SPEAKERS
Peter Goodman
Keynote Speaker
Peter S. Goodman is the global economics correspondent for The New York Times, based in New York.
Over the course of three decades in journalism, Mr. Goodman has covered some of the most momentous economic transformations and upheavals – the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession, as the Times’ New York-based national economic correspondent; the emergence of China into a global superpower as the Shanghai bureau chief for The Washington Post; the dot-com bubble as a technology reporter based in Washington. During a five-year stint in London for the Times, he wrote about Brexit, the rise of right-wing populism in Europe, and the catastrophe of the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Goodman has reported from more than 40 countries, including stints in conflict zones such as Iraq, Cambodia, Sudan and East Timor.
He has been recognized with some of journalism’s top honors, including two Gerald Loeb awards, and seven prizes from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. His work as part of the Times’ series on the roots of the 2008 financial crisis was a finalist for the Pulitzer.
He is the author two books, the best-selling DAVOS MAN: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (2022), a National Public Radio Best Book of the Year, and PAST DUE: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy (2009), which was named one of Bloomberg’s top 50 business titles.
David Brancaccio
Moderator
David Brancaccio is Host and Senior Editor of American Public Media’s Marketplace Morning Report. Most recently, his reporting has focused on ecosystems of innovation drawing on the 75th anniversary of the semiconductor revolution. He also covers regulation of financial markets, the role of technology in labor markets, digital privacy, sustainability, and social enterprises. His work has earned some of the highest honors in broadcast journalism, including the Peabody, the Columbia-duPont, the Emmy and the Walter Cronkite awards.
Mr. Brancaccio anchored the award-winning public television news program NOW on PBS until 2010. He is author of Squandering Aimlessly, a book about personal values and money. He is producing a feature-length documentary film about the intersection of art and science focusing on an exiled American rocket pioneer who founded the enduring science and art journal Leonardo. Mr. Brancaccio has degrees from Wesleyan and Stanford Universities. He grew up in Waterville, Maine and attended schools in Madagascar, Ghana and Italy. He enjoys bicycling, rocketry, and photography.
David Autor
Speaker
David Autor is Ford Professor in the MIT Department of Economics, Vice President of the American Economic Association, and codirector of the NBER Labor Studies Program and the J-PAL Work of the Future experimental initiative. His scholarship explores the labor-market impacts of technological change and globalization on job polarization, skill demands, earnings levels and inequality, and electoral outcomes.
Dr. Autor has received numerous awards for his scholarship—the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of Labor Economics, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2019, and the Society
for Progress Medal in 2021. In 2020, Autor received the Heinz 25th Special Recognition Award from the Heinz Family Foundation for his work “transforming our understanding of how globalization and technological change are impacting jobs and earning prospects for American workers.”
His teaching awards include the MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellowship for contributions to undergraduate education, the James A. and Ruth Levitan Award for excellence in teaching, the Undergraduate Economic Association Teaching Award, and the Faculty Appreciation Award from the MIT TPP program.
In a 2019 article, The Economist magazine labeled him as “The academic voice of the American worker.” Later that same year, and with (at least) equal justification, he was christened “Twerpy MIT Economist” by John Oliver of Last Week Tonight in a segment on automation and employment.
Dr. Autor earned a B.A. in Psychology from Tufts University and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 1999. Prior to graduate study, he spent three years directing computer skills education for economically disadvantaged children and adults in San Francisco and South Africa.
Dr. Autor is the captain of the MIT Economics hockey team (“The Residuals”), which is reputed to be one of the most highly cited teams in the MIT intramural league
Ajay Chhibber
Speaker
Ajay Chhibber is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University and a Senior Visiting Professor at the Indian Council for Research on India’s Economic
His latest book, co-authored with Salman Soz, is Unshackling India: Hard Truths and Clear Choices for Economic Revival, was declared a Best New Book in Economics for 2022 by the Financial Times.
Dr. Chhibber was the first Director General of the Independent Evaluation Office of the Government of India and held the rank of Minister of State. The office was mandated to undertake impartial and objective assessments of public programs and improve the effectiveness of public initiatives. He has also been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy. He served earlier as Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and Assistant Administrator of the UN Development Program with was responsibility for work on Asia and the Pacific. At the World Bank, he served in senior positions as Country Director in Turkey and Vietnam and as Director of the 1997 World Development Report on the Role of the State.
Dr. Chhibber has a Ph.D. from Stanford University, an M.A. from the Delhi School of Economics, and was awarded the David Rajaram Prize for best all-rounder at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, where he received a B.A. Hons in Economics. He has also done advanced management courses at Harvard University and at INSEAD, France.
Simon Evenett
Speaker
Simon Evenett is Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) and Founder of the St. Gallen Endowment, the new home of the Global Trade Alert, the leading independent trade policy monitoring initiative.
After starting his career at the (then) University of Michigan Business School, Dr. Evenett taught at Oxford and Rutgers universities and was DLA Piper Distinguished Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University (twice) and Visiting Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan (thrice). He was the first Director of Economic Research at the World Trade Institute and has been Co-Director of the CEPR’s International Trade and Regional Economics Programme, the leading European-based group of researchers in international trade and economic geography.
He served twice as a World Bank official, and has been a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.; a Member of the High Level Group on Globalization established by then French Trade Minister Christine LaGarde; a Member of the Warwick Commission on the Future of the Multilateral Trading System after Doha; and a Member of the Zedillo Committee on the Global Trade and Financial Architecture. In 2020 he was invited to join the Global Future Council on Trade and Investment of the World Economic Forum.
Dr. Evenett obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and B.A in Economics from the University of Cambridge. He has published over 225 books, edited volumes, journal articles, and book chapters. In addition, he has prepared over 50 reports for public bodies and international organizations.
Caroline Freund
Speaker
Caroline Freund is Dean of the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) at the University of California, San Diego. She had previously been global director of Trade, Investment and Competitiveness at the World Bank. Dr. Freund had also served as a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Dr. Freund was chief economist for the Middle East and North Africa at the World Bank, after working for nearly a decade in the international trade unit of the Bank’s research department. Dr. Freund began her career in the international finance division of the Federal Reserve Board and spent a year in the research department of the International Monetary Fund.
The author of Rich People Poor Countries: The Rise of Emerging Market Tycoons and their Mega Firms, she was co-director of the World Bank’s flagship World Development Report 2020 on Global Value Chains. Dr. Freund has also published many articles on the effects of regional trade agreements and edited a volume on “The WTO and Reciprocal Preferential Trading Agreements.” Her work has appeared in many academic journals.
She was also a member of the EXIM Bank advisory committee (2014-16) and the scientific committees of CEPII (Institute for Research of the International Economy, Paris) and the Economic Research Forum (Cairo). She is a member of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and on the editorial board of the Economics and Politics journal.
Dr. Freund is a graduate of Bowdoin College (1988) in Mathematics and Economics (with Honours) and earned a Ph.D. in Economics (with Distinction) at Columbia University.
Jennifer Hillman
Speaker
Jennifer Hillman is a professor of practice at the Georgetown Law Center, teaching the lead courses in international business and international trade while also serving as a fellow of Georgetown’s Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL). She is co-director of the Center for Inclusive Trade and Development and has served as a panelist for the second dispute under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (NAFTA updated)–a dispute between the United States and Canada over the application of U.S. safeguard measures to imports of solar panels.
She is also a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, where she served as project director for a recent task force that issued a report on China’s Belt and Road: Implications for the United States. She frequently writes and is interviewed on issues in U.S.-China trade relations. She has also written on European trade topics, including Legal Aspects of Brexit: Implications of the United Kingdom’s Decision to Withdraw from the European Union (2017).
Professor Hillman recently completed her term as one of seven members from around the world serving on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body. Prior to that, she served for nine years as a commissioner at the United States International Trade Commission (USITC), rendering decisions in more than six hundred investigations regarding injury to U.S. industries caused by imports that were dumped or subsidized, along with making numerous decisions in cases involving alleged patent or trademark infringement. Before her appointment to the USITC, Hillman served as general counsel at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), where she had previously been an ambassador and chief textiles negotiator. She also served as legislative director and counsel to U.S. Senator Terry Sanford of North Carolina.
In 2022, she received the Washington International Trade Association’s Lighthouse Award “in recognition of [her] contributions . . . to trade policy, the understanding of global trade, [and] expanding the benefits of global trade.” She is also the recipient of the Women in International Trade 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Professor Hillman is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and of Duke University, where she serves on the board of visitors at the Sanford School of Public Policy.
Douglas Irwin
Speaker
Douglas Irwin is John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is the author of Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy, which was named by The Economist and Foreign Affairs as one of their Best Books of the Year in 2017. He is president-elect of the Economic History Association (2022-23).
Dr. Irwin is also the author of Free Trade Under Fire; Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s; Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression; The Genesis of the GATT (co-authored with Petros Mavroidis and Alan Sykes), and Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade. The Financial Times has called him “one of the world’s foremost trade scholars” for his work on historical and contemporary trade policy. In addition to his many scholarly articles on trade policy and economic history, he writes for a broader audience as well.
Dr. Irwin is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He worked on trade policy issues while on the staff of President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and also worked in the International Finance Division at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C. Before joining Dartmouth, he taught at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
Dr. Irwin earned a Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University and his B.A. from the University of New Hampshire.
Paul Solman
Speaker
Paul Solman has been a business, economics and occasional art correspondent for the PBS NewsHour since 1985.
While a student at Brandeis University in 1963, he joined the campus newspaper, The Justice, and eventually became its editor. He got his first paid journalism job in 1970 at the alternative weekly Boston After Dark. He became founding editor of the rival alternative weekly The Real Paper in 1972 and went on to become a feature writer and investigative reporter.
He became interested in business when he set out to do a story about municipal bond rates (this was 1976) and realized he was clueless. As was, he realized, the entire booming generation in his wake. Here was an opportunity. But how to seize it? How about going to business school?
Having no money for tuition, he applied for a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and lucked out, joining the Harvard Business School MBA class of 1977-8. He embarked on a career as a business reporter at WGBH Boston immediately thereafter.
After a few years of local PBS reporting, he inaugurated the PBS business documentary series, ENTERPRISE, with fellow Nieman Fellow Zvi Dor-Ner.
In the 1980s, he produced documentaries, returned to local reporting, and joined the Harvard Business School faculty, teaching media, finance and business history in the school’s Advanced Management Program. He also co-authored Life and Death on the Corporate Battlefield (1983), which appeared in Japanese, German and a pirated Taiwanese edition. He joined “MacNeil/Lehrer” in 1985, two years after it become an hour-long news show.
In the ’90s, with sociologist Morrie Schwartz, a teacher of his at Brandeis, he helped create — and wrote the introduction to the book Morrie: In His Own Words, which preceded Tuesdays with Morrie by a year or more, but failed to outsell it by several orders of magnitude.
In 2015, he co-authored an actual bestseller (#1 on Amazon for four straight days!), Get What’s Yours: the Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security. It had to be revised in 2016 because Social Security provisions were changed, perhaps in response to the book.
Mr. Solman has lectured on college campuses since the ’80s and has written for numerous publications, including the Journal of Economic Education. He thinks he’s the only person, besides John Kenneth Galbraith, to have written for both Forbes and Mother Jones magazines; he was for years East Coast editor of the latter. A one-time cab driver, kindergarten teacher, crafts store co-owner and management consultant, he is also the author and presenter of “Discovering Economics with Paul Solman,” a series of videos to accompany introductory economics textbooks.
In 2007, he joined the faculty at Yale, where he added a dose of communications know-how and economics to the university’s Grand Strategy course for a decade. In 2011, he was the Richman Distinguished Visiting Professor at his alma mater, Brandeis, where he taught a seminar, “Economic Grand Strategies: From Chimps to Champs? Or Chumps?” He has lectured at campuses across the country, has taught regularly at West Point, and at Gateway Community College in New Haven, CT. In 2016, he was a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford University. He is also president of the new making-friends-across-the-political-divide group, “Us.”
He took up tennis at 50 and plays with a knee brace. He’d like to shave off his mustache but is afraid to. He wears a hat because his doctor insists.
John Sununu
Speaker
Senator John Sununu cut a unique path from the private sector to public office, serving for three terms in the House of Representatives (1997-2003) and for six years as the youngest member of the United States Senate (2003-2009). Before entering public service, Sununu worked for emerging high-tech firms as an engineer, strategy consultant, and a Chief Financial Officer. In Congress, he put his financial and technical expertise to work for the country, serving on Senate committees such as Commerce, Finance, Banking, and Foreign Relations.
As one of the few members of Congress with an engineering background, Sununu rose quickly to earn a seat on the House Appropriations Committee and serve as Vice Chairman of the Budget Committee. During his term in the Senate, Sununu provided leadership in areas of finance and technology, figuring prominently in debates addressing funding for the National Science Foundation, telecommunications and broadband policy, and financial service regulation.
From 2008-2009, Sununu served as a member or the Congressional Oversight Panel for the $700 Billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.
More recently, he served on the Board of Directors for Time Warner Cable through its landmark merger with Charter Communication. During that same period, he also served as Co-Chair of Broadband for America, a 300-member organization focused on broadband investment, deployment, and access.
He is currently a Director for Boston Scientific, a leading manufacturer of medical devices, a member of the Governing Council of Lloyds of London, the world’s oldest and most successful insurance marketplace, and Senior Advisor for TAP Advisors, an investment bank specializing in technology, media, and telecommunications.
Previously, John served on the board of the Close-Up Foundation, Washington DC’s pre-eminent civics education program. He is currently a Trustee of the American University of Beirut, and serves on the Board of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
Senator Sununu holds BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard University.
Mark Wu
Speaker
Mark Wu is the Henry L. Stimson Professor at Harvard Law School, where he specializes in international trade and international economic law. His writings cover a broad range of topics, including the impact of emerging economies on global governance, digital technologies, trade remedies, environment, and foreign investment.
In addition, Professor Wu serves as the Faculty Director for the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and as a Faculty Co-Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is affiliated with several university centers including the Asia Center, Center for the Environment, Center for International Development, East Asian Legal Studies, and the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. He previously served as the Vice Dean for Graduate Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is a past recipient of the Sacks-Freund Award and the HLS Student Government Teaching and Advising Award.
In 2021, Professor Wu served as a Senior Advisor to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) while on leave from Harvard. He also served previously as a member of the agency review team for the Biden-Harris transition team. Earlier in his career, he served as the Director for Intellectual Property at the Office of the USTR, where he was the lead negotiator for the IP chapter of several U.S. free trade agreements.
Professor Wu has presented his research before international organizations that include the G20, OECD, UNCTAD, World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO). He is a past member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council for Trade and Foreign Direct Investment and of the Advisory Board of the WTO Chairs Programme.
Professor Wu began his career as an economist and operations officer at World Bank in China. He later worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. He also served as a law clerk to Judge Pierre Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Professor Wu received his J.D. from Yale Law School. He earned a M.Sc. in Development Economics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He received his A.B. summa cum laude in Social Studies and East Asian Studies from Harvard University.