Sekou Andrews is the Founder/CEO of SekouWorld, Inc., the innovator of “Poetic Voice” and one of the most successful spoken word poets in the world.  On any given day, this school-teacher-turned-entrepreneur, who built a 7-figure company on poetry, can be found keynoting at a Fortune 500 company, inspiring thousands at a concert, or performing for Barack Obama in Oprah’s backyard.

Sekou is the creator of “poetic voice” – a cutting-edge speaking category that seamlessly fuses inspirational speaking with spoken word poetry, like “Hamilton” meets “TED”. This innovative blend of strategic storytelling, thought leadership, spoken word, theater and comedy humanizes content, making it entertaining, moving and memorable. Sekou’s accomplishments include an ABA “Entrepreneur of the Year” award, two Independent Music Awards, two National Poetry Slam championships, three Helen Hayes Awards, six CLIO awards, the most JPF music awards in history, and the first GRAMMY nomination for “Best Spoken Word Album” awarded to a spoken word poet in over 30 years.

It is no surprise that Forbes has called Sekou a “polymath” and “the de facto poet laureate of corporate America.” His “wow-factor” is in high demand with the world’s most successful organizations, including Google, Viacom, Toyota, Nike, Cisco, Linkedin, Capital One, L’Oreal, Global Green, Paypal, GE, The Gap, Paypal, General Mills, the ACLU, and the NBA to name but a few. Sekou’s work has been featured ABC World News, CBS, Fox, MSNBC, HBO, Good Morning America, Showtime, MTV and BET, and he has given private performances for such luminaries as Maya Angelou, Quincy Jones, Larry King, Hillary Clinton, Norman Lear, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Coretta Scott King. Sekou has also emerged as a powerful voice for health and wellness, routinely evoking tears, cheers, and standing ovations at events for Johnson & Johnson, United Healthcare, Mayo Clinic, Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, TEDMED, Life Itself, Northwell Health, Genentech, Humana, and the American Medical Association.

Sekou is a multi-talented entertainer with over two decades of experience inspiring audiences across industries and genres. He has shared event stages with such heavyweights as Drake, Stevie Wonder, Jay-Z, Carlos Santana, Kendrick Lamar, Maroon 5, Jill Scott and John Legend. He is also a voiceover artist and actor with several national commercials, four feature films, and a critically-acclaimed, two-man play on his resume. With creative partner Steve Connell, Sekou has inspired audiences from the HBO Aspen Comedy Arts Festival to The Pasadena Pops Orchestra. He has even returned to the classroom, teaching his rockstar secrets to public speakers through his highly-effective Stage Might speaker training system that helps influencers and leaders become more dynamic communicators. With all of the innovation and inspiration that is poetic voice, Sekou Andrews is accomplishing the seemingly impossible – bringing spoken word poetry to the world’s largest stages, while redefining the notion of what a speaker is, and what a poet can be.

Rohit Chopra is Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB is a unit of the Federal Reserve System charged with protecting families and honest businesses from illegal practices by financial institutions, and ensuring that markets for consumer financial products and services are fair, transparent, and competitive. As Director, Chopra is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

In 2018, Chopra was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a Commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, where he served until assuming office as CFPB Director. During his tenure at the FTC, he successfully worked to strengthen sanctions against repeat offenders, to reverse the agency’s reliance on no-money, no-fault settlements in fraud cases, and to halt abuses of small businesses. He also led efforts to revitalize dormant authorities, such as those to protect the Made in USA label and to promote competition.

The Director previously served at the CFPB from 2010 to 2015. In 2011, the Secretary of the Treasury designated him as the agency’s student loan ombudsman, where he led the Bureau’s efforts on student lending issues. Prior to his government service, Chopra worked at McKinsey & Company, the global management consultancy, where he worked in the financial services, health care, and consumer technology sectors.

Chopra holds a BA from Harvard University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Fortune Magazine recently named Peter Diamandis as one of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders. Diamandis is the Founder & Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions. 

He is also the Executive Founder and Director of Singularity University; a global learning and innovation community using exponential technologies to tackle the world's biggest challenges and build a better future for all. 

As an entrepreneur, Diamandis has started over 20 companies in the areas of longevity, space, venture capital, and education. He is also co-founder of BOLD Capital Partners, a venture fund with $500M investing in exponential technologies. 

Diamandis is a New York Times Bestselling author of two books: Abundance & BOLD. He earned degrees in Molecular Genetics and Aerospace Engineering from MIT and holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. 

Peter’s favorite saying is “the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.”  

Jennifer Palmieri is a writer and one of the most accomplished communications advisors in politics today.

Author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Dear Madam President and her newest book, She Proclaims: Our Declaration of Independence from a Man’s World, Jennifer was White House Communications Director for President Obama and head of Communications for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. She has been on the frontlines of American politics for 20 years and one of a few people with a hands-on, working knowledge of the complex media environment operating in the U.S. today.

Having served in the West Wing for 12 years under President Obama and President Clinton she has an unparalleled level of knowledge and experience in understanding how U.S. Presidents operate and there is no one working in politics today with more experience in managing crises. She has held the positions of White House Deputy Press Secretary for President Clinton, national press secretary for the Democratic Party and press secretary for the 2004 John Edwards presidential campaign. As someone who worked on the campaign of the first female Democratic nominee, and been a communications advisor to women in the national spotlight, she has a unique perspective on how media and voters treat women in powerful positions.

She is also a guest host of Showtime’s The Circus and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair.

After losing her sister to early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2017, she has written and spoken about her family’s experience in an effort to aid other families facing the same disease.

Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.

From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.

Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution's chief budget and academic officer. As provost, she was responsible for a $1.5 billion annual budget and an academic program involving 1,400 faculty members and 14,000 students. In 1997, she also served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender-Integrated Training in the Military.

From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She served as Director, then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As Professor of Political Science, Rice has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors – the 1984 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching and the 1993 School of Humanities and Sciences Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching.

She has authored and co-authored numerous books, most recently To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth (2019), co-authored with Philip Zelikow. Among her other volumes are three bestsellers, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom (2017); No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011); and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010). She also wrote Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995) with Philip Zelikow; edited The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin; and penned The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army, 1948-1983: Uncertain Allegiance (1984).

In 1991, Rice co-founded the Center for a New Generation (CNG), an innovative, after-school academic enrichment program for students in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California. In 1996, CNG merged with the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula, an affiliate club of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA). CNG has since expanded to local BGCA chapters in Birmingham, Atlanta, and Dallas. Rice remains an active proponent of an extended learning day through after-school programs.

Since 2009, Rice has served as a founding partner at RiceHadleyGates LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The firm works with senior executives of major companies to implement strategic plans and expand in emerging markets. Other partners include former National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley and former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.

Rice currently serves on the boards C3.ai, an AI software company; and Makena Capital Management, a private endowment firm. In addition, she is Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and a trustee of the Aspen Institute. Previously, Rice served on various additional boards, including those of: the George W. Bush Institute; the Commonwealth Club; KiOR, Inc.; the Chevron Corporation; the Charles Schwab Corporation; the Transamerica Corporation; the Hewlett-Packard Company; the University of Notre Dame; the Foundation for Excellence in Education; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and the San Francisco Symphony.

In 2013, Rice was appointed to the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, formerly the Bowl Championship Series. She served on the committee until 2017.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her master’s in the same subject from the University of Notre Dame; and her Ph.D., likewise in political science, from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

Rice is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and has been awarded fifteen honorary doctorates.

Karl Rove, an iconic political strategist and one of the most sought-after political pundits of our time, is best known for his provocative and robust knowledge of major political issues.

Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House, he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process. He was the architect of President Bush’s 2008 and 2004 White House victories.

Before the White House, he ran Rove + Co. a Texas based public affairs firm that consulted on over 75 GOP campaigns for Senator, Governor, Congress and statewide offices in 24 states.

Rove was described by author and columnist Michael Barone as “…unique…no Presidential appointee has ever had such a strong influence on politics and policy, and none is likely to do so again anytime soon.” Washington Post Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Broder wrote that Rove was a master political strategist whose “game has always been long term…and he plays it with an intensity and attention to detail that few can match.” Conservative editor and columnist Fred Barnes, called him “the greatest political mind of his generation and probably of any generation… He knows history, understands the moods of the public and is a visionary on matters of public policy.”

Mr. Rove writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, appears frequently on the Fox News Channel, and is the author of the New York Times bestseller Courage and Consequence. His latest book is The Triumph of William McKinley. A Colorado native, Rove lives in Austin, Texas where he teaches at the University of Texas and serves on the Texas State History Museum and McDonald Observatory boards.

Antonio Neves is an award-winning journalist, world-renowned speaker and top success coach known for asking the tough questions that help people get unstuck.

The author of four books including Stop Living On Autopilot: Take Responsibility for Your Life and Rediscover a Bolder, Happier You, Antonio is also the host of The Antonio Neves Show podcast where he reminds people that no matter where they stand today, their story is far from over.

Inspired by his own transformation, Antonio helps people face critical decisions so they can reboot, reset and refuel their lives. He’s shared his message on hundreds of stages worldwide, including Google, Amazon, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Visa, Booking.com, Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and Stanford University. He has been featured on the TODAY Show, Forbes, PBS, Inc.com, Thrive Global, and more.

Prior to starting his own business, Antonio worked as a correspondent in New York City with top television networks including NBC, PBS and BET Networks for over 10 years. He is a graduate of Western Michigan University and holds a Masters degree from Columbia University.