Keynote: Bill Richardson
The Honorable William Blaine “Bill” Richardson III completed his second term as Governor of New Mexico in December 2010. Since entering life as a private citizen, Governor Richardson was named chairman of APCO Worldwide’s executive advisory service Global Political Strategies (GPS). In January 2011, Richardson was named Special Envoy for the Organization of American States (OAS), adding another platform for initiatives within peace and reconciliation in the Western hemisphere. In addition, the Governor has joined several non-profit and for profit boards. The Governor also gives speeches on domestic and foreign policy through the Washington Speakers Bureau.
Governor Richardson was first elected to office in 2002 and re-elected in 2006 with the support of 69 percent of voters, representing the largest margin of victory for any Governor in state history. Bill Richardson’s bold governing style moved New Mexico forward in several important areas, including: clean energy, education, environment, and health care.
In 2008, Governor Richardson sought the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
Governor Richardson served for 15 years in northern New Mexico representing the 3rd Congressional District. Governor Richardson served in 1997 as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and in 1998, he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy.
While a congressman, Richardson served as a special envoy on many sensitive international missions. He successfully won the release of hostages, American servicemen, and prisoners in North Korea, Iraq, Cuba and Sudan. Governor Richardson has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 2001, Richardson assumed the chairmanship of Freedom House, a private, non-partisan organization that promotes democracy worldwide. He also worked as a business consultant in Santa Fe and served on several boards including the Natural Resource Defense Council and United Way International.
Bill Richardson has been married to his high school sweetheart, Barbara, for 37 years. Richardson received a BA from Tufts in 1970 and a MA from Tuft’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1971.
Moderator and Speaker: R. Nicholas Burns
Nicholas Burns is Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project and Faculty Chair for the Programs on the Middle East and on India and South Asia. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He was a visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in summer 2008.
He is Director of the Aspen Strategy Group, Senior Counselor at the Cohen Group, Vice Chairman of the American Ditchley Foundation and serves on the Board of Directors of Entegris, Inc., and the Advisory Board for Veracity Worldwide. Burns is on the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Center for a New American Security, The Atlantic Council and a number of other non-profit organizations. He serves on the Panel of Senior Advisors at Chatham House: the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and on the Board of the Associates of the Boston Public Library. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission., the Order of Saint John and Red Sox Nation.
Ambassador Burns served in the United States Foreign Service for twenty-seven years until his retirement in April 2008. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008, the State Department’s third-ranking official when he led negotiations on the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement, a long-term military assistance agreement with Israel and was the lead U.S. negotiator on Iran’s nuclear program. He was U.S. Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005) and to Greece (1997-2001) and State Department Spokesman (1995-1997). He worked for five years (1990-1995) on the National Security Council at the White House when he was Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and, before that, Director for Soviet Affairs in the Administration of President George H.W. Bush. Burns also served in the American Consulate General in Jerusalem from 1985 to 1987 where he coordinated U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and before that, at the American embassies in Egypt and Mauritania. He has received twelve honorary degrees, the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Johns Hopkins University and the Boston College Alumni Achievement Award. Burns has a BA in History from Boston College (1978) and an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1980). He also earned the Certificat Pratique de Langue Francaise at the University of Paris-Sorbonne in 1977.
Deborah Amos
Deborah Amos covers the Middle East for NPR News. Her reports can be heard on NPR’s award-winning Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition.
Amos travels extensively across the Middle East covering a range of stories including the rise of well-educated Syria youth who are unqualified for jobs in a market-drive economy, a series focusing on the emerging power of Turkey and the plight of Iraqi refugees.
In 2009, Amos won the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown University and in 2010 was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Life Time Achievement Award by Washington State University. Amos was part of a team of reporters who won a 2004 Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia Award for coverage of Iraq. A Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1991-1992, Amos was returned to Harvard in 2010 as a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School.
In 2003, Amos returned to NPR after a decade in television news, including ABC’s Nightline and World News Tonight and the PBS programs NOW with Bill Moyers and Frontline.
When Amos first came to NPR in 1977, she worked first as a director and then a producer for Weekend All Things Considered until 1979. For the next six years, she worked on radio documentaries, which won her several significant honors. In 1982, Amos received the Prix Italia, the Ohio State Award, and a DuPont-Columbia Award for “Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown” and in 1984 she received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for “Refugees.”
From 1985 until 1993, Amos spend most of her time at NPR reporting overseas, including as the London Bureau Chief and as an NPR foreign correspondent based in Amman, Jordan. During that time, Amos won several awards, including an Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award and a Break thru Award, and widespread recognition for her coverage of the Gulf War in 1991.
A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Amos is also the author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2010) and Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World (Simon and Schuster, 1992).
Amos began her career after receiving a degree in broadcasting from the University of Florida at Gainesville.
Pete du Pont
Pete du Pont is a regular columnist on www.opinionjournal.com, the editorial page website of The Wall Street Journal. Entitled, Outside the Box, du Pont’s columns discuss current public policy and political matters.
du Pont has served as a state legislator, U.S. Congressman, Governor, and in 1988 was a Republican candidate for President of the United States. In 1996, Pete du Pont co-founded IntellectualCapital.com, a weekly on-line public policy journal featuring the leading ideas of renowned public policy thinkers.
Pete du Pont began his political career in 1968 with his election to the House of Representatives of the Delaware General Assembly. He served for six years in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1971-1977. He was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and in l975 was picked by Time magazine as one of America’s “200 Faces for the Future.”
In l976, Pete du Pont was elected Governor of Delaware. He was re-elected in 1980 to a second term, winning a record 7l% of the vote and becoming the first Delaware Governor reelected in 20 years. During his tenure as Delaware’s Governor, du Pont restored financial integrity to the state government. He signed into law two income tax reduction measures, the first tax reductions in Delaware’s history, and a constitutional amendment that restrained future tax increases and limited government spending. He balanced his state budget eight out of eight years.
As Governor, Pete du Pont also focused his energies on education and preventing youth unemployment. In 1979, he founded the nonprofit “Jobs for Delaware Graduates,” an employment counseling and job placement program for high school seniors not bound for college. This successful program gave birth in 1980 to “Jobs for America’s Graduates,” an identical movement currently functioning in twenty some states and foreign countries.
In his campaign for the Presidency, du Pont’s focus was upon the central issues facing our country — the economy, taxes, education, retirement income, and defense.
A leader in the debate on how to improve education, in 1984 Pete du Pont served as Chairman of the Education Commission of the States, a national organization of educators dedicated to improving all facets of American education.
du Pont was a member of the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform. The Commission was established by Speaker Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole to examine overhauling the tax system. The Commission’s January report called for repeal of the existing tax code and its replacement with a low, single-rate tax with a generous personal exemption.
Pete du Pont served as Chairman of the Hudson Institute from 1985-1987 and the National Review Institute from 1994-1997. He received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering in 1956 from Princeton University. After graduating from Princeton, he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy from 1957-1960. He graduated with his Doctors of Law degree from Harvard University in 1963. Upon graduation from Harvard, he joined the Du Pont Company at its Wilmington, Delaware, headquarters, and held several positions there until 1968 when he resigned as quality control supervisor to begin his political career.
Pete du Pont was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on January 22, 1935. He is married to the former Elise R. Wood. They have a daughter, three sons, four granddaughters and three grandsons.
Amory B. Lovins
Amory Lovins, a MacArthur and Ashoka Fellow and consultant physicist, is among the world’s leading innovators in energy and its links with resources, security, development, and environment. He has advised the energy and other industries for more than three decades as well as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense. His work in 50+ countries has been recognized by the “Alternative Nobel,” Blue Planet, Volvo, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, Goff Smith, and Mitchell Prizes, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, 11 honorary doctorates, honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects, Foreign Membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, honorary Senior Fellowship of the Design Futures Council, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Jean Meyer, Time Hero for the Planet, Time International Hero of the Environment, Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership, National Design (Design Mind), and World Technology Awards.
A Harvard and Oxford dropout and former Oxford don, he has briefed 20 heads of state and advises major firms and governments worldwide, recently including the leadership of Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, Ford, Holcim, Interface, and Wal-Mart.
In 2009, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers.
Mr. Lovins cofounded and is Chairman and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org), an independent, market-oriented, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, nonpartisan think-and-do tank that creates abundance by design. Much of its pathfinding work on advanced resource productivity (typically with expanding returns to investment) and innovative business strategies is synthesized in Natural Capitalism (1999, with Paul Hawken and L.H. Lovins, www.natcap.org). This intellectual capital provides most of RMI’s revenue through private-sector consultancy that has served or been invited by more than 80 Fortune 500 firms, lately redesigning more than $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors. In 1992, RMI spun off E SOURCE (www.esource.com), and in 1999, Fiberforge Corporation (www.fiberforge.com), a composites technology firm that Mr. Lovins chaired until 2007; its technology, when matured and scaled, will permit cost effective manufacturing of the ultralight-hybrid Hypercar® vehicles he invented in 1991.
The latest of his numerous books is Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era (2011, Chelsea Green Publishing), in which Lovins maps a robust path for integrating comprehensive energy solutions in four industries-transportation, buildings, electricity, and manufacturing-melding radically efficient energy use with reliable, secure, renewable energy supplies. Others include: Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2002, www.smallisprofitable.org), an Economist book of the year blending financial economics with electrical engineering, and the Pentagon-cosponsored Winning the Oil Endgame (2004, www.oilendgame.com), a roadmap for eliminating U.S. oil use by the 2040s, led by business for profit. His most recent visiting academic chair was in spring 2007 as MAP/Ming Professor in Stanford’s School of Engineering, offering the University’s first course on advanced energy efficiency (www.rmi.org/stanford).
Colonel Mark Mykleby
Colonel Mark “Puck” Mykleby was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps following his graduation from the United States Naval Academy in 1987. He was designated a naval aviator and qualified F/A-18 pilot in 1990. Mykleby has served in five fleet fighter squadrons and his operational experience includes five deployments (land based and ship borne) to the European, Pacific, and Southwest Asian theaters. He has participated in combat operations in support of Operations PROVIDE PROMISE, DENY FLIGHT, SOUTHERN WATCH, and IRAQI FREEDOM.
From 2007 to 2009, he developed strategy for US Special Operations Command and from 2009 until 2011 he served as a special strategic assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff developing grand strategy, and where he co-wrote “A National Strategic Narrative,” with Navy Captain Wayne Porter, which offers a contextual narrative to help guide future U.S. policy. Mark retired from the Marine Corps in July 2011 and has joined LRN, a company dedicated to helping organizations build ethical, values-based cultures that inspire principled performance in business and in life.
Colonel Mykleby is a graduate of Marine Weapons and Tactics Instructor School, the Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun), and the Allied Air Forces Central Europe’s Tactical Leadership Program (TLP). Mykleby graduated from the United States Naval Academy with distinction in 1987 and the Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School in 1995. He holds both a Masters of National Security Studies from the Air War College and a Masters of Military Studies from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College.
Capt. Wayne Porter
Capt. Wayne Porter’s distinguished career in the U.S. Navy began with his commission in 1986. His tours have included Fleet Ocean Surveillance Intelligence Center, The USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19), Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), and the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Capt. Wayne Porter recently joined the Naval Postgraduate School as the new Chair of Systemic Strategy and Complexity under the Global Public Policy Academic Group.
Porter most recently served as the special strategic assistant to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and co-wrote “A National Strategic Narrative,” with retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Mykleby, which offers a contextual narrative to help guide future U.S. policy. Porter holds dual master’s degrees in Computer Science and Joint Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence. He is currently working on his Ph.D. at NPS, testing systems and complexity theories in his dissertation research.
Clyde Prestowitz
Clyde Prestowitz is founder and President of the Economic Strategy Institute. His leadership has propelled ESI into an important role in the public policy process, influencing and often defining the terms of the debate in the areas of international trade policy, economic competitiveness, and the effects of globalization. Mr. Prestowitz has played key roles in achieving congressional passage of NAFTA and in shaping the final content of the Uruguay Round, as well as providing the intellectual basis for current U.S. trade policies toward Japan, China, and Korea.
Prior to founding ESI, Mr. Prestowitz served as counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration. There, he led many U.S. trade and investment negotiations with Japan, China, Latin America, and Europe. Before joining the Commerce Department, he was a senior businessman in the United States, Europe, Japan, and throughout Asia and Latin America. He has served as vice chairman of the President’s Committee on Trade and Investment in the Pacific and sits on the Intel Policy Advisory Board and the U.S. Export-Import Bank Advisory Board.
Clyde Prestowitz regularly writes for leading publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Fortune, and Foreign Affairs. He is the author of the best-selling book on U.S.-Japan relations, Trading Places, and co-author and editor of several other books on international trade and business strategy including Asia After the Miracle; Powernomics; Bit by Bit; The New North American Trade Order; Rogue Nation; and Three Billion New Capitalists. His latest book, The Betrayal of American Prosperity: Free Market Delusions, America’s Decline, and How We Must Compete in the Post-Dollar Era, addresses how we can restore our economic leadership and excellence.
Mr. Prestowitz has a B.A. with honors from Swarthmore College; an M.A. in East-West Policies and Economics from the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii; and an M.B.A. from the Wharton Graduate School of Business. He also studied at Keio University in Tokyo. He is fluent in Japanese, Dutch, German, and French.
Robert B. Schwartz
Robert Schwartz has since 1996 been a lecturer on education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, where he currently directs the Education and Management Program. From 1997-2002 he also served as founding President of Achieve, Inc., an independent, bipartisan, non-profit organization created by the nation’s governors and corporate leaders to help states raise standards and improve performance in the schools. In its first five years Achieve conducted benchmarking studies of state standards, tests, and related education policies for 16 states; organized an interstate consortium to strengthen middle grades mathematics education; launched the American Diploma Project, an initiative with three other national organizations and five states to close the gap between high school exit requirements in reading, writing and mathematics and the real-world demands of colleges and high-skills workplaces; and hosted two National Education Summits.
Over the past four decades, Mr. Schwartz has worked in a variety of roles in education and government. He has been a high school English teacher and principal; an education advisor to the Mayor of Boston and the Governor of Massachusetts; an assistant director of the National Institute of Education; a special assistant to the President of the University of Massachusetts; and Executive Director of The Boston Compact, a public-private partnership designed to improve access to higher education and employment for urban high school graduates.
From 1990 to 1996, Schwartz directed the education grant making program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the nations’ largest private philanthropies. Among the major reform projects initiated during his tenure at the Trusts were New Standards, a voluntary national system of student performance standards and assessments developed jointly by the University of Pittsburgh, the National Center of Education and the Economy, and 17 partner states; Community Compacts for Student Success, a six city K-16 systemic reform effort to increase the enrollment and success rates of disadvantaged students in higher education; and the National Youth Apprenticeship Initiative, a policy, research and technical assistance initiative developed by Jobs for the Future aimed at promoting better national, state and local policies and programs to prepare young people for work and further learning.
Mr. Schwartz has written and spoken widely on such topics as standards-based reform, public-private partnerships, school-to-work, and the role of higher education in K-12 reform. He currently serves on the boards of The Education Trust, Teachers 21, and the National Academy of Science’s Center for Education, and on advisory committees for The Boston Foundation, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, and the Public Education Network. He has degrees from Harvard College and Brandeis University.
Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson
Lawrence B. “Larry” Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army Colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson left Bucknell University in 1966 to enlist in the army during the Vietnam War. He served as pilot of an observation helicopter in combat, then went to Airborne School and Ranger School. He then earned his B.A. and graduate degrees in International Relations and National Security. He attended the Naval War College and later taught there. Later he was deputy director of the Marine Corps War College at Quantico. After several years in the Navy’s Pacific Command he became a top assistant to General Colin Powell and stayed in that role as Powell moved through a series of high-level appointments—ultimately as Secretary of State. He was deeply upset over his role in Powell’s faulty U.N. presentation on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and, following retirement, has been a frequent critic of government policies and practices (and secrecy) in the second term of President George W. Bush. Wilkerson is now a visiting professor at the College of William and Mary and a Professional Lecturer in the Honors Program at the George Washington University.