John Authers is a Senior Investment Columnist at the Financial Times. He is also the writer and presenter of The Long View column and online broadcasts, which examines the effect of long-term market trends on investors. Authers joined the FT in 1990 and during his career has served as its US markets editor, Mexico City bureau chief, US banking correspondent, personal finance correspondent, education and local government correspondent and ‘On Wall Street’ columnist.
Authers won awards from The Society of American Business Editors and Writers’ Best in Business competition in 2008 and 2010 for his video reports on FT.com, and he was named the UK’s investment journalist of the year for national newspapers in the State Street Institutional Press Awards in 2009. Authers is the author of the book, The Fearful Rise of Markets: Global Bubbles, Synchronized Meltdowns and How to Prevent Them in the Future (FT Press May 2010). He has also written The Victim’s Fortune—Inside the Epic Battle Over the Debts of the Holocaust, co-authored with Richard Wolffe (Harper Collins 2002).
Authers received his MBA from Columbia Business School and an MS from Columbia School of Journalism as a Knight-Bagehot Fellow. In 2002, he won the Best of Knight-Bagehot Award for outstanding journalism by one of the 250 alumni of the program. He graduated from University College, Oxford, with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Jennifer Blanke is Chief Economist at the World Economic Forum, overseeing economic research activities and leading the Global Challenge on Economic Growth and Social Inclusion. She joined the Global Competitiveness and Benchmarking team in 2002, and was head of the team from 2007-2014. She has written and lectured extensively on issues related to national competitiveness and has edited a number of competitiveness reports, with a particular regional focus on Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. From 1998 to 2002, she was Senior Programme Manager responsible for developing the business, management, and technology sections of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Before joining the Forum, Dr Blanke worked as a management consultant for Eurogroup (Mazars Group) in Paris, France, where she specialized in banking and financial market organizations. Dr Blanke has a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, US, and an MA and PhD in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva.
Peter Bruce is the editor-in-chief of BDFM, which owns Business Day and BDlive, the Financial Mail and ABC, the broadcaster of the Business Day TV, Home and Ignition television channels. He was editor of Business Day from 2001 until August 2012. His previous roles include editor: Financial Mail; editor: Business Report; UK news editor: Financial Times; and Madrid correspondent, Bonn correspondent, industrial correspondent: Financial Times. Peter describes himself as a media junkie, a die-hard Protea and Springbok fan and a hopeless Sharks supporter.
David Coats is the director of Workmatters Consulting. He is also a research fellow at the Smith Institute in London and a visiting professor at the Centre for Sustainable Work and Employment Futures, University of Leicester. Previously he was Associate Director-Policy at The Work Foundation (2004-2010) and Director of Economic and Social Affairs at the Trades Union Congress (1999-2004), having joined the TUC in 1989 as an employment law specialist. David was appointed as a member of the Central Arbitration Committee (the industrial court for Great Britain} in 2005. He was a member of the Low Pay Commission, which advises the government on matters relating to the UK’s national minimum wage, from 2000-04.
Shawn Cole is the John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he teaches and conducts research on financial services and social enterprise topics. He is an affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. He is on the board of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, as the co-chair for research. Before joining the Harvard Business School, Professor Cole worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the economic research department. He has served on the Boston Federal Reserve's Community Development Research Advisory Council, serves as an external advisor to the Gates Foundation, and was the chair of the endowment management committee of the Telluride Association. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, where he was an NSF and Javits Fellow, and an A.B. in Economics and German Literature from Cornell University. He received the 2015 "Shin Research Excellence Award" for his work on insurance.
Henry Curr is US economics correspondent for The Economist, where he covers a range of economic topics including macroeconomics, finance and public policy. He regularly writes Free Exchange, the magazine's economics column. Henry was previously Britain economics correspondent, and before that he worked as a professional economist for a consulting firm in London. Henry has an M.Phil. in economics from Nuffield College, Oxford and a B.A. in PPE from Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was the John Hicks prize winner.
Mitul Desai is Director of Research Partnerships and Analytics at the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth. In this role, he manages partnerships with international research institutions and builds tools and processes to ensure the Center’s insights are uniquely data-informed and widely accessible. Before joining MasterCard, Mitul served as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. State Department, where he handled international economic policy and public-private partnerships in South Asia. Previously, he was an intellectual property attorney at Merck and an equity research analyst at the investment bank Piper Jaffray. Mitul has a B.A. in chemistry and philosophy from Rutgers University and a J.D. from the Boston University School of Law. He serves on the U.S. board of Pratham, India’s largest education NGO, and was a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 2006-2011. He is a member of the NationSwell Council, a network of professionals that engages America’s top business and government leaders to advance national service and economic opportunity. Mitul is also a member of the Economic Club of New York..
Marcela Escobari is Executive Director of Harvard's Center for International Development, a university-wide center that develops and disseminates breakthrough strategies for growth and prosperity in developing countries. The Center encompasses 40 staff and fellows and 80 faculty associates from across Harvard University.
She has two decades of experience in economic development. Before joining CID, Marcela led the Americas region and served on the Executive Committee of the OTF Group, a strategy consulting firm that advises private and public sector leaders on how to improve export competitiveness.
Prior to working at OTF, Marcela worked with indigenous communities in Bolivia for the World Bank and was a Mergers & Acquisitions investment banker with JP Morgan in New York. Marcela grew up in Bolivia, holds a B.A. in Economics from Swarthmore College and a Masters in Public Policy (MPP) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Ricardo Hausmann is Director of Harvard's Center for International Development and Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at the Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department. He has served as Minister of Planning of Venezuela (1992-1993) and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela. He also served as Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. He was Professor of Economics at the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administracion (IESA) (1985-1991) in Caracas, where he founded the Center for Public Policy. His research interests include issues of growth, macroeconomic stability, international finance, and the social dimensions of development. He holds a PhD in economics from Cornell University.
Yuwa Hedrik-Wong is currently Chief Economist and Chair of the Academic Advisory Council at MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, and Global Economic Advisor, MasterCard Worldwide. Prior to his global role, he was Economic Advisor to MasterCard in Asia/Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. He was HSBC Visiting Professor of International Business at the University of British Columbia, Canada from 2010 to 2014; and Adjunct Professor at the School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, China from 2006 to 2011. He is a Canadian who grew up in Vancouver and has spent 25 years working in Europe, Sub-Sahara Africa, and Asia Pacific before returning to Canada. He has served as advisor to over fifty leading multinational companies in North America, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Europe. Yuwa studied philosophy, political science, and economics at Trent University, and pursued post-graduate training at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University in Canada, where he received his Ph.D. He lives on Salt Spring Island, off the West Coast of Canada, with his wife and their cat; and is an enthusiastic apprentice in the fine art of gardening.
Josh Lerner is the Head of the Entrepreneurial Management Unit and the Jacob H. Schiff Professor of Investment Banking at Harvard Business School. He graduated from Yale College with a special divisional major that combined physics with the history of technology. He worked for several years on issues concerning technological innovation and public policy at the Brookings Institution, for a public-private task force in Chicago, and on Capitol Hill. He then earned a Ph.D. from Harvard's Economics Department.
Much of his research focuses on venture capital and private equity organizations. (This research is collected in three books, The Venture Capital Cycle, The Money of Invention, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams.) He also examines policies on innovation and how they impact firm strategies. (That research is discussed in the books Innovation and Its Discontents, The Comingled Code, and The Architecture of Innovation.) He co-directs the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program and serves as co-editor of their publication, Innovation Policy and the Economy. He founded and runs the Private Capital Research Institute, a nonprofit devoted to encouraging access to data and research about venture capital and private equity.
Among other recognitions, he is the winner of the Swedish government’s Global Entrepreneurship Research Award. He has recently been named one of the 100 most influential people in private equity by Private Equity International magazine and one of the ten most influential academics in the institutional investing world by Asset International's Chief Investment Officer magazine. He serves as vice-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of Investing.
Kyle Meade is the Director of Innovation at Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL). He is responsible for driving innovation and Research and Development with the EFL psychometric test, incorporating direct field research on user experience and content adaptation into the EFL product and ensuring successful market launch. Kyle received an International Bachelors of Business Administration (Hons) from Schulich School of Business, York University, and a Certificate Mandarin Studies from Fudan University.
Liana Melchenko is Associate Director, Network of Global Agenda Councils, at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland. She is responsible for community management of the Network of Global Agenda Councils. She led a number of public-private cooperation projects, including the G20/B20 collaboration under the Russian Presidency of the G20. In 2008, joined the World Economic Forum as Global Leadership Fellow. She holds a Master of International Affairs degree from School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University; Master’s degree from Lund University, and Master in Law and Letters from Kaliningrad State University.
Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland directs the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics labs and previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and the Media Lab Asia in India. He is one of the most-cited scientists in the world, and Forbes recently declared him one of the "7 most powerful data scientists in the world" along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States. He has received numerous awards and prizes such as the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review, the 40th Anniversary of the Internet from DARPA, and the Brandeis Award for work in privacy. He is a founding member of advisory boards for Google, AT&T, Nissan, and the UN Secretary General, a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded more than a dozen companies including social enterprises such as the Data Transparency Lab, the Harvard-ODI-MIT DataPop Alliance and the Institute for Data Driven Design. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and leader within the World Economic Forum.
Lant Pritchett is Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In addition he works as a consultant to Google.org, is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Global Development, and is a senior fellow of BREAD. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics.
He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1983 with a B.S. in Economics and in 1988 from MIT with a PhD in Economics. After finishing at MIT Lant joined the World Bank, where he held a number of positions in the Bank's research complex between 1988 and 1998, including as an adviser to Lawrence Summers when he was Vice President 1991-1993. From 1998 to 2000 he worked in Indonesia. From 2000 to 2004 Lant was on leave from the World Bank as a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2004 he returned to the World Bank and moved to India where he worked until May 2007.
He has been part of the team producing many World Bank reports, including: World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for Development, Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't and Why (1998), Better Health Systems for Indias Poor: Findings, Analysis, and Options (2003), World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for the Poor, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reforms (2005).
Zia Qureshi has thirty-five years of experience at the World Bank and the IMF, most recently as a Director in the Development Economics Department of the Bank. His experience spans work on both global economic issues and country economic policy and operations. He has written and published widely on the global economy and public policy, including leading several World Bank and IMF flagship publications. Mr. Qureshi’s country work spans emerging economies in all regions of the world. He has led the World Bank’s analytical work, policy dialogue, and lending operations in several major economies, including leading some of the Bank's largest operations in countries facing economic and financial crises. He is the author of several country economic reports and policy papers. His work runs the gamut of the economic growth and development agenda, from macroeconomic policy to structural reforms and development issues. Mr. Qureshi has held senior executive positions, including serving as Executive Secretary of the joint IMF-World Bank Development Committee (a ministerial-level body). He has represented the World Bank at major international forums, including the G20. Mr. Qureshi is currently a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. He holds a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.
Carmen M. Reinhart is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. Professor Reinhart held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s. She spent several years at the International Monetary Fund. Reinhart is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Advisers and Council on Foreign Relations. She was listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, 2011. Her best-selling book (with Kenneth S. Rogoff) entitled This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly has been translated to 20 languages and won the 2010 Paul A. Samuelson TIAA-CREF Institute Award, among others. Reinhart received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Richard Samans is a Member of the Managing Board of the World Economic Forum (WEF). He leads the Forum’s action and policy oriented multistakeholder initiatives on major global challenges as head of its Centre for the Global Agenda. He is also responsible for the Forum’s relations with international organizations and coordinates its portfolio of public-private partnership projects. From 2011 to 2013, he served as Director-General of the Global Green Growth Institute, a new international organization headquartered in Seoul, Republic of Korea. He led the organization’s transformation from a start-up non-governmental organization to a treaty-based intergovernmental institution active in over 20 countries. Before earlier service at the World Economic Forum from 2001 to 2011, Samans served in the US White House as Special Assistant for International Economic Policy to President Bill Clinton and Senior Director for International Economic Affairs of the National Security Council. Prior to that, he was Economic Policy Adviser to US Senate Democratic Leader Thomas A. Daschle and served in a range of roles in other public, private and research institutions. Since 2007, he has also served as Chairman of the Climate Disclosure Standards Board, a consortium of business and environmental organizations that has established a common framework for reporting of carbon-related corporate performance and risks in mainstream reports to the investment community.
Shamina Singh is the Executive Director of the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth. In this position, she is responsible for the Center’s consistent achievement of its mission to advance sustainable and equitable economic growth and financial inclusion around the world. In her previous position as Global Director of MasterCard’s Government Social Programs, she worked to digitize social subsidy programs in over 40 countries.
In 2015, she was appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to a six-year term on the Board of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Currently, she serves as Board Chair of this U.S. federal agency responsible for engaging more than five million citizens in community service through its core programs of AmeriCorps, Senior Corps and the Social Innovation Fund.
Shamina has a graduate degree in public policy from the Lyndon B. Johnson School for Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and completed her undergraduate degree at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She has completed executive programs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Yale’s Jackson Institute for Diplomacy and the India School of Business.
Lawrence H. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past two decades, he has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including the 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council for President Obam, Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank. He received a Bachelor of Science from MIT in 1975 and was awarded a PhD from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987, Dr. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and in 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to an outstanding American economist under the age of 40.