Past Speakers

Dr. Robert Lanza

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Dr. Robert Lanza

Scientist, philosopher

Robert Lanza, M.D., is currently Head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, and is Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He was previously Chief Scientific Officer at Ocata Therapeutics. Dr. Lanza has hundreds of publications and inventions, and over 30 scientific books. He is a former Fulbright Scholar, and studied as a student with polio-pioneer Jonas Salk and Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. He also worked closely (and co-authored a series of papers) with noted Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard.

Dr. Lanza was part of the team that cloned the world’s first human embryo, as well as the first to successfully generate stem cells from adults using therapeutic cloning. In 2001 he was also the first to clone an endangered species, and recently published the first-ever report of pluripotent stem cell use in humans. Lanza was recognized by TIME Magazine in 2014 on its list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” PROSPECT Magazine named him one of the Top 50 “World Thinkers” in 2015.

Dr. Lanza spoke about the field of stem cell research at The Common Good Forum 2015.

Twitter: @RobertLanza

Brian Sullivan

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Brian Sullivan

Anchor of CNBC's Worldwide Exchange

Brian Sullivan is anchor of CNBC's Worldwide Exchange and is the network's Senior National Correspondent. Additionally, he has been co-anchor of CNBC’s Power Lunch and the host of Talking Numbers. He also writes for CNBC.com and the recently re-launched CNBC PRO.

He joined CNBC in May 2011 and is based at the network’s Global Headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Sullivan has more than 15 years of financial broadcasting experience, having served as an anchor at Fox Business Network and prior to that as producer, reporter and anchor at Bloomberg Television.

He has twice been nominated for the prestigious Loeb Award; one for being recognized as among the first financial journalists to highlight the risks of the housing bubble in 2007, and the other for the 2013 CNBC documentary “America’s Gun: The Rise of the AR-15.”

Twitter: @SullyCNBC

Amy Sullivan

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Amy Sullivan

Journalist

Amy Sullivan is a Chicago-based journalist who has covered religion and politics as an editor at TIME, Yahoo, the Washington Monthly, and National Journal. She contributes opinion and news analysis to outlets including NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Sullivan co-hosts the podcast "Impolite Company" with Nish Weiseth. Her critically acclaimed first book, The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap, was published by Scribner in 2008.

Sullivan spoke about The Role of Religion in the 2008 Campaign at The Common Good alongside Jon Meacham and Steven Waldman, moderated by Paul Glastris and introduced by Richard Feigen.

Twitter: @sullivanamy

Jesse LaGreca

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Jesse LaGreca

Writer, protestor

Jesse LaGreca has worked as a freelance writer for the Daily Kos under the name Ministry Of Truth for the last three years and is one of their most frequent writers. He’s a member of various subgroups on the site, including their Anonymous forum, Environmental Foodies, and the Progressive Policy Zone.

LaGreca was a major activist during the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York and a frequent speaker on behalf of the movement. His introduction into mainstream media came when an unaired Fox News interview with Griff Jenkins was put on YouTube. In the clip, LaGreca spoke articulately and intelligently about the OWS movement and criticized Fox News for marginalizing the movement. He was named the face of “The Budding Stars of Occupy Wall Street,” according to the Atlantic Wire and was featured in various interviews from ABC’s This Week to The New York Observer.

LaGreca spoke at The Common Good on June 20th, 2012, alongside Todd Gitlin: The Power of Protest: Todd Gitlin & Jesse LaGreca.

Twitter: @JesseLaGreca

Matt Taibbi

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Matt Taibbi

Author and Journalist

Matt Taibbi is a multitalented author and journalist who has covered politics, media, finance and sports, and in 2008 received a National Magazine Award for his columns in Rolling Stone. In February of 2014, he penned a goodbye in Rolling Stone magazine and moved to Glenn Greenwald’s First Look Media, where is he assembling a team of top-notch journalists and helping to launch a new magazine.

Taibbi spoke at The Common Good in 2014: Matt Taibbi on Corruption, Fraud and Inequality.

Twitter: @mtaibbi

Paul Krugman

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Paul Krugman

Economist

Paul Krugman is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is a best-selling author, columnist, and blogger for the New York Times, and is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes.

His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the “new trade theory,” a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to “that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge.” Krugman’s current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.

Paul Krugman was hosted by The Common Good in 2012: Nobel Prize Economist Paul Krugman on Reigniting the Economy.

Twitter: @paulkrugman

Arun Sundararajan

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Arun Sundararajan

Professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business

Arun Sundararajan is a professor at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Professor Sundararajan’s research program studies how digital technologies transform business and society. His current scholarly research focuses on peer-to-peer markets, the sharing economy, digital trust, social media and brand, digital labor, new institutions, regulation, social networks and online privacy.

He is an advisor to Cisco Systems, OuiShare, the Center for Global Enterprise, and the National League of Cities. Professor Sundararajan’s book The Sharing Economy is about crowd-based capitalism, and was published in the Spring of 2016 by the MIT Press.

Twitter: @digitalarun

Alan Krueger †

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Alan Krueger †

Economist

Alan B. Krueger was the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He served as Chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers from November 2011 to August 2013, and was a Member of the President’s Cabinet. From 1987 until his death, he held a joint appointment in the Economics Department and Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. He was the founding Director of the Princeton University Survey Research Center.

In 2009-2010 he served as Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and in 1994-95 he served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor. He wrote for the New York Times Economic Scene column and Economix blog from 2000 to 2009. He was named a Sloan Fellow in Economics in 1992 and an NBER Olin Fellow in 1989-90. Krueger was editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives from 1996 to 2002. He was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1996, a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists in 2005 and a member of the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association in 2004. Krueger was awarded the Kershaw Prize by the Association for Public Policy and Management in 1997 and the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal by the Indian Econometric Society in 2001. In 2002 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and in 2003 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

On March 16, 2019, Krueger was found dead at his home in Princeton.

Alan Krueger spoke at The Common Good Forum 2015.

Senator Jon Tester

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Jon Tester

American Politician

R. Jon Tester is the junior United States Senator for Montana, serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served as President of the Montana Senate.

Tester was first elected to the Montana State Senate in 1998, after his neighbor, a Republican State Senator, decided not to run for re-election. He was elected the minority whip for the 2001 session. In 2002, he won re-election with 71% of the vote. In 2003, he became minority leader. In 2005, Tester was elected President of the Montana Senate, the chief presiding officer of the Montana Legislature’s upper chamber.

His election as President marked a transition for Montana Democrats as they moved into the majority leadership of the Senate for the first time in more than a decade. Term limits would have prohibited Tester from running for state Senate for a third time. While serving as Senate President, Tester supported increased funding for public education and cutting taxes for small business owners and the working poor. He also worked to make health insurance more affordable and require public utilities to use more renewable energy.

He has made government reform a top priority issue. Tester criticized Republicans in Congress for making policy that is designed “for those who write the biggest campaign checks.” He has stated that Washington culture is “controlled by K Street cronies.” He has spoken against gay marriage and flag burning, but sees Constitutional bans on each issue as unnecessary. Instead of avoiding class issues, Tester has also taken them head-on. On Meet the Press, he asserted that “there’s no more middle class” because of Bush Administration policies.

Tester is a more liberal Democrat on other issues. He is pro-choice and supports embryonic stem cell research, and he has also voted to increase funding for Medicare and SCHIP. In the Senate, Tester continues to advocate increased funding for public education, just as he did in the Montana Legislature. Tester supports middle class tax cuts. He has voted against repealing the Estate Tax and Alternative Minimum Tax, policies he sees as favoring only the wealthy. When criticized for being soft on national security, Tester stated that “the Patriot Act has very little to do with the War on Terrorism” and asserted that “I don’t want to weaken the Patriot Act, I want to repeal it.”  Tester is also a strong supporter of alternative energy, voting to increase wind and solar power funding and decrease emissions. He states that the Kyoto Protocol needs American support in order to have global legitimization.

Twitter: @jontester

Steve Kornacki

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Steve Kornacki

Political journalist

Steve Kornacki is an American political journalist and current national political correspondent for NBC News.

Kornacki previously hosted “Up with Steve Kornacki” from 2011-2016. He also contributed occasionally to Capital New York and Salon, where he served as a senior political writer and politics editor from 2010 to 2013. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Daily News, New York Post, Boston Globe and Daily Beast.

Kornacki spoke on the Midterm Elections Panel alongside Patrick Caddell, Carol E. Lee, Anna Greenberg, Jim McLaughlin, and Jefrey Pollock, moderated by John Harwood, at The Common Good in 2014.

Twitter: @SteveKornacki

Gillian Tett

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Gillian Tett

Journalist

Gillian Tett is chairman editorial board and editor-at-large, US of the Financial Times. She writes weekly columns, covering a range of economic, financial, political and social issues.

In 2014, she was named Columnist of the Year in the British Press Awards and was the first recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute Marsh Award. Her other honors include a SABEW Award for best feature article (2012), President’s Medal by the British Academy (2011), being recognized as Journalist of the Year (2009) and Business Journalist of the Year (2008) by the British Press Awards, and as Senior Financial Journalist of the Year (2007) by the Wincott Awards. In June 2009 her book Fool’s Gold won Financial Book of the Year at the inaugural Spear’s Book Awards.

Twitter: @gilliantett

Bill Thompson

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Bill Thompson

Politician

As Comptroller of New York City from 2002 through 2009, Bill Thompson was responsible for managing the finances of the nation’s largest municipality and supervised a staff of 700 professionals. Thompson was given the opportunity to run for a third term in 2009, but he chose to run for mayor instead. As the Democratic nominee, Bill came within just a few percentage points of beating Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

As the head of the Board of Education for five terms, he oversaw a school system with 1.1 million students and 130,000 employees. Thompson is also Chair of Governor Cuomo’s Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise Team. In 2012, he stepped down as Chairman of the Hugh L. Carey Battery Park City Authority to focus on his campaign for mayor.

In addition to his eight years of public service, Thompson has private sector experience. He currently serves as the Chief Administrative Officer and Senior Managing Director at Siebert, Brandford, Shank & Co., the nation’s largest minority public finance firm, where he underwrites loans for schools, roads, bridges and infrastructure projects.

Thompson spoke at The Common Good in 2013: NYC Mayoral Candidate Series: Bill Thompson.

Ted Koppel

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Ted Koppel

Broadcast journalist

Ted Koppel, a 42-year veteran of ABC News, was anchor and managing editor of Nightline from 1980 to 2005.

New York University recently named Koppel one of the top 100 American journalists of the past 100 years. He has won every significant television award, including 8 George Foster Peabody Awards, 11 Overseas Press Club Awards, 12 duPont-Columbia Awards, and 42 Emmy’s. Since 2005 he has served as managing editor of the Discovery Channel, as a news analyst for BBC America, as a special correspondent for Rock Center, and continues to function as commentator and nonfiction book critic at NPR. He has been a contributing columnist to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and is the author the New York Times bestseller Off Camera.

Koppel spoke at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards 2016.

Jeffrey Toobin

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Jeffrey Toobin

Freelance lawyer

Jeffrey Toobin began freelancing for The New Republic as a law student. He went on to become a law clerk to a federal judge and work as an associate counsel to Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh during the Iran-Contra affair and Oliver North’s criminal trial, before becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn. He then took up a post in 1993 at The New Yorker, and became the first television legal analyst in 1994, at ABC.

He currently is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a senior analyst for CNN since 2002, and the author of five books. Toobin’s latest book, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, has received awards from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Toobin was hosted by The Common Good in 2012: Aftermath: Supreme Court & Health Care with Carl Bernstein, Jeffrey Toobin & Susan Blumenthal.

Twitter: @JeffreyToobin

Ted Turner

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Ted Turner

Media Mogul and Philanthropist

Robert Edward “Ted” Turner is an American media mogul and philanthropist.  As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel.  He attended Brown University and was vice-president of the Brown Debating Union and captain of the sailing team.  After the death of his father at age 24, he took the family’s billboard business. He went on to purchase Atlanta UHF and started assembling his Turner Broadcasting System.

In 1980 he launched CNN, which rose to prominence as it garnered a reputation for having its reporters arrive first on any news scene.  Some of the incidents that marked CNN as a serious network were the covering of the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981, the Challenger disaster in 1986 and the first Persian Gulf War in 1991.

In 1986 Turner purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Myer (MGM) / United artists instead and used their extensive film library to launch TNT in 1988.  In 1996, Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner Inc. and Ted Turner became the Vice Chairman of the company of which he now owned 10% – the largest individual stockholder.

As a philanthropist, he is known for his $1 billion gift to support UN causes, which created the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to broaden support for the UN.  Turner serves as Chairman of the United Nations Foundation board of directors.  His other causes include the Turner Foundation, Inc, Turner Endangered Species Fund and the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He is also the originator of the Goodwill Games that started in 1986.

Turner has also devoted his assets to environmental causes.  As one of the largest private land owners in the US, he uses much of his land for ranches to re-popularize bison meat, amassing the largest herd in the world. He also created the environmental-themed animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers.

Mayor Ed Koch ✝

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Mayor Ed Koch ✝

American lawyer, politician

Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City. During his three terms as Mayor from 1978-1989, he was responsible for placing the City on a GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices) balanced budget basis. He created a housing program which, over a ten-year period, provided more than 150,000 units of affordable housing financed by City funds in the amount of $5.1 billion.

Koch was drafted into the Army where he served with the 104th Infantry Division. He served in the European Theater of Operations, received two battle stars, the Combat Infantry badge, and he was honorably discharged with the rank of Sergeant in 1946. Prior to being Mayor, Koch served for nine years as a Congressman and two years as a member of the New York City Council. He has also written many books on his life and experience.

Koch died of heart failure on February 1, 2013, at 89.

He was hosted by The Common Good in 2010: Ed Koch on the Reform of New York's Government.

Robert Knake

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Robert Knake

Writer

Rob Knake is a Senior Fellow for Cyber Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. His work focuses on internet governance, public-private partnerships, and cyber conflict.

Knake served from 2011 to 2015 as Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the National Security Council. In this role, he was responsible for the development of presidential policy on cybersecurity, and built and managed federal processes for cyber incident response and vulnerability management. He worked to establish presidential policy that created the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center and Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations.

Before joining government, Knake was an International Affairs Fellow-in-Residence at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he completed the manuscript for Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It and authored the Council Special Report “Internet Governance in an Age of Cyberinsecurity”. Some of his other books include The Fifth Domain and Internet Governance in an Age of Cyber Insecurity.

Twitter: @RobKnake

Jose Antonio Vargas

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Jose Antonio Vargas

Journalist, filmmaker, activist

Jose Antonio Vargas is a journalist, filmmaker, and immigration rights activist. He was part of The Washington Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2008 for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings online and in print. Vargas also has worked for The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Daily News, and The Huffington Post. He wrote, produced, and directed the autobiographical 2013 film, Documented, which CNN Films broadcast in June 2014.

In a June 2011 essay in The New York Times Magazine, Vargas revealed his status as an undocumented immigrant in an effort to promote dialogue about the immigration system in the U.S. and to advocate for the DREAM Act, which would provide children in similar circumstances with a path to citizenship. A year later, a day after the publication of his Time cover story about his continued uncertainty regarding his immigration status, the Obama administration announced it was halting the deportation of undocumented immigrants age 30 and under, who would be eligible for the DREAM Act. Vargas, who had just turned 31, did not qualify.

Vargas is the founder of Define American, a nonprofit organization intended to open up dialogue about the criteria people use to determine who is an American.

Vargas was awarded the American Spirit Award for Citizen Activism at The Common Good Forum & The American Spirit Awards 2014.

Twitter: @joseiswriting

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

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Senator Amy Klobuchar

Senior Senator representing Minnesota

Amy Jean Klobuchar is the senior United States Senator from Minnesota. She is running in the 2020 Presidential Campaign and is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, an affiliate of the Democratic Party. She is the first elected female senator from Minnesota.

Klobuchar was county attorney of Hennepin County, the most populous county in Minnesota. She was a legal adviser to former U.S. Vice President Walter Mondale and partner in two prominent law firms. Klobuchar has been named by the New York Times as one of the seventeen women most likely to become the first female President of the United States and by MSNBC as a possible nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Klobuchar served as Minnesota’s only senator between January 3 and July 7, 2009, due to the contested results of Minnesota’s senatorial election held the previous year.

Klobuchar spoke at The Common Good as part of the 2008 Democratic National Convention Panel.

Twitter: @amyklobuchar

Secretary Tom Vilsack

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Secretary Tom Vilsack

30th U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

Tom Vilsack serves as the Nation’s 30th Secretary of Agriculture.

As leader of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Vilsack is working hard to strengthen the American agricultural economy, build vibrant rural communities and create new markets for the tremendous innovation of rural America. In five years at the Department, Vilsack has worked to implement President Obama’s agenda to put Americans back to work and create an economy built to last. USDA has supported America’s farmers, ranchers and growers who are driving the rural economy forward, provided food assistance to millions of Americans, carried out record conservation efforts, made record investments in our rural communities and helped provide a safe, sufficient and nutritious food supply for the American people.

As chair of the first-ever White House Rural Council, Secretary Vilsack and USDA are taking steps to strengthen services for rural businesses and entrepreneurs by finding new ways to partner with other Federal agencies and the private sector to spur investment in rural America.

Prior to his appointment, Vilsack served two terms as the Governor of Iowa, in the Iowa State Senate and as the mayor of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Vilsack was born into an orphanage and adopted in 1951. After graduating Hamilton College and Albany Law School, he moved to Mt. Pleasant, his wife Christie’s hometown, where he practiced law. The Vilsacks have two adult sons and two daughters-in-law – Doug, married to Janet; and Jess, married to Kate. They also have two grandchildren.