Rachel Slade spent a decade in the city magazine trenches at Boston magazine—first as the design editor, ultimately as executive editor. In 2015, she helped steer Boston to a top national award from the City and Regional Magazine Association. Her two-part story about Boston’s secretive planning and development agency won national awards and laid the groundwork for Mayor Michelle Wu’s sweeping reforms to the city's planning processes. In 2016, Yankee magazine ran Slade’s long-form narrative about the sinking of the container ship El Faro. A CRMA finalist for reporting, the story led to the national bestselling book, Into the Raging Sea. Into the Raging Sea earned starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly; the Maine Literary Award for nonfiction; the Massachusetts Honor Book Award; and the Mountbatten Award for Best Book from the Maritime Foundation UK. It was a NYT Notable Book, an NYT editors’ pick, an Amazon editors’ pick for Best History, and among NPR’s Best Books, Paste magazine’s best books, Longread’s best books, Inc. Magazine’s 7 Best Business Books, the Maine Edge’s favorite books, and Book Scrolling best history books. In 2021, Into the Raging Sea was adapted for a Harvard Business School case study. In 2023, Down East magazine named Slade’s book one of its top 25 “New Maine Classics.” Slade’s second book, Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the USA (and How It Got That Way), Pantheon/Penguin Random House, came out 1/9/24. Slade’s editing and writing have won national awards in civic journalism, reporting, criticism, and reader service. She earned her BA in political science from Barnard College and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. She splits her time between Brookline, Massachusetts, and Rockport, Maine. Michelle Tolini Finamore, Ph.D., is a fashion and design historian, curator, and author. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including the recent Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour, as well as the groundbreaking Gender Bending Fashion, #techstyle, Hollywood Glamour: Fashion and Jewelry from the Silver Screen, and Think Pink at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has written numerous articles for both the scholarly and popular press on topics as varied as American fashion, menswear, contemporary fashion, sustainability, studio jewelry, and food history. Her books include Hollywood Before Glamour: Fashion in American Silent Film, Fashioning America: Grit to Glamour, Gaetano Savini: The Man Who Was Brioni, and Jewelry by Artists: In the Studio, 1940-2000. Michelle has taught courses on fashion/design/film history at Northeastern University, Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. She has also interviewed fashion luminaries such as Hamish Bowles, Fern Mallis, Isaac Mizrahi, Liz Goldwyn, Hussein Chalayan, Diane Pernet, Viktoria Modesta, Virgil Ortiz, and Rodarte on stage.
Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation
Dr. Abiodun Williams is Professor of the Practice of International Politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and The Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. He was also Director of the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University from 2017 to 2022. Previously, he held leadership positions at thinks tanks in the United States and Europe. From 2001 to 2007 Dr. Williams was Director of Strategic Planning to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-Moon. He gained valuable field operational experience, serving with the UN from 1994 to 2000 in peacekeeping operations in North Macedonia, Haiti, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in senior political and humanitarian roles. He has held faculty appointments at the National Defense University, the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the University of Rochester. Dr. Williams has furthered his impact on international affairs and education through service on several boards. He served as Chair of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), and as a member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Justice, the Group of Senior Experts of the UN’s Human Rights Up Front Initiative, the International Board of Directors of the United World Colleges, and the Lester Pearson UWC College Board of Trustees. He is the recipient of several awards including the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University and the Constantine E. Maguire Medal from Georgetown University. He is the author or editor of five books, including Kofi Annan and Global Leadership at the United Nations.
Foley & Lardner LLP
Drew Faust, Harvard University president emerita and Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, and Paula A. Johnson, president of Wellesley College and women's health pioneer
John F. Kennedy Library
Terry Szuplat, one of President Barack Obama's longest-serving speechwriters and former deputy director of the White House Speechwriting Office; Ashley All, president of the Kansas Coalition for Common Sense; Donovan Livingston, teaching assistant professor of music and director of college thriving at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Zander Moricz, executive director of the Social Equity through Education Alliance.
John F. Kennedy Library
Chuck Leavell, Grammy Award-winning keyboardist for The Rolling Stones and the Allman Brothers Band, and Dana Jacobson, co-host of CBS Saturday Morning
John F. Kennedy Library
Ambassador Robert Blake Jr.
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
Sharman Sacchetti, WCVB political reporter and co-host of On The Record, and Thomas Whalen, Boston University professor of social sciences
John F. Kennedy Library
Panelists include: Laurie Donnelly, Executive Producer, "Sea Change", and Director of Lifestyle Programming, GBH Dr. David Fields, Senior Research Scientist, Bigelow Labs Brian Skerry, Photographer and Producer, "Sea Change" Chun-Wei Yi, Writer, Director, and Producer, "Sea Change" Moderated by Dr. Letise LaFeir, Chief of Conservation and Stewardship, New England Aquarium
New England Aquarium
Robert D. Blackwill is the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and a senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. His current work focuses on U.S. foreign policy writ large as well as on China, Russia, the Middle East, South Asia, and geoeconomics. The Ambassador’s new book coauthored with Richard Fontaine, Lost Decade: The U.S. Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power, was published by Oxford University Press in June 2024. As deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for strategic planning under President George W. Bush, Blackwill was responsible for government-wide policy planning to help develop and coordinate the mid- and long-term direction of U.S. foreign policy. He also served as presidential envoy to Iraq. Blackwill went to the National Security Council (NSC) after serving as the U.S. ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003. He is the recipient of the 2007 Bridge-Builder Award for his role in transforming U.S.-India relations. In 2016 he became the first U.S. Ambassador to India since John Kenneth Galbraith to receive the Padma Bhushan Award from the government of India for distinguished service of a high order. Prior to reentering government in 2001, Blackwill was the Belfer lecturer in international security at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. During his fourteen years as a Harvard faculty member, he was associate dean of the Kennedy School, where he taught foreign and defense policy and public policy analysis. He was faculty chair for executive training programs for business and government leaders from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, and Kazakhstan, as well as military general officers from Russia and the People's Republic of China. From 1989 to 1990, he was special assistant to President George H.W. Bush for European and Soviet affairs, during which he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit by the Federal Republic of Germany for his contribution to German unification. Earlier in his career, he was the U.S. ambassador to conventional arms negotiations with the Warsaw Pact, director for European affairs at the NSC, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs. Blackwill’s best-selling book, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (MIT Press, February 2013), coauthored with Graham Allison of the Harvard Kennedy School, has sold over 300,000 copies. His book, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (Harvard University Press, April 2016), coauthored with Jennifer M. Harris, was named one of the best foreign policy books of 2016 by Foreign Affairs. His latest Council Special Reports are Implementing Grand Strategy Toward China: Twenty-Two U.S. Policy Prescriptions (January 2020), The End of World Order and American Foreign Policy (May 2020), coauthored with Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution, and The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War (February 2021), coauthored with Dr. Philip Zelikow of the University of Virginia. Blackwill is a member of CFR, the Aspen Strategy Group, the Trilateral Commission, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Foley & Lardner LLP
Richard Verma-Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Monica Duffy Toft-Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies Academic Dean
Boston Public Library - Rabb Lecture Hall
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