to create a “culture of responsibility” in the online world. Prior to FOSI, Stephen was the Founder and CEO of the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) and lead a team which developed the world’s leading content labeling system on the web. While with ICRA, Stephen served on the US Child Online Protection Commission (COPA) in 2000 and was named one of the Top 50 UK Movers and Shakers, Internet Magazine, 2001.

In 1994, Stephen was named the first Executive Director of the Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC) which created a unique self-labeling system for computer games and then, in 1996, Stephen launched RSACi – a forerunner to the ICRA website labeling system. For his efforts in online safety, Stephen was given the 1998 Carl Bertelsmann Prize in Gutersloh, Germany, for innovation and responsibility in the Information Society and was invited to the first and subsequent White House Internet Summits during the Clinton Administration.

Stephen’s other positions include the Executive Director of the National Stepfamily Association (UK); General Secretary of the Islington Voluntary Action Council; Executive Director of Camden Community Transport as well as management positions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Inter-Action. Stephen’s first job was with Burroughs Machines (now Unisys) and he had a spell working for West Nally Ltd – a sports sponsorship PR company.

Stephen received a BA, magna cum laude, in Psychology from University College, Cardiff, Wales in 1977. A native of Washington, DC, Stephen spent many years in the UK and now has dual citizenship. He writes regularly for the Huffington Post, has appeared on nationally syndicated TV and radio programs such as MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC and has been interviewed by leading newspapers such as the Washington Post, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, radio and in the mainstream press. He has given presentations and spoken in16 countries on 4 continents.

Mark Brownstein is Chief Counsel of the Energy Program at Environmental Defense Fund. Mark specializes in utility-related issues, including transmission development, wholesale and retail electric market design, rate reform, and power plant siting and investment. Mark leads EDF’s team on coal and natural gas. Mark is also adjunct Professor of Energy Policy at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Mark was one of two EDF staff leads on the United States Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of the nation’s leading corporations and environmental groups championing immediate action on federal legislation to cap and substantially reduce greenhouse gas pollution across the US economy. He is co-author of the Carbon Principles, a set of enhanced due diligence principles for investment banks considering the financing of coal fired power plants.

Prior to joining Environmental Defense Fund, Mark was Director of Enterprise Strategy for Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), where he worked directly with PSEG’s senior leadership in crafting and implementing the corporation’s business strategy. Over his nearly ten year career with PSEG, Mark served the company in a variety of environmental management roles, including Director of Environmental Strategy and Policy. Mark was active in numerous environmental legislative and regulatory proceedings including efforts to develop federal legislation limiting emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and carbon dioxide from power plants, and the Environmental Council of States’ (ECOS) 37-state Ozone Transport Assessment Group (OTAG) process, which developed specific recommendations to address the persistent problem of ozone transport in the eastern United States. Mark was also an active member of the US EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee and New Jersey’s Renewable Energy Task Force.

Aside from PSEG, Mark’s career includes time as an attorney in private environmental practice, a regulator with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and an aide to then-Congressman Robert G. Torricelli (D–NJ).

Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She is based in New York. Her opinion pieces have been published frequently in The Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune and her columns appear in several other publications across the world. She is a frequent media guest analyst. During the 18-day revolution that toppled Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, she appeared on most major media outlets, leading the feminist website Jezebel to describe her as “The Woman Explaining Egypt to the West”. Newsweek magazine said she was “in demand as a fresh, female counterweight to all the white-bearded professorial types.”

Before she moved to the U.S. in 2000, Mona was a news reporter in the Middle East for many years, including in Cairo and Jerusalem as a Reuters correspondent and she reported for various media from Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia and China. Ms Eltahawy was the first Egyptian journalist to live and to work for a western news agency in Israel. Her public speaking has taken her around the world, including to the first TEDWomen where she spoke about the virtues of confusion in breaking stereotypes of Muslim women.

In 2010 the Anna Lindh Foundation awarded her its Special Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism and the Estlow International Center for Journalism and New Media at the University of Denver gave her its Anvil of Freedom Award. In 2009, the European Union awarded her its Samir Kassir Prize for Freedom of the Press for her opinion writing and Search for Common Ground named her a winner of its Eliav-Sartawi Award for Middle Eastern Journalism. Mona is a lecturer and researcher on the growing importance of social media in the Arab world. She has taught as an adjunct at the New School in New York, the University of Oklahoma and the U.N.-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica.

Mona was born in Port Said, Egypt and has lived in the U.K, Saudi Arabia and Israel. She calls herself a proud liberal Muslim. In 2005, she was named a Muslim Leader of Tomorrow by the American Society for Muslim Advancement and she is a member of the Communications Advisory Group for Musawah, the global movement for justice and equality in the Muslim family.

New York Salon
November 4-5, 2011
New York, NY

Bart Houlahan, along with his partners, Jay Coen Gilbert and Andrew Kassoy, co-founded B Lab in 2006. B Lab is a nonprofit organization dedicated to using the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. B Lab drives systemic change through three interrelated initiatives: 1) Certified B Corporations: a corporate certification for sustainable businesses and social enterprises that meet higher standards of social and environmental performance and legal accountability; 2) GIIRS Ratings and Analytics: a ratings platform (analogous to Morningstar and Capital IQ) that drives capital to impact investments by assessing the social and environmental performance of companies and funds; and 3) Benefit Corporations: a new, legally-recognized corporate form that changes corporate fiduciary duty, permitting companies to create shareholder value and social value.

Prior to B Lab, Bart was President of AND 1, a basketball footwear and apparel company. Over the course of 11 years, Bart helped to finance, operate and scale the business to $250 MM in brand revenues with distribution in 80 countries. AND 1 undertook a leveraged recapitalization in 1999 with TA Associates, and was sold in May, 2005, to American Sporting Goods out of Irvine, CA. Before AND 1, Bart was an investment banker with Stonebridge Associates, BNY Associates, and Prudential-Bache Securities. Bart is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and an Advisory Board Member of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at the Fuqua School of Business. A graduate of Stanford University, Bart now resides in Devon, PA, with his wife, Chrissy, and daughters, Molly and Carly.

Brian Trelstad is the Chief Investment Officer of Acumen Fund, a $40m social investment fund investing in innovative social enterprises in South Asia and East Africa delivering critical health, water, housing and energy services to the base of the pyramid. He also drives Acumen’s work measuring social and financial return and is a founding executive committee member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). Prior to Acumen Fund, Brian was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in their New Jersey office. He has co-founded and advised several early-stage technology companies and social enterprises and was the lead environmental staffer for President Clinton’s Corporation for National Service. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the University of California’s College of Environmental Design.

Senate Socrates Seminar
October 28-30, 2011
Wye River Campus, Queenstown, MD (www.aspenwyeriver.com)

Bradley D. Belt is senior managing director of the Milken Institute, head of the Institute’s Washington office, and oversees the Center for Financial Market Understanding and related capital markets initiatives.

Belt joins the Milken Institute from Palisades Capital, a boutique restructuring advisory and investment firm he co-founded. Prior to establishing Palisades, he served in the Bush administration as the executive director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. As the chief executive officer of the PBGC, Belt was responsible for the operations and management of a $50 billion investment portfolio. Under his leadership, PBGC restructured its operations, adopted a new liability-driven investment policy, implemented performance-based human capital management strategies, established new risk management and internal control systems, and oversaw the resolution of many of the agency’s largest and most complex financial settlements. Belt had been previously appointed by President Bush to the Social Security Advisory Board, and he helped shape and communicate administration policy on pension and retirement security issues.

Belt has extensive executive management, operations, finance and policy experience in the private, public and non-profit sectors. His previous government service includes senior staff positions with the Securities Exchange Commission and the U.S. Senate, including as counsel to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. In the private sector, he has been an executive of a financial services and technology company, and managing director of merchant banking and public affairs strategy firms. He also served as senior vice president of the bipartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Belt is chairman of Palisades Capital, as well as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation (the oversight board for Washington National Cathedral, and St. Albans, Cathedral, and Beauvoir schools), the Board of Directors of Zurich American Life Insurance Company, and the Advisory Board of Norfolk Markets. He is also a senior fellow with the McDonough School of Business (Georgetown).

A frequent speaker and commentator on pensions, retirement finance, regulatory policy and corporate governance matters, Belt was named by SmartMoney as one of its “Power 30” in finance and by Workforce magazine as one of its “10 Most Forward-Thinking Leaders in Workforce Management.”

An Eisenhower Fellow, Belt completed an executive management program at the Kennedy School at Harvard University, received his law degree from Georgetown and obtained his undergraduate degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska. He is a member of the New York, District of Columbia, and U.S. Supreme Court bars.

Jared Bernstein joined the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in May 2011 as a Senior Fellow. From 2009 to 2011, Bernstein was the Chief Economist and Economic Adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, executive director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, and a member of President Obama’s economic team. Bernstein’s areas of expertise include federal and state economic and fiscal policies, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, international comparisons, and the analysis of financial and housing markets.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Bernstein was a senior economist and the director of the Living Standards Program at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. Between 1995 and 1996, he held the post of deputy chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. He is the author and coauthor of numerous books for both popular and academic audiences, including “Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?” and nine editions of “The State of Working America.” Bernstein has published extensively in various venues, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and Research in Economics and Statistics. He is an on-air commentator for the cable stations CNBC and MSNBC and hosts jaredbernsteinblog.com. Bernstein holds a PhD in Social Welfare from Columbia University.

2011 Summer Seminars
June 24-27, 2011
Aspen, Colorado

Catherine Brown is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence Policy and Coordination (IPC) in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at the Department of State. She previously worked with INR on a range of issues while in the Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, which she joined in 1985. She has extensive experience representing the Department in interagency and international forums.

Immediately before assuming her current position, Ms. Brown was the Department’s Assistant Legal Adviser for Diplomatic Law and Litigation, focusing on legal issues relating to the status of diplomatic and consular officers, other foreign government officials, and international organizations. From 1991 until 2006, she was Assistant Legal Adviser for Consular Affairs, handling legal issues relating to visa and citizenship adjudication, passport issuance, consular protection of Americans abroad and foreign nationals in the United States, and border security programs instituted in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Ms. Brown represented the United States before the International Court of Justice in the Breard, LaGrand, and Avena cases brought by Paraguay, Germany, and Mexico over breaches of the consular notification requirements of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and participated in formulating the United States response to the Court’s decisions in those cases. She has also been involved in U.S. domestic litigation relating to consular notification requirements, and instituted the Department’s program to improve United States compliance with its consular notification obligations.

During her State Department career, Ms. Brown has also worked in the areas of human rights and refugees; management; and Latin American affairs. She served as Deputy Agent for the United States for the merits phase of the Heathrow Airport User Charges Arbitration (United States v. United Kingdom), which resolved a US-UK dispute over landing fees imposed on U.S. airlines. She was Senior Adviser to the U.S. Refugee Coordinator from 1988-1989. As the Department’s Civil Service Ombudsman from 1993–1996, she helped develop career development opportunities for the Department’s civil service employees and participated in Department management reform efforts.

Ms. Brown previously worked for the law firm of Covington & Burling of Washington, D.C. and served as a law clerk to Judge Levin Campbell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a magna cum laude graduate of the Harvard Law School and author of Japanese Approaches to Equal Rights for Women: The Legal Framework, 12 LAW IN JAPAN 29 (1979) (based on her work as a Luce Scholar in Japan, 1976-1977) and of reviews of Denza’s Diplomatic Law (2d ed.1998), 94 AJIL 424 (2000), and Lee’s Consular Law and Practice (2d ed. 1991), 90 AJIL 178 (1996).

Clive Crook is senior editor of The Atlantic and chief Washington commentator of The Financial Times. In addition, he writes a column for National Journal and serves as chief editorial adviser to David G. Bradley, the chairman of Atlantic Media Group. He was formerly on the staff of The Economist, latterly from 1993 to 2005 as deputy editor. A graduate of Oxford and the London School of Economics, he has served as a consultant to The World Bank and worked as an official in the British Treasury. He lives in Washington, DC.

David Leonhardt is an economics columnist for The New York Times and a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in April 2011 and the Gerard Loeb Award for magazine writing in 2009. He also founded the Times's Economix blog, in 2008, and an analytical sports column, called "Keeping Score," in 2004. Before coming to the Times in 1999, he worked for Business Week magazine and for the metro desk of The Washington Post. Leonhardt frequently appears on public radio and television and lectures at universities. He majored in applied math at Yale University and is a third-generation native of New York.

Geneva Overholser is director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Previously she held the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism, where she was based in the school’s Washington bureau. From 1988 to 1995, Overholser was editor of The Des Moines Register, where she led the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. While at the Register, she also earned recognition as Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation and was named “The Best in the Business” by American Journalism Review.

In addition, Overholser has been ombudsman of The Washington Post, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group, and a reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun. She has been a columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review and frequent contributor to Poynter.org. She also spent five years overseas, working and writing in Paris and Kinshasa. Through the Annenberg Public Policy Center, in 2006 she published a manifesto on the future of journalism titled On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change. She is also co-editor, with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, of the volume “The Press,” part of the Oxford University Press Institutions of American Democracy series.

Overholser is a member of the boards of the Knight Fellowships at Stanford, the Center for Public Integrity, the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the Academy of American Poets. She serves on the Journalism Advisory Committee of the Knight Foundation. She was for nine years a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the final year as chair, and is a former officer of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. She is a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She held a Nieman fellowship at Harvard and a Congressional fellowship with the American Political Science Association. She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Wellesley College, a master’s in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a French language certificate from the Sorbonne. She has honorary doctorates from Grinnell College and St. Andrews Presbyterian College, and alumnae achievement awards from Wellesley, Northwestern and Medill.

Philip Zelikow Photo

Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in History at the University of Virginia. Zelikow began his professional career as a trial and appellate lawyer in Texas. His Ph.D. is from Tufts University’s Fletcher School. He was a career diplomat, posted overseas and in Washington, including service on the NSC staff for President George H.W. Bush. Since 1991 he has taught and directed research programs at Harvard University and at the University of Virginia. His books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (with Condoleezza Rice), The Kennedy Tapes (with Ernest May), and Essence of Decision (with Graham Allison). In addition to service on some government advisory boards, and as an elected member of a local school board, he has taken two public service leaves from academia to return full-time to government service, in 2003-04 to direct the 9/11 Commission and in 2005-07 as Counselor of the Department of State, a deputy to Secretary Rice. He also advises the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s program in global development and is a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Boston Salon
April 1-2, 2011
Boston, MA

Joseph Nye Boston Joseph Nye received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1958. He did postgraduate work at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He joined the Harvard Faculty in 1964, and taught one of the largest core curriculum courses in the college. In December 1995, he became Dean of the Kennedy School through June 2004. He is the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations and University Distinguished Service Professor.

He has also worked in three government agencies. From 1977 to 1979, Mr. Nye served as Deputy to the Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology and chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In recognition of his service, he received the highest Department of State commendation, the Distinguished Honor Award. In 1993 and 1994, he was chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates intelligence estimates for the President. He was awarded the Intelligence Community’s Distinguished Service Medal. In 1994 and 1995, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, where he also won the Distinguished Service Medal with an Oak Leaf Cluster.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Academy of Diplomacy, Mr. Nye has also been a Senior Fellow of the Aspen Institute, Director of the Aspen Strategy Group, and North American Chairman of The Trilateral Commission. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Diplomacy; a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a member of the advisory committee of the Institute of International Economics, and the American representative on the United Nations Advisory Committee on Disarmament Affairs. He has been a trustee of Wells College and Radcliffe College.

A member of the editorial boards of Foreign Policy and International Security magazines, he is the author of numerous books and more than a hundred and fifty articles in professional journals. His most recent publication is The Powers to Lead (2008). In addition, he recently published; The Power Game: A Washington Novel (2004); Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (2004), and an anthology, Power in the Global Information Age (2004). He has published policy articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times. He has appeared on programs such as ABC’s Nightline and Good Morning America, CNN’s Larry King Live, CBS’s Evening News, and The PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, as well as Australian, British, French, Swiss, Japanese, and Korean television.

In addition to teaching at Harvard, Dr. Nye also has taught for brief periods in Geneva, Ottawa, and London. He is an honorary fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has lived for extended periods in Europe, East Africa, Central America, and traveled to more than 90 countries.

His hobbies include fly fishing, hiking, squash, skiing, gardening, and working on his tree farm in New Hampshire. He is married to Molly Harding Nye, an art consultant and potter. They have three grown sons.

2011 Winter Seminars
February 18-21, 2011
Aspen, Colorado

zeke emanuel 2011 feb Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, the Chair of the Department of Bioethics at the NIH, is currently the Special Advisor on Health Policy at the White House Office of Management and Budget. He is also a breast oncologist and author.

For 10 years, Dr. Emanuel has worked on global health, especially related to malaria and HIV/AIDS. He has trained researchers in developing countries on the ethics of clinical research and conducted numerous studies of ethical issues related to research in developing countries. At OMB, Dr. Emanuel has helped develop President Obama’s Global Health Initiative.

He has written 3 books and co-authored 4. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science and the Association of American Physicians. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Malaria Vision Award from Malaria No More, and the President’s Medal for Social Justice from Roosevelt University.

Michelle Lapinski is The Nature Conservancy's Director, Corporate Practices, reporting to the Chief External Affairs Officer. She leads development of the Conservancy's worldwide corporate engagement strategy, and the Conservancy's International Leadership Council of corporations. She is especially focused on increasing collaboration with the private sector to improve business practices andengage industry partners to realize the benefits of conservation and good ecosystem management as a business strategy. Michelle is located at the Conservancy's worldwide office in Arlington, VA.

Michelle's career has focused on advising leading global companies on more sustainable business strategies, practices and business models. Most recently she ran her own consulting business, SustainBiz, and has advised clients such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Starbucks as well as private investors to build sustainability into their business strategies and practices. She served as Deputy Director of the Global Health and Safety Initiative, an alliance of 10 of the nation’s largest health care organizations integrating sustainability into operations, sector goal, research and development and public policy. Michelle developed the public private partnership of the Global Environment Facility, launched at the UNFCCC in Bali. Prior to launching her own business, she did similar work for Business for Social Responsibility as Director, Advisory Services, leading BSR’s work in the Food & Agriculture, Consumer Products and Transportation sectors with Fortune 500 companies. While there she led the development of several voluntary industry partnerships to create global guidelines in the consumer products and transportation sectors including the first methodology for calculating scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from ocean container shipping and restricted substances lists and water quality standards in the consumer products industries. Michelle began her work on sustainability at Gap Inc., where she developed the company's industry-leading initiative on responsible sourcing. As Gap Inc.’s Global Environmental Health & Safety Manager she developed standards for its products and 3500 suppliers in 53 countries. Michelle holds a Master of Science in Environmental Management from the University of San Francisco, where she also served as an Adjunct Professor and a Bachelor of Arts in Behavioral Biology from Johns Hopkins University.

She is a founding Board member and National Co-Director of Young Women Social Entrepreneurs and an Environmental Leadership Program Senior Fellow. In her free time she can be found exploring the outdoors, wandering art galleries, cooking and enjoying live music.

Peter F. Romero is the CEO of Experior Advisory, a Washington DC-based consulting firm that specializes in international business and political advising. Mr. Romero has over twenty-six years of experience negotiating in international markets and politics. He has advised major U.S. corporations on national and local strategies regarding environmental, indigenous, labor, and political issues. In addition, he advises U.S. and foreign companies on capital raising, selecting local partners, acquisitions, and mergers in association with several investment banks.
From July 2001 to April 2003 Mr. Romero served as Managing Director of Violy, Byorum & Partners (VB&P). During this time, he led the advisory and consultancy practice at VB&P, which included foreign–venue dispute resolution and bidding (both public and private). Additionally, Mr. Romero is a board advisor to U.S. and foreign corporations on commercial and financial matters in connection with governmental affairs.

Formerly, Mr. Romero was the Assistant Secretary of State of the new Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau (an area that stretches from Canada to Chile), where he was the highest-ranking Hispanic in the career U.S. Foreign Service. A twenty-four-year career diplomat, he previously served inter alia as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador and Chief of Mission of our Embassy in San Salvador. The bureau Ambassador Romero led is responsible for promoting U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere in support of strengthening democratic institutions, expanding U.S. trade opportunities and attaining sustainable economic development, including the start of free trade negotiations with Chile.

Ambassador Romero promoted enhanced cooperation on counternarcotics, crime, and poverty reduction. On counternarcotics, he was a principal architect of the Forward Operations Location (FOLS) concept, which now forms the lynchpin of our national security strategy. Ambassador Romero was responsible for making and defending budget proposals before the U.S. Congress and executing an annual operations budget in excess of $2 billion.

First as U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador, and then as Assistant Secretary of State, Ambassador Romero played a key role in support of the peaceful resolution of the border dispute between Peru and Ecuador.

Born in New York, Peter Romero received a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Arts degree in International Relations from Florida State University. He speaks fluent English, Spanish and Italian.

jeff rosen photo winter 2011 Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at The George Washington University in Washington, DC and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. The Chicago Tribune has named him one of the “10 Best Magazine Journalists in America” and the LA Times called him “the nation’s most widely-read and influential legal commentator.” Mr. Rosen is the author of numerous books, including his most recent, The Supreme Court: The personalities and rivalries that defined America. He is a Brookings Institution Fellow and is considered one of the leading constitutional scholars in the United States. Mr. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Christine Rosen and two sons.

Jeff Speck is a city planner and urban designer who, through writing, lectures, public service, and built work, advocates internationally for smart growth and sustainable design. He currently leads a private consultancy offering design and advisory services to public officials and the real estate industry. As Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 through 2007, Mr. Speck presided over two NEA leadership initiatives, the Mayors' Institute on City Design and Your Town, both of which teach design skills to community leaders nationwide. He also created and ran a new initiative, the Governors' Institute on Community Design, which is bringing smart growth principles and techniques to state leadership.

Prior to his federal appointment, Mr. Speck spent ten years as Director of Town Planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co., Architects and Town Planners. DPZ is a leader in the international movement called the New Urbanism, which promotes alternatives to suburban sprawl and urban disinvestment. Mr. Speck is a contributing editor to Metropolis magazine, and serves on the Sustainability Task Force of the US. Department of Homeland Security. With Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, he is the co-author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, which the Wall Street Journal calls "the urbanist's bible.” With Andres Duany, he has written The Smart Growth Manual, just published by McGraw Hill.

San Francisco Salon
November 19-20, 2010
San Francisco, CA

Donlyn Lyndon FAIA conducts a consulting practice, Architecture and Place, that draws on his extensive background in education, publication and practice in architecture and urban design

Professor Lyndon's work as an architect, author and educator concerned with the design of places has been widely recognized. Within CED he was a member of the Graduate Group for the Design of Urban Places and taught in both the Architecture and Master of Urban Design programs. He is the Editor of PLACES, a journal of environmental design, author of The Sea Ranch (with Jim Alinder) and The City Observed: Boston, and co-author of Chambers for a Memory Palace and The Place of Houses. He serves on the Boards of the International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design, in Italy and of the Charles Moore Center for the Study of Place in Austin TX. He is Chair of the Board of Directors for the Kronos Performing Arts Association and has served as a member of the Architectural Advisory Board for the US State Department's Office of Overseas Building Operations. His architectural and urban design practice has included a continuing series of works at the Sea Ranch CA, where, with MLTW (Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker), he was one of the designers of Condominium One, (1965) which subsequently received the distinguished 25 year Award from the AIA. He has continuing architectural work there and has been the architect for projects elsewhere in California, Texas, New England, the South and the Northwest. His urban design practice in California has included plans for Pasadena, Menlo Park and Berkeley, including the Bayer Bio tech campus and the Downtown Public Improvements Master Plan for Berkeley. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, his work has received numerous design awards and he is frequently asked to serve on architectural competition juries. Lyndon served as Head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Oregon, and at MIT, and is a former Chair of the Department of Architecture at Berkeley. His work as an educator was honored in 1997 with the AIA-ACSA's Topaz Award, the highest award in architectural education, and he has served as a Chancellor's Professor and as the Eva Li Professor at Berkeley. Research activity includes examination of the structure of place and the ethical dimensions of design.

Senate Socrates
October 22-24, 2010
Wye River Campus, Queenstown, MD

Summer Socrates Moderators
July 2 - 5, 2010
Aspen, Colorado

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Born in Glasgow in 1964, he was a Demy at Magdalen College and graduated with First Class Honours in 1985. After two years as a Hanseatic Scholar in Hamburg and Berlin, he took up a Research Fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1989, subsequently moving to a Lectureship at Peterhouse. He returned to Oxford in 1992 to become Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, a post he held until 2000, when he was appointed Professor of Political and Financial History at Oxford. Two years later he left for the United States to take up the Herzog Chair in Financial History at the Stern Business School, New York University, before moving to Harvard in 2004.

His first book, Paper and Iron: Hamburg Business and German Politics in the Era of Inflation 1897-1927 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), was short-listed for the History Today Book of the Year award, while the collection of essays he edited, Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (Macmillan, 1997), was a UK bestseller and subsequently published in the United States, Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

In 1998 he published to international critical acclaim The Pity of War: Explaining World War One (Basic Books) and The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild (Penguin). The latter won the Wadsworth Prize for Business History and was also short-listed for the Jewish Quarterly/Wingate Literary Award and the American National Jewish Book Award. In 2001 he published The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 (Basic), following a year as Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England.

He is a regular contributor to television and radio on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2003 he wrote and presented a six-part history of the British Empire for Channel 4, the UK terrestrial broadcaster. The accompanying book, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (Basic), was a bestseller in both Britain and the United States. The sequel, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, was published in 2004 by Penguin. Two years later he published The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West, which was also a PBS series. His most recent book is the best-selling Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Penguin, 2008). It aired on PBS this year. He has just completed a biography of the banker Siegmund Warburg and is now working on the life of Henry Kissinger.

A prolific commentator on contemporary politics and economics, Niall Ferguson writes and reviews regularly for the British and American press. He is a contributing editor for the Financial Times and a regular contributor to Newsweek. In 2004 Time magazine named him as one of the world’s hundred most influential people.

Hafrey holds an A.B. in English from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969. The daughter of a political opponent of the Somali dictatorship, Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in exile, moving from Saudi Arabia to Ethiopia then Kenya. As a young child, she was subjected to female genital mutilation. As she grew up, she embraced Islam and strove to live as a devout Muslim. In 1992 Ayaan was married off by her father to a distant cousin who lived in Canada. In order to escape this marriage, she fled to the Netherlands where she was given asylum, and in time citizenship. In her early years in Holland she worked in factories and as a maid. She quickly learned Dutch, however, and was able to study at the University of Leiden. Working as a translator for Somali immigrants, she saw at first hand the inconsistencies between liberal, Western society and tribal, Muslim cultures.

After earning her M.A. in political science, Ayaan worked as a researcher for the Wiardi Beckman Foundation in Amsterdam. She then served as an elected member of the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006. In 2004 Ayaan gained international attention following the murder of Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh had directed her short film Submission, a film about the oppression of women under Islam. The assassin, a radical Muslim, left a death threat for her pinned to Van Gogh's chest. A visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, Ayaan is currently researching the relationship between the West and Islam.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was named one of TIME Magazine's "100 Most Influential People" of 2005, one of the Glamour Heroes of 2005 and Reader's Digest's European of the Year for 2005. She has published a collection of essays, The Caged Virgin (2006), a memoir, Infidel (2007).

Joe Nye received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1958. He did postgraduate work at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. He joined the Harvard Faculty in 1964, and taught one of the largest core curriculum courses in the college. In December 1995, he became Dean of the Kennedy School through June 2004. He is the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations and University Distinguished Service Professor.

Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at The George Washington University in Washington, DC and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. The Chicago Tribune has named him one of the “10 Best Magazine Journalists in America” and the LA Times called him “the nation’s most widely-read and influential legal commentator.” Mr. Rosen is the author of numerous books, including his most recent, The Supreme Court: The personalities and rivalries that defined America. He is a Brookings Institution Fellow and is considered one of the leading constitutional scholars in the United States. Mr. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Christine Rosen and two sons.

kai ryssdal teen socrates Kai Ryssdal took the reins as host of the public radio program, Marketplace, produced by American Public Media (APM) in August 2005. He previously hosted APM's Marketplace Morning Report for more than four years. Before joining Marketplace, Kai was a reporter and substitute host for The California Report, a news and information program distributed to public radio stations throughout California by KQED-FM in San Francisco. His radio work has won first place awards from the Radio and Television News Directors Association and the national Public Radio News Directors Association. After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Kai spent eight years in the United States Navy, first flying from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, and then as a Pentagon staff officer. Before his career in public radio, Kai was a member of the United States Foreign Service and served in Ottawa, Canada, and Beijing, China. Kai is married and the father of four. He also enjoys running, a fact featured in a Runner's World magazine article.

DC Salon
May 7 - 8, 2010
Washington, DC

Susan Dentzer is the Editor-in-Chief of Health Affairs, the nation’s leading peer-reviewed journal focused on the intersection of health, health care and health policy in the United States and internationally. One of the nation’s most respected health and health policy journalists, she is an on-air analyst on health issues with the PBS NewsHour, and a frequent guest and commentator on such National Public Radio shows as This American Life and The Diane Rehm Show. Susan is also an elected member of the Institute of Medicine and the Council on Foreign Relations.

At Health Affairs, Susan oversees the journal’s team of nearly 30 editors and other staff in producing the monthly publication and web site. Health Affairs has been described by the Washington Post as the “Bible” of health policy. Its articles and their authors ars frequently cited in the Congressional Record and in congressional testimony as well as in the news media. The Health Affairs web site recorded 21.5 million page views in 2009.

Before joining Health Affairs in May 2009, Susan was on-air Health Correspondent at the PBS NewsHour. From 1998 to 2008, she led the show’s unit providing in-depth coverage of health care, health policy and Social Security. Prior to joining the PBS NewsHour, she was chief economics correspondent and economics columnist for U.S. News & World Report, and previously was a senior writer covering business and economic news at Newsweek.

Susan’s other work in television has included appearances as a regular analyst or commentator on CNN and The McLaughlin Group. Her writing has also earned her several fellowships, including a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, where she studied health economics and policy, and a U.S.-Japan Leadership Program Fellowship, during which she researched the effects of the rapidly aging Japanese population.

Susan is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization made up of the nation's leading experts on social insurance, is a fellow of the Hastings Center, a nonpartisan research institution dedicated to bioethics and the public interest.

Susan chairs the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council, the largest membership organization of groups involved in global health, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian organization providing relief to refugees and displaced persons around the world. She chairs the IRC board’s Health Committee, which oversees that organization’s health-related activities in roughly 25 countries. A graduate of Dartmouth and holder of an honorary master of arts from the institution, Susan is a Dartmouth trustee emerita and chaired the Dartmouth Board of Trustees from 2001 to 2004. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Overseers of Dartmouth Medical School.

Socrates Winter Seminars
February 12 - 15, 2010
Aspen, Colorado

niall ferguson photo Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Sue Sheridan is the former Chief Counsel to the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, a part of the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the U.S. House of Representatives. In that position, Sue served as the lead attorney responsible for overseeing hearings, drafting bills, and advancing legislative proposals on a wide variety of energy matters. Her expertise includes climate change policy, electricity regulation, nuclear energy and waste disposal issues, and oil and natural gas law. Sue began her work with the Committee on Energy and Commerce in 1983, serving as Majority Counsel from 1983 to 1994, as Senior Democratic Counsel from 1995 to 2006, and as Chief Counsel to the Subcommittee from 2007 to May 2008. Prior to her service on Capitol Hill, Sue worked on detail to the staff of the White House Domestic Policy Council and as a staff attorney for the U.S. Department of Energy. Sue received her J.D. from Vanderbilt Law School (1979), and her B.A. from Duke University (1976). She is a member of the Keystone Center Energy Board and an adviser to Columbia University's Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy. Sue is an adjunct professor at the George Washington Law School. She is a frequent speaker before U.S. and international audiences on energy and environmental policy, and represents corporate and environmental entities with interests in legislative and regulatory affairs.

Elizabeth Stark is a leader in th stark photo e global free culture movement. She is a Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project, a Lecturer in Computer Science at Yale University, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at NYU. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Stark founded the Harvard Free Culture Group and served on the board of directors of Students for Free Culture. While at Harvard, she was Editor-at-Large of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, and worked with the Harvard Advocates for Human Rights to make better use of new media to promote human rights. Elizabeth spent years researching for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, and has taught courses ranging from Cyberlaw to Intellectual Property to Technology & Politics to Electronic Music. She recently produced the inaugural Open Video Conference in NYC, garnering nearly 9000 participants in person and across the web. Elizabeth regularly gives talks around the world on the intersection of law, technology, and culture, and has collaborated with myriad organizations on promoting shared knowledge and the open web. She has lived and worked in Berlin, Singapore, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro, and speaks French, German, and Portuguese.

Los Angeles Salon
October 23-24, 2009
Los Angeles, CA

Kai Ryssdal took the reins as host of Marketplace in August 2005. He previously hosted the Marketplace Morning Report for more than four years.

Before joining Marketplace, Kai was a reporter and substitute host for The California Report, a news and information program distributed to public radio stations throughout California by KQED-FM in San Francisco.

His radio work has won first place awards from the Radio and Television News Directors Association and the national Public Radio News Directors Association.

After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Kai spent eight years in the United States Navy, first flying from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, and then as a Pentagon staff officer. Before his career in public radio, Kai was a member of the United States Foreign Service and served in Ottawa, Canada, and Beijing, China.

Kai is married and the father of four. He also enjoys running, a fact featured in a Runner's World magazine article.

YPO-Socrates Seminars Moderators
October 12-15, 2009

Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at The George Washington University in Washington, DC and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. The Chicago Tribune has named him one of the “10 Best Magazine Journalists in America” and the LA Times called him “the nation’s most widely-read and influential legal commentator.” Mr. Rosen is the author of numerous books, including his most recent, The Supreme Court: The personalities and rivalries that defined America. He is a Brookings Institution Fellow and is considered one of the leading constitutional scholars in the United States. Mr. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife Christine Rosen and two sons.

R. James Woolsey is a venture partner at VantagePoint Venture Partners. He is also the Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; Of Counsel to the law firm of Goodwin Procter; and chairman of the Strategic Advisory Group of Paladin Capital Corporation. Before he joined VantagePoint in March 2008, Mr. Woolsey was a Partner with Booz Allen Hamilton in McLean, Virginia, specializing in energy and security issues, and prior to that a partner with Shea & Gardner in Washington D.C., specializing in commercial litigation and alternative dispute resolution (arbitration and mediation). He practiced at the firm for 22 years on four different occasions and served five times in the federal government for a total of 12 years, holding Presidential appointments in two Democratic and two Republican administrations. He served as Director of Central Intelligence (1993-95), Ambassador and Chief Negotiator for the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in Vienna (1989-91), Delegate at Large (on a part-time basis) to the Strategic Arms Reductions Talks (START) and the Defense and Space Talks in Geneva (1983-86), Under Secretary of the Navy (1977-79), and General Counsel to the U.S. Senate committee on Armed Services (1970-73). He has served on numerous corporate and non-profit boards. From time to time he speaks publicly and contributes articles to newspapers and other periodicals on such issues as national security, energy, foreign affairs and intelligence.

Senate Socrates
September 25-27, 2009
Wye River Campus, Queenstown, MD

Stephen Cohen joined the Brookings Institution as Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies in 1998 after a career as a professor of Political Science and History at the University of Illinois. In 2004 he was named by the World Affairs Councils of America as one of America’s five hundred most influential people in the area of foreign policy.

Dr. Cohen is the author, co-author or editor of over twelve books, mostly on South Asian security issues, the most recent being Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia (2007) and The Idea of Pakistan (2004), and an edited volume published by the National Academy of Science that explores the application of technology to the prediction, prevention or amelioration of terrorist acts. A book on the future of the Indian military is now in progress.

In early 2008 Dr. Cohen was Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, where he taught a course on the politics of manmade and natural disaster. In Asia he has also taught in Japan (Keio University) and India (Andhra University). He has consulted for numerous foundations and government agencies and was a member of the Policy Planning Staff (Department of State) from 1985-87. Dr. Cohen is currently a member of the National Academy of Science’s Committee on International Security and Arms Control, and was the founder of several arms control and security-related institutions in the U.S. and South Asia. He received undergraduate and graduate education at the University of Chicago, and the PhD in Political Science and Indian Studies from the University of Wisconsin.

Marvin Weinbaum is currently a Scholar-in-Residence with the Middle East Institute. He previously served as an Afghanistan and Pakistan Analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence Research at the State Department (1999-2003), Professor Emeritus oat the University of Illinois and Director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (1996-97).

2009 Summer Moderators

William D. Browning received a Bachelor of environmental design from the University of Colorado and a MS in real estate development from MIT. In 1991, Browning founded Rocky Mountain Institute's Green Development Services, which was awarded the 1999 President's Council for Sustainable Development/Renew America Prize. Browning's clients include Wal-Mart's Eco-mart, Starwood, Yellowstone National Park, Lucasfilm's Letterman Digital Arts Center, New Songdo City, Bank of America's One Bryant Park, the White House, and the Sydney 2000 Olympic Village. He coauthored Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate, Green Developments (CD-ROM), A Primer on Sustainable Building, and Greening the Building and the Bottom Line. Browning was named one of five people "Making a Difference" by Buildings magazine, and an Honorary member of the AIA. He was a founding member of US Green Building Council's Board of Directors. In 2006 he became a principal in Terrapin Bright Green LLC, which crafts environmental strategies for corporations, government agencies and large-scale developments. He served on the DoD Defense Science Board Energy Task Force.

Rebecca Ratner is an associate professor of marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. Prior to joining the faculty at the Smith School, Ratner was associate professor of marketing at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, a visiting scholar at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a visiting faculty fellow at the James M. Kilts Center for Marketing at the University of Chicago. Her research explores factors underlying suboptimal decision making and focuses on variety seeking, affective forecasting, and the influence of social norms. Her work has appeared in leading marketing, psychology, and decision-making journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. She is a recipient of the Academy of Management Best Paper Award (for the most influential paper in conflict management from 1998-2001) and is the recipient of several teaching awards for her courses on consumer behavior and marketing management, which she has taught to MBA students, undergraduate students, and executives.

She currently serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Economic Psychology and is associate editor for Journal of Consumer Research. She holds a M.A. degree in psychology from Williams College and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton University.

Professor Nouriel Roubini is an internationally known expert in the field of international macroeconomics. He is a Professor of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business and is also the co-founder and Chairman of RGE Monitor, an innovative economic and geo-strategic information service named one of the best economics websites by Business Week, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and The Economist.

Professor Roubini served as a senior adviser to the White House Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Treasury Department; has published numerous policy papers and books on key international macroeconomic issues; and is regularly cited as an authority in the media. He received an undergraduate degree at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy and a Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University, and was previously a faculty member at Yale University.

Jeremy Schaap has been a reporter on ESPN since 1996, appearing frequently on SportsCenter and ˆ, on which he also serves as substitute host. In addition, he is the substitute host for The Sports Reporters on Sundays and contributes to ABC’s Nightline and World News Tonight. Schaap is also a correspondent for E:60, ESPN’s first multi-themed prime-time newsmagazine program.

Schaap has won five Sports Emmy Awards and other honors for his work, which usually focuses not on simply who won or lost, but on breaking news, investigative journalism and profiling intriguing stories and personalities. He authored the New York Times bestseller Cinderella Man, which in 2005 became an Emmy-winning ESPN documentary about heavyweight champion James Braddock. He also authored Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics, published in 2007.

On Sept. 12, 2000, Schaap conducted a one-on-one, exclusive interview with former Indiana University coach Bob Knight – the first by Knight after being fired by the university two days earlier. He also was the first reporter to interview Darryl Strawberry in 1998 after the New York Yankee was diagnosed with colon cancer.

In a poignant moment in 2006, Schaap won his fifth Sports Emmy Award, the one named for his award-winning journalist father who passed away in 2001 – the Dick Schaap Award for Writing. It was for the SportsCenter feature, “Finding Bobby Fischer.” He had previously won three for his work on Outside the Lines and one as a feature producer for SportsCenter.

Before joining ESPN, Schaap, was a writer for NBC’s Atlanta Summer Olympics daytime show (hosted by Greg Gumbel), and a writer and producer for NBC’s Wimbledon coverage. In 1994, Schaap was a writer for CBS’s Lillehammer Winter Olympics prime-time show. His television career also includes covering sports and general news for New York 1 News (1992-94), and serving as an associate editor of special projects for the Winter and Summer Olympics for Sports Illustrated (1991-92). His writing has been published in the international edition of Time magazine, Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, Time, Parade, the New York Times, and in the official program of the Twenty-Fifth Olympiad.

A native of New York City, Schaap is a 1991 graduate of Cornell University.

AO Forbes works currently at Colorado Rocky Mountain School (CRMS) in Carbondale. He teaches high school geography. Forbes has served on numerous committees at CRMS, coached soccer, led trips, been a dorm parent, served as liaison between staff and school trustees and chaired the history department. He was awarded the Governor's Award for Excellence, and earned Teacher of the Year from Phi Delta Kappa in 1985. Since 2000, Tomorrow's Voices has been Forbes most driving extracurricular purpose.