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INTELLECTUAL JAZZ
DAVID AGUS
DAN ARIELY
KEITH BLACK
DAVID BLAINE
MIKE BLOCK
ADAM B LY
SCOTT BOLTON
DAVID BROOKS
MARK CUBAN
ANTONIO DAMASIO
JACK DANGERMOND
DAVE GALLO
FRANK GEHRY
MATT GROENING
HERBIE HANCOCK
DANNY HILLIS
BJARKE INGELS
QUINCY JONES
MARY JORDAN
JON KAMEN
JEFFREY KATZENBERG
NORMAN LEAR
YO-YO MA
JOHN MAEDA
JOHN MAZZIOTTA
NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE
TODD OLDHAM
CRISTINA PATO
STEVEN PINKER
LISA RANDALL
PETER RAVEN
MOSHE SAFDIE
MEGAN SMITH
BENEDIKT TASCHEN
JULIE TAYMOR
CHARITY TILLEMANN DICK
CRAIG VENTER
GEOFFREY WEST
will.i.am
C. K. WILLIAMS
EO WILSON
DAMIAN WOETZEL
STEPHEN WOLFRAM
WILL WRIGHT
JOSHUA WURMAN
RICHARD SAUL WURMAN
SCHEDULE
TUES18SEPT
Mission Inn Hotel and Spa
3649 Mission Inn Avenue
Riverside, CA 92501
Tel: 951.784.0300
www.missioninn.com
5:00PM OPENING in the St. Francis of Assisi Chapel at The Mission Inn
RICHARD SAUL WURMAN
YO-YO MA and will.i.am
C. K. WILLIAMS AND STEVEN PINKER
7:20PM WINE and hors d’oeuvres in the Atrio adjacent to the Chapel
8:30PM DINNER in the Galleria at The Mission Inn
WED19SEPT
Esri
380 New York Street
Redlands, CA 92373
Tel. 909.793.2853
www.esri.com
7:00AM Transport from the Mission Inn to Esri Conference Center
7:15AM Coffee, Juice / Esri Conference Center
8:00AM promptly
JEFFREY KATZENBERG and NORMAN LEAR
DAVID AGUS and ANTONIO DAMASIO
HERBIE HANCOCK and will.i.am
10:15AM BREAK—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
11:15AM
E.O. WILSON and CRAIG VENTER
KEITH BLACK and DAVID AGUS
YO-YO MA and MIKE BLOCK
1:15PM LUNCH—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
2:45PM
DANNY HILLIS and STEPHEN WOLFRAM
DAVID BLAINE and JULIE TAYMOR
MATT GROENING and DAVID BROOKS
4:45PM BREAK—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
5:15PM Chinese Telepresence / Esri Executive Briefing Room
6:00PM
YO-YO MA and DAVID BROOKS
MARK CUBAN and DAN ARIELY
QUINCY JONES and DAMIAN WOETZEL
8:00PM Transport to The Mission Inn
8:45PM DINNER in the Galleria at The Mission Inn
THURS20SEPT
Esri
380 New York Street
Redlands, CA 92373
Tel. 909.793.2853
www.esri.com
7:00AM Transport from the Mission Inn to Esri Conference Center
7:15AM Coffee, Juice / Esri Conference Center
8:00AM promptly
CHARITY TILLEMANN DICK
PETER RAVEN and JACK DANGERMOND
MEGAN SMITH and NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE
FRANK GEHRY and JOHN MAZZIOTTA
10:15AM BREAK—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
11:00AM
BENEDIKT TASCHEN and JON KAMEN
MARY JORDAN and MOSHE SAFDIE
JOSHUA WURMAN and DAVE GALLO
1:00PM LUNCH—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
2:15PM
JOHN MAEDA and ADAM B LY
TODD OLDHAM and BJARKE INGELS
4:00PM BREAK—Esri Café, adjacent to the Conference Center
4:30PM Chinese Telepresence / Esri Executive Briefing Room
5:00PM
LISA RANDALL and SCOTT BOLTON
CRISTINA PATO
EO WILSON and WILL WRIGHT
6:15PM GEOFFREY WEST and RICHARD SAUL WURMAN
7:15PM Transport to The Mission Inn
8:30PM FAREWELL DINNER in the Spanish Art Gallery at The Mission Inn
DAVID AGUS
David Agus (born January 29, 1965) is an American physician
and a co-founder of Navigenics, a personal genetic testing
company, and Oncology.com, the largest online cancer
resource and virtual community and Applied Proteomics.
He is a Professor of Medicine and Engineering
at the University of Southern California.
He graduated cum laude in molecular biology from
Princeton University and received his medical degree from
the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1991.
Agus completed his residency training at Johns Hopkins
Hospital and completed his oncology fellowship training at
the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
He spent two years at the National Institutes of Health as a
Howard Hughes Medical Institute-NIH Research Scholar.
Agus has had a long and varied career. At the
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York,
he was an attending physician in the Department
of Medical Oncology and head of the Laboratory of
Tumor Biology. He was also Assistant Professor of
Medicine at Cornell University Medical Center.
As director of the Spielberg Family Center for Applied
Proteomics at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles,
he led a multidisciplinary team of researchers dedicated
to the development and use of proteomic technologies to
guide doctors in making health-care decisions tailored to
individual needs. The center grew out of earlier clinical
projects at Cedars-Sinai, where Agus served as an attending
physician in oncology, which showed striking differences
between the aggressiveness of prostate cancer in certain
patients and their ability to respond to treatment.
Agus also served as Director of the Louis Warschaw
Prostate Cancer Center, and as an attending physician in the
Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology at
Cedars-Sinai. He was also an Associate Professor of Medicine
at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
He currently is a Professor of Medicine and
Engineering at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the
Viterbi School of Engineering and is the Director of the USC
Center for Applied Molecular Medicine and the USC Westside
Norris Cancer Center. Agus is co-Director of the newly funded
USC-NCI Physical Sciences in Oncology Center together
with Danny Hillis. Dr. Agus is an international leader in new
technologies and approaches for personalized healthcare,
chairs the Global Agenda Council (GAC) on Genetics for the
World Economic Forum, and speaks regularly at TEDMED,
the Aspen Ideas Festival and the World Economic Forum.
Agus has received many honors and awards,
including the American Cancer Society Physician Research
Award, a Clinical Scholar Award from the Sloan-Kettering
Institute, a CaP CURE Young Investigator Award and the
American Cancer Society Clinical Oncology Fellowship
Award, the HealthNetwork Foundation’s Excellence Award,
and the 2009 Geoffrey Beene Foundation’s Rock Stars of
Science™, as seen in GQ. In 2009, he was selected to serve
as a judge for the first Biotech Humanitarian Award.
Agus’s research has focused on the application
of proteomics and genomics for the study of cancer
and the development of new medications for cancer.
He has published many scientific articles.
He is a member of several scientific and
medical societies, including the American Association
for the Advancement of Science, American Association
for Cancer Research, American College of Physicians,
American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Society
of Hematology and the American Medical Association.
Agus was recently named one of the
“Future Health 100” by HealthSpottr.
The End of Illness is Agus’s first book, was published
January, 2012 by the Free Press Division of Simon and
Schuster and is a New York Times #1 Bestseller.
Agus is married to Amy Joyce Povich, actress and
daughter of syndicated television talk show host Maury
Povich. Her stepmother, Connie Chung, is a former CBS News
anchor. Agus’ grandfather, the late Rabbi Jacob B. Agus, was a
theologian and the author of several books on Jewish history
and philosophy. Agus has two children, Sydney and Miles.
Agus has one film credit to his name, appearing as
“David Agus” in the 2006 documentary “Who Needs Sleep?”
DAN ARIELY
Dan Ariely (born April 29, 1968) is an Israeli American
professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He
teaches at Duke University and is the founder of The
Center for Advanced Hindsight. Ariely’s talks on TED
have been watched 2.8 million times. He is the author
of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality,
both of which became New York Times best sellers.
Dan Ariely was born in New York City while
his father was studying for an MBA degree at Columbia
University. The family returned to Israel when he was
three. He grew up in Ramat Hasharon. In his senior year of
high school, he was active in Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed,
an Israeli youth movement. While preparing a ktovet esh
(fire inscription) for a traditional nighttime ceremony, the
flammable materials he was mixing exploded, causing
third-degree burns over 70 percent of his body.
Ariely is married to Sumi, with whom
he has two children, a son and a daughter.
Ariely was a physics and mathematics major
at Tel Aviv University, but transferred to philosophy
and psychology. However, in his last year he dropped
philosophy and concentrated solely on psychology, in
which he received his B.A. He also holds an M.A. and a
Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed a second doctorate
in business administration at Duke University at the urging
of Nobel economic sciences laureate Daniel Kahneman.
After obtaining his Ph.D. degree, he taught at MIT
between 1998 and 2008, before returning to Duke University
as James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral
Economics. He was formerly the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of
Behavioral Economics at MIT Sloan School of Management.
Although he is a professor of marketing with no formal training
in economics, he is considered one of the leading behavioral
economists. Ariely is the author of the books Predictably
Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions and The
Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic
at Work and at Home. When asked whether reading Predictably
Irrational and understanding one’s irrational behaviors could
make a person’s life worse (such as by defeating the benefits of
a placebo), Ariely responded that there could be a short-term
cost, but that there would also likely be long-term benefits,
and that reading his book would not make a person worse off.
Ariely’s laboratory, the Center of Advanced
Hindsight at Duke University, pursues research in
subjects like the psychology of money, decision making
by physicians and patients, cheating, and social justice.
KEITH BLACK
Keith L. Black (born September 13, 1957) is an American
neurosurgeon specialising in the treatment of brain tumors
and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment.
He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and
director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
Keith Black was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. His
mother, Lillian, was a teacher and his father, Robert, was the
principal at a racially segregated elementary school in Auburn,
Alabama; prohibited by law to integrate the student body,
Black’s father instead integrated the faculty, raised standards,
and brought more challenging subjects to the school. Later in
his childhood, Black’s parents found new jobs and relocated
the family to Shaker Heights, Ohio. Black attended Shaker
Heights High School. Already interested in medicine, Black
was admitted to an apprenticeship program for minority
students at Case Western Reserve University, and then became
a teenaged lab assistant for Frederick Cross and Richard
Jones (inventors of the Cross-Jones artificial heart valve) at
St. Luke’s Hospital in Cleveland. At 17, he won an award in a
national science competition for research on the damage done
to red blood cells in patients with heart-valve replacements.
According to Black: “I was working in the lab of a heart surgeon
who had developed his own artificial heart valve, and I had a
concept that the heart valve might be damaging red blood cells,
so I asked to do a research project using a scanning electron
microscope at the time. When I was trying to basically learn
the technique, I took some blood from the heart-lung bypass
machine from patients undergoing heart-lung bypass, and
when I incubated the red blood cells overnight, I noticed that
a certain percentage of these cells change from their normal
discoid shape to one that resembled a porcupine, called an
econocyte. What I did was to describe the discocyte-econocyte
transformation in patients undergoing heart-lung bypass, as
an index of sub-lethal red blood cell damage. The importance
being that the blood cells could not parachute through the
small capillaries.” He attended the University of Michigan in
a program that allowed him to earn both his undergraduate
degree and his medical degree in 6 years. He received his M.D.
degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1981.
After serving his internship and residency at the
University of Michigan, in 1987 he moved to the UCLA
Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he later became head
of UCLA’s Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program. In 1997,
after 10 years at UCLA, he moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center to head the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute.
He was also on the faculty of the University of California,
Irvine School of Medicine from 1998 to 2003. In 2007 he
opened the new Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Brain Tumor Center
at Cedars-Sinai, a research center named after the famous
lawyer who had been Black’s patient and supporter.
Black has been a frequent subject of media reports
on medical advances in neurosurgery. He was featured
in a 1996 episode of the PBS program The New Explorers
entitled “Outsmarting the Brain”. Esquire included him in
its November 1999 “Genius Issue” as one of the “21 Most
Important People of the 21st Century.” He has been cited as
an expert in reports about whether mobile phone use affects
the incidence of brain tumors. He is also noted for his very
busy surgery schedule: a 2004 Discover article noted that he
performs about 250 brain surgeries per year, and that at age 46
he had “already performed more than 4,000 brain surgeries,
the medical equivalent of closing in on baseball’s all-time
career hits record.” (As of 2009, Black’s surgery count had risen
to “more than 5,000 operations for resection of brain tumors”.)
In 1997, Time magazine featured Black on the
cover of a special edition called “Heroes of Medicine”. The
accompanying article described Black’s reputation as a
surgeon who would operate on tumors that other doctors
would not, as well as aspects of his medical research,
including his discovery that the peptide bradykinin can
be effective in opening the blood–brain barrier.
In 2009 Black published his autobiography, coauthored
with Arnold Mann, entitled Brain Surgeon. New
York Times reviewer Abigail Zuger described the book as a
“fascinating, if somewhat stilted, memoir”. The Publishers
Weekly review commented that the book “examines
racial hurdles he had to leap to become a neurosurgeon”
and “alternat[es] incisive writing about incisions with
his personal memoir, insightful and inspirational.”
DAVID BLAINE
For more than a decade, David Blaine has been attracting
the world’s attention with his high-profile endurance stunts.
Starting his career as a magician who appeared to do the
impossible with a deck of cards, he was soon following in the
footsteps of Houdini—seeking out that which seems physically
impossible and actually doing it. To that end, he’s been buried
alive in New York City for a week, barely survived being
encased inside a six-ton block of ice for three days and three
nights, stood atop a 100-foot-tall pillar in Bryant Park for 36
hours without a safety net, survived inside a transparent box in
London on nothing but water for 44 days, and spent one week
submerged in a sphere-shaped aquarium at Lincoln Center, at
the end of which he attempted to break the world record for
breath holding. A year later, he succeeded live on the Oprah
Winfrey show, holding his breath for 17 minutes and 4 seconds.
Born in Brooklyn, Blaine discovered his passion for
magic at the age of four when he saw a magician perform
in the subway. His mother encouraged his passion and he
began performing professionally at private parties by the age
of thirteen. By the age of twenty-three, Blaine had created,
directed, and produced an original television program titled
Street Magic, which garnered rave reviews by critics and
revolutionized the way magic is portrayed on television.
Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller called Street Magic “the best
TV magic special ever done” and “the biggest breakthrough
in our lifetime.” The New York Times noted that David has
“taken a craft that’s been around for hundreds of years
and done something unique and fresh with it.” The New
Yorker claimed that “he saved magic.” Since then, Blaine
has produced nine additional primetime specials.
Blaine has performed magic privately for U.S.
Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Mayor
Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, and Muhammad Ali, as
well as President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia and other
international leaders. He also performed alongside Michael
Jackson, and during the Super Bowl halftime show.
In 2010, Blaine performed magic for 72 hours
straight in Times Square, raising nearly $100,000 for
relief efforts following the earthquake in Haiti.
Blaine resides in New York City with his
fiancée, Alizee Guinochet. The couple welcomed a
magical daughter into the world on January 27, 2011.
MICHAEL GLEN BLOCK
Michael Glen Block (born May 25, 1982) is an American
cellist, composer, arranger, and solo artist hailed as “the
ideal musician of the twenty-first century” by cultural icon
Yo-Yo Ma. Mike Block has worked with Yo-Yo Ma, Bobby
McFerrin, Lenny Kravitz, Shakira, The National, Joe Zawinul,
Alison Krauss, Rachel Barton Pine, Mark O’Connor, and
other notable musicians. Block currently plays with the
Silk Road Ensemble. He has appeared on Late Night with
Conan O’Brian, National Public Radio’s St. Paul Sunday,
Regis and Kelly, VH1, the Disney Channel, WNBC-TV
with Chuck Scarborough, and the CBS Early Show.
Block is most famous for playing second cello
alongside Yo-Yo Ma. He performed in Mark O’Connor’s
Appalachia Waltz trio for three years. His performances
have been described as “vital, rich-hued solo playing”
by the New York Times, and “a true artist ... a sight
to behold” by the Salt Lake City Desert News.
Mike Block’s Cello Concerto,
Movement 1 was completed in 2009.
Mr. Block’s classical compositions have
been performed at the Bremen MusikFest, Tribeca
New Music Festival, the Kimmel Center series “Fresh
Ink,” and the MATA Festival, at which he performed
as soloist in his own Cello Concerto in 2009.
His non-classical writing has been
featured at festivals such as Rockygrass, Delfest,
Celtic Connections, and Wintergrass.
Mike Block has served as musical director to
cellist Yo-Yo Ma, singer Bobby McFerrin, ballet star Damien
Woetzel, jookin dancer Lil’ Buck, actor/comedian Bill Irwin,
jazz trumpeter Marcus Printup, world-music group The Silk
Road Ensemble, and classical orchestra The Knights.
A frequent guest lecturer, Mr. Block has presented
at Stanford University, Princeton University, Harvard
University, New York University, Berklee College of Music,
Cleveland Institute of Music, Belmont University, Southern
Methodist University, Sam Houston State University,
Illinois State University, Illinois Wesleyan University, and
University of Arkansas. In 2006, he received Suzuki method
certification in music education from the New York Citybased
School for Strings, under Pamela Devenport.
In 2009 Mike founded The Mike Block String
Camp, which takes place in multiple locations each summer.
The camp’s goal is to empower musicians of all ages/
levels to perform, improvise, compose, and arrange their
own music - all by ear. The first location debuted in 2010
in Vero Beach, Florida, followed in 2011 with Fayetteville,
Arkansas, and Saline, Michigan in 2012. The world-class
faculty has included Darol Anger, Hanneke Cassel, Joe
Craven, Rushad Eggleston, Brittany Haas, Natalie Haas,
Jeremy Kittel, Clay Ross, Kimber Ludiker, Jefferson
Hamer, Victor Lin, Emy Phelps, and Lauren Rioux.
Since 2009, Mike has been the Lead Teaching Artist
for Silk Road Connect, a partnership between the Silk Road
Project and schools in New York City and Boston areas.
The Mike Block Band presents an exciting
and genre-bending combination of rock, classical,
jazz, and folk music through original songs and
instrumental compositions, featuring quirky yet
honest lyrics, and a variety of musical influences.
Mike Block has also worked with notable musicians
such as Edgar Meyer, Mike Marshall, Zakir Hussain, My
Brightest Diamond, Bon Iver, Tim O’Brien, Marcel Khaliffe,
Goran Bregovic, Kayhan Kalhor and Bruce Molsky.
Triborough Trio—Featuring Mike Block
(cello), Hans Holzen (guitar), and Kyle Kegerreis
(bass), the trio’s mission is to put their personal spin on
traditional and contemporary music from around the
world in well-crafted and creative arrangements.
Mike is also the Artistic Director and host
of GALA Brooklyn: “Global Art - Local Art:”, a Music
Festival in Brooklyn featuring a diverse array of
musicians and artists in unique collaborations.
Notable guests include Anthony Mcgill (Metropolitan
Opera), Aoife O’Donovan (singer for Crooked Still), Aaron
Dugan (guitarist for Matisyahu), Multi-genre violinist/
composer Todd Reynolds, Grammy-Nominated classical artists
Anastasia Khitruk (violin), and the Enso Quartet, Marcus
Printup from Jazz at Lincoln Center, and jazz saxophonist
Seamus Blake, and singer-songwriter Amy Correia.
Performed on WNYC’s
Soundcheck with John Schaefer.
Mike has also worked with director Yaron Zilberman
as a Music Consultant for “A Late Quartet”, a 2011 movie
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken.
On April 4, 2009, Mike Block was struck by
a NYC Taxi while walking at the corner of W85th St.
and West End Ave, in Manhattan. Injuries included
broken rib, jaw, cheek, nose, and he lost nine teeth. His
reconstruction required multiple surgeries, and his missing
teeth were eventually restored on February 15, 2012.
ADAM B LY
Adam Bly (born 1981 in Montreal, Canada) is founder
and CEO of Seed. He is the editor of “Science is Culture:
Conversations at the New Intersection of Science +
Society” (published by HarperCollins) and the creator
of the data visualization platform Visualizing.org.
He began his career at the age of 16 as the youngest
researcher at the National Research Council of Canada, where
he spent three years studying the biochemistry of cancer,
specifically the role of cell adhesion in metastasis. Out of the
lab, he founded Seed—tag-lined “Science is Culture™”—and
served as its Editor-in-Chief. “The best comparison for Seed,”
wrote a media critic at the time of the magazine’s launch in
2001, “is the early years of Rolling Stone, when music was less a
subject than a lens for viewing culture.” Under his leadership,
the magazine earned critical acclaim for modernizing
scientific publishing and for bridging long-standing divides
between science and society—from art and design to politics
and religion. Together with Paola Antonelli he co-founded a
monthly gathering of scientists, architects, and designers
that laid the foundation for Design and the Elastic Mind,
an exhibition about science and design at The Museum
of Modern Art.
In 2007, Bly was named a Young Global Leader
by the World Economic Forum. He is a recipient of the
Golden Jubilee Medal from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
and his achievements have been highlighted by Canadian
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, “for showing people the
scope and power of science not just as an object of study
but as a key to understanding the world around us.”
Bly has lectured around the world on the future of
science and its role in society, including at the World Economic
Forum, the National Academies of Science, the Royal Society,
the National Institutes of Health, the State Department,
NASA, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, The
Museum of Modern Art, and The Academy of Sciences for the
Developing World, before the National Science Board and the
U.S. House of Representatives, and at universities including
Harvard, MIT, and Beijing. He has served on the nominating
committees and juries of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge,
the Earth Award, and the TED Prize, and sits on the Science
Advisory Committee of the World Economic Forum, the
External Advisory Board of the University of Michigan’s Risk
Science Center, the American Committee of the Weizmann
Institute of Science, the Communications Advisory Board
of the National Academy of Sciences, and as an advisor to
OECD’s Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies.
Bly was recently named Vice Chair of the World
Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Design
Innovation and Partner to the Executive Coordination
Office for the Rio+20 United Nations Conference
on Sustainable Development.
SCOTT BOLTON
Dr. Scott Bolton is the Director of the Space Sciences
Department at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San
Antonio, Texas. Dr. Bolton is also the Principal Investigator
for the Juno project, a project within NASA’s New Frontiers
Program. Prior to being Director at SwRI, Dr. Bolton was a
senior scientist and manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) for over 25 years. During his tenure as Director of Space
Science at SwRI, Dr. Bolton oversaw the launches of New
Horizons and IBEX, the selection of Juno, the confirmation
of MMS, and the delivery of hardware for a number of non-
NASA programs related to national security. As director of
SwRI’s Space Science Department, Dr. Bolton is responsible
for the approximately 150 engineers and scientists working on
over a dozen programs including new proposals, instrument
development, mission operations and scientific data analysis.
As Principal Investigator of Juno, Dr. Bolton is
responsible for all aspects of the Juno program including
project management by JPL, spacecraft development
at Lockheed Martin, all science instruments, launch
vehicle development and operation, and the resulting
scientific analysis throughout the life of the project. Dr.
Bolton has more than 30 years experience in the field of
aerospace and space science. Dr. Bolton received his B.S.
in Aerospace Engineering from U. Michigan in 1980, and
a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from U.C. Berkeley in 1990.
Dr. Bolton is a Co-Investigator on a number of NASA
missions including experiments on the Cassini mission. Dr.
Bolton chaired the Titan science group for the Cassini-Huygens
mission and was responsible for the formulation of the
scientific investigation of Saturn’s moon Titan. Dr. Bolton has
been a Principal Investigator with NASA on various research
programs since 1988. His research includes the modeling of the
Jovian and Saturnian radiation belts, atmospheric dynamics
and composition, and the formation and evolution of the
solar system. He has authored over 150 scientific papers, five
book chapters, and consulted/appeared in five space science
documentaries. He received the NASA Outstanding Leadership
Medal in 2012, Exceptional Achievement Medal in 2002; the
NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1994. He
also received JPL Individual Awards for Exceptional Excellence
in Leadership in 2002, 2001, and 1996, and Excellence in
Management in 2000; and has received sixteen NASA Group
Achievement Awards. Dr. Bolton maintains a relationship
with JPL and the California Institute of Technology through
a special appointment as a Senior Staff Scientist.
Dr. Bolton also leads a number of educational
programs aimed at developing science, math and art skills for
children from elementary to high school and college level.
As part of the NASA Juno educational Outreach Program,
Dr. Bolton has dedicated developed educational programs
involving both formal and informal education including the
creation of science and math curriculum driving new national
standards for elementary level education (an age bracket
known to be underserved in this area). Dr. Bolton has worked
with a number of corporate sponsors dedicated to space
science educational programs, including Lego, Universal,
Sony, and Time-Warner. Dr. Bolton helped develope an
innovative educational program, in partnership with the
Lewis Center for Educational Excellence, that provides an
opportunity for elementary to high school level children to
experience the scientific and engineering process directly.
This program trains teachers on science and math education
and provides access to NASA research facilities and scientists
for hundreds of schools around the country. Through his
private company, Artistic Sciences, Inc, Dr. Bolton’s has
produced a number of musical concerts, art exhibits, scientific
documentaries and videos aimed at inspiring and motivating
children in academic studies. He has worked with a number
of musical artists developing both educational and musical
programs. He is one of the founding members of the Vangelis
Foundation in Athens, Greece dedicated to the combined
study of Science, Math, Art, Music and Philosophy.
DAVID BROOKS
David Brooks (born August 11, 1961) is a political and cultural
commentator who writes for The New York Times. He worked as
an editorial writer and film reviewer for the Washington Times;
a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal;
a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception; a
contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly;
and as a commentator on National Public Radio. He is
now a columnist for The New York Times and commentator
on PBS NewsHour.
Brooks, who is Jewish, was born in Toronto,
Canada—his father was a U.S. citizen living in Canada at the
time—and grew up in New York City in Stuyvesant Town. He
graduated from Grace Church School in New York City, Radnor
High School (located in a Main Line suburb of Philadelphia)
in 1979 and from the University of Chicago, with a degree
in history, in 1983.
Brooks edited a 1996 anthology of writings by
new conservative writers, Backward and Upward: The New
Conservative Writing. He wrote a book of cultural commentary
titled Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They
Got There, published in 2000, and followed it four years later
with On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have)
in the Future Tense.
He also authored The Social Animal: The Hidden
Sources of Love, Character and Achievement. The book was
excerpted in The New Yorker magazine in January 2011
and received mixed reviews upon its full publication, by
Random House, in March of that year. The book has been a
commercial success, reaching the #3 spot on the Publishers
Weekly best-sellers list for non-fiction in April 2011.
Brooks was a visiting professor of public policy at
Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, and
he taught an undergraduate seminar there in the fall of 2006.
He and his wife live in the Cleveland Park
neighborhood of Northwest Washington, DC.
Brooks describes himself as being originally a liberal
before “coming to my senses.” In 1983, he wrote a parody
of conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr., which said
“In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded
rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings
are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping.”
Buckley admired the parody and offered Brooks
a job with National Review. A turning point in Brooks’s
thinking came later that year in a televised debate with
Milton Friedman, which, as Brooks describes it, “was
essentially me making a point, and he making a twosentence
rebuttal which totally devastated my point.”
Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Brooks argued
forcefully for American military intervention, echoing the
belief of commentators and political figures that American
and British forces would be welcomed as liberators. In the
spring of 2004, some of his opinion pieces suggested that
he had tempered his earlier optimism about the war.
Brooks’ public writing about the U.S. wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq is similar to those by neoconservatives,
according to a Salon article by Glenn Greenwald, that labels
Brooks as a neoconservative. His angry dismissal of the
conviction of Scooter Libby as being “a farce” and having “no
significance” was derided by political blogger Andrew Sullivan.
On August 10, 2006, Brooks wrote a column for The
New York Times titled “Party No. 3”. The column proposed
the idea of the McCain-Lieberman Party, or the fictional
representation of the fictional moderate majority in America.
Ottawa Citizen commentator David Warren has
identified Brooks as the sort of conservative pundit that
liberals like, someone who is “sophisticated” and “engages
with” the liberal agenda, in contrast to a real conservative like
Charles Krauthammer. Brooks has long been a supporter of
John McCain; however, he did not show a liking for McCain’s
2008 running mate, Sarah Palin, calling her a “cancer” on
the Republican Party. He has referred to her as a “joke,”
unlikely to ever win the Republican nomination. But he later
admitted during a CSPAN interview that he had gone too far
in his previous “cancer” comments about Palin, which he
regretted, and simply stated he was not a fan of her values.
In a March 2007 article published in The New
York Times titled “No U-Turns”, Brooks explained that the
Republican Party must distance itself from the minimalgovernment
conservative principles that had arisen
during the Abraham Lincoln, Barry Goldwater, Ronald
Reagan and Calvin Coolidge eras. He claims that these
core concepts had served their purposes and should
no longer be embraced by Republicans in order to win
elections, which he considers the most important purpose
of a political party designed to serve the political class.
Brooks has been a frequent admirer of President
Barack Obama. In an August 2009 profile of Brooks, The
New Republic describes his first encounter with Obama, in the
spring of 2005: “Usually when I talk to senators, while they
may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t
know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he
knew both better than me. […] I remember distinctly an image
of—we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his
pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking,
a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good
president.” Two days after Obama’s second autobiography,
The Audacity of Hope, hit bookstores, Brooks published a
column in The New York Times, titled “Run, Barack, Run”,
urging the Chicago politician to run for president. However as
of December 2011 in a CSPAN interview, Brook’s opinion of
Obama’s presidency was more tempered, giving Obama only
a “B-” rating, and said that Obama’s chances of reelection
would be less than 50-50 if elections were held at that time.
In writing for The New York Times in January 2010,
Brooks described Israel as “an astonishing success story”.
He wrote that “Jews are a famously accomplished group,”
who, because they were “forced to give up farming in the
Middle Ages... have been living off their wits ever since”. In
Brooks’ view, “Israel’s technological success is the fruition
of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray
settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians
in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place
to come together and create things for the world.”
Brooks opposes what he sees as self-destructive
behavior, such as teenage sex and divorce. His view is that
“sex is more explicit everywhere barring real life. As the
entertainment media have become more sex-saturated,
American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious”
by “waiting longer to have sex…[and] having fewer partners.”
He sees the culture war as nearly over, because “today’s
young people…seem happy with the frankness of the left
and the wholesomeness of the right.” As a result, he
is optimistic about the United States’ social stability,
which he considers to be “in the middle of an
amazing moment of improvement and repair.”
Brooks also broke with many in the conservative
movement when, in late 2003, he came out in favor of samesex
marriage in his New York Times column. He equated
the idea with traditional conservative values: “We should
insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous
that two people could claim to love each other and not
want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.…
It’s going to be up to conservatives to make the important,
moral case for marriage, including gay marriage.”
Regarding abortion, Brooks has advocated for
pro-choice government regulations: abortion should be
legal, with parental consent for minors, during the first four
or five months, and illegal afterward, except in extremely
rare circumstances. (New York Times, April 22, 2002.)
MARK CUBAN
When Mark Cuban purchased the Dallas Mavericks on
January 14, 2000, the face of the organization began to
change immediately. Once again Mavericks games had
a party atmosphere as Reunion Arena rocked with the
return of the “Reunion Rowdies.” Mavericks games
became more than just ordinary NBA games—
they were a total entertainment experience.
Cuban was not only successful at instilling a sense
of pride and passion into Mavericks fans by presenting himself
as the ultimate role model by cheering from the same seats he
had in years past, but he also became the first owner in team
sports to encourage fan interaction through e-mail on his
personal computer. It was through this personal touch that
fans throughout the Metroplex, and around the world, began
to notice Cuban’s energetic personality and take notice of
the Mavericks. He has personally responded to thousands
of emails, and several suggestions from fans have led to
innovative changes such as a new three-sided shot clock,
which allows line of site to the 24-second clock from
anywhere in the arena.
Cuban’s whatever-it-takes attitude and commitment
to winning has everyone’s attention. From his first introduction
to the team to the end of his first season as owner, the players
responded with a 31-19 record, including a 9-1 mark in April
2000. In addition to hiring special coaches for offense,
defense and shooting, Cuban has promised to do everything
in his power to improve the team. This goal was achieved as
the club finished the 2000-01 season with a 53-29 record en
route to their first playoff appearance in 11 years where they
became just the sixth team in NBA history to be down 0-2 and
come back to win a five-game series vs. Utah in Round 1.
Before the start of the 2001-02 season, American
Airlines Center, the Mavs new home, opened and Cuban
co-founded HDNet, an all high-definition television network
on DIRECTV channel 199 which launched in September
2001. As with his other ventures, Cuban is revolutionizing
the television industry with HDNet. He is planning to expand
HDNet to include three more networks showing high-def
sports, movies and entertainment by the end of 2002.
During the Mavs 2001-02 campaign, the team
continued their winning ways by finishing the season with
a franchise-best record of 57-25 and an NBA-best road
record of 27-14, advancing to the postseason for the
second-consecutive year.
Prior to his purchase of the Mavericks, Cuban cofounded
Broadcast.com, the leading provider of multimedia
and streaming on the Internet, in 1995, selling it to Yahoo!
in July of 1999. Before Broadcast.com, Cuban co-founded
MicroSolutions, a leading National Systems Integrator,
in 1983, and later sold it to CompuServe.
Today, in addition to his ownership of the Mavericks,
Cuban is an active investor in leading and cutting-edge
technologies and continues to be a sought-after speaker.
ANTONIO DAMASIO
Antonio Damasio (born February 25, 1944 in Lisbon, Portugal)
is a University Professor (an award based on multi-disciplinary
interests and significant accomplishments in several
disciplines) and David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at
the University of Southern California, where he heads USC’s
Brain and Creativity Institute. Prior to taking up his posts at
USC, in 2005, Damasio was M.W. Van Allen Professor and
Head of Neurology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and
Clinics from 1976 to 2005. He is also Adjunct Professor
at the Salk Institute.
Damasio is the author of several best-selling
books which describe his scientific thinking. “As a leading
neuroscientist, Damasio has dared to speculate on
neurobiological data, and has offered a theory about the
relationship between human emotions, human rationality,
and the underlying biology.”
Damasio was born in Lisbon and studied medicine
at the University of Lisbon Medical School in Portugal, where
he also did his neurological residency and completed his
doctorate. He worked as a research fellow at the Aphasia
Research Center in Boston in 1967, prior to receiving his
MD in Lisbon. His work there on behavioural neurology
was done under the supervision of the late Norman
Geschwind, the Harvard neurologist who created the field.
As a researcher, Damasio’s main field is the
neurobiology of the mind, especially neural systems which
subserve emotion, decision-making, memory, language and
consciousness. Damasio’s seeks to demonstrate that emotions
play a critical role in high level cognition, an idea that ran
counter to dominant 20th century views in psychology,
neuroscience and philosophy. He showed that emotions and
their biological underpinnings are involved in decision-making
(both positively and negatively, and often non-consciously);
provide the scaffolding for the construction of social cognition;
and are required for the self processes which undergird
consciousness. “Damasio provides a contemporary scientific
validation of the linkage between feelings and the body by
highlighting the connection between mind and nerve cells…
this personalized embodiment of mind.”
He formulated the somatic markers hypothesis,
which captures the essence of these ideas. This idea has
inspired many systems-neuroscience experiments carried out
in laboratories in the U.S. and Europe, and has had a major
impact in contemporary science and philosophy. His articles
on this topic include: Bechara A, Damasio AR, Damasio H,
Anderson S. Insensitivity to future consequences following
damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition. 50:7-15. 1994;
Bechara A, Damasio H, Tranel D, Damasio AR. Deciding
advantageously before knowing the advantageous strategy.
Science. 275:1293-1294. 1997; Anderson SW, Bechara A,
Damasio H, Tranel D, Damasio AR. Impairment of social
and moral behaviour related to early damage in human
prefrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience. 2:1032-1037. Damasio
has been named by the Institute of Scientific Information as
one of the most highly cited researchers in the past decade).
Current work on the biology of moral decisions, neuroeconomics,
social communication, and drug-addiction,
has been strongly influenced by Damasio’s hypothesis.
Damasio also proposed that emotions are part of
homeostatic regulation and are rooted in reward/punishment
mechanisms. He recovered James’ perspective on feelings as
a read-out of body states, but expanded it with an “as-if-bodyloop”
device which allows for the substrate of feelings to be
simulated rather than actual (foreshadowing the simulation
process later uncovered by mirror neurons). He demonstrated
experimentally that the insular cortex is a critical platform
for feelings, a finding that has been widely replicated, and
he uncovered cortical and subcortical induction sites for
human emotions, e.g. in ventromedial prefrontal cortex
and amygdala. He also demonstrated that while the
insular cortex plays a major role in feelings, it is not
necessary for feelings to occur, suggesting that brain
stem structures play a basic role in the feeling process.
He has continued to investigate the neural basis of
feelings and demonstrated that although the insular cortex is
a major substrate for this process it is not exclusive, suggesting
that brain stem nuclei are critical platforms as well. He
regards feelings as the necessary foundation of sentience.
In another development, Damasio proposed that
the cortical architecture on which learning and recall depend
involves multiple, hierarchically organized loops of axonal
projections that converge on certain nodes out of which
projections diverge to the points of origin of convergence
(the convergence-divergence framework). This architecture
is applicable to the understanding of memory processes
and of aspects of consciousness related to the access
of mental contents.
In “The Feeling of What Happens”, Damasio lays
the foundations of the “enchainment of precedences”: “the
nonconscious neural signaling of an individual organism
begets the protoself which permits core self and core
consciousness, which allow for an autobiographical self,
which permits extended consciousness. At the end of the
chain, extended consciousness permits conscience.
Damasio’s research depended significantly on
establishing the modern human lesion method, an enterprise
made possible by Hanna Damasio’s structural neuroimaging/
neuroanatomy work complemented by experimental
neuroanatomy (with Gary Van Hoesen and Josef Parvizi),
experimental neuropsychology (with Antoine Bechara, Ralph
Adolphs, and Dan Tranel) and functional neuroimaging (with
Kaspar Meyer, Jonas Kaplan, and Mary Helen Immordino-
Yang). The experimental neuroanatomy work with Van Hoesen
and Bradley Hyman led to the discovery of the disconnection
of the hippocampus caused by neurofibrillary tangles in the
entophinal cortex of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
As a clinician, he and his collaborators
have studied and treated disorders of behaviour
and cognition, and movement disorders.
Damasio’s books deal with the relationship between
emotions and feelings, and what their brain substrates. His
1994 book, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human
Brain, won the Science et Vie prize, was a finalist for the
Los Angeles Times Book Award, and is translated in over 30
languages. It is regarded as one of the most influential books
of the past two decades. His second book, The Feeling of What
Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness,
was named as one of the ten best books of 2001 by the New
York Times Book Review, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of
the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and has
over 30 foreign editions. Damasio’s Looking for Spinoza: Joy,
Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, was published in 2003. In it,
Damasio suggested that Spinoza’s thinking foreshadowed
discoveries in biology and neuroscience views on the mindbody
problem. Spinoza was a protobiologist. His latest book
is Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. In
it Damasio suggests that the self is the key to conscious
minds and that feelings, from the kind he designates as
primordial to the well-known feelings of emotion, are the
basic elements in the construction of the protoself and core
self. The book received the Corinne International Book Prize.
Damasio is a member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute
of Medicine, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Damasio has received many awards including the Prince of
Asturias Award in Science and Technology, the Honda Prize,
the Kappers Neuroscience Medal, the Beaumont Medal from
the American Medical Association, the Nonino Prize and the
Reenpaa Prize in Neuroscience. He has received honorary
doctoral degrees (Doctor honoris causa) from the University
of Aachen (2002), University of Aveiro (2003), University
of Copenhagen (Copenhagen Business School; 2009),
University of Leiden (2010), University Ramon Llull,
Barcelona (2010), University of Coimbra (2011) and
from the EPFL, Lausanne (2011).
His current work involves the social emotions,
consciousness and the creative interface between
neuroscience and the arts, especially music and
film. The role of feelings states on sentience.
Damasio is married to Dr. Hanna Damasio,
his colleague and frequent co-author.
Damasio himself notes, in fallibilist fashion,
“I have a difficult time seeing scientific results, especially in
neurobiology, as anything but provisional approximations”’.
Whether despite or because of that fallibilism, Damasio
writes in the belief that ‘scientific knowledge can
be a pillar to help humans endure and prevail’.
OUR HOST
JACK DANGERMOND
Jack Dangermond is the founder and president of Esri, the
world’s fourth largest privately held software company.
Founded in 1969 and headquartered in Redlands, California,
Esri is widely recognized as the technical and market leader
in geographic information systems, or GIS, pioneering
innovative solutions for working with spatial data.
Esri has more than one million users in over 350,000
organizations representing government; nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs); academia; and industries such as
utilities, health care, transportation, telecommunications,
homeland security, retail, and agriculture.
Dangermond is recognized not only as a pioneer
in spatial analysis methods but also as one of the most
influential people in GIS. He actively manages Esri and is
closely connected to projects, clients, and company vision.
He takes a leadership role in national and global initiatives to
facilitate standards for data access and sharing across agencies
and organizations. He is personally committed to applying
GIS methods for environmental stewardship and
sustainable communities.
Dangermond is the recipient of numerous
fellowships, honorary degrees, and awards. He has
authored hundreds of papers on GIS in such diverse
fields as photogrammetry, computer science, planning,
environmental science, and cartography. He delivers keynote
addresses at meetings and conferences around the globe.
Dangermond’s current work is focused on helping
organizations deploy spatial data in enterprise environments,
Web-based services, and mobile computing systems as well
as enhancing applications, models, and tools that can be
used for optimized routing, intelligent site selection, crime
and disease analysis, location-based services, infrastructure
management, public safety, and homeland security.
DAVE GALLO
David Gallo is an American oceanographer and Director
of Special Projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution—a preeminent, globally recognized scientific
laboratory. For more than 25 years, Dr. Gallo has been at the
forefront of ocean exploration, participating in and being
witness to the development of new technologies and scientific
discoveries that shape our view of planet earth. He has been
described by TED Conferences as “an enthusiastic ambassador
between the sea and those of us on dry land.” With more than
8 million views his TED presentation “Underwater
Astonishments” is among the top 5 TED Talks viewed to date.
David has participated in expeditions to all of
the world’s oceans and was one of the first scientists to
use a combination of robots and submarines to explore
the deep seafloor. Most recently he co-led an expedition
to create the first detailed and comprehensive map of the
RMS Titanic and he co-led the successful international
effort to locate the remains of Air France flight 447.
Dr. Gallo is currently active in planning a series of
challenging expeditions and is encouraging the development
of new technologies for ocean exploration. He is a member
of James Cameron’s Deep Ocean Task Force and the
XPrize Ocean Advisory Board. Almost every expedition
into the deep provides results that are often surprising,
sometimes startling and in many cases revolutionary.
David is becoming increasingly outspoken about
the relationship between humanity and the sea. He feels
strongly that instead of taking the oceans for granted we need
to recognize the oceans critical role in providing the air we
breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat. At the same
time, Dr. Gallo feels that human activity has impacted the
ocean on a global scale and with significant consequences.
The oceans hold the clues to our past and the key to our future
yet they remain mostly unexplored and poorly understood.
Dr. Gallo is personally committed to conveying
the excitement and importance of ocean exploration to the
public-at-large. He has lectured internationally to audiences
ranging from children to CEO’s with the goal of awakening
the little bit of Jacques Cousteau and Jules Vernes that resides
in each of us. He has given more than 10 TED and TEDx
presentations and has appeared in numerous documentaries
(Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic)
and has been featured on numerous televised news programs
(Weather Channel , PBS Need to Know, MSNBC Ed Show,
and NBC Today show).
In recognition of his efforts in exploration and science
communications, David was recently elected a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. He
is a National Fellow of the Explorer’s Club, a member of the
American Geophysical Union, and active on several boards
including the Marine Environmental Research Institute, the
One World One Ocean Campaign, and the Terramar Project.
FRANK GEHRY
Raised in Toronto, Canada, Frank Gehry moved with his family
to Los Angeles in 1947. Mr. Gehry received his Bachelor of
Architecture degree from the University of Southern California
in 1954, and he studied City Planning at the Harvard University
Graduate School of Design. In subsequent years, Mr. Gehry
has built an architectural career that has spanned five decades
and produced public and private buildings in America, Europe
and Asia. Hallmarks of Mr. Gehry’s work include a particular
concern that people exist comfortably within the spaces that
he creates, and an insistence that his buildings address the
context and culture of their sites and the budgets of his clients.
His work has earned Mr. Gehry several of the most
significant awards in the architectural field. He was inducted
into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of
Architects in 1974, and his buildings have received over 100
national and regional A.I.A. awards. In 1977, Mr. Gehry was
named recipient of the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize
in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. In 1989, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture
Prize, perhaps the premiere accolade of the field, honoring
“significant contributions to humanity and the built
environment through the art of architecture.” In 1992, he
received the Wolf Prize in Art (Architecture) from the Wolf
Foundation. In the same year, he was named the recipient of
the Praemium Imperiale Award by the Japan Art Association
to “honor outstanding contributions to the development,
popularization, and progress of the arts.” In 1994, he became
the first recipient of the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Award for
lifetime contribution to the arts. In 1998, Mr. Gehry received
the National Medal of Arts, and he became the first recipient
of the Friedrich Kiesler Prize. In 1999, Mr. Gehry received the
Lotos Medal of Merit from the Lotos Club, and he received
the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects.
In 2000, Mr. Gehry received the Gold Medal from the Royal
Institute of British Architects, and he received the Lifetime
Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts. In 2002,
Mr. Gehry received the Gold Medal for Architecture from
the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Gehry
was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters in 1987, a trustee of the American Academy in Rome
in 1989, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences in 1991. In 1994, he was bestowed with the title of
Academician by the National Academy of Design. In 1998, he
was named an Honorary Academician by the Royal Academy
of Arts. In 2003, Mr. Gehry was inducted into the European
Academy of Sciences and Arts and he was designated as
a Companion to the Order of Canada. In 2005 Mr. Gehry
received the Ordre National de Legion d’honneur Chevalier
from the French Government. In 2006 he was a first year
inductee into the California Hall of Fame. In 2008, Mr. Gehry
received the Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at
the Venice Biennale. In 2010, Mr. Gehry received the John
Singleton Copley Award from the American Associates of
the Royal Academy Trust, and he received the Cooper Union
for the Advancement of Science and Art Award in New York.
Mr. Gehry has received honorary doctoral degrees from
Occidental College, Whittier College, the California College
of Arts and Crafts, the Technical University of Nova Scotia,
the Rhode Island School of Design, the California Institute
of Arts, the Southern California Institute of Architecture,
the Otis Art Institute at the Parsons School of Design, the
University of Toronto, the University of Southern California,
Yale University, Harvard University, and the University of
Edinburgh. Mr. Gehry has held teaching positions at some of
the world’s most prestigious institutions including Harvard
University, University of Southern California, University
of California Los Angeles, Sci-Arc, University of Toronto,
Columbia University, the Federal Institute of Technology in
Zurich, and at Yale University where he still teaches today.
Notable projects include: the Guggenheim Museum
in Bilbao, Spain; the DZ Bank Building in Berlin; Nationale-
Nederlanden Building in Prague; the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and
BP Bridge in Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois; Maggie’s
Centre, a cancer patient center in Dundee, Scotland; Hotel
Marques de Riscal in El Ciego, Spain; Lou Ruvo Brain Institute
in Las Vegas, Nevada; Princeton University Peter B. Lewis
Science Library in Princeton, New Jersey; Art Gallery of
Ontario Renovation in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; the New
World Symphony in Miami, Florida; the Eight Spruce Street
Residential Tower located in New York City; and the Walt
Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California. Projects under
construction include the Signature Theatre in New York City;
the Ohr O’Keefe Museums in Biloxi, Mississippi; the Make
it Right Foundation in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Puente
de Vida Museum of Biodiversity in Panama; the Frederick
R. Weisman Art Museum Expansion at the University of
Minnesota; and the Foundation Louis Vuitton Museum in
Paris, France. Mr. Gehry is also completing work on the
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; LUMA Foundation in Arles, France
and the University of Technology, Sydney in Sydney, Australia.
2006 / 200 lbs ago
MATT GROENING
Matt Groening was born in Portland, Oregon, on February
15, the third of five children. His father, Homer, was a
cartoonist and filmmaker. From an early age, Matt created
his own cartoons, amusing his friends and annoying his
teachers. Groening attended Evergreen State College
in Washington State, where he studied philosophy and
continued his interest in cartoons, comics and music.
After his graduation in 1977, Groening headed to
Los Angeles where he struggled in immobilizing but irksome
poverty. Increasingly frustrated by the traffic, smog, and
his landlords, Matt began to vent his angst to his friends by
sending them cartoons starring a bug-eyed rabbit named
Binky. Groening soon began to publish and sell these cartoons
at the record shop where he worked. Their popularity
encouraged Matt to syndicate, and in April 1980, Life In Hell®
formally debuted in the Los Angeles Reader. It was there that
he met his future wife, Deborah Caplan, and together
they formed Acme Features Syndicate, which today
circulates Life in Hell® to more than 250 newspapers
around the world in a half-dozen languages.
Life in Hell® has also been collected in a bestselling
series of books with over two million copies in print,
including Love is Hell, Work is Hell, School is Hell, Childhood
is Hell, Akbar & Jeff ’s Guide to Life, Greetings From Hell, The
Big Book of Hell, With Love From Hell, How to Go to Hell, The
Road to Hell, Binky’s Guide to Love, and Love is Still Hell.
In 1987 James L. Brooks approached Matt about
creating animated shorts to fit between sketches of “The
Tracey Ullman Show.” Matt agreed, but instead of using the
Life in Hell® characters, he created an entirely new cast:
The Simpsons, which bear the names of his family members,
Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie (Bart is an anagram for brat).
The Simpsons were soon spun off into a half-hour
animated series which first aired on December 17, 1989
with a Christmas special, followed by the series premiere
on January 14, 1990. It has since gone on to become
the longest running prime-time animated show in
television history. An international hit, the series has
also spawned a licensing and merchandising empire.
Books based on The Simpsons include The Simpsons
Xmas Book, Greetings From The Simpsons, The Simpsons
Rainy Day Fun Book, The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album,
Maggie Simpson’s Alphabet Book, Maggie Simpson’s Counting
Book, Maggie Simpson’s Book of Colors & Shapes, Maggie
Simpson’s Book of Animals, The Simpsons Fun in the Sun Book,
Making Faces With The Simpsons, The Ultra-Jumbo Rain-
Or-Shine Fun Book, Cartooning With The Simpsons, Bart’s
Guide To Life and The Simpsons: A Complete Guide To Our
Favorite Family, a campanion book to the television series.
Groening is also creator and publisher
of Bongo Comics and Zongo Comics.
HERBIE HANCOCK
Herbie Hancock is a true icon of modern music. Throughout
his explorations, he has transcended limitations and
genres while maintaining his unmistakable voice. With an
illustrious career spanning five decades and 14 Grammy®
Awards, including Album of the Year for River: The Joni
Letters, he continues to amaze audiences across the globe.
There are few artists in the music industry
who have had more influence on acoustic and electronic
jazz and R&B than Herbie Hancock. As the immortal
Miles Davis said in his autobiography, “Herbie was
the step after Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and I
haven’t heard anybody yet who has come after him.”
Born in Chicago in 1940, Herbie was a child
piano prodigy who performed a Mozart piano concerto
with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 11. He
began playing jazz in high school, initially influenced
by Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. He also developed a
passion for electronics and science, and double-majored
in music and electrical engineering at Grinnell College.
In 1960, Herbie was discovered by trumpeter Donald
Byrd. After two years of session work with Byrd as well as
Phil Woods and Oliver Nelson, he signed with Blue Note
as a solo artist. His 1963 debut album, ‘Takin’ Off ’, was an
immediate success, producing the hit “Watermelon Man.”
In 1963, Miles Davis invited Herbie to join the
Miles Davis Quintet. During his five years with Davis, Herbie
and his colleagues Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Ron Carter
(bass), and Tony Williams (drums) recorded many classics,
including ‘ESP’, ‘Nefertiti’ and ‘Sorcerer’. Later on, Herbie
made appearances on Davis’ groundbreaking ‘In a Silent Way’
and ‘Bitches Brew’, which heralded the birth of jazz-fusion.
Herbie’s own solo career blossomed on Blue Note,
with classic albums including ‘Maiden Voyage’, ‘Empyrean
Isles’, and ‘Speak Like a Child’. He composed the score to
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film ‘Blow Up’, which led to
a successful career in feature film and television music.
After leaving Davis, Herbie put together a new
band called The Headhunters and, in 1973, recorded ‘Head
Hunters.’ With its crossover hit single “Chameleon,”
it became the first jazz album to go platinum.
By mid-decade, Herbie was playing for stadium-sized
crowds all over the world and had no fewer than four albums in
the pop charts at once. In total, Herbie had 11 albums in the pop
charts during the 1970s. His ’70s output inspired and provided
samples for generations of hip-hop and dance music artists.
Herbie also stayed close to his love of acoustic
jazz in the ’70s, recording and performing with VSOP
(reuniting him with his Miles Davis colleagues), and in
duet settings with Chick Corea and Oscar Peterson.
In 1980, Herbie introduced the trumpeter Wynton
Marsalis to the world as a solo artist, producing his debut
album and touring with him as well. In 1983, a new pull to the
alternative side led Herbie to a series of collaborations with
Bill Laswell. The first, ‘Future Shock’, again struck platinum,
and the single “Rockit” rocked the dance and R&B charts,
winning a Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental. The video of
the track won five MTV awards. ‘Sound System’, the follow-up,
also received a Grammy in the R&B instrumental category.
Herbie won an Oscar in 1986 for scoring the
film “’Round Midnight”, in which he also appeared as
an actor. Numerous television appearances over the
years led to two hosting assignments in the 1980s: “Rock
School” on PBS and Showtime’s “Coast To Coast”.
After an adventurous 1994 project for Mercury
Records, ‘Dis Is Da Drum’, he moved to the Verve label,
forming an all-star band to record 1996’s Grammywinning
‘The New Standard’. In 1997, an album of
duets with Wayne Shorter, ‘1+1’, was released.
The legendary Headhunters reunited in 1998,
recording an album for Herbie’s own Verve-distributed
imprint, and touring with the Dave Matthews Band. That
year also marked the recording and release of ‘Gershwin’s
World’, which included collaborators Joni Mitchell, Stevie
Wonder, Kathleen Battle, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra,
Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea. ‘Gershwin’s World’ won three
Grammys in 1999, including Best Traditional Jazz Album
and Best R&B Vocal Performance for Stevie Wonder’s
“St. Louis Blues.”
Herbie reunited with Bill Laswell to collaborate
with some young hip-hop and techno artists on
2001’s FUTURE2FUTURE. He also joined with Roy
Hargrove and Michael Brecker in 2002 to record a live
concert album, ‘Directions In Music: Live at Massey
Hall’, a tribute to John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
‘Possibilities’, released in August 2005, teamed
Herbie with many popular artists, such as Sting, Annie Lennox,
John Mayer, Christina Aguilera, Paul Simon, Carlos Santana,
Joss Stone and Damien Rice. That year, he played a number
of concert dates with a re-staffed Headhunters,
and became the first-ever Artist-In-Residence at
the Tennessee-based festival Bonnaroo.
In 2007, Hancock recorded and released ‘River: The
Joni Letters’, a tribute to longtime friend and collaborator Joni
Mitchell featuring Wayne Shorter, guitarist Lionel Loueke,
bassist Dave Holland and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and coproduced
by Larry Klein. He enlisted vocalists Norah Jones,
Tina Turner, Corinne Bailey Rae, Luciana Souza, Leonard
Cohen and Mitchell herself to perform songs she wrote or was
inspired by. The album received glowing reviews and was a
year-end Top 10 choice for many critics. It also garnered three
Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year; Herbie is one
of only a handful of jazz musicians ever to receive that honor.
In 2010 Hancock released the critically-acclaimed
CD, ‘Herbie Hancock’s The Imagine Project,’ winner of two
20ll Grammy Awards for Best Pop Collaboration and Best
Improvised Jazz Solo. Utilizing the universal language of
music to express its central themes of peace and global
responsibility, the ‘Imagine’ project was recorded around
the world and features a stellar group of musicians
including Jeff Beck, Seal,Pink, Dave Matthews, The
Chieftains, Lionel Loueke, Oumou Sangare, Konono
#l, Anoushka Shankar, Chaka Khan, Marcus Miller,
Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Tinariwen, and Ceu.
Herbie Hancock also maintains a thriving career
outside the performing stage and recording studio. Recently
named by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Creative Chair
For Jazz, he currently also serves as Institute Chairman of the
Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the foremost international
organization devoted to the development of jazz performance
and education worldwide. Hancock is also a founder of
The International Committee of Artists for Peace, and was
recently awarded the much esteemed “Commandeur des Arts
et des Lettres” by French Prime Minister Francois Fillon.
In July of 2011 Hancock was designated a UNESCO
Goodwill Ambassador by UNESCO Director-General Irina
Bokova. Recognizing Herbie Hancock’s “dedication to the
promotion of peace through dialogue, culture and the arts,”
the Director-General has asked the celebrated jazz musician
“to contribute to UNESCO’s efforts to promote mutual
understanding among cultures, with a particular emphasis on
fostering the emergence of new and creative ideas amongst
youth, to find solutions to global problems, as well as ensuring
equal access to the diversity of artistic expressions.” UNESCO’s
Goodwill Ambassadors are an outstanding group of celebrity
advocates who have generously accepted to use their talent
and status to help focus the world’s attention on the objectives
and aims of UNESCO’s work in its fields of competence:
education, culture, science and communication/information
Now in the fifth decade of his professional life,
Herbie Hancock remains where he has always been: in the
forefront of world culture, technology, business and music.
Though one can’t track exactly where he will go next, he is
sure to leave his inimitable imprint wherever he lands.
DANNY HILLIS
William Daniel “Danny” Hillis (born September 25, 1956,
in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American inventor, scientist,
engineer, entrepreneur, and author. He co-founded Thinking
Machines Corporation, a company that developed the
Connection Machine, a parallel supercomputer designed
by Hillis at MIT. He is also co-founder of the Long Now
Foundation, Applied Minds, Metaweb Technologies,
Applied Proteomics, and author of The Pattern on the
Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work.
Danny Hillis was born in Baltimore, Maryland
in 1956. His father, William Hillis, was a US Air Force
epidemiologist studying hepatitis in Africa and relocated with
his family through Rwanda, Burundi, Republic of the Congo,
and Kenya. He spent a brief part of his childhood in Calcutta,
India when his father was a visiting faculty at ISI, Calcutta.
During these years the young Hillis was home schooled by his
mother Aryge Briggs Hillis, a biostatistician, and developed an
early appreciation for mathematics and biology. His younger
brother is David Hillis, a professor of evolutionary biology
at the University of Texas at Austin, and his sister is Argye E.
Hillis, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University.
In 1978 Hillis graduated from MIT with a BS degree
in mathematics, followed in 1981 with an MS
degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer
Science (EECS), specializing in robotics.
During this time Hillis worked at the MIT Logo
Laboratory developing computer hardware and software for
children. He designed computer-oriented toys and games
for the Milton Bradley Company, and co-founded Terrapin
Software—a producer of computer software for elementary
schools. He also built a digital computer composed of
Tinkertoys that is on display at the Museum of Science, Boston.
Hillis’ major research, however, was into parallel
computing. Hillis designed the Connection Machine, a
parallel supercomputer; in 1983 Hillis co-founded Thinking
Machines Corporation to produce and market supercomputers
based on this design. In 1988, continuing this research, Hillis
received a PhD in EECS from MIT under doctoral advisers
Gerald Jay Sussman, Marvin Minsky and Claude Shannon.
Hillis co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation in
1983 while doing his doctoral work at MIT. The company was
to develop Hillis’ Connection Machine design into commercial
parallel supercomputers, and to explore computational
pathways to building artificial intelligence. Hillis’ ambitions
are represented by the company’s motto: “We’re building
a machine that will be proud of us,” and Hillis’ parallel
architecture was to be the main component for this task:
Clearly, the organizing principle of the brain is
parallelism. It’s using massive parallelism. The information
is in the connection between a lot of very simple parallel
units working together. So if we built a computer that was
more along that system of organization, it would likely
be able to do the same kinds of things the brain does.
At Thinking Machines Corporation, Hillis
built a technical team with many people that would
later become leaders in science and industry including
Brewster Kahle, Guy Steele, Sydney Brenner, David
Waltz, Jack Schwartz, and Eric Lander. He even recruited
Richard Feynman to spend his summers there. For many
years, Thinking Machines Corporation connection
machines were the fastest computers in the world.
During 1994, however, Thinking Machines filed for
bankruptcy. In 1996, after a short stint as a professor at the MIT
Media Lab, Hillis joined The Walt Disney Company full time
in the newly created role of Disney Fellow and Vice President,
Research and Development, Walt Disney Imagineering,
which Hillis claimed was an early ambition of his:
I’ve wanted to work at Disney ever since I was a
child…I remember listening to Walt Disney on television
describing the ‘Imagineers’ who designed Disneyland.
I decided then that someday I would be an Imagineer.
Later, I became interested in a different kind of magic—
the magic of computers. Now I finally have the perfect
job—bringing computer magic into Disney.
At Disney, Hillis developed new technologies as well
as business strategies for Disney’s theme parks, television,
motion pictures, Internet and consumer products businesses.
He also designed new theme park rides, a full sized walking
robot dinosaur and various micro mechanical devices.
Hillis left Disney in 2000, taking with him Bran
Ferren, President of the Walt Disney Imagineering, R&D
Creative Technologies division. Together, Ferren and Hillis
founded Applied Minds, a company aimed at providing
technology and consulting services to firms in an array of
industries, including aerospace, electronics, and toys. In
July 2005, Hillis and others from Applied Minds initiated
Metaweb Technologies, Inc. to develop a semantic data storage
infrastructure for the Internet, and Freebase, an “open,
shared database of the world’s knowledge”. When Metaweb
was acquired by Google, the technology became the basis
of Google’s Knowledge Graph. Hillis, together with
Dr. David B. Agus, cofounded a spinoff of Applied Minds
called Applied Proteomics Inc which designed and
prototyped a machine that measures the level of proteins
in the blood for medical diagnosis.
Hillis’ work with Agus on cancer led to the
founding of the University of Southern California
Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (USC PS-OC),
funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Hillis
is the principle investigator of this program.
In 1993, with Thinking Machines facing its demise,
Hillis wrote about long-term thinking and suggested a
project to build a clock designed to function for millennia:
When I was a child, people used to talk about
what would happen by the year 2000. Now, thirty years
later, they still talk about what will happen by the year
2000. The future has been shrinking by one year per year
for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a longterm
project that gets people thinking past the mental
barrier of the Millennium. I would like to propose a large
(think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal
temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a
century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.
This clock became the Clock of the Long
Now, a name invented by the songwriter and composer,
Brian Eno. Hillis wrote an article for Wired magazine
suggesting a clock that would last over 10,000 years.
The project led directly to the founding of the Long Now
Foundation in 1996 by Hillis and others, including Stewart
Brand, Brian Eno, Esther Dyson, and Mitch Kapor.
Hillis asserts that parallelism itself is approximately
the main ingredient of intelligence; that there is not
anything else required to make a mind result from a
distributed network of processors. Hillis believes that
…intelligence is just a whole lot of little
things, thousands of them. And what will happen is
we’ll learn about each one at a time, and as we do it,
machines will be more and more like people. It will
be a gradual process, and that’s been happening.
This is not so different from Marvin Minsky’s Society
of Mind theory, which holds that mind is a collection of agents,
each one taking care of a particular aspect of intelligence,
and communicating with one another, exchanging
information as required.
Some artificial intelligence theorists have other
opinions—that it’s not the underlying computational
mode that’s crucial, but rather particular algorithms
(of reasoning, memory, perception, etc.). Others
argue that the right combination of “little things” is
needed to give rise to the overall emergent patterns of
coordinated activity that constitute real intelligence.
Hillis is one of a small number of people
who have made a serious attempt to create such a
“thinking machine” and his ambitions are clear:
“I’d like to find a way for consciousness to
transcend human flesh. Building a thinking machine is
really a search for a kind of Earthly immortality. Something
much more intelligent than we can exist. Making a
thinking machine is my way to reach out to that.”
Hillis’ 1998 popular science book The Pattern on the
Stone attempts to explain concepts from computer science for
laymen using simple language, metaphor and analogy. It moves
from Boolean algebra through topics such as information
theory, parallel computing, cryptography, algorithms,
heuristics, Turing machines, and promising technologies
such as quantum computing and emergent systems.
BJARKE INGELS
QUINCY JONES
Bjarke Ingels started BIG Bjarke Ingels Group in 2005 after
co-founding PLOT Architects in 2001 and working at OMA
in Rotterdam. Through a series of award-winning design
projects and buildings, Bjarke has developed a reputation
for designing buildings that are as programmatically
and technically innovative as they are cost and resource
conscious. Bjarke has received numerous awards and
honors, including the Danish Crown Prince’s Culture Prize
in 2011, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2004,
and the ULI Award for Excellence in 2009. In 2011, the Wall
Street Journal awarded Bjarke the Architectural Innovator
of the Year Award. In 2012, the American Institute of
Architects granted the 8 House its Honor Award, calling it
“a complex and exemplary project of a new typology.”
Alongside his architectural practice, Bjarke
taught at Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia
University, and Rice University and is an honorary professor
at the Royal Academy of Arts, School of Architecture in
Copenhagen. He is a frequent public speaker and has
spoken in venues such as TED, WIRED, AMCHAM, 10
Downing Street, and the World Economic Forum.
An impresario in the broadest and most creative sense
of the word, Quincy Jones’ career has encompassed the
roles of composer, record producer, artist, film producer,
arranger, conductor, instrumentalist, TV producer, record
company executive, magazine founder, multi-media
entrepreneur and humanitarian. As a master inventor of
musical hybrids, he has shuffled pop, soul, hip-hop, jazz,
classical, African and Brazilian music into many dazzling
fusions, traversing virtually every medium, including
records, live performance, movies and television.
Celebrating more than 60 years performing and
being involved in music, Quincy’s creative magic has spanned
over six decades, beginning with the music of the postswing
era and continuing through today’s high-technology,
international multi-media hybrids. In the mid-50’s, he was
the first popular conductor-arranger to record with a Fender
bass. His theme from the hit TV series Ironside was the first
synthesizer-based pop theme song. As the first black composer
to be embraced by the Hollywood establishment in the 60’s,
he helped refresh movie music with badly needed infusions of
jazz and soul. His landmark 1989 album, Back On The Block—
named “Album Of The Year” at the 1990 Grammy Awards—
brought such legends as Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah
Vaughan and Miles Davis together with Ice T, Big Daddy Kane
and Melle Mel to create the first fusion of the be bop and hip
hop musical traditions; while his 1993 recording of the critically
acclaimed Miles and Quincy Live At Montreux, featured
Quincy conducting Miles Davis’ live performance of the
historic Gil Evans arrangements from the Miles Ahead, Porgy
and Bess and Sketches of Spain sessions, garnered a Grammy
Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance. As producer
and conductor of the historic “We Are The World” recording
(the best-selling single of all time) and Michael Jackson’s
multi-platinum solo albums, Off The Wall, Bad and Thriller
(the best selling album of all time, with over 50 million copies
sold), Quincy Jones stands as one of the most successful and
admired creative artist/executives in the entertainment world.
His 1995 recording, Q’s Jook Joint, again showcased
Quincy’s ability to mold the unique talents of an eclectic
group of singers and musicians, in what resulted in a
retrospective of his broad and diverse career from that of
a seasoned Jazz musician, to skilled composer, arranger,
and bandleader, to acclaimed record producer.
A reference to the backwoods club houses of rural
America in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s, the platinum selling
Q’s Jook Joint featured performances by artists such as
Bono, Brandy, Ray Charles, Phil Collins, Coolio, Kenny
“Babyface” Edmonds, Gloria Estefan, Rachelle Ferrell, Aaron
Hall, Herbie Hancock, Heavy D., Ron Isley, Chaka Khan, R.
Kelly, Queen Latifah, Tone Loc, the Luniz, Brian McKnight,
Melle Mel, Shaquille O’Neal, Joshua Redman, the Broadway
musical troupe Stomp, SWV, Take 6, newcomer Tamia,
Toots Thielemans, Mervyn Warren, Barry White, Warren
Wiebe, Charlie Wilson, Nancy Wilson, Stevie Wonder, Mr.
X, and Yo-Yo, among others, and garnered seven Grammy
nominations. His recording, From Q, With Love, featured a
collection of 26 love songs that he recorded over the last 32
years of his more than 50 year career in the music business.
Named by Time Magazine as one of the most
influential jazz musicians of the 20th century, Quincy Jones
was born on March 14, 1933, in Chicago and brought up
in Seattle. While in junior high school, he began studying
trumpet and sang in a gospel quartet at age 12. His musical
studies continued at the prestigious Berklee College of
Music in Boston, where he remained until the opportunity
arose to tour with Lionel Hampton’s band as a trumpeter,
arranger and sometime-pianist. He moved on to New York
and the musical “big leagues” in 1951, where his reputation
as an arranger grew. By the mid-50’s, he was arranging and
recording for such diverse artists as Sarah Vaughan, Ray
Charles, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Big Maybelle, Dinah
Washington, Cannonball Adderly and LeVern Baker.
In 1957, Quincy decided to continue his musical
education by studying with Nadia Boulanger, the legendary
Parisian tutor to American expatriate composers such as
Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland. To subsidize
his studies he took a job with Barclay Disques, Mercury’s
French distributor. Among the artists he recorded in Europe
were Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel and Henri Salvador,
as well as such visitors from America as Sarah Vaughan,
Billy Eckstine and Andy Williams. Quincy’s love affair with
European audiences continues through the present: in 1991,
he began a continuing association with the Montreux Jazz
and World Music Festival, which he serves as co-producer.
Quincy won the first of his many Grammy’s in
1963 for his Count Basie arrangement of “I Can’t Stop
Loving You.” Quincy’s three-year musical association as
conductor and arranger with Frank Sinatra in the mid-60’s
also teamed him with Basie for the classic Sinatra At The
Sands, containing the famous arrangement of “Fly Me To
The Moon,” the first recording played by astronaut Buzz
Aldrin when he landed upon the moon’s surface in 1969.
When he became vice-president at Mercury Records
in 1961, Quincy became the first high-level black executive
of an established major record company. Toward the end of
his association with the label, Quincy turned his attention
to another musical area that had been closed to blacks--the
world of film scores. In 1963, he started work on the music
for Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker and it was the first of
his 33 major motion picture scores. In 1985, he co-produced
Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color
Purple, which garnered eleven Oscar nominations, introduced
Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to film audiences, and
marked Quincy’s debut as a film producer. In 1991 Quincy
helped launch NBC-TV’s hit series, The Fresh Prince Of
Bel Air, for which he served as an executive producer.
In 1990, Quincy Jones formed Quincy Jones
Entertainment (QJE), a co-venture with Time Warner, Inc. The
new company, which Quincy served as CEO and chairman,
had a broad ranging, multi-media agenda which encompassed
programming for current and future technologies, including
theatrical motion pictures and network, cable and syndicated
television. QJE produced NBC Television’s Fresh Prince Of
Bel Air (now in syndication), and UPN’s In The House and
Fox Television’s Mad TV, among other syndicated shows and
television specials. In 1991 Jones founded VIBE Magazine,
and with his publishing group VIBE Ventures, would go on to
acquire SPIN Magazine before divesting his magazine interests.
In January 1992, Quincy Jones executive produced
the An American Reunion concert at Lincoln Memorial,
an all-star concert and celebration that was the first
official event of the presidential inaugural celebration
and drew widespread acclaim as an HBO telecast.
On March 25, 1996, Quincy Jones, executive
produced the most watched awards show in the
world, the 68th Annual Academy Awards. The show
received widespread acclaim as one of the most
memorable Academy Award shows in recent years.
In 1997, Quincy Jones formed the Quincy Jones
Media Group. QJMG’s feature film projects in development
include such highly anticipated films as the adaptations of the
Ralph Ellison novel Juneteeth, David Halberstam’s The Children
for Home Box Office in association with producers Kathleen
Kennedy and Frank Marshall, a bio-pic on the 19th century
Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, Pimp and Seeds of Peace for
Showtime, among others. For television, QJMG is developing
the sit-com The White Guy. QJMG is also active in live
entertainment, direct response marketing, and cross-media
projects for home entertainment and educational applications.
As a record company executive, Quincy remained
highly active in the recording field throughout the 1990s as the
guiding force behind his own Qwest Records, which boasted
such important artists as New Order, Tevin Campbell, Andre
Crouch, Patti Austin, James Ingram, Siedah Garrett, Gregory
Jefferson and Justin Warfield. New Order’s album, Substance
earned Qwest a gold album in 1987. Tevin Campbell’s T.E.V.I.N
was both a critical sensation and major commercial success,
and the label’s release of the Boyz N The Hood soundtrack
album was among the most successful soundtrack recordings
of 1991. Qwest Records has also released soundtrack albums
from the major motion pictures Sarafina! and Malcolm X.
In 1994, Quincy Jones led a group of businessmen,
including Hall of Fame football player Willie Davis, television
producer Don Cornelius, television journalist Geraldo Rivera
and businesswoman Sonia Gonsalves Salzman in the formation
of Qwest Broadcasting, a minority controlled broadcasting
company which purchased television stations in Atlanta and
New Orleans for approximately $167 million, establishing it
as one of the largest minority owned broadcasting companies
in the United States. Quincy served as chairman and CEO of
Qwest Broadcasting. In 1999, taking advantage of the rapid
escalation of broadcast station values, Jones and his partners
sold Qwest Broadcasting for a reported $270 million.
The laurels, awards and accolades have been
innumerable: Quincy has won an Emmy Award for his score
of the of the opening episode of the landmark TV miniseries,
Roots, seven Oscar nominations, the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award,
27 Grammy Awards, and N.A.R.A.S.’ prestigious Trustees’
Award and The Grammy Living Legend Award. He is the alltime
most nominated Grammy artist with a total of 79 Grammy
nominations. In 1990, France recognized Quincy with its most
distinguished title, the Commandeur de la Legion d’ Honneur.
He is also the recipient of the French Ministry of Culture’s
Distinguished Arts and Letters Award. Quincy is the recipient
of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music’s coveted Polar
Music Prize, and the Republic of Italy’s Rudolph Valentino
Award. He is also the recipient of honorary doctorates from
Howard University, the Berklee College of Music, Seattle
University, Wesleyan University, Brandeis University,
Loyola University (New Orleans), Clark Atlanta University,
Claremont University’s Graduate School, the University of
Connecticut, Harvard University, Tuskegee University, New
York University, University of Miami and The American
Film Institute, among others. In 2001, Jones was named a
Kennedy Center Honoree, for his contributions to the cultural
fabric of the United States of America. He was recognized by
the National Endowment for the Arts as a Jazz Master—the
nation’s highest jazz honor, and was most recently bestowed
the National Medal of Arts, our nation’s highest artistic honor.
In 1990, his life and career were chronicled in
the critically acclaimed Warner Bros. film, Listen Up: The
Lives of Quincy Jones, produced by Courtney Sale Ross,
a film which helped illuminate not only Quincy’s life and
spirit, but also revealed much about the development of
the African American musical tradition. Reflecting on
the changes in pop music over the years, Quincy says, “If
there are any common denominators, they are spirit and
musicality. I go for the music that gives me goose bumps,
music that touches my heart and my soul.” Over the years,
Quincy Jones has reached the essence of music and art:
the ability to touch people’s feelings and emotions.
In 2001, Quincy Jones added the title “Best
Selling Author” to his list of accomplishments when his
autobiography Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones entered
the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal
Best-Sellers lists. Released by Doubleday Publishing, the
critically acclaimed biography retells Jones’ life story from
his days as an impoverished youth on the Southside of
Chicago through a massively impressive career in music,
film and television where he worked beside legends such
as Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Count
Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and Michael Jackson, among many
others. In conjunction with the autobiography, Rhino
Records released a 4-cd boxed set of Jones’ music, spanning
his more than 5 decade career in the music business,
entitled “Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy Jones.”
The audio recording of “Q: The Autobiography
of Quincy Jones,” (Simon & Schuster) earned Jones
his 27th Grammy Award, in the Best Spoken Word
Category, while “Q: The Musical Biography of Quincy
Jones” garnered him a 15th NAACP Image Award,
in the category of Outstanding Jazz Artist.
In 2008 The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey &
Passions, (Palace Press) examined the virtuosity of the man
Frank Sinatra named “Q,” celebrating his prolific contribution
to American art and culture. The book included a foreword
by Clint Eastwood, preface from Bono, an introduction by
Maya Angelou and an afterword by Sidney Poitier. Comprised
of personal interviews and recollections from Jones, this
collection peers behind the veil of celebrity, with extraordinary
access to his creative inspirations and achievements.
Jones next projects include the forthcoming
release of Soul Bossa Nostra, an album featuring some of
today’s biggest recording artists and producers such as
Usher, Ludacris, Akon, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson, Mary
J. Blige, T-Pain, Robin Thicke, LL Cool J, John Legend,
Snoop Dogg, Wyclef Jean, Q-Tip, Talib Kweli, Three 6 Mafia,
David Banner, Bebe Winans, Mervyn Warren, Jermaine
Dupri, DJ Paul, and Scott Storch, among others, who have
joined together to celebrate the music of the multi-Grammy
winning producer, composer and arranger by recording
contemporary versions of popular recordings from his
massive catalog; the book Q on Producing which recounts
his six-decade long career working in the recording studio
with music icons such as Count Basie, Duke Ellington,
Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson, among
many others; a duets album with Stevie Wonder and Tony
Bennett; as well as multiple projects for film and television.
With a long history of humanitarian work which
began in the 1960’s and 70’s, Jones was one of the key
supporters of Jesse Jackson’s Operation P.U.S.H. In 1985, he
pioneered the model of using celebrity to raise money and
awareness for a cause with “We Are the World.” The song
remains the best-selling single of all-time, and raised more
than $63 Million for Ethiopian famine relief. More importantly,
however, it shined a spotlight on the Ethiopian drought and
U.S. Government responded with over $800 million in aid.
In 1999 Quincy Jones joined Bono and Bob
Geldof during a meeting with Pope John Paul II as a part of
the Jubilee 2000 delegation to end third world debt. The
delegation’s visit resulted in $27 billion in third world debt
relief for Bolivia, Mozambique, and the Ivory Coast.
In 2004, in front of a live audience of more than
a half-million spectators, Jones launched the We Are the
Future initiative with a concert featuring Carlos Santana,
Alicia Keyes, Josh Groban, Oprah Winfrey, Norah Jones
and a host of other entertainers from around the world.
The initiative has established Municipal Child Centers
in the cities of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Asmara (Eritrea),
Freetown (Sierra Leone), Kigali (Rwanda) and Nablus
(Palestine) where youth are being trained to run childbased
programs in health, nutrition, Information and
Communication Technology (ICT), Sports and Arts.
In 2007, Jones and the Harvard School of Public
Health joined forces to advance the health and well-being of
children worldwide through Project Q, a strategic initiative
of School’s Center for Health Communication. Through
the strategic use of media, Project Q challenges leaders
and citizens of the world to provide essential resources
to enable young people to achieve their full potential.
A centerpiece of Project Q is the Q Prize, which
recognizes extraordinary leadership by public figures and social
entrepreneurs who are championing the needs of children.
The inaugural Q Prize was awarded in January 2007 to Scott
Neeson, founder of the Cambodian Children’s Fund, and over
$600,000 was raised in support of Neeson’s work. The 2008
Q Prize will be awarded on October 23 in New York City.
Through his personal foundation, The Quincy
Jones Foundation, Jones raises awareness and financial
resources for initiatives that support global children’s
issues in areas of conflict, malaria eradication, clean
water and efforts to restore the Gulf Coast (post-Katrina).
Philanthropic partners include Malaria No More, Millennium
Promise, and R&B singer Usher’s New Look Foundation.
MARY JORDAN
JON KAMEN
Mary Catherine Jordan (born November 10, 1960) is a Pulitzer
Prize-winning American journalist for the Washington Post.
She is currently the editor of Washington Post Live, which
organizes political debates, conferences and news events
for the media company. She has written on U.S. politics,
the American education system and many other subjects.
With her husband, Post journalist Kevin Sullivan, Jordan
ran the newspaper’s bureaus in Tokyo, Mexico City and
London. Jordan has written from nearly 40 countries and
also been a frequent commentator on BBC Television.
Jordan, a daughter of Irish immigrants, was
born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She graduated from
Georgetown University in 1983 and earned a master’s
degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of
Journalism in 1984. In 1989–90, Jordan was awarded
a Nieman Fellowship by Harvard University.
Jordan began her Post career as an intern
for the Style section, crisscrossed the country writing
about colleges and schools as the national education
reporter, and covered Virginia and national politics.
For a year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, she
studied William Butler Yeats and other Irish poets. She was
given her first job in the newspaper business by legendary Irish
author and editor Tim Pat Coogan, who hired her to write a
column in the Irish Press. She enrolled in Japanese language
classes at Georgetown University before moving to Tokyo for
four years and studied Spanish on a post-graduate fellowship
at Stanford University before moving to Mexico for five years.
Currently, Jordan moderates many high-profile
forums for the Washington Post including the “The 40th
Anniversary of Watergate” in June 2012 that featured key
Watergate figures including including former White House
counsel John Dean, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee,
and reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
She hosted the 2010 Maryland gubernatorial
debate between Governor Martin O’Malley and former
Governor Robert Ehrlich, and moderated a rare sitdown
with Redskin owner Dan Snyder, Capital’s owner Ted
Leonsis, and other owners of Washington’s sports teams.
Among the many newsmakers she has interviewed:
Legendary singer and songwriter Paul McCartney, Colombian
novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize winner Henry
Kissinger, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and
Benjamin Arellano Felix, one of Mexico’s most notorious
drug kingpins. Jordan has written extensively about injustices
and discrimination against women around the world
including articles about the exceedingly low conviction
rate of rape in Britain and the unfortunate girls in India
denied schooling solely because they were not born male.
Jordan and Sullivan won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for
International Reporting for their Post series on the “horrific
conditions in Mexico’s criminal justice system and how
they affect the daily lives of people,” as the Pulitzer Board
described. Along with four Post photographers, Jordan and
Sullivan were also finalists for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for
International Reporting for their series of stories on the
difficulties women face around the world. The Pulitzer jury
called the series a “sensitive examination of how females in
the developing world are often oppressed from birth to death,
a reporting project marked by indelible portraits of women
and girls and enhanced by multimedia presentations.”
Jordan and Sullivan authored The Prison Angel:
Mother Antonia’s Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service
in a Mexican Jail (The Penguin Press, 2005). In 2006, the
book won the Christopher Award, which “salutes media
that affirm the highest values of the human spirit.”
Jordan and Sullivan have also won numerous other awards
including the George Polk Award for their coverage of the 1997
Asian Financial Crisis and awards from the Overseas Press
Club of America and the Society of Professional Journalists.
@radical.media creates some of the world’s most innovative
content across all platforms of media. Originally renowned
for its commercial and advertising success, it has transformed
and grown to develop, produce, and distribute television,
feature films, music programming, live events, digital
content and design. As the founding Chairman and CEO
of @radical.media, Jon continues to expand @radical’s
capabilities within this ever-evolving media landscape.
Beyond an Executive, Jon is a Producer and Executive
Producer of groundbreaking projects. Amongst @radical’s
major achievements, @radical.media has been recognized
for producing multiple award-winning projects including
the Academy Award and Independent Spirit Award for the
documentary The Fog of War; and a Grammy for the Concert
for George. This past year, @radical produced the Academy
Award and Emmy-nominated HBO documentary Paradise
Lost 3 and the Emmy-nominated A&E documentary following
Paul Simon’s Graceland journey, Under African Skies.
@radical is currently in production on a Ron Howarddirected
documentary on the Made In America festival in
Philadelphia. And it recently launched THNKR, a Premium
YouTube Channel, offering viewers extraordinary access to
the people, stories, and ideas that are transforming the world.
Beyond his professional duties and
prolific production credits, Jon is on the Board of Trustees
of the Rhode Island School of Design, and has recently
has been appointed to the Board of the Mr. Holland’s
Opus Foundation. Jon has continuously fostered @
radical’s work with numerous organizations and public
service initiatives, including RED, ONE, and Conservation
International. In 2012, he accepted Mayor Bloomberg’s
Made in New York Award at Gracie Mansion.
Jon strives to increase the reach, impact, and
legacies of the advertising and entertainment industries.
During his two terms as National Chairman of the AICP,
he founded the “Art and Technique of the American
Television Commercial,” which has been presented for
the past 20 years at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1994,
Jon received the Crystal Apple Award for his outstanding
contributions to the city’s production industry.
JEFFREY KATZENBERG
Jeffrey Katzenberg (born December 21, 1950) is an American
film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation. He
is perhaps most known for his period as chairman of The
Walt Disney Studios when Disney produced some of its
biggest hits, including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the
Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. As a founder and CEO
of DreamWorks Animation, he has overseen the production
of such animated franchises as Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu
Panda, Monsters vs. Aliens and How to Train Your Dragon.
Katzenberg was born in New York City, the son
of Anne, an artist, and Walter, a stockbroker. He attended
the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, graduating in 1969.
Katzenberg began his career as an assistant to
producer David Picker, then in 1974 he became an assistant
to Barry Diller, the Chairman of Paramount Pictures. Diller
moved Katzenberg to the marketing department, followed
by other assignments within the studio, until he was
assigned to revive the Star Trek franchise, which resulted
in the hit film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). He
continued to work his way up and became President of
Production under Paramount President Michael Eisner.
In 1984, Michael Eisner became Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) at The Walt Disney Company. Eisner brought
Katzenberg with him to take charge of Disney’s motion
picture division. Katzenberg was responsible for reviving
the studio which, at the time, ranked last at the box office
among the major studios. He focused the studio on the
production of adult-oriented comedies under its Touchstone
Pictures banner, including films such as Down and Out in
Beverly Hills (1986), Three Men and a Baby (1987) and Good
Morning, Vietnam (1987). By 1987, Disney had become
the number-one studio at the box office. Katzenberg also
oversaw Touchstone Television, which produced such hit
TV series, The Golden Girls and Home Improvement.
Katzenberg was also charged with turning around
Disney’s ailing Feature Animation unit, creating some
intrastudio controversy when he personally edited three
minutes out of a completed Disney animated feature, The
Black Cauldron (1985), shortly after joining the company.
Under his management, the animation department eventually
began creating some of Disney’s most critically acclaimed and
highest grossing animated features. These films include Who
Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Little Mermaid (1989),The
Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991,
the first animated feature to be nominated for an Academy
Award for Best Picture), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King
(1994). In addition, Katzenberg also sealed the deal that
created the highly successful partnership between Pixar and
Disney and the deal that brought Miramax Films into Disney.
When Eisner’s second in command, Frank Wells,
died in a helicopter crash in 1994, Eisner refused to promote
Katzenberg to the vacated position of president. This led to
a falling out between the two executives, and Katzenberg
left the company in September 1994. He launched a lawsuit
against Disney to recover money he felt he was owed and
settled out of court for an estimated $250 million.
Later in 1994, Katzenberg co-founded
DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David
Geffen, with Katzenberg taking primary responsibility for
animation operations. He was also credited as executive
producer on the DreamWorks animated films The Prince
of Egypt (1998), The Road to El Dorado and Joseph:
King of Dreams (both in 2000) and Shrek in 2001.
After DreamWorks Animation suffered a
$125 million loss on the traditionally-animated Sinbad:
Legend of the Seven Seas, the studio switched to all
computer-generated animation. Since then, DreamWorks’
animated films have been consistently successful.
In 2004, DreamWorks Animation (DWA)
was spun off from DreamWorks as a separate
company headed by Katzenberg in an IPO and has
recorded mostly profitable quarters since then.
The live-action DreamWorks movie studio was
sold to Viacom in December 2005. In 2008, the liveaction
DreamWorks studio again became an independent
production company, releasing its films through Disney.
In 2006, Katzenberg made an appearance on the
fifth season of The Apprentice. He awarded the task winners
an opportunity to be character voices in Over the Hedge.
Katzenberg has been an industry leader in promoting
digital 3D production of film, calling it “the greatest advance
in the film industry since the arrival of color in the 1930s.”
When Katzenberg appeared on The Colbert Report on April
20, 2010, he confirmed that from now on “every single
movie” that DreamWorks Animation produced would be
in 3D and gave Stephen Colbert a pair of new 3D glasses.
Katzenberg married Marilyn Siegel, a kindergarten
teacher, in 1975, and they have two children.
Together, Marilyn and Jeffrey have been highly
active in charitable causes. They donated the multimillion-dollar
Katzenberg Center to Boston University’s
College of General Studies, citing that the school gave
their two children the “love of education.” They also
donated the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Center for
Animation at the University of Southern California.
In addition to serving as Chairman of the Board
for the Motion Picture and Television Fund Foundation,
Katzenberg sits on the boards or serves as a trustee of AIDS
Project Los Angeles, American Museum of the Moving Image,
California Institute of the Arts, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,
Geffen Playhouse, Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s
Research, University of Southern California School of
Cinematic Arts and The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Together
with DreamWorks Animation, Katzenberg founded the
DreamWorks Animation Academy of Inner-City Arts in 2008.
Katzenberg has an estimated worth of $800
million according to Forbes. Katzenberg is reported to
have donated over $3.5 million in political contributions
since 1979: 33% ($1.171+ million) to Democrats, 66%
($2.33+ million) to special interest groups without party
affiliations, and less than 1% ($7,000) to Republicans.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate from
Ringling College of Art and Design on May 2, 2008.
NORMAN LEAR
90
Norman Lear has enjoyed a long career in television and film,
and as a political and social activist and philanthropist.
Mr. Lear began his television writing career in 1950
when he and his partner, Ed Simmons, were signed to write
for the The Ford Star Revue, starring Jack Haley. After only
four shows, they were hired away by Jerry Lewis to write for
the Martin and Lewis Colgate Comedy Hour, which they
continued to write until 1953. Mr. Lear then began writing on
his own for comedy shows including The Martha Raye Show,
The George Gobel Show, and The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show.
In 1958, Mr. Lear teamed with director Bud Yorkin
to form Tandem Productions. Together they produced several
feature films, with Mr. Lear taking on roles as executive
producer, writer, and director. He was nominated in 1967
for an Academy Award for his script for Divorce American
Style. In 1970, CBS signed with Tandem to produce All in
the Family, which first aired on January 12, 1971 and ran for
nine seasons. It earned four Emmy Awards for Best Comedy
series as well as the Peabody Award in 1977. All in the Family
was followed by a succession of other television hit shows
including Maude, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, One Day
at a Time, Good Times, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
Concerned about the growing influence of radical
religious evangelists, Mr. Lear decided to leave television
in 1980 and formed People For the American Way, a nonprofit
organization designed to speak out for Bill of Rights
guarantees and to monitor violations of constitutional
freedoms. People For remains an influential and effective
voice for freedom. In 1982, he produced a two-hour
television special I Love Liberty, with a cast of stars and
an audience filling the Los Angeles Sports Arena.
Mr. Lear’s business career continued in 1984 when
he and his business partners created T.A.T. Communications,
later known as Embassy Communications, which was sold
in 1985. Mr. Lear then created and is currently chairman of
Act III Communications, a multimedia holding company
with interests in the recording, motion picture, broadcasting,
publishing, and licensing industries, including Concord
Music Group and Village Roadshow Pictures Group.
In addition to People for the American Way, Mr.
Lear has founded other nonprofit organizations, including
the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School
for Communication (2000–present), a multidisciplinary
research and public policy center dedicated to exploring
the convergence of entertainment, commerce and society;
the Business Enterprise Trust (1989–2000) to spotlight
exemplary social innovations in American business; and
with his wife, Lyn, co-founded the Environmental Media
Association (1989–present), to mobilize the entertainment
industry to become more environmentally responsible.
In 1999, President Clinton bestowed the National
Medal of Arts on Mr. Lear, noting that “Norman Lear has
held up a mirror to American society and changed the way
we look at it.” He has the distinction of being among the
first seven television pioneers inducted into the Television
Academy Hall of Fame (1984). In addition to his awards for
All in the Family, he has been honored by the International
Platform Association (1977), the Writers Guild of America
(1977) and many other professional and civic organizations.
In 2001, Lyn and Norman Lear created the
Declaration of Independence Road Trip, a four-year
educational initiative and national multimedia tour of one of
the surviving original copies of the Declaration, which they
purchased to share with the American people. As part of the
project, Mr. Lear launched Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan
youth voter initiative that registered well over four million
new young voters in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections.
At the Presidential Inauguration in 2009, Declare
Yourself premiered BornAgainAmerican.org, featuring
an inspiring music video that has been viewed by millions
across the country. It is part of an on-going drive to promote
active and thoughtful citizenship, as embodied in the
Declaration of Independence, which continues to tour.
Mr. Lear is married to Lyn Davis Lear and
resides in Los Angeles, California. He has six children:
Ellen, Kate, Maggie, Benjamin, Brianna, Madeline and
four grandchildren: Daniel, Noah, Griffin, Zoe.
YO-YO MA
Yo-Yo Ma’s multi-faceted career is testament to his continual
search for new ways to communicate with audiences, and
to his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal.
Whether performing new or familiar works from the
cello repertoire, coming together with colleagues for
chamber music or exploring cultures and musical forms
outside the Western classical tradition, Mr. Ma strives
to find connections that stimulate the imagination.
One of Mr. Ma’s goals is the exploration of music as
a means of communication and as a vehicle for the migrations
of ideas across a range of cultures throughout the world.
Expanding upon this interest, in 1998, Mr. Ma established
the Silk Road Project, a nonprofit arts and educational
organization. Under his artistic direction, the Silk Road Project
presents performances by the acclaimed Silk Road Ensemble,
engages in cross-cultural exchanges and residencies, leads
workshops for students, and partners with leading cultural
institutions to create educational materials and programs.
The Project’s ongoing affiliation with Harvard
University has made it possible to broaden and enhance
educational programming. In the 2011–2012 school year,
with ongoing partnerships with arts and educational
organizations in New York City, it continues to expand Silk
Road Connect, a multidisciplinary educational initiative
for middle-school students in the city’s public schools.
Developing new music is also a central undertaking of the
Silk Road Project, which has been involved in commissioning
and performing more than 60 new musical and multimedia
works from composers and arrangers around the world.
As the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Judson
and Joyce Green Creative Consultant, Mr. Ma is partnering
with Maestro Riccardo Muti to provide collaborative
musical leadership and guidance on innovative program
development for The Institute for Learning, Access and
Training at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and for Chicago
Symphony artistic initiatives. Mr. Ma’s work focuses on the
transformative power music can have in individuals’ lives,
and on increasing the number and variety of opportunities
audiences have to experience music in their communities.
Mr. Ma and the Institute have created the Citizen Musician
Initiative, a movement that calls on all musicians, music
lovers, music teachers and institutions to use the art form
to bridge gulfs between people and to create and inspire a
sense of community. www.citizenmusician.org features
stories of Citizen Musician activity across the globe.
Mr. Ma is also widely recognized for his strong
commitment to educational programs that bring the world
into the classroom and the classroom into the world.
While touring, he takes time whenever possible to conduct
master classes as well as more informal programs for
students—musicians and non-musicians alike. He has also
reached young audiences through appearances on “Arthur,”
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Sesame Street.”
Mr. Ma’s discography of over 75 albums (including
more than 15 Grammy Award winners) reflects his wideranging
interests. He has made several successful recordings
that defy categorization, among them “Hush” with Bobby
McFerrin, “Appalachia Waltz” and “Appalachian Journey”
with Mark O’Connor and Edgar Meyer and two Grammywinning
tributes to the music of Brazil, “Obrigado Brazil”
and “Obrigado Brazil—Live in Concert.” Mr. Ma’s recent
recordings include Mendelssohn Trios with Emanuel Ax and
Itzhak Perlman. His new album, “The Goat Rodeo Sessions,”
with Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile and Stuart Duncan was
released in October 2011. Across this full range of releases,
Mr. Ma remains one of the best-selling recording artists in the
classical field. All of his recent albums have quickly entered
the Billboard chart of classical best sellers, remaining in
the Top 15 for extended periods, often with as many as four
titles simultaneously on the list. In fall 2009, Sony Classical
released a box set of over 90 albums to commemorate Mr.
Ma’s 30 years as a Sony recording artist.
Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living
in Paris. He began to study the cello with his father at age
four and soon came with his family to New York, where he
spent most of his formative years. Later, his principal teacher
was Leonard Rose at The Juilliard School. He has received
numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978),
the Glenn Gould Prize (1999), the National Medal of the
Arts (2001), the Dan David Prize (2006), the Sonning Prize
(2006), the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award (2008)
and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010). In 2011 Mr.
Ma was recognized as a Kennedy Center Honoree. He was
the recipient of the 2012 Polar Music Prize. Appointed a
CultureConnect Ambassador by the United States Department
of State in 2002, Mr. Ma has met with, trained and mentored
thousands of students worldwide in countries including
Lithuania, Korea, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and China. Mr. Ma
serves as a UN Messenger of Peace and as a member of the
President’s Committee on the Arts & the Humanities. He
has performed for eight American presidents, most recently
at the invitation of President Obama on the occasion of the
56th Inaugural Ceremony. Mr. Ma and his wife have two
children. He plays two instruments, a 1733 Montagnana
cello from Venice and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.
For additional information, see: www.yo-yoma.
com, www.silkroadproject.org, and www.opus3artists.com.

JOHN MAEDA
John Maeda (born 1966 in Seattle, Washington) is a
Japanese-American graphic designer, computer scientist,
academic, and author. His work in design, technology and
leadership explores the area where the fields merge. He is
the current President of the Rhode Island School of Design.
Maeda was originally a software engineering
student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when
he became fascinated with the work of Paul Rand and Muriel
Cooper. Cooper was a director of MIT’s Visual Language
Workshop. After completing his bachelors and masters degrees
at MIT, Maeda studied in Japan at Tsukuba University’s
Institute of Art and Design to complete his Ph.D. in design.
As an artist, Maeda’s early work redefined
the use of electronic media as a tool for expression by
combining computer programming with traditional artistic
technique, laying the groundwork for the interactive motion
graphics that are taken for granted on the web today. He
has exhibited in one-man shows in London, New York
and Paris. His work is in the permanent collections of
the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art and the Cartier Foundation in Paris.
At RISD, Maeda is leading the movement to
transform STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Math) to STEAM by adding Art. He believes art and design
are poised to transform our economy in the 21st century
like science and technology did in the last century.
In 1999, he was named one of the 21 most important
people in the 21st century by Esquire. In 2001, he received
the National Design Award for Communication Design in
the United States and Japan’s Mainichi Design Prize.
In 2006, Maeda published Laws of Simplicity, his bestselling
book to date, based on a research project to find ways for
people to simplify their life in the face of growing complexity.
In 2009 he was inducted into the New
York Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame, and he
received the AIGA Medal in 2011. He is a trustee of
the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
JOHN MAZZIOTTA
NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE
Dr. John Mazziotta is Chair of the Department of
Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA,
and Director of the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain
Mapping Center. After receiving his B.A. and M.A. degrees
from Columbia University in 1972, he obtained an M.D.
and Ph.D. in Neuroanatomy and Computer Science from
Georgetown University in 1977. Following an internship at
Georgetown, he completed Neurology and Nuclear Medicine
training at UCLA and joined the faculty here in 1983.
Dr. Mazziotta chairs one of the nation’s largest
Neurology departments, which for nine of the last ten
years achieved the distinguished position of being first in
National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding. An
expert in brain imaging, he established the Brain Mapping
Center at UCLA that includes all of the methods available
to study human brain structure and function. He was the
principal investigator of the International Consortium for
Brain Mapping, whose goal is to develop the first atlas of
the human brain that will include behavioral, demographic,
imaging, and genetic data from 7,000 subjects.
Since beginning this work, Dr. Mazziotta has
published more than 255 research papers and eight texts.
He has received numerous awards and honors, including
the Oldendorf Award from the American Society of
Neuroimaging, the S. Weir Mitchell Award and the
Wartenberg Prize of the American Academy of Neurology,
the Von Hevesy Prize from the International Society
of Nuclear Medicine, the 1996 Medical Science Award
from the UCLA Medical Alumni Association, election
to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences, Honorary Doctorate from l’Université de Caen
and membership in the Royal College of Physicians.
In January 2012, Dr. Mazziotta was appointed
Associate Vice Chancellor for Medical Sciences and Executive
Vice Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is an
American architect best known as the founder and
Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Media Lab, and also known as the founder
of the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC).
Negroponte was born to Dimitri John Negroponte,
a Greek shipping magnate, and grew up in New York
City’s Upper East Side. He is the younger brother of John
Negroponte, former United States Deputy Secretary of State.
He attended Buckley School in New York City, Le
Rosey in Switzerland, and The Choate School (now Choate
Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, from which he
graduated in 1961. Subsequently, he studied at MIT as both
an undergraduate and graduate student in Architecture where
his research focused on issues of computer-aided design. He
earned a Master’s degree in architecture from MIT in 1966.
Negroponte joined the faculty of MIT in 1966.
For several years thereafter he divided his teaching time
between MIT and several visiting professorships at Yale,
Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1967, Negroponte founded MIT’s Architecture
Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank which
studied new approaches to human-computer interaction.
In 1985, Negroponte created the MIT Media Lab with
Jerome B. Wiesner. As director, he developed the lab into
the pre-eminent computer science laboratory for new
media and a high-tech playground for investigating the
human-computer interface. Negroponte also became a
proponent of intelligent agents and personalized electronic
newspapers, for which he popularized the term the Daily Me.
In 1992, Negroponte became involved in the creation
of Wired Magazine as the first investor. From 1993 to 1998,
he contributed a monthly column to the magazine in which
he reiterated a basic theme: “Move bits, not atoms.”
Negroponte expanded many of the ideas from his
Wired columns into a bestselling book Being Digital (1995),
which made famous his forecasts on how the interactive
world, the entertainment world and the information world
would eventually merge. Being Digital was a bestseller and
was translated into some twenty languages. Negroponte
is a digital optimist who believed that computers would
make life better for everyone. However, critics such as
Cass Sunstein have faulted his techno-utopian ideas for
failing to consider the historical, political and cultural
realities with which new technologies should be viewed.
Negroponte’s belief that wired technologies such
as telephones will ultimately become unwired by using
airwaves instead of wires or fiber optics, and that unwired
technologies such as televisions will become wired, is
commonly referred to as the Negroponte switch.
In 2000, Negroponte stepped down as director
of the Media Lab as Walter Bender took over as Executive
Director. However, Negroponte retained the role of laboratory
Chairman. When Frank Moss was appointed director of the lab
in 2006, Negroponte stepped down as lab chairman to focus
more fully on his work with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
although he retains his appointment as professor at MIT.
In November 2005, at the World Summit on the
Information Society held in Tunis, Negroponte unveiled the
concept of a $100 laptop computer, The Children’s Machine,
designed for students in the developing world. The price
has increased to US$180, however. The project is part of
a broader program by One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit
organisation started by Negroponte and other Media Lab
faculty, to extend Internet access in developing countries.
Negroponte is an active angel investor and has
invested in over 30 startup companies over the last 30 years,
including Zagats, Wired, Ambient Devices, Skype and Velti.
He sits on several boards, including Motorola (listed on the
New York Stock Exchange) and Velti (listed on the London
Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ). He is also on the advisory
board of TTI/Vanguard. In August 2007, he was appointed
to a five-member special committee with the objective of
assuring the continued journalistic and editorial integrity
and independence of the Wall Street Journal and other Dow
Jones & Company publications and services. The committee
was formed as part of the merger of Dow Jones with News
Corporation. Negroponte’s fellow founding committee
members are Louis Boccardi, Thomas Bray, Jack Fuller,
and the late former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn.
Negroponte has influenced modern
day futurists, such as David Houle.

TODD OLDHAM
Todd is a well-known designer whose career spans more
than 20 years. Distinguished as an innovator of accessible
design, Todd Oldham is the founder of Todd Oldham Studio,
a multifaceted, full-service design studio based in NYC.
Originally a New York fashion designer, the host
of “Todd Time” on MTV’s House of Style, Todd’s career has
evolved to include all areas of design, from interior design,
film and photography, to furniture and graphic design.
Todd is currently working on his 19th book Charley
Harper’s Animal Kingdom. His previous books include a 672-
page monograph on the life’s work of artist Alexander Girard; a
unique ongoing series called Place Space that explores singular
places and the uncommonly devoted people that create them;
an artist’s monograph on the brilliant, warped work of Wayne
White (all published by AMMO BOOKS). Most recently, Kid
Made Modern, a collection of art supplies and kits, books
and events, debuted this summer in all Target locations.
CRISTINA PATO
Cristina Pato has already opened historical new paths for the
Gaita (Galician bagpipe). In 1998 Cristina Pato became the
first female Gaita player releasing a solo album and since then
she has collaborated with world music, jazz, classical and
experimental artists (including Chicago Symphony, Yo-Yo Ma,
The Chieftains, Arturo O’Farril, World Symphony Orchestra,
Paquito D’Rivera). Her unique and powerful style full of
passion and energy has been acclaimed by The New York Times
as “a virtuosic burst of energy” or the BBC as “the Galician
bagpipe diva”. Cristina Pato fuses the influences of Latin
music, jazz, pop and contemporary music, and uses her artistry
and unprecedented virtuosic skill to bring her musical vision
to life. Pato is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble.
Internationally acclaimed as a Gaita master and
classical pianist, Cristina Pato enjoys an active professional
career devoted to both Galician popular and classical music.
Her dual careers have led to performances throughout major
stages throughout the world, including USA (Carnegie Hall,
Lincoln Center), India (Kamani Auditorium), Jerusalem
(Jerusalem Festival), Angola, China, Corea, Portugal
(Festa do Avante), Brazil (Liszt Festival), UK (Celtic
Connections), France, Italy (Etnofestival), Germany,
Mexico (Palacio de Bellas Artes) and her native Spain.
An active recording artist and performer since age
12, Ms. Pato has released four solo Gaita recordings, two as a
pianist and has collaborated in more than thirty recordings
as a guest artist, including the Grammy award winner “Yo-
Yo Ma and Friends; Songs of Joy and Peace” (SONY BMG
2008), the “Miles Español: New Skectches of Spain” album
and the Grammy nominated Silk Road Ensemble album “Off
the Map”(World Village 2010). Ms. Pato has given more than
500 concerts with her own band many of them recorded and
broadcasted by television stations such as BBC, TVG, CNN
and RTVE, and she has been praised by newspapers as The
New York Times, El Pais, La Voz de Galicia or The Scotsman.
Ms. Pato is Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative
Piano from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers
University (NJ, USA), where she studied with a fellowship
from Fundacion Barrie de la Maza. She was awarded with
the Edna Mason Scholarship and the Irene Alm Memorial
Prize for excellence in scholarly research and performance
(Rutgers University, May 2008). Cristina Pato holds both
a Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance and a
Master of Music Degree in Music Theory and Chamber
Music (with honors) from the Conservatorio de Musica
del Liceu (Barcelona). She also holds also a Master of
Fine Arts Degree in Digital Arts (Computer Music)
from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona).
Cristina Pato is part of the Leadership Council
of The SIlk Road Ensemble collaborating closely
with Harvard University, the ensemble’s residency.
Cristina is also a faculty member (adjunct) at the
vocal department of New Jersey City University.
During the 2011-2012 season Cristina Pato has toured
Africa and Spain with her own band; USA, China, and Korea
with Yo Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble and India with
HUM Ensemble. She collaborated in the album Miles Español
along with Chick Corea and Jack DeJonnette and participated
at the Kennedy Center Honors Awards honoring Yo Yo Ma with
The Silk Road Ensemble, Johns Williams and James Taylor.
She is the founder and artistic director of
Galician Connection, a forum in world music celebrated
annually at Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
Ms. Pato resides in New York City since 2004.
More info: www.cristinapato.com

STEVEN PINKER
Steven Pinker was born in 1954 in the English-speaking Jewish
community of Montreal,Canada. He earned a bachelor’s
degree in experimental psychology at McGill University and
then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1976, where he
has spent most of his career bouncing back and forth between
Harvard and MIT. He earned his doctorate at Harvard in 1979,
followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, a one-year stint
as an assistant professor at Harvard, and in 1982, a move back
to MIT that lasted until 2003, when he returned to Harvard.
Currently he is Harvard College Professor and the Johnstone
Family Professor in the Department of Psychology. He also
has spent two years in California: in 1981–82, when he was an
assistant professor at Stanford, and in 1995–96,when he spent
a sabbatical year at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Pinker is an experimental psychologist who is
interested in all aspects of language and mind. Much of his
initial research was in visual cognition, the ability to imagine
shapes, recognize faces and objects, and direct attention within
the visual field. But beginning in graduate school he cultivated
an interest in language, particularly language development
in children, and this topic eventually took over his research
activities. Aside from his experimental papers in language and
visual cognition, he wrote two fairly technical books early in
his career. One outlined a theory of how children acquire the
words and grammatical structures of their mother tongue. The
second focused on one aspect of this process, the ability to
use different kinds of verbs in appropriate sentences, such as
intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and verbs taking different
combinations of complements and indirect objects. For the
next two decades his research focused on the distinction
between irregular verbs like bring-brought and regular
verbs like walk-walked. The reason is that the two kinds of
verbs neatly embody the two processes that make language
possible: looking up words in memory, and combining words
(or parts of words) according to rules. He has also studied
language development in twins and the neuroimaging of
language processes in the brain, and has recently begun
lines of research on the nature of reminding and on the
function of innuendo and other forms of indirect speech.
In 1994 he published the first of five books
written for a general audience. The Language Instinct was
an introduction to all aspects of language, held together by
the idea that language is a biological adaptation. This was
followed in 1997 by How the Mind Works, which offered a
similar synthesis of the rest of the mind, from vision and
reasoning to the emotions, humor, and art. In 1999 he
published Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language which
presented his research on regular and irregular verbs as a
way of explaining how language works in general. In 2002
he published The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human
Nature, which explored the political, moral, and emotional
colorings of the concept of human nature. The Stuff of Thought:
Language as a Window into Human Nature, published in 2007,
discussed the ways in which language reveals our thoughts,
emotions, and social relationships. His most recent book is
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,
published in 2011. Pinker frequently writes for The New York
Times, Time, The New Republic, and other magazines on
subjects such as language and politics, the neural basis of
consciousness, and the genetic enhancement of human beings.
Pinker is the Chair of the Usage Panel of The
American Heritage Dictionary and has served as editor or
advisor for numerous scientific, scholarly, media, and
humanist organizations, including the American Association
the Advancement of Science, the National Science Foundation,
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American
Psychological Association, and the Linguistics Society of
America. He has won many prizes for his books (including
the William James Book Prize three times, the Los Angeles
Times Science Book Prize, and the Eleanor Maccoby Book
Prize), his research (including the Troland Research Prize
from the National Academy of Sciences, the Early Career
Award from the American Psychological Association, and
the Henry Dale Prize from the Royal Institution of Great
Britain), and his graduate and undergraduate teaching.
He is also a Humanist Laureate, the 2006 Humanist of
the Year, recipient of the 2008 Innovations for Humanity
Award from La Ciudad de las Ideas in Mexico, the 2008
Honorary President of the Canadian Psychological
Association, and the recipient of six honorary doctorates.
Pinker lives in Boston and in Truro
with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. The other
authors in the family are his sister Susan Pinker
and Rebecca’s daughter Yael Goldstein Love.
LISA RANDALL
Professor Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics
and cosmology at Harvard University. Her research
connects theoretical insights to puzzles in our current
understanding of the properties and interactions of
matter. She has developed and studied a wide variety of
models to address these questions, the most prominent
involving extra dimensions of space. Her work has
involved improving our under-standing of the Standard
Model of particle physics, supersymmetry, baryogenesis,
cosmological inflation, and dark matter. Randall’s research
also explores ways to experimentally test and verify ideas
and her current research focuses in large part on the Large
Hadron Collider and dark matter searches and models.
Randall has also had a public presence through her
writing, lectures, and radio and TV appearances. Randall’s
books, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s
Hidden Dimensions and Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How
Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the
Modern World were both on The New York Times’ list of 100
Notable Books of the Year. Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty
Space was released as a Kindle Single in the summer of 2012
as an update with recent particle physics developments.
Randall’s studies have made her among the most
cited and influential theoretical physicists and she has received
numerous awards and honors for her scientific endeavors.
She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the
American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, was a fellow of the American Physical
Society, and is a past winner of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Young
Investigator Award, a DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator
Award, and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Randall
is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an
Honorary Fellow of the British Institute of Physics. In 2003,
she received the Premio Caterina Tomassoni e Felice Pietro
Chisesi Award, from the University of Rome, La Sapienza. In
2006, she received the Klopsteg Award from the American
Society of Physics Teachers (AAPT) for her lectures and in
2007 she received the Julius Lilienfeld Prize from the American
Physical Society for her work on elementary particle physics
and cosmology and for communicating this work to the public.
Randall has also pursued art-science connections,
writing a libretto for Hypermusic: A Projective Opera in Seven
Planes that premiered in the Pompidou Center in Paris
and co-curating an art exhibit for the Los Angeles Arts
Association, Measure for Measure, which was presented
in Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, at the Guggenheim Gallery
at Chapman University, and at Harvard’s Carpenter
Center. In 2012, she was the recipient of the Andrew
Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics,
which is given annually for significant contributions to the
cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics.
Professor Randall was on the list of Time Magazine’s
“100 Most Influential People” of 2007 and was one of 40
people featured in The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue
that year. Prof. Randall was featured in Newsweek’s “Who’s
Next in 2006” as “one of the most promising theoretical
physicists of her generation” and in Seed Magazine’s
“2005 Year in Science Icons”. In 2008, Prof. Randall was
among Esquire Magazine’s “75 Most Influential People.”
Professor Randall earned her Ph.D. from Harvard
University and held professorships at MIT and Princeton
University before returning to Harvard in 2001. She is also the
recipient of honorary degrees from Brown University, Duke
University, Bard College, and the University of Antwerp.
PETER RAVEN
Peter H. Raven, a leading botanist and advocate of
conservation and biodiversity with a notably international
outlook, is president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical
Garden and George Engelmann Professor of Botany
Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition,
Dr. Raven is a Trustee of the National Geographic Society
and Chairman of the Society’s Committee for Research and
Exploration. For more than 39 years, Dr. Raven headed the
Missouri Botanical Garden, an institution he nurtured to
become a world-class center for botanical research, education,
and horticulture display. During this period, the Garden
became a leader in botanical research and conservation
in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and North America.
Dr. Raven first realized in the mid 1960s that
the rapid growth of the human population, consumption,
and the spread of polluting technologies were threatening
biological diversity to a degree that had not been realized
earlier. He soon became an outspoken advocate of the need
for conservation throughout the world based on efforts to
attain sustainability and social justice everywhere. He was
described by Time magazine as a “Hero for the Planet,” and
has received numerous prizes and awards, including the
International Prize for Biology from the government of Japan;
Volvo Environment Prize; the Tyler Prize for Environmental
Achievement; the Sasakawa Environment Prize; and the
BBVA Prize for Ecology and Conservation, Madrid. In October
2009 he was awarded the first RBG Kew International
Medal, given on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of
the Gardens; in January 2010, the Award for International
Scientific Cooperation of the Chinese Academy of Science
and the Friendship Award (for promoting international
cooperation) from the government of China. Earlier in 2012,
he received an award from the President of Mexico for his
work with Mexican scientists and institutions over the years.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Raven held Guggenheim and John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships.
In 2001, Dr. Raven received the National Medal of
Science, the highest award for scientific accomplishment in
the United States. He has been president of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi, the
American Institute of Biological Sciences, and a number of
other organizations. He served for 12 years as Home Secretary
of the National Academy of Sciences, to which he was elected
in 1977. He is also a member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society,
of the academies of science in Argentina, Australia, Austria,
Brazil, Chile, China, Denmark, Georgia, Hungary, India, Italy,
Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, the U.K. (the
Royal Society), and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and
the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).
Dr. Raven is Co-editor of the Flora of China,
a joint Chinese-American international project that is
leading to a contemporary, 50-volume account on all the
plants of China scheduled for completion at the end of
2012. He was the first chair of the U.S. Civilian Research
and Development Foundation, a private, congressionallychartered
organization that funds joint research with the
independent countries of the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Raven has written numerous books and
publications, both popular and scientific, including Biology
of Plants (co-authored with Ray Evert and Susan Eichhorn,
W. H. Freeman and Company/Worth Publishers, New York),
the internationally best-selling textbook in botany, of which
the eighth edition appeared in 2011; and Environment (coauthored
with Linda Berg, Wiley & Sons, New York), a leading
textbook on the environment, now in its eighth edition (2011).
Dr. Raven received his Ph.D. from the University
of California, Los Angeles, in 1960 after completing his
undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
He has been awarded honorary degrees by a number of
universities in the United States and around the world.
MOSHE SAFDIE
Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator,
theorist, and author. Embracing a comprehensive and
humane design philosophy, Safdie is committed to
architecture that supports and enhances a project’s
program; that is informed by the geographic, social, and
cultural elements that define a place; and that responds to
human needs and aspirations. Safdie has completed a wide
range of projects, such as cultural, educational, and civic
institutions; neighborhoods and public parks; mixed-use
urban centers and airports; and master plans for existing
communities and entirely new cities around the world.
Major projects by Safdie Architects currently under
construction or recently completed include Mamilla Alrov
Center, a dynamic urban center near the Old City in Jerusalem;
Marina Bay Sands, a mixed-use integrated resort in Singapore;
Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex, the national museum
of the Sikh people in the Punjab, India; the United States
Institute of Peace Headquarters on the Mall in Washington,
D.C.; the National Campus for the Archeology of Israel in
Jerusalem; Golden Dream Bay, a high-density residential
project in Qinhuangdao, China; the Kauffman Center for the
Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri; and the Crystal
Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1938, Safdie moved to
Canada with his family at a young age. He graduated from
McGill University in 1961 with a degree in architecture.
After apprenticing with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie
returned to Montreal to oversee the master plan for the
1967 World Exhibition. In 1964 he established his own firm
to realize Habitat ’67, an adaptation of his thesis at McGill,
which was the central feature of the World’s Fair and a
groundbreaking design in the history of architecture.
In 1970, Safdie established a Jerusalem branch office,
commencing an intense involvement with the rebuilding of
Jerusalem. He was responsible for major segments of the
restoration of the Old City and the reconstruction of the new
center, linking the Old and New Cities. Over the years, his
involvement expanded and included the new city of Modi’in,
the new Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, and the Rabin
Memorial Center. During this period, Safdie also became
involved in the developing world, working in Senegal, Iran,
Singapore, and in the northern Canadian arctic. In 1978,
after teaching at Yale, McGill, and Ben Gurion Universities,
Safdie relocated his residence and principal office to Boston.
He served as Director of the Urban Design Program at
Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1978 to
1984, and Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban
Design from 1984 to 1989. In the following decade, he was
responsible for the design of six of Canada’s principal public
institutions, including the Quebec Museum of Civilization, the
National Gallery of Canada, and Vancouver Library Square.
Safdie has worked with a wide range of clients,
including municipal entities and government agencies,
colleges and universities, private developers, and nonprofit
organizations and civic institutions. Many of his
firm’s buildings have become beloved regional and
national landmarks, including Exploration Place Science
Center, Wichita, Kansas; Salt Lake City Public Library,
Salt Lake City, Utah; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem,
Massachusetts; Springfield Federal Courthouse, Springfield,
Massachusetts; Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles,
California; Lester B. Pearson International Airport,
Toronto, Canada; the National Gallery of Canada; and
Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Jerusalem, Israel.
In addition to numerous articles on the theory
and practice of architecture, Safdie has written several
books, most notably, Beyond Habitat (1970), For Everyone a
Garden (1974), Form and Purpose (1982), and Jerusalem: The
Future of the Past (1989). The City After the Automobile (1997)
details Safdie’s ideas about urbanism and city planning. A
comprehensive monograph of his work, Moshe Safdie I, was
published in 1996. Moshe Safdie II, a second monograph
featuring work from 1996–2008, was published in 2009.
Safdie has been featured in several films, including
Moshe Safdie, The Power of Architecture, which is a portrait
film (directed by Donald Winkler, 2004), My Architect: A
Son’s Journey about Nathaniel Kahn and his father Louis
I. Khan (directed by Nathaniel Kahn, 2003), and The
Sound of the Carceri, about Bach and Piranesi, with Yo-
Yo Ma (directed by Francois Girard, 1997). In the fall of
2010, The National Gallery of Canada presented Global
Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie, an exhibition that
explores the architect’s buildings and design philosophy.
The exhibition is co-sponsored by Crystal Bridges Museum
of American Art and the Skirball Cultural Center.
Past exhibitions of Safdie’s designs include Building
a New Museum (Peabody Essex Museum, 2003-2004); Moshe
Safdie, Museum Architecture 1971–1998 (Tel Aviv University,
1998); Moshe Safdie, Projects: 1979–1989 (Harvard University
Graduate School of Design, 1989); and For Everyone a Garden
(Baltimore Museum of Art, National Gallery of Canada,
and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1973-1974).
Safdie has been the recipient of numerous
awards, honorary degrees, and civil honors, including
the Companion of the Order of Canada and the Gold
Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
MEGAN SMITH
BENEDIKT TASCHEN
Megan recently joined Google’s advanced products team,
Google [x], where she is working on range of projects including
co-creating/hosting SolveForX, a forum to encourage and
amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork
(http://www.wesolveforx.com/). For nine years before that she
oversaw Google’s New Business Development team managing
early-stage partnerships, pilot explorations, and technology
licensing working closely with Google’s engineering and
product teams globally across all product areas. She led many
of the company’s early acquisitions, including Keyhole (Google
Earth), Where2Tech (Google Maps) and Picasa. Megan also
led the Google.org team transition to expand and innovate
engineering based projects including Google Crisis Response,
Google for Nonprofits, and Earth Outreach/Earth Engine,
Googler 1%-time (now called “GoogleServe20”) in addition to
operationalizing Google’s more traditional corporate giving.
Prior to joining Google in 2003, Megan was the CEO
and, earlier, COO of PlanetOut, the leading gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender online community, where the
team broke through many barriers and partnered closely
with all of the early major web players. She also held roles
at General Magic and Apple Japan. Over the years, Megan
has contributed to a wide range of engineering projects,
including an award-winning bicycle lock, space station
construction program, solar cookstoves and was a member
of the MIT student team who designed, built and raced a
solar car 2000 miles across the Australian outback. She holds
a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in mechanical
engineering from MIT, where she now serves on the board. She
completed her master’s thesis work at the MIT Media Lab.
Benedikt Taschen, 1961, Cologne, Germany, is a German
publisher. His professional life started at age 18 in a
250-square-foot (23 m 2 ) store in Cologne, Germany, named
TASCHEN COMICS. In 1984, he bought 40,000 remainder
copies of a Magritte monograph published in English with
money borrowed from his family. The books sold through at
double the price in two months and he was soon publishing
his own books. By the end of the 1980s TASCHEN titles
were available in over a dozen languages at prices that made
art books affordable to students and collectors alike.
By the late 1990s, he had become a household
name in publishing. When Vanity Fair’s Matt Tyrnauer
deemed him, “one of the few people in business who has the
courage to do exactly what he wants whenever he wants to”,
Benedikt Taschen tested the theory with Helmut Newton’s
SUMO, the largest bound book of the 20th century. “I have
done a lot of books, and I can tell you—without mentioning
names—that publishers are not all like him. There are very
few like him. Or there are none like him. He is also, I might
add, a madman”, says Helmut Newton to Vanity Fair.
SUMO is also the company’s most successful title
of the last ten years and the precursor to Benedikt Taschen’s
most ambitious personal project: GOAT—Greatest of All Time, a
tribute to Muhammad Ali, shipping in Spring 2004. Four years
in the making, GOAT weighs 75 lbs and is 20˝ x 20˝ in size, with
nearly 800 pages of archival and original photographs, graphic
artwork and articles and essays—including those of Ali himself.
Another of his books is the Icons series of art
books, some of the most accessible in the world.
Today, TASCHEN has offices in Cologne, Hong
Kong, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Paris and Tokyo and
stores in Amsterdam, Berlin, Beverly Hills, Brussels, Cologne,
Copenhagen, Hamburg, Hollywood, London, Miami, New
York, and Paris. TASCHEN employs 200 staff members
worldwide and many longtime freelance editors. As Billy
Wilder put it in Vanity Fair 2000: “Benedikt reminds me
of an old-time Hollywood figure—a studio head, someone
who is in firm command and has his hand in everything”.
He is married and lives in the Chemosphere, designed
by John Lautner in 1960. He bought the home for $1 million
in 1997, restored the building, and published a book on
Lautner. He lives and works in Cologne and Los Angeles.
JULIE TAYMOR
In 1998, Julie Taymor became the first woman to win the Tony®
Award for Best Direction of a Musical, and also won a Tony®
for Best Costumes, for her landmark production of The Lion
King. The musical has won three Molière Awards including
Best Musical and Best Costumes, garnered Drama Desk,
Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for Taymor’s
direction, and myriad awards for her original costume, mask
and puppet designs. For her latest Broadway production,
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Taymor served as director and
co-book writer. Taymor made her Broadway debut in 1996 with
Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, nominated for five Tony® Awards.
Other theater work includes The Green
Bird, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, The Taming of the
Shrew, The Transposed Heads and Liberty’s Taken.
Taymor’s feature film directorial debut, Titus, starred
Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and Alan Cumming. In 2002,
her biographical film Frida, starring Salma Hayek and Alfred
Molina, earned six Academy Award® nominations, winning
two. She took on the music of the Beatles, and earned a
Golden Globe® nomination for Best Motion Picture—Musical
or Comedy, in Across the Universe. Julie’s most recent
film, The Tempest, had its North American premiere at the
48th New York Film Festival in October 2010, following
a world premiere at the 67th Venice International Film
Festival. Taymor’s adaptation of the William Shakespeare
play features an all-star cast including Helen Mirren,
Russell Brand, Djimon Hounsou and Alfred Molina.
Beyond the theatre and screen, Taymor has
directed five operas internationally including Oedipus
Rex with Jessye Norman, for which she earned the
International Classical Music Award for Best Opera
Production. A subsequent film version premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival and won her an Emmy® award.
Taymor also directed Salomé, The Flying Dutchman,
Die Zauberflöte (which has been in repertory at The Met for six
years), The Magic Flute (the abridged English version of Die
Zauberflöte, which inaugurated a new PBS series entitled “Great
Performances at The Met”) and Elliot Goldenthal’s Grendel.
An illustrated book on her career, Julie Taymor:
Playing With Fire, was recently expanded and revised by Harry
N. Abrams. Her book, The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway,
is published by Hyperion. Taymor’s adapted screenplay for
Titus is published in an illustrated book by Newmarket Press.
An illustrated book, Frida: Bringing Frida Kahlo’s Life and Art
to Film, is available from Newmarket Press. Harry N. Abrams
also published an illustrated screenplay of Taymor’s film
adaptation of The Tempest which coincided with its premiere.
Taymor is a 1991 recipient of the
MacArthur “genius” Fellowship.
J. CRAIG VENTER
J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., is regarded as one of the leading
scientists of the 21st century for his numerous invaluable
contributions to genomic research. He is Founder, Chairman,
and President of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a notfor-profit,
research organization with approximately 300
scientists and staff dedicated to human, microbial, plant,
synthetic and environmental genomic research, and the
exploration of social and ethical issues in genomics.
Dr. Venter is also Founder and CEO of Synthetic
Genomics Inc (SGI), a privately held company dedicated
to commercializing genomic-driven solutions to address
global needs such as new sources of energy, new food and
nutritional products, and next generation vaccines.
Dr. Venter began his formal education after a tour
of duty as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.
After earning both a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a
Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of
California at San Diego, he was appointed professor at the State
University of New York at Buffalo and the Roswell Park Cancer
Institute. In 1984, he moved to the National Institutes of
Health campus where he developed Expressed Sequence Tags
or ESTs, a revolutionary new strategy for rapid gene discovery.
In 1992 Dr. Venter founded The Institute for Genomic
Research (TIGR, now part of JCVI), a not-for-profit research
institute, where in 1995 he and his team decoded the genome
of the first free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus
influenzae, using his new whole genome shotgun technique.
In 1998, Dr. Venter founded Celera Genomics
to sequence the human genome using new tools and
techniques he and his team developed. This research
culminated with the February 2001 publication of the human
genome in the journal, Science. He and his team at Celera
also sequenced the fruit fly, mouse and rat genomes.
Dr. Venter and his team at JCVI continue to blaze
new trails in genomics. They have sequenced and analyzed
hundreds of genomes, and have published numerous
important papers covering such areas as environmental
genomics, the first complete diploid human genome, and the
groundbreaking advance in creating the first self-replicating
bacterial cell constructed entirely with synthetic DNA.
Dr. Venter is one of the most frequently cited
scientists, and the author of more than 250 research articles.
He is also the recipient of numerous honorary degrees,
public honors, and scientific awards, including the 2008
United States National Medal of Science, the 2002 Gairdner
Foundation International Award, the 2001 Paul Ehrlich and
Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize and the King Faisal International
Award for Science. Dr. Venter is a member of numerous
prestigious scientific organizations including the National
Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and the American Society for Microbiology.
CHARITY TILLEMANN DICK
GEOFFREY WEST
Charity Tillemann Dick is an American-born soprano and
a recipient of two double lung transplants. Charity has
performed across the United States, Europe, and Asia in venues
as diverse as the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center in New York
City; The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Severance Hall
in Cleveland, Ohio; Il Giardino Di Boboli in Florence, Italy;
the National Palace of the Arts in Budapest, Hungary; the Tel
Aviv Opera House in Israel; the American Embassy in Beijing,
China; the United Nations in New York; and National Statuary
Hall in the United States Capitol. She has collaborated and
performed with noted conductors and musicians including
Eva Marton, Bruno Rigacci, Joela Jones, Marvin Hamlisch,
Bono, Zoltan Kocis, Joan Dornemann, and former Secretary
of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Some of her operatic roles
have included Titania in A Mid Summer’s Night Dream, Gilda
in Rigoletto, Violetta in La Traviata, and Ophelia in Ophelia
Forever. Charity has also performed for numerous presidents,
prime ministers, members of Congress, and world dignitaries.
After receiving a diagnosis of Idiopathic
Pulmonary Hypertension in 2004, Charity served as the
national spokesperson for the Pulmonary Hypertension
Association, working to raise awareness, increase federal
research funding, expand stem cell research, and promote
preventative and alternative medicine. In September of 2009,
Charity received a bilateral lung transplant at the Cleveland
Clinic in Ohio. After complications from rejection, Charity
received a second bilateral lung transplant in January 2012.
Since receiving her first transplant, Charity has
shared her amazing story and vocal talents at numerous
conferences, musical performance, and events, including:
TEDMED 2010 in San Diego, CA; the 6th National Learning
Congress on Organ Donation in Dallas, TX; the 2010 Empathy
and Innovation Summit in Cleveland, OH; and the EG
Conference in Monterey, CA. Charity has been featured on
CNN with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CBS This Morning, Glamour
magazine, ABCNews.com, TED.com, The Huffington Post,
The Wall Street Journal Health Blog, the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Sunday Times (London).
Her performances have been broadcast around the world on
CNN, CBS, BBC, FOX, MSNBC, PBS, C-SPAN and NPR.
Charity received a Bachelor’s degree with high
honors from Regis University in Denver, CO, where she was
raised with her 10 brothers and sisters. She later studied
music at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins
University and the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. She
currently resides in Washington, DC and New York City.
Geoffrey West is Distinguished Professor and former
President of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) and an Associate
Fellow of the Said Business School, Oxford University. Prior
to joining SFI in 2003, he was leader of high energy physics
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he remains
a Senior Fellow. He received his B.A. from Cambridge
University in 1961 and his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford
University in 1966. After spells at Cornell and Harvard
Universities, he returned to Stanford in 1970 to join the
faculty. He was President of SFI from 2005–2009.
West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests
have been in fundamental questions in physics and biology,
ranging from the elementary particles, their interactions and
cosmological implications to the origins of universal scaling
laws and a unifying quantitative framework of biology. His
research in biology has included metabolic rate, growth, aging
and mortality, sleep, cancer, and ecosystem dynamics.
His recent work has focused on developing
an underlying quantitative theory for the structure and
dynamics of cities, companies and long-term sustainability,
including rates of growth and innovation, the accelerating
pace of life, and why companies die, yet cities survive.
He has given many colloquia, keynote addresses
and public lectures world-wide. Awards include the Mercer
Prize from the Ecological Society of America, the Weldon
Prize for Mathematical Biology, and the Glenn Award for
Aging research. He has been featured in many publications
world-wide including The New York Times, Nature, Science,
The Financial Times, Time, Newsweek and Scientific American
and has participated in television productions including
Nova, National Geographic and the BBC. His work was
selected as a breakthrough idea of 2007 by Harvard Business
Review and, in 2006, he was named to Time magazine’s
list of “100 Most Influential People in the World”.
will.i.am
will.i.am, a multi-faceted entertainer and creative innovator,
is a seven-time Grammy Award winner. Known for his
work with The Black Eyed Peas, who have sold 31 million
albums and 58 million singles worldwide, he also works
with some of the industry’s biggest names including
Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Usher, Nicki Minaj, Britney
Spears, David Guetta, and film composer Hans Zimmer.
Frontman and founder of The Black Eyed Peas
will.i.am has released two songs from his upcoming solo
cd, #willpower on Interscope Records. The first two singles
from the cd released in 2012 are: “T.H.E (The Hardest Ever),”
featuring Mick Jagger and Jennifer Lopez, and number one
hit song in the UK, “This is Love” featuring Eva Simons.
His songs and imagery have entertained and inspired
millions, and the power of his words resonated deeply in his
song “Yes We Can” that mobilized an entire generation to
action during the 2008 presidential campaign. Demonstrating
that music, brands and causes can be intertwined to entertain
and inform, “Yes We Can” garnered an Emmy Award for
“Best New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment.”
In 2011, will.i.am executive produced and starred in
his first prime time TV special “i.am FIRST: Science is Rock
and Roll” to get young people excited about math and science
education, as well as technology and science-related careers.
Earlier this year he starred as a Coach on the hit reality TV
show, “The Voice” UK edition on BBC One. While in London,
will.i.am was a featured performer in “Concert for The Queen”
in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.
As a musician, producer, director and advocate
for education, he is an enthusiastic user of technologies in
both his professional and personal lives. In recognition of
his ability to harness technology to enhance entertainment,
creativity and communication, Intel Corporation appointed
will as Director of Creative Innovation in 2011.
In collaboration with The Coca-Cola Company,
will.i.am is on a mission to elevate the importance of recycling
and to turn waste into a valued commodity through his
EKOCYCLE brand. Launched in July, 2012, EKOCYCLE
will give consumers more stylish options when shopping
for fashion apparel, accessories and sporting goods that
incorporate recycled plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
With a commitment to inspire kids to stay in
school and go to college to become the leaders of tomorrow,
will.i.am advocates regarding the importance and power of
a good education through his i.am angel foundation’s i.am
scholarship. The i.am scholarship provides future leaders
and innovators with comprehensive financial assistance to
complete post-secondary education. The i.am angel foundation
is also active in the U.K. through a STEM education and
computer skills joint initiative with The Prince’s Trust.
Recognized and honored by numerous industry
organizations, will.i.am is the recipient of multiple Grammy
Awards, a Latin Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, two
NAACP Image Awards, a VH1 Do Something Award, the
BMI President’s Award and a 2008 Webby Award.
C. K. WILLIAMS
C. K. Williams (born Charles Kenneth Williams on November
2, 1936) is an American poet, critic and translator. Williams
has won nearly every major poetry award. Flesh and Blood
won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair
(1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National
Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book
Prize. The Singing won the National Book Award, 2003 and
in 2005 Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
C. K. Williams grew up in Newark, New Jersey and
graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood. He
later briefly attended Bucknell University and graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn he studied
with the romantic scholar, Morse Peckham, and spent a great
deal of time in the circle of young architects who studied
with and worked for the great architect Louis Kahn. In an
essay, “Beginnings,” he acknowledges Kahn’s dedication and
patience as essential to his notion of the life of an artist.
Williams lived for a period in Philadelphia, where he
worked for a number of years as a part-time psychotherapist
for adolescents and young adults, a ghost-writer and editor,
then began teaching, first at the YM-YWHA in Philadelphia,
then at several universities in Pennsylvania, Beaver College,
Drexel, and Franklin and Marshall. He subsequently taught
at many other universities, including Columbia, NYU, Boston
University, the University of California, both at Irvine and
Berkeley, before finally becoming a professor at George Mason
University, then moving in 1995 to Princeton University, where
he has taught poetry workshops and translation ever since.
He met his present wife, Catherine Mauger, a
French jeweler, in 1973, and they have a son who is now a
noted painter, Jed Williams. He has a daughter from an earlier
marriage, Jessie Burns, who is a writer. He lives half the
year near Princeton, and the rest in Normandy in France.
He is a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters.
His first book, Lies, was published in 1969, and since
then he has published many collections of poetry, culminating
in his Collected Poems, of which Peter Campion wrote in The
Boston Globe: “Throughout the five decades represented
in his new Collected Poems, Williams has maintained the
most sincere, and largest, ambitions. Like Yeats and Lowell
before him, he writes from the borderland between private
and public life….[His poems] join skeptical intelligence
and emotional sincerity, in a way that dignifies all of our
attempts to make sense of the world and of ourselves. C. K.
Williams has set a new standard for American poetry.”
Another collection, Wait, appeared in 2010, and
another, Writers Writing Dying, will come out in 2012.
He has written a memoir, Misgivings, which
appeared in 2000, a collection of essays, Poetry and
Consciousness, 1999, and a critical study of Walt Whitman,
On Whitman, 2010. A new collection of essays, In Time:
Poets, Poems and the Rest, will be published in 2012.
Williams is also an acclaimed translator,
notably of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis and Euripides’
The Bacchae, as well as of the Polish poet Adam
Zagajewski and the French poet Francis Ponge.
He has also published several children’s books.
APES
One branch, I read, of a species of chimpanzees has something like territorial wars,
and when the…army, I suppose you’d call it, of one tribe prevails and captures an enemy,
“Several males hold a hand or foot of the rival so the victim can be damaged at will.”
This is so disquieting: if beings with whom we share so many genes can be this cruel,
what hope for us? Still, “rival,” “victim, “will”—don’t such anthropomorphic terms
make those simians’ social-political conflicts sound more brutal than they are?
The chimps Catherine and I saw on their island sanctuary in Uganda we loathed.
Unlike the pacific gorillas in the forest of Bwindi, they fought, dementedly shrieked,
the dominant male lorded it over the rest; they were, in all, too much like us.
Another island from my recent reading, where Columbus, on his last voyage,
encountering some “Indians” who’d greeted him with curiosity and warmth, wrote,
before he chained and enslaved them, “They don’t even know how to kill each other.”
It’s occurred to me I’ve read enough—at my age all it does is confirm my sadness.
Surely the papers: war, terror, torture, corruption—they’re like broken glass in the mind.
Back when I knew I knew nothing, I read all the time, poems, novels, philosophy, myth,
but I hardly glanced at the news, there was a distance between what could happen
and the part of myself I felt with: now everything’s so tight against me I hardly can move.
The Analects say people in the golden age weren’t aware they were governed; they just
lived.
Could I have passed through my own golden age and not even known I was there?
Some gold: nuclear rockets aimed at your head, racism, sexism, contempt for the poor.
And there I was, reading. What did I learn? Everything, nothing, too little, too much…
Just enough to get me here: a long-faced, white-haired ape with a book, still turning the
page.
C. K. WILLIAMS
EDWARD WILSON
Edward Osborne Wilson is a world leading biologist
and internationally recognized as one of the planet’s
most articulate authorities on the interrelatedness
of knowledge disciplines and of life systems.
He is acknowledged for two interdisciplinary
scientific disciplines (island biogeography and
sociobiology), three unifying concepts for science and
the humanities jointly (biophilia, biodiversity studies,
and consilience), and one technological advance in the
study of global biodiversity (the Encyclopedia of Life).
A native of Alabama, Wilson grew up in Mobile
and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology
from The University of Alabama (1949, 1950) and his
doctoral degree in biology from Harvard University (1955).
Wilson has received more than 100 awards for
his research on ants and biodiversity and for his writings
addressed to both scientific and non-scientific audiences.
He has received two Pulitzer Prizes in general non-fiction
for his books On Human Nature (1979) and The Ants (1991);
the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences; the International Prize of Biology of Japan; and the
Nonino and Serono Prizes for Letters and Sciences of Italy.
His work in the sciences, letters, the environment
and conservation earned him prominence in the annals of the
21st Century. He was named one of the 25 most influential
Americans by Time magazine and one of the world’s 100
leading intellectuals by Foreign Policy magazine. He is the
author of 28 books including the recent novel, Anthill, set in
the woods of South Alabama; The Social Conquest of Earth;
the soon-to-be-released profile of his boyhood hometown,
Why We Are Here: Mobile and the Spirit of a Southern City.
DAMIAN WOETZEL
Damian Woetzel was a Principal Dancer at New York City
Ballet and frequently performed internationally as a guest
star and visiting artist with numerous companies including
the Kirov Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, until his
retirement from the stage in 2008. Woetzel currently serves
as the Director of Arts Programs for the Aspen Institute, the
Artistic Director of the Vail International Dance Festival,
and as the Founding Director of the Jerome Robbins New
Essential Works Program. Woetzel is also active as a director
and producer outside these roles. Among his recent projects,
Woetzel produced and directed an arts salute to Stephen
Hawking at Lincoln Center for the World Science Festival,
and directed the first performance of the White House Dance
Series, which took place in the East Room of the White House
and was hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama. Woetzel also
works with Yo-Yo Ma on his Silk Road Connect program in
the New York City Public Schools, and has twice directed
culminating year-end performances; at the Museum of Natural
History in 2010, and for the Central Park SummerStage series
in 2011. Woetzel was appointed to the President’s Committee
on the Arts and Humanities by President Obama in 2009. In
July 2012, Woetzel was honored with the inaugural Gene Kelly
Legacy Award—an award jointly created by the Dizzy Feet
Foundation and the Estate of Gene Kelly in honor of the 100th
anniversary of Kelly’s birth—for his contributions to the arts as
a ballet star and director of dance and music performances.
In June 2011, Woetzel was named the Director
of Arts Programs at the Aspen Institute. Under Woetzel’s
direction, the Aspen Institute Arts Program brings together
leading artists, arts managers, sponsors, government officials
and patrons. Through these collaborations, the Program
seeks to generate, exchange, and develop ideas and policies
in order to encourage vibrancy and dynamism in all artistic
realms, and to enrich civic culture in ways only the arts can.
Among the events curated by the Aspen
Institute Arts Program under Woetzel’s direction:
In November 2011, Woetzel curated the inaugural US-
China Forum on the Arts and Culture in Beijing, in partnership
with Asia Society and the Chinese People’s Association for
Friendship with Foreign Countries. The four day forum was
the first in a series of cultural exchanges seeking to strengthen
mutual understanding between Americans and Chinese
through panel discussions, lectures, film screenings, museum
tours, dinners and performance. American and Chinese
artists and cultural representatives engaged in the forum
included Joel Coen, Meryl Streep, Yo-Yo Ma, Alice Waters,
Liu Ye, Ge You and others. Woetzel also directed a Public
Forum in partnership with the Public Theater titled “Does
Culture Make Us Who We are,” hosted by Anne Hathaway with
guests including Bill Irwin, David Brooks and Oskar Eustis.
In March 2012, Woetzel produced a panel with
Howard Gardner, the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and
Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
and Dr. Ellen Winner, Professor of Psychology at Boston
College, and Senior Research Associate at Project Zero,
examining the current state of the arts in education.
Woetzel also hosted renowned artists Eric Fischl and
Chuck Close in a conversation about artists and their
audience at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York.
In June 2012, the Arts Program for the first time
curated multiple sessions at the Institute’s premiere
public program, the Aspen Ideas Festival. For nineteen
sessions, Woetzel brought renowned artists, policymakers,
arts administrators as well as leading Chinese cultural
representatives for discussions, film screenings and
cultural exchanges focusing on how the arts impact society.
Sessions included “Culture and Conflict” with Palestinianborn
ballroom star and educator Pierre Dulaine and
Dutch composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven; a conversation
between renowned producer Julie Taymor and former
Disney CEO and current Aspen Institute Arts Program
chair Michael Eisner; “Radical Creative Spaces” with
architect Elizabeth Diller; “Arts and the City: Making
Cities Sing” with Rocco Landesman, Dennis Scholl, Darren
Walker and Richard Florida; among many others.
Since 2006, Woetzel has been the Artistic Director
of the summer Vail International Dance Festival, where
he presents dance performances and commissions. He
has instituted a number of initiatives as director, including
bringing the educational arts program “Celebrate The
Beat”—the Colorado associate of Jacques d’Amboise’s
National Dance Institute—to the Vail Valley, to reach
local underserved children in the public schools.
Under Woetzel’s direction, the festival has
received wide acclaim for its innovation and growth as a
nationally recognized showcase for dance, featuring such
performances as the debut of Morphoses/The Wheeldon
Company, and the launch of New York City Ballet MOVES.
The annual International Evenings of Dance galas have
become renowned for Woetzel’s curation of first-time
partnerships across companies and countries, as well as the
presentation of young, emerging stars making their debuts
in new repertory. In August 2012, The New York Times’
Alastair Macaulay wrote that the 2012 Vail International
Dance Festival presentations “were distinguished above
all by catholic taste and brilliant programming. They merit
superlatives” and that the International Evenings I gala
“was simply the best gala I have attended in decades.”
Writing the same week, Wendy Perron of Dance Magazine
compared Woetzel to the legendary impresario Serge
Diaghilev, and praised Woetzel for engaging and educating
audiences through spoken introductions to each work, and
for his commitment to collaboration with live musicians.
Woetzel has also instituted a series of “UpClose”
performances: lecture-demonstration events which combine
rehearsal, performance and commentary by Woetzel and
special guests. Recent UpClose performances have included:
“UpClose: Stravinsky by Balanchine,” an examination of
the legendary collaboration between George Balanchine
and Igor Stravinsky, co-hosted by Woetzel and New York
City Ballet Master-in-Chief Peter Martins (2012); “UpClose:
Premieres,” which provided a first look at a series of works
created in Vail by choreographers including Christopher
Wheeldon and Emery LeCrone during the weeks of the 2011
Vail International Dance Festival; among many others.
In 2009 and 2010, Woetzel produced and directed
the World Science Festival Gala Performances at Lincoln
Center’s Alice Tully Hall. For the 2010 event he created
an arts salute to science honoring the theoretical physicist
Stephen Hawking, featuring performances by Yo-Yo
Ma, John Lithgow, and Kelli O’Hara among others.
In the fall of 2009, Woetzel helped create and began
directing the Jerome Robbins Foundation’s New Essential
Works (NEW) Program, which supports choreographers
and dance companies during the current financial crisis
by giving grants to enable the production of new works.
In 2009, Woetzel launched as curator and director
the new Studio 5 performance series at New York’s City
Center, which features in-depth examinations of today’s
most compelling dance artists and companies highlighted by
in-studio performances and demonstrations. In 2009–2012,
guests included David Hallberg, Christopher Wheeldon,
Victoria Clark, Rob Berman, Angel Corella, Wendy Whelan,
Edward Villella, among others; topics of discussion ranged
from musical theatre to collaboration; and featured
companies included American Ballet Theatre, the Paul
Taylor Dance Company and Dance Theater of Harlem.
In June of 2010 Woetzel piloted “Arts Strike,”
a new effort to have celebrated artists engage educators
and students, schools and communities, highlighting and
sharing the unique power of the arts to empower, enrich
and educate. The first events have taken place in Vail,
Chicago, and Los Angeles, and have all featured Woetzel
with Yo-Yo Ma in schools, engaging with students and
their teachers to promote learning through the arts.
Woetzel works with Yo-Yo Ma on his Silk Road
Connect program in the New York City Public Schools. In
June 2010, Woetzel directed the culminating year-end event
which took place at New York’s Museum of Natural History,
and featured the participation of the Silk Road Ensemble
and 450 sixth-grade students. In June 2011, the culminating
year-end event opened the Central Park SummerStage series.
Titled “Night at the Caravanserai: Tales of Wonder,” the
performance again featured hundreds of sixth-grade students
from New York-area public schools, Ma with his Silk Road
Ensemble, vocalist Bobby McFerrin, the soprano Emalie Savoy,
actor Bill Irwin, and author Jhumpa Lahiri, among others.
In April 2011, Woetzel organized an “arts strike” at
Inner-City Arts in downtown Los Angeles with Yo-Yo Ma, The
Silk Road Ensemble, and Memphis Jooker Charles “Lil Buck”
Riley. The event included a demonstration and workshop for
more than one hundred elementary school students from
the Los Angeles Unified School District. Highlighting the
event was a first-time duet directed by Woetzel between Ma
and Lil Buck, who performed a Memphis Jookin’ version of
The Dying Swan with Ma accompanying on the cello; the
performance was immortalized in a video shot by Spike
Jonze which reached over one million views within weeks.
In the fall of 2010, Woetzel was a visiting Lecturer
at Harvard Law School, where he co-taught a course
on Performing Arts and the Law with Jeannie Suk.
Woetzel was the artistic director of the New York State
Summer School for the Arts School of Ballet from 1994–2007.
Woetzel was a Principal Dancer at New York City
Ballet from 1989 until his retirement from the stage in 2008.
At New York City Ballet, Woetzel had works created for him
by Jerome Robbins, Eliot Feld, Twyla Tharp, Susan Stroman,
and Christopher Wheeldon among others, and danced more
than 50 featured roles in the Company’s repertory, including:
George Balanchine’s: Agon, Coppelia, Prodigal Son, Slaughter
on Tenth Avenue, Stars and Stripes, Swan Lake; and Jerome
Robbins’: Afternoon of a Faun, Fancy Free, Dances at a
Gathering, A Suite of Dances, and West Side Story Suite.
Woetzel originated featured roles in: Eliot Feld’s
The Unanswered Question and Organon, Peter Martins’ Jeu
de Cartes and The Sleeping Beauty, Jerome Robbins’ Ives,
Songs and Quiet City, Susan Stroman’s “The Blue Necklace”
from Double Feature, Twyla Tharp’s The Beethoven Seventh,
Christopher Wheeldon’s An American in Paris, Carousel
(A Dance), Evenfall, Morphoses, and Variations Sérieuses.
Woetzel also originated roles in ballets by Kevin O’Day,
Richard Tanner, and Lynne Taylor-Corbett, among others.
Woetzel appeared in Dance in America’s presentation
of “Dinner with Balanchine,” dancing Union Jack and Stars
and Stripes. In October 1998, Mr. Woetzel appeared as one of
the stars of the Cole Porter musical Jubilee in a special benefit
performance at Carnegie Hall, during which he sang as well
as danced. In May 1999, he starred as Prince Siegfried in Peter
Martins’ Swan Lake on the PBS national telecast “Live from
Lincoln Center.” Woetzel also appeared in the 2002 nationally
televised Live from Lincoln Center broadcast “New York City
Ballet’s Diamond Project: Ten Years of New Choreography”
on PBS and in the May 2004 Live from Lincoln Center
broadcast of “Lincoln Center Celebrates Balanchine 100.”
Woetzel starred as the Cavalier in the film version of George
Balanchine’s The Nutcracker™, released in the winter of 1993.
During his career, Woetzel frequently performed
internationally as a guest star and was a visiting artist
with numerous companies including the Kirov Ballet
and American Ballet Theatre. In his guest appearances,
Woetzel danced principal roles in classics such as Don
Quixote, Giselle, and La Bayadere, among others.
Woetzel has choreographed a number of ballets
for New York City Ballet, among other companies. For New
York City Ballet, he choreographed Ebony Concerto to
Stravinsky, and Glazounov Pas de Deux to the composer’s
Les Ruses d’Amour. Woetzel also choreographed the
“Polovtsian Dances” for New York City Opera’s production
of Prince Igor, and in 1998, he choreographed and
starred in a new version of An American in Paris ballet
for Marvin Hamlisch’s Gershwin Centennial Gala.
Woetzel is the recipient of a Choo San Goh award
for new choreography. He serves on the Artists Committee
of the Kennedy Center Honors and as a judge for the Astaire
Awards. He has also served as a juror for the Princess Grace
Awards. Woetzel is a frequent speaker on the arts and arts
policy. Woetzel was the 2008 Harman-Eisner Artist in
Residence of the Aspen Institute, and in 2011, he became a
member of the Knight Foundation’s National Arts Advisory
Committee. Woetzel also serves on the boards of directors
of New York City Center, The Clive Barnes Foundation and
The Sphinx Organization, and served on the recent Harvard
Task Force on the Arts. In November 2009, President
Obama appointed Woetzel to the President’s Committee
on the Arts and Humanities. In July 2012, Woetzel was
honored with the inaugural Gene Kelly Legacy Award—an
award jointly created by the Dizzy Feet Foundation and
the Estate of Gene Kelly in honor of the 100th anniversary
of Kelly’s birth—for his contributions to the arts as a ballet
star and director of dance and music performances.
Woetzel holds a Master in Public Administration
Degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Woetzel has been married to
Heather Watts since 1999.
STEPHEN WOLFRAM
WILL WRIGHT
Stephen Wolfram has been responsible for three
revolutionary developments: the Mathematica
computation system, A New Kind of Science, and the
Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine.
Wolfram was educated at Eton, Oxford and
Caltech, receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the
age of 20. Wolfram’s work on basic science led him to a
series of fundamental discoveries about the computational
universe of possible programs. Summarized in his bestselling
2002 book A New Kind of Science, these discoveries
have not only launched major new directions in basic
research, but have also led to breakthroughs in scientific
modeling in physical, biological and social domains—as well
as defining a broad new basis for technology discovery.
Launched in 1988, Mathematica has revolutionized
the way technical computation is done, and has been
responsible for countless advances over the past two decades.
Starting from a set of fundamental principles devised by
Wolfram, Mathematica has continually grown, integrating
more and more algorithmic domains, and spawning such
technologies as the Computable Document Format (CDF).
Building on Mathematica and A New Kind of
Science, Wolfram in 2009 launched Wolfram|Alpha—an
ambitious, long-term project to make as much of the world’s
knowledge as possible computable, and accessible to
everyone. Used every day on the web and through apps by
millions of people around the world, Wolfram|Alpha defines
a fundamentally new kind of computing platform that is
turning science-fiction computer intelligence into reality.
In addition to his scientific and technical
achievements, Wolfram has been the CEO of Wolfram
Research since its founding in 1987. Under Wolfram’s
leadership, Wolfram Research has become one of the world’s
most respected software companies, as well as a powerhouse
of technical and intellectual innovation, and a major
contributor to education and research around the world.
William Ralph “Will” Wright (born January 20, 1960, in
Atlanta, Georgia) is an American video game designer and
co-founder of the game development company Maxis, now
part of Electronic Arts. In April 2009, he left Electronic
Arts to run “Stupid Fun Club”, an entertainment think
tank in which Wright and EA are principal shareholders.
The first computer game Wright designed was
Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984, but it was SimCity that
brought him to prominence. The game was released by
Maxis, a company Wright formed with Jeff Braun, and he
built upon the game’s theme of computer simulation with
numerous other titles including SimEarth and SimAnt.
Wright’s greatest success to date came as the original
designer for The Sims games series. The game spawned
multiple sequels and expansions and Wright earned many
awards for his work. His latest work, Spore, was released
in September 2008 and features gameplay based upon the
model of evolution and scientific advancement. The game
sold 406,000 copies within three weeks of its release.
He was born as William Ralph Wright
on January 20, 1960, in Atlanta. He is of French,
English, Italian, and Native American descent.
After graduating at 16 from Episcopal High School,
he enrolled in Louisiana State University, transferring two
years later to Louisiana Tech. Beginning with a start at an
architecture degree, followed by mechanical engineering,
he fell into computers and robotics. He excelled in subjects
he was interested in—architecture, economics, mechanical
engineering, and military history—but was held back by his
impractical goals such as language arts. His earlier dream
of space colonization remained, and was joined by a love
for robotics. After another two years at Louisiana Tech, in
the fall of 1980, Wright moved on to The New School in
Manhattan. He lived in an apartment over Balducci’s, in
Greenwich Village, and spent his spare time searching for
spare parts in local electronics surplus stores. After one year
at the New School, Wright returned to Baton Rouge without
his degree, concluding five years of collegiate study.
During a summer break from college, he
met his first wife Joell Jones, an artist currently living
in California, on vacation to her hometown of Baton
Rouge. In an interview published in February 2003, Will
claims that games were absorbing so much of his time,
he decided that perhaps making games was the way to
go. Wright’s first game was the helicopter action game
Raid on Bungeling Bay (1984) for the Commodore 64.
Wright found that he had more fun creating levels
with his level editor for Raid on Bungeling Bay than he had
while actually playing the game. He created a new game
that would later evolve into SimCity, but he had trouble
finding a publisher. The structuralist dynamics of the game
were in part inspired by the work of two architectural and
urban theorists, Christopher Alexander and Jay Forrester.
“I’m interested in the process and strategies
for design. The architect Christopher Alexander, in
his book A Pattern Language formalized a lot of spatial
relationships into a grammar for design. I’d really like to
work toward a grammar for complex systems and present
someone with tools for designing complex things.”
Wright, in an interview with The Times,
expressed belief that computers extend the imagination,
and posits the emergence of the “metabrain”, stating:
“Any human institutional system that draws
on the intelligence of all its members is a metabrain. Up
to now, we have had high friction between the neurons
of the metabrain; technology is lowering that friction
tremendously. Computers are allowing us to aggregate our
intelligence in ways that were never possible before. If you
look at Spore, people are making this stuff, and computers
collect it, then decide who to send it to. The computer is
the broker. What they are really exploring is the collective
creativity of millions of people. They are aggregating
human intelligence into a system that is more powerful
than we thought artificial intelligence was going to be.”
In 1986, he met Jeff Braun, an investor interested
in entering the computer game industry, at what Wright
calls “the world’s most important pizza party.” Together
they formed Maxis the next year in Orinda, California.
SimCity (1989) was a hit and has been credited as one of
the most influential computer games ever made. Wright
himself has been widely featured in several computer
magazines—particularly PC Gamer, which has listed
Wright in its annual ‘Game Gods’ feature, alongside such
notables as Roberta Williams and Peter Molyneux.
Following the success of SimCity, Wright
designed SimEarth (1990) and SimAnt (1991). He codesigned
SimCity 2000 (1993) with Fred Haslam and
in the meantime Maxis produced other “Sim” games.
Wright’s next game was SimCopter (1996). Although
none of these games were as successful as SimCity, they
further cemented Wright’s reputation as a designer of
“software toys”—games that cannot be won or lost. In 1992,
Wright and his family moved to Orinda, California.
Wright has a great interest in complex adaptive
systems and most of his games have been based around
them or books that describe them (SimAnt: E.O. Wilson’s
The Ants, SimEarth: James Lovelock’s Gaia Theory, SimCity:
Jay Forrester’s Urban Dynamics and World Dynamics, Spore:
Drake’s Equation and The Powers of Ten) Wright’s role in the
development of the concepts from simulations to games is
to empower the players by creating what he dubs “possibility
spaces”, or simple rules and game elements that add up to a
very complex design. All Maxis, and later games that Wright
had a hand in designing, adhere to these design principles.
Maxis went public in 1995 with revenue of US$38
million. The stock reached $50 a share and then dropped
as Maxis posted a loss. Electronic Arts bought Maxis in
June 1997. Wright had been thinking about making a virtual
doll house ever since the early 1990s, similar to SimCity
but focused on individual people. Originally conceived
of as an architectural design game called Home Tactics,
Wright’s idea changed when someone suggested the player
should be rated on the quality of life experience by the
homeowners. It was a difficult idea to sell to E.A., because
already 40% of Maxis’s employees had been laid off.
When Wright took his idea to the Maxis board of
directors, Jeff Braun says, “The board looked at The Sims
and said, ‘What is this? He wants to do an interactive doll
house? The guy is out of his mind.’ ” Doll houses were for girls,
and girls didn’t play video games. Maxis gave little support
or financing for the game. Electronic Arts, which bought
Maxis in 1997, was more enthusiastic. Wright’s games are so
different from E.A.’s other releases that it was hard to imagine
the two being united in the same enterprise. But the success
of SimCity had already established Sim as a strong brand,
and E.A., which by then, fifteen years after its founding, was
becoming a Procter & Gamble-style brand-management
company, foresaw the possibility of building a Sim franchise.
E.A. published The Sims in February 2000
and it became Wright’s biggest success yet. It eventually
surpassed Myst as the best-selling computer game of all
time and spawned numerous expansion packs and other
games. He designed a massively multiplayer version
of the game called The Sims Online, which was not as
popular as the original. By November 2006, The Sims
franchise had earned E.A. more than a billion dollars.
In a presentation at the Game Developers Conference
on March 11, 2005, he announced his latest game Spore.
He used the current work on this game to demonstrate
methods that can be used to reduce the amount of content
that needs to be created by the game developers. Wright
hopes to inspire others to take risks in game creation.
As for his theories on interactive
design, Wright says the following:
“Well, one thing I’ve always really enjoyed is making
things. Out of whatever. It started with modeling as a kid,
building models. When computers came along, I started
learning programming and realizing the computer was this
great tool for making things, making models, dynamic models,
and behaviors, not just static models. I think when I started
doing games I really wanted to carry that to the next step, to
the player, so that you give the player a tool so that they can
create things. And then you give them some context for that
creation. You know, what is it, what kind of kind of world
does it live in, what’s its purpose? What are you trying to do
with this thing that you’re creating? To really put the player
in the design role. And the actual world is reactive to their
design. So they design something that the little world inside
the computer reacts to. And then they have to revisit the
design and redesign it, or tear it down and build another one,
whatever it is. So I guess what really draws me to interactive
entertainment and the thing that I try to keep focused on is
enabling the creativity of the player. Giving them a pretty large
solution space to solve the problem within the game. So the
game represents this problem landscape. Most games have
small solution landscapes, so there’s one possible solution and
one way to solve it. Other games, the games that tend to be
more creative, have a much larger solution space, so you can
potentially solve this problem in a way that nobody else has. If
you’re building a solution, how large that solution space is gives
the player a much stronger feeling of empathy. If they know
that what they’ve done is unique to them, they tend to care for
it a lot more. I think that’s the direction I tend to come from.”
Wright believes that simulations as games
can be used to improve education by teaching
children how to learn. In his own words:
“The problem with our education system is we’ve
taken this kind of narrow, reductionist, Aristotelian approach
to what learning is. It’s not designed for experimenting
with complex systems and navigating your way through
them in an intuitive way, which is what games teach. It’s not
really designed for failure, which is also something games
teach. I mean, I think that failure is a better teacher than
success. Trial and error, reverse-engineering stuff in your
mind—all the ways that kids interact with games—that’s
the kind of thinking schools should be teaching. And I
would argue that as the world becomes more complex, and
as outcomes become less about success or failure, games
are better at preparing you. The education system is going
to realize this sooner or later. It’s starting. Teachers are
entering the system who grew up playing games. They’re
going to want to engage with the kids using games.”
Wright will appear as a character in the video game
Mr. T, where he will team up with Mr. T to fight Nazis.
Wright was given a “Lifetime Achievement
Award” at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2001.
In 2002, he became the fifth person to be inducted into the
Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame.
Until 2006, he was the only person to have been honored
this way by both of these industry organizations. In 2007
the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awarded
him a fellowship, the first given to a game designer.
He has been called one of the most important
people in gaming, technology, and entertainment by
publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Time, PC Gamer,
Discover and GameSpy. Wright was also awarded the PC
Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award in January 2005.
In 1980, along with co-driver and race organizer
Rick Doherty, Wright participated in the U.S. Express,
a cross-country race that was the predecessor to The
Cannonball Run. Wright and Doherty drove a specially
outfitted Mazda RX-7 from Brooklyn, New York to Santa
Monica, California in 33:39, winning the illegal race. Wright
only competed once in the race, which continued until 1983.
Since 2003, in his spare time, Wright has collected
leftovers from the Soviet space program, “including a
100-pound hatch from a space shuttle, a seat from a
Soyuz… control panels from the Mir”, and the control
console of the Soyuz 23, as well as dolls, dice, and
fossils. During E3 2004 he passed off an old lapel pin
commemorating the Soviet space program to a reporter.
“I’m uncollecting. I buy collections on eBay, and I
disperse them out to people again. I have to be like an entropic
force to collectors, otherwise all of this stuff will get sorted.”
He once built competitive robots for BattleBots
with his daughter, but no longer does so. As of November
2006, Wright still had remnant bits of machined metal left
over from his BattleBots days strewn about the garage of his
Oakland home. Wright was a former Robot Wars champion
in the Berkeley-based robotics workshop, the Stupid Fun
Club. One of Wright’s bots, designed with the help of Wright’s
daughter Cassidy, “Kitty Puff Puff ”, fought against its
opponents by sticking a roll of gauze onto its armature and
circling around them, encapsulating them and denying them
movement. The technique, cocooning, was eventually banned.
Following his work in BattleBots, he has taken
steps into the field of human-robot interactions.
“We build these robots and we take them down to
Berkeley and study the interactions that people have with
the robots,” says Wright. “We built this newer one that has a
rapid-fire pingpong cannon. It will fire about 10 per second.
So we give people this plastic bat and we say, ‘It’s set up to
play baseball. Do you want to play baseball? It’s going to
shoot a little ball and you try to hit it.’ And all of a sudden
it’s like da-da-da-da, and it’s pelting them with balls.”
After building his reputation as one of the most
important game designers in the world, Wright in 2009
left Maxis, the Electronic Arts owned studio he founded.
His first post-E.A. venture was the Stupid Fun Club.
In October 2010, Current TV announced that
Will Wright will produce a new show for the network. The
program, entitled Bar Karma, began airing in February 2011.
In October 2011, Will Wright became
a member of the Board of Directors of Linden
Lab, the creators of Second Life.
JOSHUA WURMAN
I grew up in Pennsylvania, bereft of any really meaningful
opportunities to experience severe weather, hurricanes, even
real deep snow. As a youth, I tried to impress friends and
girls with my home weather station and insect collection.
These efforts, among other factors, kept me well out of the
running for homecoming king. Naturally, I moved on to a
party school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
to search for a better social life. But hating schoolwork, I
rushed through it, earning my MS at only 21. Then after some
aimless additional years in school I dropped out for three
years, working for the Air Force on nuclear winter computer
simulations and other cheery subjects. Returning to MIT,
I earned my Doctorate and moved to Colorado to work at
the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on
bistatic radar networks, a new type of weather radar system
that I had invented. However, after seeing real High Plains
thunderstorms close up, and tornadoes, I got distracted
and conceived of building a network of big, fast scanning
radars that could drive right up to tornadoes and fires, inside
hurricanes, and into other nice weather. The DOW program
was born, and I moved down to Oklahoma to be a professor
for a few years, chase tornadoes and hurricanes, file patents,
teach and write papers. In the middle of this, I traveled to Asia
on a research project and met my wife operating a weather
radar on an island off the coast of Hong Kong and conned
her into believing that Oklahoma was just like Hong Kong.
After receiving tenure and the implied lifetime sentence
at the university, I did the sensible thing: I quit and moved
back to Boulder and founded my own non-profit research
institution, the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR).
My wife and I run CSWR, manage the DOWs as National
Science Foundation (NSF) Facilities, and conduct research
programs such as the VORTEX2 study and hurricane studies.
We have four young children who, so far, show no unhealthy
obsessive interests in tornadoes, hurricanes or radars. I’ve just
finished the VORTEX2 tornado study (http://vortex2.org),
which is the largest tornado research mission ever, funded
mostly by NSF, employing about 120 scientists and crew in
50 vehicles. We had 11 radars, 4 balloon trucks, UAVs, 40
deployable instruments, 13 mobile mesonets, photogrammetry
and microphysics teams, damage survey teams, basically
more of anything that used to study tornadoes scientifically.
Just imagine the lines for fuel and bathrooms in smalltown
gas stations. During WWW, I’ll be keeping a nervous
eye out for any hurricanes threatening to make landfall.
If a hurricane looms, I’ll be leading my team into the eye.
TELEPRESENCE CONVERSATIONS TENTATIVE
MAO YUSHI
Chinese economist, 2012 Milton Friedman Liberty Award.
(He wrote an online column criticizing the communist
and totalitarian policies of Mao Zedong (Chairman
Mao) in China, attacked by Maoists in China.)
http://www.cato.org/special/friedman/yushi/index.html
YAO MING
Retired Chinese basketball player who last played
for the Houston Rockets of NBA; investor.
TAN DUN
Grawemeyer, Oscar, and Grammy awarding winning
Chinese contemporary classical composer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tan_Dun
ZHANG YONG HE
Chinese-American architect, former head of architecture
at MIT.
RICHARD SAUL WURMAN
Described by Fortune magazine as an “intellectual hedonist”
with a “hummingbird mind,” Richard Saul Wurman
seeks ways to make the complex clear. Recognizing at
an early age that his ignorance is his greatest asset, he
has made it his mission to sort through the abundance
of information that is available on every topic, and
design the techniques to make it understandable.
In doing so he has continually sought to put himself
in the presence of extraordinary people, including (all now
all deceased), Francis Crick, Richard Feynman, Jonas Salk,
Eva Zeisel, Louis I. Kahn, Charles Eames, Frank Stanton and
Schuyler van Renssalaer Cammann, and Arnold Toynbee.
There are many others. The only two bosses he had who
didn’t fire him were Lou Kahn and Charlie Eames.
As a result, Wurman has had many lives: as an author
(83 books); FAIA Architect, 13-year partner in Murphy Levy
Wurman Architects; cartographer (mapped 1/3 of the Mayan
city of Tikal and current project 19.20.21.); teacher (Cambridge
University, England; Princeton; Washington University,
St. Louis; University of Southern California; University of
California Los Angeles; City College of New York, and Dean,
Cal Poly School of Design); urban designer (recipient of MIT’s
Kevin Lynch award in urban design); graphic designer (AIGA
Gold Medal, membership in AGI and inducted into the Art
Directors Hall of Fame); information theorist (Information
Anxiety, Follow the Yellow Brick Road) and in medicine (6
books on healthcare and creator and chairman of TEDMED,
1995–2010), and as a conference convener. The path of this
journey has been paved by one surface: his curiosity.
The acknowledged father of Information
Architecture, Wurman has written, designed and published 83
books on a range of topics, while creating conferences and new
mapping projects. All contribute to a greater understanding of
complex information. They spring from his particular brand
of innovation: doing the opposite of what is rote or expected.
Wurman published his first two books in 1962. The
first featured models of 50 world cities all constructed on a
uniform scale, the other was the first book to be written on
Louis Kahn. In 1967 he co-authored the first comparative
statistical atlas of major American cities. His latest book is
called 33: Understanding Change & the Change in Understanding.
It chronicles the adventures and musings of the eccentric main
character, the Commissioner of Curiosity and Imagination.
Wurman created the ACCESS city guides, using
graphics and logical editorial organization to make places such
as New York, Tokyo, Rome, Paris and London understandable
to visitors. Other volumes he created focus on topics such as
baseball, football and the 1984 Olympics, the latter with over
with 3.2 million copies sold. His road atlases employed similar
techniques that elucidate U.S. geography and transportation
networks. In addition he completed many one-off projects,
such as his book Twin Peaks Access, which he co-authored
with David Lynch. Several of his books are in the permanent
collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Wurman began his career in conferences in 1972
when he chaired the International Design Conference
in Aspen. He then co-chaired the first Federal Design
Assembly in 1973 and the national AIA Conference in 1976.
With each of these he changed the fundamentals of how
gatherings were run. All these helped his creative molding
of TED, TEDMED, and eg, the Entertainment Gathering.
Wurman created the TED conference in 1984,
which he chaired through the 2002 meeting. TED brings
together many of America’s clearest thinkers in the fields
of technology, entertainment and design. He created the
eg conference in 2006 and the TEDMED conference in
1995, which he chaired through 2010. Other conferences
he created and chaired include California 101, TEDSELL,
TEDNYC, TED4Kobe in Japan and TEDCity in Toronto.
Now in 77, Wurman continues to quell his restlessness
with a series of new projects. The WWW Conference will be an
active gathering of some of the brightest thinkers of our time
discussing the complexity of emerging patterns on our planet
in improvised conversation – intellectual jazz. In partnership
with Esri and @radical.media, 19.20.21. is a major cartographic
initiative that endeavors to standardize a methodology for
comparative urban data. His Urban Observatory project aims
to establish, for the first time ever, a series of live and changing
electronically connected urban observatories around the world.
Wurman received both his B.Arch. and M.Arch.
degrees with highest honors from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1959. While there, he was awarded the
Arthur Spayd Brooks Gold Medal, the Thornton Oakley
Award for Achievement in Creative Art, 2 Chandler grants
and two graduate fellowships. He has also been awarded a
Guggenheim Fellowship in Architecture and Design, three
honorary doctorates, two Graham Fellowships and numerous
grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the
2012 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient given by The
Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design museum. He was
recently given the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to
Public Discourse by Trinity College Dublin, an honor shared in
the past by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Wurman currently lives in Newport, RI
with his wife, novelist Gloria Nagy, and their three
yellow Labradors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They
have four children and six grandchildren.
MEMO TO PARTICIPANTS
re: CONVERSATIONS
As most of you are aware, I created TED in 1984 and
chaired it through 2002. During that time I created
TEDMED in 1995 and the eg Conference in 2006. For
all those meetings I developed an 18-minute talk and
a series of rules called the TED Commandments.
Several of you have asked ‘well what are the new
guidelines as they relate to the WWW Conference’?
1 Participants have all been sent the schedule
listing the person with whom they have
been paired, attached again below.
2 If you go to the participants page on the web
site, you can click on that person’s name and link
to his or her biographical information.
3 I have developed a list of 30 different premises or
postulations that will begin you in improvised conversation.
4 I have tried this and it works.
5 You will be facing each other on comfortable
couches and not the audience.
6 There will be approximately 150 people in the
audience, which will be comprised of fellow participants,
guests and individuals invited by sponsors.
7 Absolutely no preparation is necessary.
8 You will not be selling a book, charity, project or religion.
9 As long as the conversation holds my attention and
my perceived attention of the audience, you will be in
conversation. At the conclusion, I will with reasonable
politeness call up the next two individuals.
10 If the conversation is fabulous but goes on so long
as to potentially cause us to miss our lunch, I will also
end it and the two of you can continue it over lunch.
11 There will be no lectern but there will be a side
table for a cup of coffee or glass of water.
12 There is no strict time schedule but I will
attempt to keep the order of the final schedule.
13 On occasion I might take the liberty part way into
a given conversation to add a third person, another
participant or simply another member of the audience,
whom I know can add constructively to the conversation.
14 The entire meeting will be filmed as inconspicuously
as possible from the far left and right of the stage
and with one small camera in the audience.
15 At this moment there are no plans to live-stream
any of the conference. There will be an app with access
to a server to hold the conversations. It is planned that
this will be available on 1 December and will include a
running line of translation into several languages.
16 The app will also contain a large body of curated
personal information about you. Further explanation
about this will come to you next week.
17 I have personally worked out the breaks, lunches and
dinners and I believe they will be of the highest quality and in
rooms that will delight you, both at Esri and at The Mission Inn.
18 Obviously there is a lot of risk about the
conversations, particularly the quality, spontaneity,
clarity, improvisation and surprise.
19 The goal is to find some threads that have not
emerged before as you speak with your partner,
which will encapsulate a type of honesty and a nonpredicted
path in response to each other.
20 This has happened in my several tests of this idea.
21 To repeat, I am endeavoring to make the filming,
ambiance, location and lack of press all focus on
your comfort and the quality of your experience.
This above all is my concern and my goal.
22 Improvised conversation in this manner is a new
form but a wonderful conversation is perhaps the
oldest human media for creative discourse. So in
that sense, this is a great leap backwards.
23 It will be a wonderful salon and an absolutely
immersive experience with extraordinary people.
MEMO TO PARTICIPANTS
re: FUTURE APP
I trust each of you has read my 24-point memo called
WWW Conference Conversation Guidelines with 24 points
that I believe give the spirit of the meeting itself. I’ve
had excellent response from many of you as well as
from sponsors and attendees. This memo addresses the
outcome of the conference, in other words, what I do with
the filming of these approximately 30 conversations.
1 It will be filmed in black and white by a team directed
by Jon Kamen and Sidney Beaumont of @radical.media,
and John Halloran of John Halloran Associates.
2 It will be unedited. There will be a camera on
each of the individuals in conversation, as well as a
long camera on the three of us sitting on stage.
3 Michael Smolens and David Orban of dotSUB will
then translate it into perhaps 10 languages and add a
running translation in English, which will address the
language needs of 90% plus of the world’s population.
4 This will live on a server and be accessed by
an app that has a release date at this juncture of 1
December. The app will also contain a great deal of
additional information on each of the presenters.
5 The additional curated stuff—photos, videos,
and links is what this memo is focused on.
6 Scrollmotion has already done two extraordinary
versions of the organization and design of this app. They
have offices in San Diego and New York City.
7 There will be a series of unique videos on which I will
comment later, made where appropriate of you in situ.
8 The video of the entire conference of course can
be accessed by pairings of speakers from a list and
viewed as you would at the conference showing
individuals in improvised conversation. However, one
could also double click on a single name and go into
this visual biography of each of the participants.
9 The demo can be found at
http://vimeo.com/user7992663/review/47187545/29ddc526f0
The password is WWW. It shows an extremely brief version of
C. K. Williams, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet, in which you
cannot only see a bio, for which we will ask a major expansion,
but also photographs of the covers of a few of his 11 books. We
would also like to have all of his books, which you will be able
to order form the app, some outtake videos, not from the
conference but from other sources that we would identify, and
that you will identify, as well as, in the case of C. K. Williams,
many pages, a few shown here, of his personally edited
writings of his poetry—something you can’t find on YouTube,
a presentation or in a book, or perhaps anywhere but this app.
10 The idea of this app is to get a behind the scenes,
behind the curtain, personalized journey through
each individual, which will also have a list of links
to suggested articles, reviews, YouTubes and other
material that will fill out this visual biography.
11 This is an important point: if you Google Richard
Wurman, you come up with perhaps 450,000 citations.
The number changes daily. This would amount to 40,000+
pages, which of course nobody looks at. Basically it’s junk
big data, and people mostly focus on one article and a
wikipedia entry. The attempt here is to have the first primitive
development of a platform for beginning to assuage some
curiosity in the beginning of looking at a visual biography of
at least these 50 people. If the platform works it’s scalable.
That’s the idea of a new modality. If it works for people
perhaps it will work for healthcare and other subjects.
12 I’m putting together a team of people consisting of Ali
Smolens, who will help curate some of the materials for
many of you, Paul Kandarian, a magazine writer friend
of mine from Rhode Island, and three others plus Blaise
Zerega, CEO of FORA.tv who has agreed to make some
original, simple videos such as Frank Gehry walking around
his office showing and discussing models of buildings that
he has not built, or variations of for instance the 8 Spruce
Street tower in New York or hopefully Craig Venter’s
laboratories in a walk-through, E.O. Wilson’s offices, etc. etc.
13 So this is a request for the following: please start thinking
about the stuff that you’ve never shown: everything from
baby pictures, pictures of your pets, pictures of your office,
pictures of your home, things that make you real. Multiple
photographs of yourself, perhaps a strip of photographs of
you taken in a photo booth at an amusement park that you
have in a drawer. Writings that you’ve done that show your
edits, something that shows you’re real, human, and shows
your process. Pictures of your laboratories. Agree to have
somebody do a 5- or 10-minute walk through with you in your
office or your lab or your place of work or your architectural
studio. Videos or DVDs that for example I know Moshe
Safdie has which he makes to describe what a building will
look like in computer graphics to a client. I know he has a
fantastic one of an apartment house in Singapore. And I’m
sure Bjarke has similar things that he generally does not
release. Covers of books about you, covers of books by you. A
list of articles that you think critically describes you and links
to YouTubes or other videos or other citations that you think
and you have curated yourself that make you particularly
interesting, not the half a million available on line. Julie
Taymor most have lots of stuff as well as David Blaine.
14 We hope to have this put together, along with the
entire conference, for release by 1 December and promote
it immediately after Thanksgiving with the help of
IDG, Flipboard (Mike McCue), Esri, IIR and others. I
am going to ask for your cooperation out in Redlands at
the conference and I will have additional copies of this
and the other memo to give you when you register.
15 Attached are technical specifications for those of
you who understand them yourself. Otherwise please
show them to somebody in your office under the age of
30 who automatically understands them, who could help
us translate whatever you send us in a usable format. I
don’t understand them myself but I’m sure some of you
have a better handle on this than I do. These will make
the process smooth and efficient and within budget.
THANKS & TEAM
HOST
ESRI
SPONSORS
GE
WILLIAM R. HEARST III
NEW MODALITY DESIGN
SCROLLMOTION
PRODUCTION
JOHN HALLORAN ASSOCIATES LLC
@RADICAL.MEDIA
FORA.TV
LIVE EVENT PRODUCTION
HARPERVISION
TRANSLATION
DOTSUB
PROGRAM CONSULTANTS
KEN HERTZ
MAGGIE XIAO (CHINA)
ADAM B LY
GRAPHICS
PAUL SOULELLIS
MARKETING AND PROMOTION
INTERNATIONAL DATA GROUP
INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH
FLIPBOARD
SPIRITS
CHAPPELLET VINEYARD
FREE SPIRITS BRANDS WILLA ORGANIC VODKA
MACHIA FOREST
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SEATING
STEELCASE
PIANO
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WORLD
WATER WEALTH
WOMEN WASTE
WAR WELL-BEING
WILDLIFE WEB
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WIND WORDS
WONDER WITNESS
WILDERNESS WORK
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