WHERE AMBITION AND EXCLUSIVITY MEET
The Wall Street Journal CEO Council connects the world’s most ambitious and influential business leaders to discuss the issues shaping the future.
Our members lead companies that collectively employ more than 5 million people, generate $2 trillion + in annual revenue, represent 11 countries and a wide cross section of industries.
What began as a landmark meeting in Washington D.C. has grown to include a calendar of exclusive events across the USA, Europe and Asia, giving members a formative voice in the global agenda.
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2016 CEO Council annual meeting, Washington, D.C. | November 14-15
LAST YEAR'S U.S. ANNUAL MEETING:
SPEAKERS
Martin Neil Baily is the Bernard L. Schwartz Chair in Economic Policy Development and Senior Fellow and Director of the Business and Public Policy Initiative at Brookings. He is studying financial regulation, growth, and how to speed the recovery. He is a Senior Advisor to the McKinsey Global Institute and to the Albright Stonebridge Group. He is the co-chair of the Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative of the Bipartisan Policy Center. Dr. Baily served as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and was a member of the Cabinet, 1999-2001. Dr. Baily earned his Ph.D. in economics in 1972 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After teaching at MIT and Yale, he became a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in 1979 and a Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland in 1989. He is the author of many professional articles and books, testifies regularly to House and Senate committees and is often quoted in the press.
A results-driven manager, Secretary Burwell has led large and complex organizations across the public and private sectors. Most recently, she served as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Prior to serving in the Obama Administration, she was President of the Walmart Foundation, and President of the Global Development Program and Chief Operating Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. During the Clinton Administration, Secretary Burwell served as Deputy Director of OMB, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the Treasury and Staff Director of the National Economic Council. She has served on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, MetLife, and the University of Washington Medical Center, among other organizations. A second-generation Greek-American from Hinton, West Virginia, Secretary Burwell received an A.B. from Harvard University and a B.A. from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She and her husband Stephen live in Washington, D.C. with their two young children.
Arne Duncan is the ninth U.S. secretary of education. He has served in this post since his confirmation by the U.S. Senate on Jan. 20, 2009. Mr. Duncan’s tenure as secretary has been marked by a number of significant accomplishments on behalf of American students and teachers. He helped secure congressional support for investments in education, including the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s $100 billion to fund 325,000 teaching jobs, increases in Pell grants to increase the number of Americans attending college, reform efforts such as Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation, and interventions in low-performing schools. Previously, Mr. Duncan served as the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), a position he held from June 2001 through December 2008. Prior to joining CPS, from 1992 to 1998, Mr. Duncan ran the nonprofit education foundation Ariel Education Initiative, which helped fund a college education for a class of inner-city children under the I Have A Dream program. Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in sociology in 1987.
General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr. is the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, and the principal military advisor to the President, Secretary of Defense, and National Security Council. Prior to becoming Chairman on October 1, 2015, General Dunford served as the 36th Commandant of the Marine Corps. He previously served as the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps from 2010 to 2012 and was Commander, International Security Assistance Force and United States Forces-Afghanistan from February 2013 to August 2014. A native of Boston, Massachusetts, General Dunford graduated from Saint Michael’s College and was commissioned in 1977. A graduate of the U.S. Army Ranger School, Marine Corps Amphibious Warfare School, and the U.S. Army War College, General Dunford also earned master’s degrees in Government from Georgetown University and in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Jason Furman was confirmed by the Senate on August 1, 2013 as the 28th Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. In this role, he serves as President Obama’s Chief Economist and a Member of the Cabinet. Furman has served the President since the beginning of the Administration, previously holding the position of Principal Deputy Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President. Immediately prior to the Administration, Furman was Economic Policy Director for the President’s campaign in 2008 and a member of the Presidential Transition Team. Furman held a variety of posts in public policy and research before his work with President Obama. In public policy, Furman worked at both the Council of Economic Advisers and National Economic Council during the Clinton Administration and also at the World Bank. In research, Furman was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and also has served in visiting positions at various universities, including NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Policy. Furman has conducted research in a wide range of areas, such as fiscal policy, tax policy, health economics, Social Security, and domestic and international macroeconomics. In addition to numerous articles in scholarly journals and periodicals, Furman is the editor of two books on economic policy. Furman holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Peter Hart is regarded as one of the top analysts of public opinion in the United States. He has represented more than 55 U.S. senators and 40 governors. Additional focuses on public policy and cultural issues have included work for such clients as the Smithsonian Institution, Habitat for Humanity, UNICEF and the Gates Foundation.Hart Research has also conducted studies in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Over the course of the last decade, Mr. Hart has worked on spotting the new directions and trends in society, working with companies such as 3M and Citi Group. He has been on the election night coverage for either NBC or CBS since 1964. In 2002, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contribution to Campaign Consulting by the Campaign Management Institute at American University. For the past 30 years, he has been a Woodrow Wilson visiting fellow of The Council of Independent Colleges, and he has taught at Duke University, the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley. In the fall of 2013, he was a Shorenstein visiting fellow teaching at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Lou Holtz has established himself as one of the most successful college football coaches of all time taking six different teams to a bowl game, winning five bowl games with different teams and having four different college teams ranked in the final Top 20 poll. In his 11 seasons at Notre Dame, Holtz chalked up more victories than the number accumulated by Parseghian, Rockne or Leahy in their first 11 years on the job. In addition to Notre Dame, Holtz was head coach at North Carolina State, University of Minnesota, College of William and Mary, University of Arkansas, University of South Carolina. Since his departure from Notre Dame, Holtz has been an analyst on CBS Sports’ College Football Today, ESPN College GameDay and SportsCenter and currently hosts the SiriusXM College Football Tailgate Show and Holtz in One. He has authored three New York Times best-selling books. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in History from Kent State, a master’s degree from Iowa in Arts and Education and 14 honorary doctorate degrees. Holtz and his wife Beth are the parents of four children and currently reside in Orlando, Florida.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin has a distinguished record as an academic, policy adviser, and strategist. Currently he is the President of the American Action Forum and most recently was a Commissioner on the Congressionally-chartered Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Since 2001, he has served in a variety of important policy positions. He was the 6th Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 2003 to 2005. Following his tenure at CBO, Dr. Holtz-Eakin was the Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and the Paul A. Volcker Chair in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. During 2007 and 2008 he was Director of Domestic and Economic Policy for the John McCain presidential campaign.
Mr. Inglis currently serves as the current U. S. Naval Academy Robert and Mary M. Looker Distinguished Visiting Professor for Cyber Studies. He is also the current Chair of the US Strategic Command Intelligence Panel and a member of the Director of National Intelligence Strategic Advisory Group. He retired from the Department of Defense in January 2014 after 41 years of federal service, including 28 years at NSA, 3 years as the Senior US Liaison to London (SUSLOL), and seven and a half years as the NSA Deputy Director. Mr. Inglis holds advanced degrees in engineering and computer science from Columbia University, Johns Hopkins University, and the George Washington University. He is a graduate of the Kellogg Business School executive development program and the USAF Air War College. Mr. Inglis’ military career includes 30 years of service in the US Air Force and Air National Guard — from which he retired as a Brigadier General. He holds the rating of Command Pilot and commanded units at squadron, group, and joint force headquarters. Mr. Inglis’ significant Awards include the Clements award as the US Naval Academy’s Outstanding Military Faculty member, three Presidential Rank Awards, the USAF Distinguished Service Medal, the Boy Scouts of America Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, the Director of National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and The President’s National Security Medal.
Bill McInturff is a partner and co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, a national political and public affairs survey research firm. Since its founding in 1991, the firm has completed more than 7 million interviews with voters and consumers in all fifty states and over a dozen foreign countries, and conducted more than 3,500 focus groups. Called by The New York Times, “the leading Republican polling company,” Public Opinion Strategies currently represents 13 U.S. Senators, five governors, and over 68 Members of Congress. Bill, along with Hart Research Associates, conducts The NBC News/The Wall Street Journal Poll and polling on economic trends for CNBC.
Doris Meissner, former Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), is a Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), where she directs its U.S. immigration policy work. From 1993-2000, she served in the Clinton administration as Commissioner of the INS, then a bureau in the Justice Department. Her accomplishments included reforming the nation’s asylum system; creating new strategies for managing U.S. borders; improving naturalization and other services for immigrants; shaping new responses to migration and humanitarian emergencies; strengthening cooperation and joint initiatives with Mexico, Canada, and other countries; and managing growth that doubled the agency’s personnel and tripled its budget.She first joined the Justice Department in 1973 as a White House Fellow and Special Assistant to the Attorney General. She served in various senior policy posts until 1981, when she became Acting INS Commissioner and then Executive Associate Commissioner, the third-ranking post in the agency. In 1986, she joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a Senior Associate, where she created the Endowment’s Immigration Policy Project, which evolved into MPI in 2001.
Stephen Orlins has been president of the National Committee since 2005. He was previously the managing director of Carlyle Asia and the chairman of Taiwan Broadband Communications. Prior to joining Carlyle, Mr. Orlins was a senior advisor to AEA Investors Inc. From 1983 to 1991, Mr. Orlins was a managing director and president of Lehman Brothers Asia. Prior to joining Lehman Brothers, Mr. Orlins practiced law with Coudert Brothers and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in New York, Hong Kong and Beijing. From 1976 to 1979, Mr. Orlins served in the Office of the Legal Advisor of the United States Department of State, first in the Office of the Assistant Legal Advisor for Political-Military Affairs and then for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. While in that office, he was a member of the legal team that helped establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Orlins is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. He speaks Mandarin Chinese and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
DARPA’s director since 2012, Arati Prabhakar has spent her career investing in world-class engineers and scientists to create new technologies and businesses. She first came to DARPA in 1986 as a program manager and was the founding director of the Agency’s Microelectronics Technology Office. Arati served as director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology from 1993 to 1997. She then spent 15 years in Silicon Valley, including a decade as a partner at U.S. Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm. Arati is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow. She received her Ph.D. in applied physics and M.S. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology and her B.S. in electrical engineering from Texas Tech University.
Marco Rubio is passionate about restoring the American Dream because he has lived it himself. The son of Cuban immigrants, Marco served his home community of West Miami as a city commissioner before becoming a member of the Florida House of Representatives in 2000, and eventually Speaker of the House in 2007.
Three years later, in a remarkable come-from-behind victory, Marco was elected to the U.S. Senate on the promise of bringing optimistic conservative ideas to Washington. In the Senate, he has dedicated himself to leading a bold offensive to restore the American Dream through innovative 21st century conservative policy. He has proposed reforms to our nation’s anti-poverty efforts, tax code, regulatory policies, higher education system, vital safety net programs, and foreign policy.
All of Senator Rubio’s efforts are based on the belief that a smart limited government approach can bring the American Dream into reach of more people than ever before and usher in an American Century even greater than the last.
Matthew J. Slaughter is the Paul Danos Dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of Management, and the founding Faculty Director of the Center for Global Business and Government. He is also currently a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; an adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; a member of the advisory committee of the Export-Import Bank of the United States; a member of the academic advisory board of the International Tax Policy Forum; and an academic advisor to the McKinsey Global Institute. He received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Notre Dame in 1990, and his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994.
Neera Tanden is the President of the Center for American Progress. Tanden previously served on President Obama’s health reform team to develop and pass the Affordable Care Act. Prior to that, Tanden was the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden campaign, managing all domestic policy proposals. She had served as policy director for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, legislative director to Senator Clinton and associate director for domestic policy and senior advisor to the First Lady in the Clinton administration.
John Thune grew up in Murdo, South Dakota. He received his undergraduate degree from Biola University and his master’s degree from the University of South Dakota. In 1984, he married Kimberley Weems. In 1996, Senator Thunewon his first term in of the U.S. House of Representatives and was re-elected to a second term by the largest margin in South Dakota history. He returned again to Washington in 2001 to serve a third term in the House. He won his current U.S. Senate seat in 2004 and was re-elected to serve a second term in 2010. For the 114th Congress, SenatorThune serves on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee; the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee; and the Finance Committee. Senator Thune serves as chairman of the Commerce Committee and chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, the number three position in Senate Republican leadership. SenatorThuneand his wife live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They have two grown daughters. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family, pheasant hunting and running.
Mary Jo White was sworn in as the 31st Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission in April 2013.
She brings to the agency decades of experience as a federal prosecutor and securities lawyer. As the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1993 to 2002, she prosecuted complex securities and financial frauds and international terrorism cases. She is the only woman to hold that post.
After leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Chair White became the head of the litigation department at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York, where she led a team of more than 200 lawyers.
Chair White earned her undergraduate degree from William & Mary, her master’s degree in psychology from The New School for Social Research and her law degree from Columbia Law School.
She has served as a director of The NASDAQ Stock Exchange and on its executive, audit, and policy committees.
LAST YEAR'S U.S. ANNUAL MEETING
The 2015 annual meeting focused on the coming leadership change in Washington and how it would affect national and global concerns such as: security, the economic outlook, immigration, education, innovation and regulation. The members heard from top policy makers and experts in provocative interviews led by the Journal’s senior editors. And critically, they proposed their own solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing global enterprise today — an agenda for the next president.
