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.
The landmark annual 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.
2016 U.S. ANNUAL MEETING
WASHINGTON, D.C. | NOVEMBER 14-15, 2016
2017 ASIA ANNUAL MEETING
TOKYO | MAY 16, 2017
PAST ANNUAL MEETING SPEAKERS
Jeb Bush was the 43rd governor of the state of Florida from 1999 through 2007. Under his leadership, Florida was on the forefront of consumer healthcare advances, led the nation in job growth, andaccelerated Everglades’ restoration. In education, Florida raised academic standards, required accountability in public schools and created the most ambitious school choice program in thenation. As a result, Florida students have made great academicgains and Florida is among a handful of states to significantly narrow the achievement gap. Bush maintains his passion for improving education quality by serving as the chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which works with states to develop and implement reforms that lead to rising student achievement. In 2013, he co-authored Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution with Clint Bolick. Rooted in the fundamental thought that immigration is vital to America’s future, Bush and Bolick constructed an enduring solution that remains true to the rule of law and our immigrant heritage. Bush is currently President of the Miami-based consulting firm Jeb Bush and Associates.
Ashton B. Carter is the 25th Secretary of Defense. Secretary Carter has spent more than three decades leveraging his knowledge of science and technology, global strategy and policy as well as his deep dedication to the men and women of the Department of Defense. He has done so in direct and indirect service of eleven secretaries of defense in both Democratic and Republican Administrations. Secretary Carter earned his bachelor’s degrees in physics and in medieval history, summa cum laude, at Yale University, where he was also awarded Phi Beta Kappa; and he received his doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He was a physics instructor at Oxford, a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University and M.I.T., and an experimental research associate at Brookhaven and Fermilab National Laboratories. He is author or co-author of 11 books and more than 100 articles on physics, technology, national security, and management. A native of Philadelphia, he is married to Stephanie Carter and has two grown children.
Chris Christie was sworn in as New Jersey’s 55th Governor on January 19, 2010 and won re-election for a second term on November 5, 2013. Under Governor Christie, New Jersey has drawn national attention for taking on the biggest, toughest challenges facing the state with real solutions and bipartisan cooperation. Since taking office, Governor Christie has acted on an aggressive reform agenda to combat property taxes, reform the state’s pension and health benefits system and give every child access to a quality education. Before serving as Governor, Christie was named U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey in 2002. While each of his cases made a difference for New Jersey, he earned widespread praise for standing up to the dirty practices of the political elite and made clear that stealing from New Jersey taxpayers or abusing power would not be tolerated. Governor Christie graduated from the University of Delaware and holds a law degree from Seton Hall University School of Law. He and his wife, Mary Pat, have four children: Andrew, Sarah, Patrick and Bridget.
Angus Deaton is Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University where he has taught for thirty years. He is the author of five books including, most recently, The Great Escape: health, wealth, and the origins of inequality. His interests include health, development, poverty, inequality, and wellbeing. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was President of the American Economic Association in 2009. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and of the National Academy of Sciences. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Rome, London, St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Cyprus. In 2012, he won the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in recognition of his life’s work. In 2015, he was the recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel “for his analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.”
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.
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.
Jim Yong Kim, M.D., Ph.D., became the 12th President of the World Bank Group on July 1, 2012. A physician and anthropologist, Dr. Kim has dedicated himself to international development for more than two decades, helping to improve the lives of under-served populations worldwide. Dr. Kim came to the Bank after serving as President of Dartmouth College, a pre-eminent center of higher education that consistently ranks among the top academic institutions in the United States. Dr. Kim is a co-founder of Partners In Health (PIH) and a former director of the HIV/AIDS Department at the World Health Organization (WHO). As President of Dartmouth – an institution that comprises a liberal arts college, graduate programs in the arts and sciences, and renowned professional schools of medicine, engineering and business – Dr. Kim earned praise for reducing a financial deficit without cutting any academic programs. Dr. Kim also founded the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, a multidisciplinary institute dedicated to developing new models of health care delivery and achieving better health outcomes at lower costs. Before assuming the Dartmouth presidency, Dr. Kim held professorships and chaired departments at Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. He also served as director of Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. In 1987, Dr. Kim co-founded Partners In Health, a Boston-based non-profit organization now working in poor communities on four continents. Challenging previous conventional wisdom that drug-resistant tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS could not be treated in developing countries, PIH successfully tackled these diseases by integrating large-scale treatment programs into community-based primary care. As Director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS Department, Dr. Kim led the ‘3 by 5’ initiative, the first-ever global goal for AIDS treatment, which sought to treat 3 million new HIV/AIDS patients in developing countries with antiretroviral drugs by 2005. Launched in September 2003, the ambitious program ultimately reached its goal by 2007. Dr. Kim’s work has earned him wide recognition. He was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship (2003), was named one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report (2005), and was selected as one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” (2006). Born in 1959 in Seoul, South Korea, Dr. Kim moved with his family to the United States at the age of six and grew up in Muscatine, Iowa. Dr. Kim graduated with an A.B. magna cum laude from Brown University in 1982. He earned an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1991 and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University in 1993. He is married to Dr. Younsook Lim, a pediatrician. The couple has two young sons.
Born in Paris in 1956, Christine Lagarde completed high school in Le Havre and attended Holton Arms School in Bethesda, MD. She then graduated from law school at University Paris X, and obtained a Master’s degree from the Political Science Institute in Aix en Provence. After being admitted as a lawyer to the Paris Bar, Christine Lagarde joined the international law firm of Baker & McKenzie as an associate. In 1999, she became the Chairman of the Global Executive Committee of Baker & McKenzie, and subsequently Chairman of the Global Strategic Committee in 2004. She joined the French government in 2005 as Minister for Foreign Trade. In 2007, after a brief stint as Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, she became the first woman to hold the post of Finance and Economy Minister of a G-7 country. In July 2011, Christine Lagarde became the eleventh Managing Director of the IMF, and the first woman to hold that position. A former member of the French national synchronized swimming team, Christine Lagarde is the mother of two sons.
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.
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.
