Ambassador (Ret.) Charles Ries is Vice President, International at the RAND Corporation, where he oversees RAND's international offices and strategy. At RAND from 2009, his research has focused on ways to promote economic growth and development in a variety of settings.

In the diplomatic service for three decades, Ambassador Ries spent 14 months at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad (2007–2008), where he was responsible for oversight and coordination of assistance and economic policy initiatives. He also served four years (2000-2004) as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, and was Ambassador to Greece (2004-2007).  

He led economic sections at U.S. Embassy London and the U.S. Mission to the European Union. Ambassador Ries was detailed to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and led a NAFTA negotiating group.

Ries is the first recipient of the State Department's Rockwell Schnabel Award for U.S.-EU Relations (2004) for his "imaginative, dedicated leadership of the U.S. European Relationship," as well as the Cordell Hull Award for Senior Economic Officers (2008). He is co-author of "The Costs of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," RAND (2015) and several other RAND studies. He is a member of the Academy of American Diplomacy.

Branko Milanovic is currently, presidential professor at the Graduate Center City University of New York and senior fellow at Luxembourg Income Study. He obtained his Ph. D. in economics at the University of Belgrade with a dissertation on income inequality in Yugoslavia. He was lead economist in World Bank Research Department for almost 20 years and senior associate at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington (2003-2005). 

Milanovic held teaching appointments at University of Maryland (2007-2013) and School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University (1997-2007). Milanovic’s main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally.

He has published a number of articles on methodology and empirics of global income distribution and effects of globalization (Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Political Philosophy etc.). His most recent book The Haves and the Have-nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, was published in 2011, translated in seven languages, and selected by The Globalist as 2011 Book of the Year

Charles W. Freeman III is a nonresident senior fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings. As an international principal at Forbes-Tate, he directs the firm’s global efforts. He advises companies, financial institutions, and associations on strategy, regulatory issues, and trade policy matters overseas, with particular attention to China and other Asian markets.

Freeman previously served as assistant U.S. trade representative for China affairs. In his role as the United States’ chief China trade negotiator, he helped to shape U.S. trade policy toward China, as well as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Mongolia. Freeman also oversaw U.S. efforts to integrate China into the World Trade Organization. Earlier in his government career, he served as legislative counsel for international affairs for Senator Frank Murkowski of Alaska.

After leaving government, Freeman has advised a wide array of firms and associations on Chinese and East Asian business and regulatory matters. He also served as vice president for global public policy and government affairs at PepsiCo Inc., and led the company’s government relations activities across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

In addition to his work in private practice, Freeman has held the chair in China studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has been a frequent commentator on U.S.-China relations and Chinese economic issues and has published extensively on Chinese trade and regulatory matters.

Freeman received his Juris Doctor from the Boston University School of Law and his bachelor’s in Asian studies with a concentration in economics from Tufts University. He studied Chinese economic policymaking at Fudan University in Shanghai and Mandarin Chinese at the Taipei Language Institute. He is a director of Harding Loevner Funds and the National Committee for U.S.-China Relations.

Martin Wolf is Associate Editor and Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 "for services to financial journalism". Wolf is an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford University, of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy (Oxonia) and of King’s College, London.

He is also an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham and a member of the Board of Governors of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel. He was a member of the UK government’s Independent Commission on Banking between June 2010 and September 2011.

In 2014, he was made a University Global Fellow of Columbia University, New York, and a Senior Fellow in Global Economic Policy at its School of International Public Affairs. He has been a forum fellow at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, since 1999 and is a member of its International Media Council.

His most recent publications are Why Globalization Works (Yale University Press, 2004), Fixing Global Finance (Washington D.C: Johns Hopkins University Press, and London: Yale University Press, 2008 and 2010) and The Shifts and The Shocks: What we’ve learned – and have still to learn – from the financial crisis (London and New York: Allen Lane, 2014). China Business News named Fixing Global Finance its "Financial Book of the Year" for 2009. Wolf was educated at Oxford University.

He was made a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Nottingham University in July 2006, a Doctor of Science (Economics) of London University, honoris causa, by the London School of Economics, in December 2006, a Doctor of Science, honoris causa, by Warwick University, in July 2009, a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Kingston University, in January 2010 and a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Macquarie University, in Australia, in 2012

Wolf was joint winner of the Wincott Foundation senior prize for excellence in financial journalism for 1989 and 1997. He won the RTZ David Watt memorial prize for 1994, granted annually "to a writer judged to have made an outstanding contribution in the English language towards the clarification of national, international and political issues and the promotion of their greater understanding".

He won the "Accenture Decade of Excellence" at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards of 2003. He won the Newspaper Feature of the Year Award at the Workworld Media Awards 2003. On 1st December 2005 he was given First Magazine’s "Special Advocacy Award" at its annual "Award for Responsible Capitalism".

In January 2008, Wolf won the AMEC Lifetime achievement Award at the Workworld Media Awards for 2007. He won the "Commentator of the Year" award at the Business Journalist of the Year Awards of 2008. He was also placed among the world’s 100 leading public policy intellectuals by the British magazine Prospect and the US magazine, Foreign Policy in May 2008. He was placed 15th in Foreign Policy’s list of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers" in December 2009, 37th in the same list for 2010 and 55th for 2011.

He won the "Ludwig-Erhard-Preis für Wirtschaftspublizistik" ("Ludwig Erhard Prize for economic commentary") from the Ludwig Erhard Stiftung (Foundation) for 2009. He won "Commentariat of the Year 2009" at the Comment Awards, sponsored by Editorial Intelligence. He won the Hans Mőller Medaille for 2009, awarded by the Münchner Volkswirte Alumni Club. He was joint winner of the 2009 award for columns in "giant newspapers" at the 15th annual Best in Business Journalism competition of The Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Wolf won the 33rd Ischia International Journalism Prize in 2012. He won the James Cameron Memorial Award for 2012. He was given a distinguished honorary fellowship by the European International Business Academy in 2012. He won the Overseas Press Club of America’s prize for "best commentary on international news in any medium" for 2013. He won "Journalist of the Year" at the Green Ribbon Political Awards 2014.

Stephen King is HSBC’s Senior Economic Adviser and a successful author. He is currently the top-ranked global economist in the annual Extel survey.

Stephen’s latest book, When the Money Runs Out, was published by Yale University Press in May 2013 and was later selected as a "book of the year" by the Financial Times, the Economist and the Times. His first book, Losing Control, was published by Yale in 2010. Widely praised, the book examines the impact of the emerging nations on western economic prosperity. Stephen is now writing a third book.

During his career, Stephen has written on wide variety of economic topics. Recent examples include "The World Economy’s Titanic Problem" (May 2015) - focusing on the absence of policy "lifeboats" for the global economy - and "Alas, Kapital" (June 2015) - focusing on the absence of investment in a world where interest rates are remarkably low.

In 2014, Stephen became a member of the Financial Times "Exchange" which, in the FT’s words, offers "agenda-setting commentary from leading policymakers, academics and writers around the world". He writes regularly for a number of leading newspapers worldwide and regularly appears on television and radio.

Stephen was a member of the UK Government’s Asia Task Force between 2010 and 2014. He has given written and oral evidence on the effects of globalisation and on monetary policy to the House of Commons Treasury Committee and the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. Between 2007 and 2009, he was a member of the European Central Bank Shadow Council.

Stephen’s career began at H.M.Treasury, where he was an economic adviser within the UK civil service. Stephen studied at New College, Oxford. 

Peter Beinart is Associate Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York. He is also a Contributor to The Atlantic and National Journal, a Senior Columnist at Haaretz, a CNN Political Commentator, and a Senior Fellow at The New America Foundation. 

His first book, The Good Fight, was published by HarperCollins in 2006. His second book, The Icarus Syndrome, was published by HarperCollins in 2010. His third, The Crisis of Zionism, was published by Times Books in 2012.

Beinart has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic, Newsweek, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Polity: the Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Studies Association.

The Week magazine named him columnist of the year for 2004. In 2005, he gave the Theodore H. White lecture at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He has appeared on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," "Charlie Rose," "Meet the Press," "The Colbert Report" and many other television programs. 

Beinart graduated from Yale University, winning a Rhodes scholarship for graduate study at Oxford University. After graduating from University College, Oxford, Beinart became The New Republic's managing editor in 1995. He became senior editor in 1997, and from 1999 to 2006 served as the magazine’s Editor.

Paul Blustein is an economic journalist and author. A resident of Kamakura, Japan, where he moved in 2010, he is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Non-Resident Fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution.

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Blustein attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, receiving an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He spent much of his career as a reporter for the Washington Post, including five years as a correspondent in Tokyo, and before that he worked at the Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine. Among the prizes he has won for his work is the Gerald Loeb Award, which recognizes distinguished business and economic journalism.

In his books Blustein has specialized in writing behind-the-scenes narratives about international economic institutions such as the IMF and the WTO. His first book, The Chastening, chronicled the financial crises that struck Asia and other emerging markets in the late 1990s; subsequent books have focused on other crises and the travails of global trade negotiations. He is currently working on a book about the crisis in the euro zone, focusing on the role played by the IMF. More information about his work can be found at www.paulblustein.com.

David Woo is the head of Global Rates and Currencies Research at BofA Merrill Lynch. Based in New York, David heads a team of 25 analysts between New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney who are responsible for the bank's forecasts for interest rates and exchange rates. David also serves as a member of the Research Executive Management Committee.

David is widely regarded as one of the leading macro investment strategists on Wall Street. He is frequently quoted in major financial press and appears regularly on Bloomberg TV and CNBC. In 2013 David was voted by the Business Insider as one of the twelve smartest people on Wall Street. 

David joins BofA Merrill Lynch from Barclays Capital, where he served as head of Global Foreign Exchange Strategy (2004-2010). Before joining Barclays, he spent four years at Citigroup as head of Local Markets Strategy for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (2000-2004). He began his career as an economist at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C (1996-2000). 

David has a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and a BA in mathematics from Tufts University.

Michael Singh is the managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank dedicated to advancing American interests in the Middle East. Singh was senior director for Near East and North African Affairs at the White House from 2007-2008, and director for several Middle Eastern countries, including Iran and Syria, on the NSC staff from 2005-2007. 

Earlier,  Singh served as special assistant to Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, as well as staff aide to the US ambassador to Israel. He co-chaired Gov. Mitt Romney’s State Department transition team in 2012, and served as a Middle East advisor to the Romney presidential campaign from 2011-2012.

Singh has served as an adjunct fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Security at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and as an economics instructor at Harvard College. His writings have appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, the Economist, International Security, and elsewhere, and he has appeared as a commentator on CNN, NBC, Fox News, and other outlets. 

Singh earned his bachelor’s degree in economics summa cum laude from Princeton University and an MBA with high distinction (Baker Scholar) from Harvard University.

Maurice Obstfeld was born in New York City in 1952. Since September 2015, he has been the Economic Counsellor and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund, on leave from the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he is the Class of 1958 Professor of Economics and formerly Chair of the Department of Economics (1998-2001).

Obstfeld arrived at Berkeley in 1991 as a professor, following permanent appointments at Columbia (1979-1986) and the University of Pennsylvania (1986-1989), and a visiting appointment at Harvard (1989-90). He received his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1979 after attending the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 1973) and King’s College, Cambridge University (M.A., 1975).

From July 2014 to August 2015, Prof. Obstfeld served as a Member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. He was previously (2002-2014) an honorary advisor to the Bank of Japan's Institute of Monetary and Economic Studies. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Prof. Obstfeld has served both on the Executive Committee and as Vice President of the American Economic Association. He has consulted and taught at the IMF and numerous central banks around the world.

Obstfeld is also the co-author of two leading textbooks on international economics, International Economics (10th edition, 2014, with Paul Krugman and Marc Melitz) and Foundations of International Macroeconomics (1996, with Kenneth Rogoff), as well as more than 100 research articles on exchange rates, international financial crises, global capital markets, and monetary policy.

Sven Smit is a Director in the Amsterdam office. He leads the development of knowledge for the firm's Strategy Practice. He also co-leads McKinsey's Growth Practice and works with many leading companies on developing strategies for growth. His experience includes analysis of the success factors required for growth; the impact of megatrends on business growth, and defining lessons learned from "diversified growth" building on the work in the book "Granularity of Growth" he co-authored.

Sven also works with the Center for Managing Uncertainty (CMU) and helps develop McKinsey’s perspective on the economy. By building and applying macro scenarios, he helps develop the firm’s point of view on core issues such as economic volatility, inflation and fluctuations in oil pricing and defines ways to help clients navigate this volatility.

In both the telecommunications and high tech industries, Sven has helped engineer the turnaround of multinational companies through organization and performance management initiatives; lean operational improvement; governance/organization and budgeting processes.

Christian joined Barclays in 2007 from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where he had been the Resident Representative in Turkey since 2005.

At Barclays Dr. Keller has a team that provides an ever constant analysis of Emerging Markets for both internal purposes and external clients. Today's globally integrated markets make it also critical to understand developments in the global context.

Prior to that, he was based at the IMF headquarters in Washington D.C., working on IMF programs with emerging market economies in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Moritz Kraemer, a German national, joined Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services in 2001. He is the global Chief Rating Officer of S&P’s Sovereign Ratings Group. Until August 2013 he was the Head of the Sovereign Ratings Team for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Prior to joining S&P Moritz was an Economist with the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC, working with governments in Latin America in the design and implementation of economic policy reforms (mainly fiscal reform and decentralization).

Mr. Kraemer holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Göttingen (Germany), where he was a researcher and lecturer at the Ibero-America Institute of Economic Research and the Faculty of Economics from 1992 through 1996.

As Director of the Interpol Digital Crime Centre in Singapore, Sanjay Virmani heads the operational arm of Interpol that is tasked with supporting cybercrime investigations in Interpol's 190 member countries.

Prior to joining Interpol, Virmani was a Supervisory Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in their San Francisco Field Office and has more than 12 years of experience as an investigator.

Virmani successfully investigated diverse types of cyber cases including computer intrusions, Distributed Denial of Service Attacks, Bot Networks, as well as specialized in counterterrorism related cyber operations. He worked on the FBI Computer Analysis and Response Team that provided critical assistance in the search and seizure of computer evidence as well as forensic examinations and technical support for FBI investigations.

Virmani has served as a Supervisory Special Agent at the National Counterterrorism Center, leading a team to combat terrorists' use of the Internet and leading liaison efforts with other agencies for the sharing of information and joint collaboration. Also, he was a Supervisory Special Agent on a cyber-terrorism squad in San Francisco handling Cyber terrorism investigations.

Caroline Freund is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Prior to that she was chief economist for the Middle East and North Africa at the World Bank. She has also worked in the research departments of the World Bank, the IMF and the Federal Reserve Board.

Freund works primarily on economic growth and international trade and also writes on economic issues in the Middle East and North Africa. She is the author of the forthcoming book "Rich People Poor Countries, about the rise of tycoons and big business in emerging markets".

Her work has appeared in academic journals, including American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, and she has contributed to many edited volumes.

She is on the scientific committees of CEPII (Institute for Research of the International Economy, Paris) and the Economic Research Forum (Cairo), and is a member of the US Export-Import Bank Advisory Committee and of the Center for Economic Policy Research. She received a Ph.D in economics from Columbia University.

Alan Cooperman is director of religion research at the Pew Research Center. He is an expert on religion’s role in U.S. politics and has reported on religion in Russia, the Middle East and Europe. He plays a central role in planning the project’s research agenda and writing its reports.

In 2013, he oversaw the Pew Research Center’s landmark survey of U.S. Jews. He also has edited and co-authored numerous other Pew Research studies, including Mormons in America, Muslim Americans, the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, "Nones" on the Rise, and The Future of World Religions.

Before joining the Pew Research Center, he was a national reporter and editor at the Washington Post, foreign editor of U.S. News & World Report, and a Moscow correspondent for the Associated Press. From 1996 to 1998, he was based in Jerusalem as the Middle East bureau chief for U.S. News & World Report. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1982.

Raj Sisodia is the founder and leader of the fast growing global Conscious Capitalism movement. He is the FW Olin Distinguished Professor of Global Business and Whole Foods Market Research Scholar in Conscious Capitalism at Babson College in Wellesley, MA. He is also Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Conscious Capitalism Inc.

Sisodia was previously Trustee Professor of Marketing, the Founding Director of the Center for Marketing Technology and Chairman of the Marketing Department at Bentley University. Earlier, he was Director of the Executive MBA program and Associate Professor of Marketing at George Mason University, and as Assistant Professor at Boston University. An electrical engineer from BITS, Pilani (India), Raj has an MBA in Marketing from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai, and a Ph.D. in Marketing & Business Policy from Columbia University, where he was the Booz Allen Hamilton Fellow.

Raj is the co-author (with John Mackey, co-founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market) of Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business  published by Harvard Business Review in 2013, and a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. His book Firms of Endearment: How World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose (with David Wolfe and Jagdish N. Sheth, Wharton School Publishing, 2007) has been translated into six languages and was named one of the best business books of 2007 by several organizations, including Amazon.com.

His book The Rule of Three: How Competition Shapes Markets (with Jagdish N. Sheth) was published by the Free Press in 2002, and was the subject of a seven-part television series by CNBC Asia. Other books include The 4As of Marketing: Creating Value for Customers, Companies and Society (2011) Tectonic Shift: The Geoeconomic Realignment of Globalizing Markets (2006), Does Marketing Need Reform? (2006). Raj is currently working on three books: Truly Human Leadership (forthcoming from Portfolio Publishing in 2015), Shakti Leadership (Berrett-Koehler, 2016) and The Journey to Conscious Capitalism (Harvard Business Review Publishing, 2016).

Dr. Sisodia was co-founder and Chairman of adAlive, Inc. (a VC-financed company in Waltham, MA) from March 2000 to June 2002. Raj serves on the Board of Directors of two public companies: The Container Store and Mastek Ltd., a provider of enterprise technology solutions for business transformation. 

Wu Chen is the Editorial Director of The Economist Global Business Review, based in Shanghai. Prior to that, he was the Head of Editorial (Asia Pacific), EuroFinance, The Economist Group. He has been the Editor of CFO China, also an Economist Group publication from 2005 to 2009. In his journalism career, he has worked for BusinessWeek in Hong Kong, Bloomberg News in Singapore, and the international news department of Xinhua (New China) News Agency in Beijing.

Wu has a wide range of research interests. He follows closely the latest development in regulatory changes in China, RMB internationalization trends, best practices in innovation, and opportunities and challenges in China’s new urbanization, just to name a few.

Wu has chaired numerous events and is an experienced moderator of high-level panel discussions. He’s the chairperson of The Economist Group’s flagship events such as EuroFinance International Conference in Shanghai. He has also chaired The Bellweather conference of the Economist.

Wu holds the Master of Pacific International Affairs degree from School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS), University of California, San Diego and the Master of Journalism from E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. He earned his B.A. from Beijing Foreign Studies University.

As an illustration of journalistic achievement, Wu’s story on the problems involved in the process of manufacturing sector transformation in July 2008 won the Society of Asia Publishers Excellence Awards for Business Reporting (2009).

Elliott Gotkine is Bloomberg Television’s Middle East Editor. Based in Tel Aviv, he is the only international broadcaster in Israel focusing on company news, the economy, and technology.

Since joining Bloomberg in 2007, Elliott has reported on major international events including the Greek crisis, the Irish bailout, and last year's war in Gaza.

He's interviewed business and political leaders, including Alexis Tsipras, Patrick Drahi, Sheldon Adelson, and Shimon Peres. In 2008, he was nominated for a Business Journalist of the Year Award.

Before joining Bloomberg, he spent six years at the BBC, where he served as a business reporter and South America correspondent. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Geography from the University of Nottingham, and speaks fluent French and Spanish, and a smattering of Italian. He's working on his Hebrew.

Stan Phelps is a leading expert on experiential marketing. Phelps is the founder and Chief Measurement Officer of 9 INCH marketing, a North Carolina based consultancy that works with senior leaders to win customers that are four times as valuable as ordinary customers. Building programs designed to win the hearts of employees and customers.

Phelps has more than 20 years of marketing leadership experience with brands such as adidas and PGA Worldwide Golf Exhibitions. Prior to founding 9 INCH, he spent 7 years as Chief Solutions Officer with the award-winning agency Synergy, creating programs for brands such as KFC, M&M’s, Pampers, Starbucks and Walmart. He has a Certificate in Achieving Breakthrough Strategy from Harvard Business School and a JD/MBA from Villanova University.