Mrs. Laura Bush is actively involved in issues of national and global concern, with a particular emphasis on education, health care and human rights. She has investigated and showcased successful programs for early childhood education, at-risk youth, global literacy, and preservation of our national parks and our country’s national treasures. And through her travels to more than seventy-six countries, including historic trips to Afghanistan, Mrs. Bush has helped launch groundbreaking educational and healthcare programs for women.

In September 2001, Mrs. Bush joined the Library of Congress to launch the first National Book Festival. The Festival has grown each year, drawing book-lovers from across the nation. In 2006 Mrs. Bush hosted leaders from around the world for the White House Conference on Advancing Global Literacy, showcasing successful, culturally aware literacy programs from a diversity of countries. Her leadership of this effort led to her current role as Honorary Ambassador for the United Nations Literacy Decade.

Mrs. Bush is an advocate for women’s health and has been an active participant in campaigns to raise awareness of breast cancer and heart disease, both in the U.S. and around the world. She championed The Heart Truth campaign and the Red Dress project. She traveled to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Panama to help launch international partnerships for breast cancer awareness and research in collaboration with the U.S. Department of State, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in education from Southern Methodist University and a master’s degree in library science from the University of Texas. She taught in public schools in Dallas, Houston and Austin and worked as a public school librarian. Her memoir, Spoken From the Heart, is a New York Times #1 best seller.

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Tina Brown is indisputably the highest-profile, most talked-about magazine editor in the world. From a young writer for Punch magazine and the London Sunday Times, Ms. Brown quickly rose through the ranks of the magazine industry on both sides of the Atlantic to become editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, publisher of Talk magazine and recently, editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast-Newsweek merger.

Ms. Brown intimately knows the news media, as demonstrated by her string on successes in print media and her newest online venture, The Daily Beast. It's a source of breaking news and thought-provoking content that features the thought leaders of our time.

A graduate of St. Anne's College at Oxford University, Ms. Brown worked her way through a progression of newspapers such as The London Sunday Times and magazines, most notably Tatler. Ms. Brown ended up on the other side of the Atlantic not only editing Vanity Fair, but rescuing the magazine by pioneering celebrity journalism. In that endeavor, she proved that a magazine could make news as well as report on it.

Following her success at Vanity Fair, Brown went on to the venerable literary magazine, The New Yorker, where she became the first woman ever to serve as editor. She followed that success with an entrepreneurial venture, Talk Magazine, which lasted from 1999 to 2001.

Ms. Brown released The Diana Chronicles in 2007 on the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death. This New York Times best seller is a biography of the 'People's Princess,' an in-depth profile of Diana as well as the English aristocracy.

She is a frequent contributor to television, commenting on ABC's Good Morning America and MSNBC's Morning Joe. Most recently, she launched the international "Women in the World" summit.

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Roland Fryer has briskly established himself as an important player in the field of economics with a special interest in education. Professor Fryer is the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is the Faculty Director and Principal Investigator at the Educational Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University ("EdLabs"), the mission of which is to provide path-breaking research and development in the field of education.

In addition to being affiliated with Harvard University and EdLabs, he maintains offices at the National Bureau of Economic Research. In January 2008, at age 30, he became the youngest African-American to ever receive tenure at Harvard.

Professor Fryer is widely regarded to be one of Harvard's rising stars, having published numerous economics-related papers in prominent academic journals over the past few years. The New York Times ran an extensive profile of Fryer, entitled "Toward a Unified Theory of Black America."

Despite early childhood struggles, Professor Fryer received a scholarship to the University of Texas at Arlington and graduated in a mere 2.5 years. He then pursued his Ph.D. in economics from Penn State. In recent years, Fryer has noted that his rise to success happened “through the medium of education and through the idea of the mind.” Upon completing a three year fellowship with the Harvard Society of Fellows at the end of the 2005-2006 academic year, Fryer joined Harvard's Economics Department as an assistant professor.

Not only has Fryer named a "Rising Star" by Fortune magazine and featured in Esquire’s "Genius Issue," but his own work has been profiled in The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Recently, Roland Fryer has done work on the Opportunity NYC Project, which is studying how students in low-performing schools respond to financial incentives. Professor Fryer has received praise from an array of organizations for his seasoned and engaging perspective on an array of issues facing the nation.

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A one-of-a-kind commander with remarkable record of achievement, General Stanley McChrystal is credited with creating a revolution in warfare that fused intelligence and operations. A four-star general, he is the former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan and the former leader of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which oversees the military’s most sensitive forces. McChrystal’s leadership of JSOC is credited with the 2003 capture of Saddam Hussein and the June 2006 location and killing of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Gen. McChrystal, a former Green Beret, is known for his candor, innovative leadership, and going the distance.

The son and grandson of Army officers, Gen. McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976 and began training at the Special Forces School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, two years later. He was commissioned as an infantry officer, and spent much of his career commanding special operations and airborne infantry units. During the Persian Gulf War, McChrystal served in a Joint Special Operations Task Force and later commanded the 75th Ranger Regiment. He completed year-long fellowships at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1997 and in 2000 at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 2002, he was appointed chief of staff of military operations in Afghanistan. Two years later, McChrystal was selected to deliver nationally televised Pentagon briefings about military operations in Iraq. From 2003 to 2008, McChrystal commanded JSOC and was responsible for leading the nation’s deployed military counter-terrorism efforts around the globe. He assumed command of all International Forces in Afghanistan in June 2009. Gen. McChrystal retired from the military in August 2010. He now serves on the board of directors for JetBlue Airways and the Yellow Ribbon Fund. Currently, he is teaching at Yale University.

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Steven Levitt is the William B. Ogden Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. He is the co-author of the wildly successful book Freakonomics, which instantly became a cultural phenomenon when it was published in 2005. Hailed by critics and readers alike, it went on to spend more than two years on The New York Times bestseller list, having sold more than 4 million copies around the world, in more than 30 languages. Levitt and co-author, journalist Stephen Dubner have appeared widely on television and maintain the popular FREAKONOMICS blog, which can be found on The New York Times website. In 2009 they co-authored Superfreakonomics. The pair have also starred in a documentary Freakonomics.

Professor Levitt is known for his forceful storytelling and wry insight.  He demonstrates in his writing that economics is, at root, the study of incentives – that is, how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. He shows that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. Professor Levitt has been described as an intuitionist who sifts through data to find a story that no one else has found, devising ways to measure an effect that other economists have declared un-measurable.

Professor Levitt received his BA from Harvard University in 1989 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1994. He has taught at the University of Chicago since 1997. In 2004, he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the most influential economist under the age of 40. In 2006, he was named one of Time magazine's “100 People Who Shape Our World.”

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A journalist for more than 30 years, Bill O'Reilly is the host of the highest rated cable news show for 11 straight years, The O’Reilly Factor. Millions of viewers enter The Factor's No Spin Zone five nights a week to witness his news analysis, commentary and investigative reporting. The Factor showcases Mr. O'Reilly's straightforward and provocative manner, which has gained him national and international prominence – The Factor is now seen in more than 30 countries.

Mr. O'Reilly is also the author of five straight New York Times bestsellers including The O'Reilly Factor, The No Spin Zone, Who's Looking Out for You, Culture Warrior, and A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity and his most recent book, Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama. Mr. O'Reilly also writes a syndicated newspaper column which is carried by hundreds of newspapers across the United States.

Mr. O'Reilly was raised in a working class family in the huge housing subdivision of Levittown, New York and maintains his working class sensibilities in his Long Island neighborhood. He credits education with sparking the successes in his career. Mr. O'Reilly graduated with a degree in history from Marist College, with a Master's Degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University, and second Master's in Public Administration from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

Mr. O'Reilly has been both a local reporter and news anchor in Dallas, Boston, and New York. National audiences met Mr. O'Reilly when he worked at CBS News and ABC News and when he hosted the first version of Inside Edition.

Mr. O'Reilly has won two Emmy Awards for Excellence in reporting. He was awarded two National Headliner Awards while working as a national correspondent for ABC News, and was honored by The National Academy of Arts and Sciences for his reporting and analysis on and after September 11th, 2001.

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