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Washington Ideas Forum: John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Susan Rice Among Speakers

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Washington, D.C. (October 24, 2014)—Political leaders, including Secretary of State John Kerry, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, join more than 70 entrepreneurs and innovators who will share their ideas at the sixth annual “Washington Ideas Forum” October 29 and 30. Presented by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic at the Harman Center for the Arts, the Forum will convene those who are changing our world and the way we live—whether by shaping U.S. policy on the Middle East or Ebola, or pushing action in their fields of business, education, energy, technology, science, and the arts. The Washington Ideas Forum expects to draw an audience of more than 1,500 people across the two days.

A complete agenda will be released next week. Speakers bringing their ideas to stage include (note: all speakers and scheduling is subject to change):

  • BUSINESS: CrowdStrike CEO and Co-Founder Dmitri Alperovitch, Revolution Founder and Partner Steve Case, Southern Company CEO Thomas Fanning, NASCAR Vice Chairperson and International Speedway Corporation CEO Lesa Kennedy, Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey, Whole Foods CEO Walter Robb, The Carlyle Group Co-Founder and Co-CEO David Rubenstein, Yelp Inc. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, and PayPal and Palantir Co-Founder Peter Thiel

  • DESIGN: Alta Planning + Design President Mia Birk, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson, Not Impossible Labs Founder Mick Ebeling, and Flipboard CEO Mike McCue

  • LITERATURE: Americanah author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, There Are No Children Here author Alex Kotlowitz, Netherland author Joseph O’Neill, and Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story author Gary Shteyngart

  • EDUCATION: edX CEO Anant Agarwal and Cornell University President David Skorton

  • ENERGY & CLIMATE CHANGE: NRG President and CEO David Crane, XL Hybrids President and Founder Tod Hynes, Energy Sec. Ernest Moniz, and BP Capital Management Chairman T. Boone Pickens

  • MEDIA: The Onion Editor Cole Bolton, New York Times Columnist David Brooks, Washington Post Opinion Writer Jonathan Capehart, Cook Political Report Editor and Publisher Charlie Cook, CNBC Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood, ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl, Co-Authors of The Confidence Code BBC World News Anchor Katty Kay and ABC News Senior National Correspondent Claire Shipman, First Look Media Director of Security Morgan Marquis-Boire, MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell, NPR Host and Special Correspondent Michele Norris, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, and VICE Co-Founder and CEO Shane Smith

  • POLICY: Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), U.S. Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen, Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan, U.S. Trade Rep. Michael Froman, Export-Import Bank President and Chairman Fred Hochberg, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D), Houston Mayor Annise Parker (D), Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor Daniel Pfeiffer, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Riverdale Mayor Evelyn Wynn-Dixon

  • SCIENCE & TECH: Institute for Brain and Society Chairman and CEO Jacopo Annese, Shinkuro CEO and Co-Founder Steve Crocker, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, Allen Institute for Brain Science CEO Allan Jones, DEKA Research and Development Corporation Founder Dean Kamen, Fast Forward Labs Founder Hilary Mason, ZocDoc CEO Cyrus Massoumi, Intuitive Surgical Vice-President of Medical Research Catherine Mohr, Senior UN Systems Coordinator for the Ebola Virus David Nabarro, Princeton Neuroscience Professor H. Sebastian Seung, White House CTO Megan Smith, J. Craig Venter Institute Founder, Chairman, and CEO Craig Venter, University of Pennsylvania Immunology Institute Director John Wherry, and Stanford University Professor Tony Wyss-Coray

Aspen Institute President and CEO Walter Isaacson will speak about The Innovators, his forthcoming book profiling the people who started the digital revolution, and will moderate portions of the event, along with The Atlantic’s Washington Editor-at-Large Steve Clemons; National Correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates; National Correspondent James Fallows; Senior Editor David Frum; National Correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg; Senior Editor James Hamblin; Senior Editor Corby Kummer; Magazine Editor Scott Stossel; AtlanticLIVE Contributing Editor Mary Louise Kelly; and Washington Ideas Forum Editorial Director and Bloomberg View Columnist Margaret Carlson. A full schedule will be shared in the coming days.

Media interested in attending the program should contact the press leads below. Main stage interviews will also be webcast live via The Atlantic’s Events Channel and on the Aspen Institute’s live page. Follow the conversation online via @Atlantic_LIVE and @AspenInstitute, and by using #IdeasForum.

Comcast, Nestle, and The Walton Family Foundation are the Presenting Level Underwriters of the Forum. AbilTo, American Federation of Teachers, Google, and the National Council for Behavioral Health are the Supporting Level Underwriters, and Allstate, GSK, and Shinola are the Contributing Level Underwriters. McKinsey is a Knowledge Underwriter.