On January 7, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Max Sieben Baucus to be Ambassador of the United States of America to China. The Senate confirmed him on February 6, 2014 and Vice President Joe Biden swore him in on February 21, 2014. Ambassador Baucus served until January 20, 2017.

Ambassador Baucus formerly served as the senior United States Senator from Montana. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1978 to 2013, was Montana’s longest serving U.S. Senator, and had the third longest tenure among those serving in the U.S. Senate. Ambassador Baucus was Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Finance, Vice Chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, and member of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. He was also a member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and chaired its Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Before his election to the U.S. Senate, Ambassador Baucus was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1978. He previously served in the Montana House of Representatives from 1973 to 1974.

Ambassador Baucus has extensive experience in international trade. As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Ambassador Baucus led the passage and enactment of Free Trade Agreements with 11 countries: Australia, Bahrain, Jordan, Chile, Colombia, Morocco, Oman, Panama, Peru, Singapore, and South Korea. He also worked to increase U.S. exports by knocking down trade barriers and led business leaders on trade missions abroad to Germany, Spain, Belgium, Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Brazil, Colombia, and China. During his tenure, Ambassador Baucus was deeply involved in orchestrating congressional approval of permanent normal trade relations with China in 2000 and in facilitating China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization in 2001. As Chairman, Baucus also authored the Affordable Care Act of 2009 (Obamacare) and was one of the conference committee authors of the Part D Medicare Prescription Drug law. He has extensive legislative background in healthcare, trade and taxation.

Currently, Baucus is in-demand by numerous private companies and public organizations. He serves on the Board of Advisors for Alibaba, the Board of Directors for Ingram Micro, and the External Advisory Board for the Central Intelligence Agency. Baucus is also Co-Chair of Farmers for Free Trade, a non-profit dedicated to supporting and expanding export opportunities for American farms and ranches.

Ambassador Baucus earned a bachelor’s degree and law degree from Stanford University. He is married and has three children.

Michelle Caruso-Cabrera is a member of the Board of Directors of a financial services firm, Beneficient, and a contributor to CNBC.

Previously, Caruso-Cabrera spent more than 20 years at CNBC, most recently as chief international correspondent and co-anchor of “Power Lunch.” Throughout her career, Caruso-Cabrera has covered a wide range of stories from the 2008 financial crisis to U.S. elections to the debt crisis in Greece and the Brexit vote. She has traveled the world reporting live from Cuba, Iran, Ukraine, Iraq, Italy, Russia, Venezuela and Latin America, among many others.

She joined CNBC from WTSP-TV in St. Petersburg, Fla., where she spent four years as a general assignment reporter covering crime and hurricanes. Prior to that, Caruso-Cabrera was a special projects producer for Univision where she gained experience covering Latin America. She began her career in 1990 while in college, as a stringer for The New York Times, reporting for the education section.

Caruso-Cabrera wrote her first book, “You Know I’m Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” in 2010. Previously, she wrote a personal finance column for Shape en Español and People en Español.

She has also been awarded Broadcaster of the Year from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and was named one of the “100 Most Influential Hispanics” in the country by Hispanic Business magazine. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wellesley College.

Daniel Diermeier serves as the thirteenth Provost of the University of Chicago. As Provost, Diermeier has responsibility for academic and research programs across the University and oversees the University’s budget. Prior to his appointment as Provost, Diermeier was Dean of the Harris School of Public Policy from 2014-2016. He is the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor at the Harris School and the College and a member of the Board of the University of Chicago Medical Center, the Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratory, and the Board of Trustees of NORC.

Daniel Diermeier is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research (CIFAR). His teaching and research focuses on formal political theory, political institutions, the interaction of business and politics, text analytics, public perception, as well as crisis and reputation management. He has published two books and over 90 research articles in academic journals, mostly in the fields of political science, economics, and management, but also in other areas ranging from linguistics, sociology and psychology to computer science and applied mathematics.

Prior to joining the University of Chicago, Professor Diermeier taught at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, most recently as IBM Professor of Regulation and Practice in the Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences (MEDS), and Director of the Ford Motor Company Center of Global Citizenship. He also held appointments in Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, and the School of Law at Northwestern University.

During his time at Northwestern, he won multiple teaching awards including Kellogg’s Professor of the Year Award and Alumni Professor of the Year Award. He was named among the World’s 50 Best Business School Professors and was the 2007 recipient of the Faculty Pioneer Award from the Aspen Institute. Professor Diermeier has been an advisor to governments, non-profit organizations and leading corporations. He is a member of the Board of Directors of CityBase, an urban technology company.

Caroline Freund is Director of Trade, Regional Integration and Investment Climate. Previously she was a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. She has also worked as 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 research department. Freund began her career in the international finance division of the Federal Reserve Board and spent a year visiting the research department of the IMF. She has published extensively in academic journals including: American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics and is the author of Rich People Poor Countries: The Rise of Emerging Market Tycoons and their Mega Firms. She received a PhD in economics from Columbia University.

Austan D. Goolsbee is the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics.

He previously served in Washington as the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and a member of the President’s cabinet. His research has earned him recognition as a Fulbright Scholar and an Alfred P. Sloan fellow. In prior years he was named one of the 100 Global Leaders for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum, and one of the six “Gurus of the Future” by the Financial Times. His ability to explain economics clearly has made Goolsbee popular in the media. Jon Stewart describes him as “Eliot Ness meets Milton Friedman” and he has twice been named as a “star” professor by BusinessWeek‘s “Guide to the Best Business Schools.”

Goolsbee serves on the Economic Advisory Panel to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and has previously served on the Panel of Economic Advisors to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. Census Advisory Commission and as a special consultant for Internet Policy to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. He joined Chicago Booth in 1995.

Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School, as well as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. He previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon, and on the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board. Greenstone also directed The Hamilton Project, which studies policies to promote economic growth, and has since joined its Advisory Council. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Greenstone was the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT.

Greenstone’s research, which has influenced policy globally, is largely focused on uncovering the benefits and costs of environmental quality and society’s energy choices. His current work is particularly focused on testing innovative ways to increase energy access and improve the efficiency of environmental regulations around the world. Additionally, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change as a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab. He also created the Air Quality Life Index™, which provides a reliable measure of the potential gain in life expectancy communities could see if their particulates air pollution concentrations are brought into compliance with global or national standards. Greenstone’s research suggests that particulates air pollution is the greatest current environmental threat to human wellbeing.

Greenstone received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a BA in economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College.

Lars Peter Hansen is a leading expert in economic dynamics who works at the forefront of economic thinking and modeling, drawing approaches from macroeconomics, finance, and statistics. He is a recipient of the 2013 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Hansen has made fundamental advances in our understanding of how economic agents cope with changing and risky environments. He has contributed to the development of statistical methods designed to explore the interconnections between macroeconomic indicators and assets in financial markets. These methods are widely used in empirical research in financial economics today.

The Nobel Prize recognizes this work, which has been used to test theories and models that have shaped our modern understanding of asset pricing.  His recent research explores how to quantify intertemporal risk-return tradeoffs and ways to model economic behavior when consumers and investors struggle with uncertainty about the future. Improving models that measure risk and uncertainty have important implications for financial markets, fiscal policy, and the macroeconomy.

His early research in econometrics was aimed at developing time series statistical methods to investigate one part of an economic model without having to fully specify and estimate all of the model ingredients. The applications he explored with several coauthors, such as Kenneth J. Singleton, Scott F. Richard, Robert Hodrick, and Ravi Jagannathan, included systems that are rich enough to support models of asset valuation and to identify and clarify empirical puzzles, where real-world financial and economic data were at odds with prevailing academic models.

Hansen’s recent work focuses on uncertainty and its relationship to long run risks in the macroeconomy. He explores how models that incorporate ambiguities, beliefs, and skepticism of consumers and investors can explain economic and financial data and reveal the long-term consequences of policy options. Hansen, Thomas J. Sargent, and their coauthors have recently developed methods for modeling economic decision-making in environments in which uncertainty is hard to quantify.  They explore the consequences for models with financial markets and characterize environments in which the beliefs of economic actors are fragile.

Hansen joined the faculty of the University of Chicago’s Department of Economics in 1981 and has served as department chairman and director of graduate studies. He is now David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, Statistics, Booth School of Business and the College. He was the inaugural director of the Becker Friedman Institute until July of 2017. He currently directs the Macro Financial Research Initiativehoused under the Becker Friedman Institute.

Hansen also serves as co-principal investigator, along with Andrew Lo of MIT, on the Macro Financial Modeling Project (MFM). This research group works to develop macroeconomic models with enhanced linkages to financial markets, with the aim of providing better policy tools for monitoring so-called systemic risks to the economy.

In addition to the Nobel prize, Hansen has also received many other awards and honors. Hansen won the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management “for making fundamental contributions to our understanding of how economic actors cope with risky and changing environments.” He also received the CME Group-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Applications in 2008 and the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics from Northwestern University in 2006. In 1984, he and Kenneth J. Singleton were awarded the Frisch Medal from the Econometric Society for their paper, “Generalized Instrumental Variables Estimation of Nonlinear Rational Expectations Models.”

Hansen is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Finance Association. He also is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past president of the Econometric Society.

He has delivered numerous lectures around the world. In 2016, he presented the CORE Nobel Talk at the Université catholique de Louvain, and in 2015 he presented the LAUNCH Distinguished Lecture at the University of Illinois and the W.P. Carey Lecture at Colorado College. He was the 2014 lecturer at the IGIER Seminar Series at  Università Bocconi and lectured at the 1st Macro Finance Workshop of the Macro Finance Society at Ohio State University. Hansen gave the Princeton Lectures in Finance at the Bendheim Center for Finance in December 2010, the Tjalling C. Koopmans Memorial Lectures at Yale in September 2008, and the Third Toulouse Lectures in Economics at the Université de Toulouse in May 2005.

Hansen holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and political science from Utah State University and a doctorate in economics from the University of Minnesota.  Hansen has also received numerous honorary degrees, including an honorary doctorate from Utah State University in 2012.

Chang-Tai Hsieh conducts research on growth and development. Hsieh has published several papers in top economic journals, including “The Life-Cycle of Plants in India and Mexico,” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics; “Misallocation and Manufacturing TFP in China and India,” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics; “Relative Prices and Relative Prosperity,” in the American Economic Review; “Can Free Entry be Inefficient? Fixed Commissions and Social Waste in the Real Estate Industry,” in the Journal of Political Economy; and “What Explains the Industrial Revolution in East Asia? Evidence from the Factor Markets,” in the American Economic Review.

Hsieh has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis, as well as the World Bank’s Development Economics Group and the Economic Planning Agency in Japan. He is a Research Associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Senior Fellow at the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development, and a member of the Steering Group of the International Growth Center in London.

He is the recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, an Elected Member of Academia Sinica, and the recipient of the Sun Ye-Fang award for research on the Chinese economy.

Huang Yiping is Jin Guang Chair Professor of Economics and Deputy Dean of the National School of Development (NSD) and Director of the Institute of Digital Finance (IDF), Peking University. He served as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the People’s Bank of China during 2015‐2018. Currently, he is Vice Chairman of Council at the Public Policy Research Center and Research Fellow at the Financial Research Center, both at the Counselors’ Office of the State Council. He also serves as Chairman of the Academic Committee of China Finance 40 Forum, and a member of Chinese Economists 50 Forum. He is Editor of China Economic Journal and an Associate Editor of Asian Economic Policy Review. His research areas include macro economy, financial market and rural development.

Previously, he was a policy analyst at the Research Center for Rural Development of the State Council, research fellow and senior lecturer of economics at the Australian National University, General Mills International Visiting Professor of Economics and Finance at the Columbia Business School, Managing Director and Chief Asia Economist for Citigroup, Chief Economist for Caixin Media Group, Managing Director and Chief Economist for Emerging Asia for Barclays, and an Independent Director of China Life Insurance Ltd, Minmetal Trust Ltd and Mybank.

Prof Huang received his Bachelor of Agricultural Economics from Zhejiang Agricultural University, Master of Economics from Renmin University of China and PhD in Economics from Australian National University.

Erik Hurst is a macroeconomist whose work focuses on housing markets, labor markets and household financial behavior. One strand of Hurst’s research explores the importance of home production in determining time series, life cycle, and business cycle variation in measured consumption spending. His contributions to this literature include “Consumption versus Expenditure” and “Deconstructing Life Cycle Expenditure” in the Journal of Political Economy, “Life Cycle Prices and Production” and “Time Use During the Great Recession” in the American Economic Review and “Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation of Time Over Five Decades” in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. His work on these issues has been extensively covered in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Economist. In 2006, Hurst was awarded the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award for Outstanding Scholarly Writing on Lifelong Financial Security for the work examining how individuals use home production to maintain their consumption during retirement.

Recently, Hurst has explored how changes in the U.S. labor market have influenced U.S. macroeconomic outcomes. In his paper “The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth”, he shows that upwards of twenty percent of U.S. productivity growth over the last fifty years can be attributed to improved labor market outcomes for women and Blacks. In one of his more recent papers, Hurst has shown that structural forces have contributed to the low levels of employment in the wake of the 2009 recession. Specifically, in his paper “Manufacturing Declines, Housing Booms and Non-Employment,” Hurst shows that roughly forty percent of the increase in non-employment during the 2000-2011 period can be traced to the secular decline in manufacturing jobs. Both of these papers have been covered extensively in the popular press.

In 2012, Hurst was also award the Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship. The Medal is awarded annually to a scholar under the age of 40 whose research has made a significant contribution to the literature in entrepreneurship. The award cited his papers “Liquidity Constraints, Household Wealth, and Entrepreneurship” in the Journal of Political Economy and “What Do Small Businesses Do” in the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity as being important contributions to understanding the nature of small business activity.

Prior to moving to Chicago, Hurst won two teaching awards while a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Additionally, in both 2008 and 2010, the MBAs selected him as the recipient of the Emory Williams Award for Outstanding MBA Teaching. In 2013, he was voted the Faculty Excellence Award by the MBAs in the evening and weekend program for his exceptional commitment to teaching.

Hurst is a member of the Economic Fluctuations Group, Aging Group, and Public Economics Group at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is currently serving as the editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Additionally, he serves as a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Hurst earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from Clarkson University in 1993. He received a master’s degree in economics in 1995 and a PhD in economics in 1999 from the University of Michigan. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1999.

Mr. Liu Jun, a career diplomat, has been working in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China for over 20 years. Currently he serves as a Acting Consul General in the Chinese Consulate General in Chicago.

Anil Kashyap is the Edward Eagle Brown Professor of Economics and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. from University of California Davis. His research focuses on financial intermediation and regulation, the Japanese economy, business cycles, price setting, and monetary policy. His research has won him numerous awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, the Nikkei Prize for Excellent Books in Economic Sciences, and the Senior Houblon-Norman Fellowship from the Bank of England (twice).  Since October 1, 2016 he has been an external member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee.

Prior to joining Chicago Booth in 1991, Kashyap spent three years as an economist for the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve System. He currently works as a consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and as a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre for Economic Policy Research.  In 2017, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon by the Emperor of Japan for his contribution to the advancement of high-quality research on the Japanese financial system and Japan’s economic policies.

Deborah Lehr is Vice Chairman of the Paulson Institute, which she helped launch. She serves as a senior advisor to the Chairman on U.S.–China relations as well as provides counsel on strategic issues for the Paulson Institute. In addition, Lehr oversees the Institute’s Green Finance initiative, including helping to devise and establish the U.S.-China Green Fund.

Lehr has served in the public, private and not for profit sectors focused on China and emerging markets. She advised Mr. Paulson when he was the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs, and helped then-Treasury Secretary Paulson to create and launch the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue.

She is also the CEO of Basilinna, a strategic consulting firm. Previously she served as Senior Advisor to the Chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch as well as a Senior Managing Director at the New York Stock Exchange. In addition, Lehr built a successful consulting business as a partner at Mayer Brown, a top-10 law firm, as President of Stonebridge China and then with her own firm. Her clients included JP Morgan, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Sesame Workshop, Tory Burch, Goldman Sachs, Sony Music, Time Warner and Boeing.

Lehr also served in the U.S. Government in the Executive Office of the President as a Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for China, where she was a lead negotiator for China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, for two intellectual property rights negotiations and on the team for the 1992 Market Access Agreement. Additionally, Lehr was one of the youngest Directors of Asian Affairs at the National Security Council and was involved in export control and trade policy issues at the Department of Commerce.

Deborah serves as a member of the International Council of Advisors for National Geographic, is on the Board of the Archaeological Institute of America, on the International Advisory Board of the London School of Economics, the Board of the School of Advanced International Studies and the Cox Business School at Southern Methodist University. She is also on the boards of the Middle East Institute, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins. Lehr is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

W. Gyude Moore is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development. He previously served as Liberia’s Minister of Public Works and country lead on the construction and maintenance infrastructure from December 2014 to January 2018.

Prior to that role, Moore served as Deputy Chief of Staff to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Head of the President’s Delivery Unit (PDU). As Head of the PDU, Moore led a team that monitored progress on the delivery of the Public Sector Investment Program of Liberia. PDU monitored and drove delivery, on behalf of the President, for over $1 billion in road, power, and port infrastructure investment as Liberia attempted to rebuild after the civil war. As one of the President’s most trusted advisors, Gyude also played a crucial role in supporting President Sirleaf as Liberia shaped its post-Ebola outlook.

At CGD, Moore will be exploring governance, looking at the infrastructure sector in particular. He will also focus on channels of attracting private finance into African infrastructure. Moore serves on the Board of Advisors of the Master of Science in Foreign Service Program at Georgetown University. He holds a BS in Political Science from Berea College and an MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Moore was born and raised in Cape Palmas, Maryland County, Liberia.

Mr. Pin Ni is the President of Wanxiang America Corporation, the company he started in 1994. The company’s revenue grew from zero to $4 billion to date, crossing the areas of automotive, clean energy, and real estate with operations in 26 states in the US. In January, 2016, he was honored as “The Most Influential Business Person of the Year” by China General Chamber of Commerce – U.S.A.

Mr. Ni is very active in community service. He serves as vice chair of China General Chamber of Commerce – USA (CGCC-USA), board director of World Business Chicago, member of the Northwestern University Board of Trustees, board director of the US-China Strong Foundation, member of the Advisory Board of the RAND Center for Asia Pacific Policy, board director of Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and board director of The Nature Conservancy Illinois Chapter.

Mr. Ni received his Bachelor’s degree and MBA degree from Zhejiang University. He has also studied in the PhD program in University of Kentucky’s Department of Economics.

Henry M. Paulson, Jr., is a businessman, China expert, conservationist and author. He is the founder and chairman of the Paulson Institute.

Paulson served as the 74th Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush, from July 2006 to January 2009. Prior to that, he had a thirty-two year career at Goldman Sachs, serving as chairman and chief executive officer beginning in 1999. Earlier in his career, he was a member of the White House Domestic Council as well as a staff assistant at the Pentagon.

Today, he is chairman of the Paulson Institute, which aims to advance sustainable economic growth, a cleaner environment and cross-border investments in the United States and China. A “think and do” tank founded in 2011, the Institute’s work is comprised of programs, advocacy and research with partners around the globe.

Paulson is co-chair of the Aspen Institute’s Economic Strategy Group, along with former White House chief of staff, Erskine Bowles. The Economic Strategy Group convenes, in a non-partisan spirit, a diverse range of distinguished leaders and thinkers to address significant structural challenges in the U.S. economy.

A lifelong conservationist, Paulson was Chairman of The Nature Conservancy Board of Directors and founded and co-chaired the organization’s Asia-Pacific Council. In 2011, he founded the Latin American Conservation Council, comprised of global business and political leaders, which he co-chaired until 2017.  He also co-chaired the Risky Business Project from 2013-2017, a non-partisan initiative that quantified and publicized the economic risks of climate change in the United States.

In his best-selling book, On the Brink, Paulson describes his experiences as Treasury Secretary fending off the near-collapse of the U.S. economy during the Great Recession.  His most recent best-seller, Dealing with China, details his career working with scores of China’s top political and business leaders and witnessing the evolution of China’s state-controlled capitalism.

Paulson graduated from Dartmouth College in 1968 and received an M.B.A. from Harvard University in 1970. He and his wife, Wendy, have two children and four grandchildren.

Kenneth Pomeranz is a University Professor of History and in the College; he previously taught at the University of California, Irvine. His work focuses mostly on China, though he is also very interested in comparative and world history. Most of his research is in social, economic, and environmental history, though he has also worked on state formation, imperialism, religion, gender, and other topics. His publications include The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000), which won the John K. Fairbank Prize from the AHA, and shared the World History Association book prize; The Making of a Hinterland: State, Society and Economy in Inland North China, 1853–1937 (1993), which also won the Fairbank Prize; The World that Trade Created (with Steven Topik, first edition 1999, 3rd edition 2012), and a collection of his essays, recently published in France. He has also edited or co-edited five books, and was one of the founding editors of the Journal of Global History. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, American Council of Learned Societies, the Institute for Advanced Studies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other sources. His current projects include a history of Chinese political economy from the seventeenth century to the present, and a book called Why Is China So Big? which tries to explain, from various perspectives, how and why contemporary China’s huge land mass and population have wound up forming a single political unit.

Tom Pritzker was born and raised in Chicago.  He holds a B.A. from Claremont Men’s College, an MBA and J.D. degree from the University of Chicago.

Pritzker is Executive Chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H). He is also Chairman and CEO of The Pritzker Organization, the family’s historical merchant bank and on the Board of Directors of Royal Caribbean Cruises LTD. (NYSE: RCL).  Over his career he has been involved in acquiring and building companies in a number of different industries and founding significant companies in the fields of Container Leasing (Triton), biotech (Bay City Capital) and health care (Reliant Pharmaceuticals  and First Health).

Outside of business, Pritzker is Chairman of Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington DC and a member of the Aspen Strategy Group. He is also Chairman of the Hyatt Foundation which sponsors the Pritzker Architecture Prize and a member of the board of trustees at the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Pritzker is also an Honorary Professor of History at Sichuan University in China, and for the past 30 years has been leading archeological expeditions and publishing original research in the field of Western Himalayan history.

Arif Rafiq is president of Vizier Consulting, LLC, a political risk advisory company focused on the Middle East and South Asia. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. His scholarly work focuses on political reform, religious extremism, and terrorism in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India, as well as great power competition in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region.

Rafiq authored the first comprehensive public report on the economic, political, and strategic implications of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, published by the U.S. Institute of Peace. He previously completed a study on Sunni-Shia sectarian violence in Pakistan.

A frequent contributor to print and web publications, Rafiq has written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest. He has also contributed to numerous other publications, including the Daily Beast, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, and POLITICO Magazine. Rafiq is regularly quoted by publications such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Previously, Rafiq worked for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and leading public relations firms Burson-Marsteller and Ruder Finn.

From 2011-13, Rafiq was listed by Foreign Policy as one of the top 100 foreign affairs commentators on Twitter. He received an MA in Arab Studies from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service.

Raghuram Rajan is the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth. He was the 23rd Governor of the Reserve Bank of India between September 2013 and September 2016. Between 2003 and 2006, Dr. Rajan was the Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund.

Dr. Rajan’s research interests are in banking, corporate finance, and economic development, especially the role finance plays in it. The books he has written include The Third Pillar: How the State and Markets are leaving Communities Behind forthcoming, 2019, I do What I do: On Reform, Rhetoric, and Resolve, 2017, and Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy, for which he was awarded the Financial Times-Goldman Sachs prize for best business book in 2010.

Dr. Rajan is a member of the Group of Thirty. He was the President of the American Finance Association in 2011 and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In January 2003, the American Finance Association awarded Dr. Rajan the inaugural Fischer Black Prize for the best finance researcher under the age of 40. The other awards he has received include the Infosys prize for the Economic Sciences in 2012, the Deutsche Bank Prize for Financial Economics in 2013, Euromoney Central Banker Governor of the Year 2014, and Banker Magazine (FT Group) Central Bank Governor of the Year 2016.

Joshua Cooper Ramo is Co-CEO of Kissinger Associates, the advisory firm of former U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger. His last book was the international best seller, “The Age Of The Unthinkable.”

Based in Beijing and New York, Ramo serves as an advisor to some of the largest companies and investors in the world. He is a member of the boards of directors of Starbucks and Fedex.

A Mandarin speaker who has been called “one of China’s leading foreign-born scholars” by the World Economic Forum, Ramo is best known for coining and articulating “The Beijing Consensus,” among other writings on China.

His views on global politics and economics have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, Foreign Policy and Fortune. He has been a frequent guest on CNN, CNBC, NBC and PBS. In 2008 he served as China analyst for NBC during the Beijing Olympic Games. For his work with Bob Costas and Matt Lauer during the Opening Ceremony, Ramo shared in a Peabody and Emmy award.

Before entering the advisory business, Ramo was a journalist. He was the youngest senior editor and foreign editor in the history of Time magazine, wrote more than 20 cover stories and ultimately oversaw the magazine’s technology coverage and online activities.

Ramo has been a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders for Tomorrow, The Leaders Project, The Asia Society 21 Group, a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founder of the US-China Young Leaders Forum, and Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute. His last book, “The Age of the Unthinkable,” was translated into more than a dozen languages. His first book, “No Visible Horizon,” described his experiences as a competitive aerobatic pilot.

Raised in Los Ranchos, New Mexico, Ramo holds degrees from the University of Chicago and New York University. He is an avid pilot and motorcyclist.

Robert E. Rubin began his career in finance at Goldman, Sachs & Company in New York City in 1966. Mr. Rubin served as vice chairman and co-chief operating officer at Goldman from 1987 to 1990 and as co-senior partner and co-chairman from 1990 to 1992. Before joining Goldman, he was an attorney at the firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York City from 1964 to 1966.

Long active in public affairs, Mr. Rubin joined the Bill Clinton administration in 1993 as assistant to the president for economic policy and as director of the newly created National Economic Council (NEC). At the NEC, he coordinated economic policy recommendations to the president and monitored the implementation of the president’s economic policy goals. In January 1995, he was appointed as the United States’ seventieth secretary of the treasury. He served for four and a half years, until July 1999, during which he was involved in balancing the federal budget; opening trade policy to further globalization; acting to stem financial crises in Asia, Mexico, and Russia; helping to resolve the impasse over the public debt limit; and guiding sensible reforms at the Internal Revenue Service.

From 1999 to 2009, Mr. Rubin served as a member of the Board of Directors at Citigroup and as a senior advisor to the company.

Mr. Rubin is chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a member of the board of trustees at the Mount Sinai Health System and chairman of the board of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), which is the nation’s leading community development support organization with thirty-eight offices nationwide. In June 2014, he completed a twelve-year term as a member of the Harvard Corporation and is now a member of its finance committee. Mr. Rubin joined Centerview Partners in 2010 as a senior counselor of the firm. In his role at Centerview, he serves as a sounding board and advisor to clients across the firm’s various activities, bringing years of experience in finance and public policy.

Mr. Rubin graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1960 with an AB in economics. He received an LLB from Yale Law School in 1964 and attended the London School of Economics. He has received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and other universities. He was born in New York City in 1938 and is married to Judith Oxenberg Rubin, who served as the New York City commissioner of protocol for four years under Mayor David Dinkins.

Richard L. Sandor (Ph.D., Dr. sc. h. c.) is Chairman and CEO of the American Financial Exchange (AFX), an electronic exchange for direct interbank/financial institution lending and borrowing. He is also the CEO of Environmental Financial Products, which specializes in inventing, designing and developing new financial markets. Dr. Sandor is currently the Aaron Director Lecturer in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He was honored by the City of Chicago for his universal recognition as the “father of financial futures.” In 2002 he was named by TIME Magazine a “Hero of the Planet;” and in 2007 as one of the magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment” for his work as the “Father of Carbon Trading.” In October 2013, Dr. Sandor was awarded the title of Chevalier dans l ́ordre de la Légion d ́Honneur (Knight in the French National Order of the Legion of Honor), for his accomplishments in the field of environmental finance and carbon trading. He holds an honorary degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). He served on the board of directors of leading commodities and futures exchanges worldwide; and of several philanthropic and not- for-profit organizations such as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Dr. Sandor is the author of “Good Derivatives: A Story of Financial and Environmental Innovation;” the lead author of “Environmental Markets: A New Asset Class,” published by the CFA Institute Research Foundation; “Sustainable Investing and Environmental Markets: Opportunities in a New Asset Class” and “How I Saw It: Analysis and Commentary on Environmental Finance (1999–2005)” published by World Scientific. His books have been translated in Chinese by People’s Oriental Press. His latest book, “Electronic Trading and Blockchain: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” is forthcoming by World Scientific in the spring of 2018. His latest book, “Electronic Trading and Blockchain: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” was also published by World Scientific and released in April 2018. Dr. Sandor holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the City University of New York, Brooklyn College and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota.

Brad W. Setser is the Steven A. Tananbaum senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. His expertise includes macroeconomics, global capital flows, financial vulnerability analysis, sovereign debt restructuring, and the management of financial crises. He regularly blogs at Follow the Money.

Andrew Small is a senior transatlantic fellow with GMF’s Asia Program, which he established in 2006. His research focuses on U.S.–China relations, Europe–China relations, Chinese policy in South Asia, and broader developments in China’s foreign and economic policy. He was based in GMF’s Brussels office for five years, and worked before that as the director of the Foreign Policy Centre’s Beijing office, as a visiting fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and an ESU scholar in the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy. His articles and papers have been published in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Quarterly, as well as many other journals, magazines, and newspapers. He is the author of the book The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics published with Hurst / Oxford University Press in 2015. Small was educated at Balliol College, University of Oxford.

Mr. Zhou Wenzhong, born in Jiangsu Province in August 1945, is a university graduate. He is currently the Vice President of the China-US People’s Friendship Association, as well as member of the Council of Advisors, Boao Forum for Asia.

As Senior Advisor to the President and the Provost on Global Initiatives, Dali helps to develop and implement the University’s global strategy and international initiatives in education, research, and collaboration in order to create and sustain international opportunities for faculty and students, with special focus on China and the rest of East Asia, and to advance the University’s global reach and reputation.

Dali is the William Claude Reavis Professor in the Department of Political Science and the College. Between 2010 and June 2016, he was the founding Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing, a university-wide initiative to promote collaboration and exchange. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Dali’s research is focused on the politics of China’s development and governance and their global implications. His current projects include studies of social regulation, environmental governance, social and political trust, and state-society relations. Among his books are Remaking the Chinese Leviathan:  Market Transition and the Politics of Governance in China (Stanford University Press, 2004); Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford University Press, 1996); and Beyond Beijing: Liberalization and the Regions in China (Routledge, 1997).

Dali received his Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University and joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1992. His service at the University of Chicago also include chairman of the Political Science Department and Director of the Center for East Asian Studies, and of the Committee on International Relations.

Mr. Wang is Executive Director of the Board of Directors and President of the Silk Road Fund. Previously, he held a number of positions including Deputy Director-General of the Anti-Money Laundering Bureau at the People’s Bank of China, Director-General of China’s Anti-Money Laundering Monitoring and Analysis Center, and Director-General of SAFE Co-Financing.

Mr. Wang holds a Master’s degree in International Economics from Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.

On July 1, 2006, Robert J. Zimmer became the 13th President of the University of Chicago.

Prior to his appointment as President, Zimmer was a University of Chicago faculty member and administrator for more than two decades specializing in the mathematical fields of geometry, particularly ergodic theory, Lie groups, and differential geometry. As a University of Chicago administrator, Zimmer served as Chairman of the Mathematics Department, Deputy Provost, and Vice President for Research and for Argonne National Laboratory. He also served as Provost at Brown University from 2002-2006, returning to Chicago in 2006 to become President of the University.

As President of the University, he serves as Chair of the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory; Chair of the Board of Directors of Fermi Research Alliance LLC, the operator of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory; and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Marine Biological Laboratory. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a member of the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, from 2011 to 2016 and also served on the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science from 2008 to 2010.

President Zimmer is the author of two books, Ergodic Theory and Semisimple Groups (1984) and Essential Results of Functional Analysis (1990), and more than 80 mathematical research articles. He served on the Board of Mathematical Sciences of the National Research Council from 1992 to 1995, and was on the executive committee from 1993 to 1995. Zimmer held the title of Max Mason Distinguished Service Professor of Mathematics at Chicago before leaving for Brown, where he was the Ford Foundation Professor of Mathematics in addition to being Provost.

He earned his A.B., summa cum laude, from Brandeis University in 1968 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1975, and joined the Chicago faculty as an L.E. Dickson Instructor of Mathematics in 1977. He was also on the faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy from 1975 to 1977 and has held visiting positions at Harvard University and at institutions in Israel, France, Australia, Switzerland, and Italy.

President Zimmer has honorary degrees from Tsinghua University and Colby College. In 2017 he was given the Philip Merrill Award for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). He is a frequent commentator on free expression and academic freedom.