Clifford S. Asness, Ph.D.
Managing & Founding Principal, AQR Capital Management

Prior to co-founding AQR Capital Management, Cliff was at Goldman, Sachs & Co. where he was a Managing Director and Director of Quantitative Research for the Asset Management Division. Cliff and his team at Goldman were responsible for building quantitative models to add value in global equity, fixed income and currency markets for Goldman clients and partners.

Cliff has authored articles on many financial topics including multiple publications in the Journal of Portfolio Management and the Financial Analysts Journal. He has received the best paper award from the Journal of Portfolio Management twice (2001, 2003). From the Financial Analysts Journal he has received the Graham and Dodd Award for the year’s best paper (2003), a Graham and Dodd Excellence Award (2000), the award for the best perspectives piece (2004), and the Graham & Dodd Readers' Choice Award (2005). In addition, the CFA Institute has awarded Cliff the James R. Vertin Award which is periodically given to individuals who have produced a body of research notable for its relevance and enduring value to investment professionals.

Mohamed El-Erian
CEO, PIMCO

Dr. El-Erian is CEO and co-CIO of PIMCO and is based in the Newport Beach office. He re-joined PIMCO in 2008 after serving for two years as president and CEO of Harvard Management Company, the entity that manages Harvard’s endowment and related accounts. Dr. El-Erian also served as a member of the faculty of Harvard Business School. He first joined PIMCO in 1999 as managing director and was a senior member of PIMCO's portfolio management and investment strategy group.

Before coming to PIMCO, Dr. El-Erian was a managing director at Salomon Smith Barney/Citigroup in London and before that, he spent 15 years at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. Dr. El-Erian has published widely on international economic and finance topics. His book, "When Markets Collide," was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and won the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs 2008 Business Book of the Year.

Larry Fink
Chairman & CEO, BlackRock 

Laurence D. Fink, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock, Inc., is Chairman of the Management Committee. He is also Chairman of the Board of Nomura BlackRock Asset Management, BlackRock’s joint venture in Japan, and several of BlackRock’s alternative investment vehicles. In addition, Mr. Fink is a Trustee and President of BlackRock Funds, the firm’s open-end fund family, and a Director of several of BlackRock's offshore funds.

Prior to founding BlackRock in 1988, Mr. Fink was a member of the Management Committee and a Managing Director of The First Boston Corporation. Mr. Fink joined First Boston in 1976 and quickly became one of the first mortgage-backed securities traders on Wall Street.

Shelly Lazarus
Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

Shelly has been working, as she would say it, "In the business I love," for more than three decades, almost all of that time at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. Rising through the ranks of account service, Shelly has held positions of increasing responsibility in the management of the company, including president of O&M Direct North America, Ogilvy & Mather New York, Ogilvy North America, Chief Operating Officer, and CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. She is currently Chairman of the worldwide company.

Shelly started at Ogilvy at a time when the agency's legendary founder David Ogilvy still walked the halls, and personally preached that the purpose of advertising was to build great brands. Under Shelly's leadership, that essential mission has remained the centerpiece of the company's philosophy, extending across regions and marketing disciplines, and attracting some of the world's the largest and most respected brands including American Express, BP, Coca-Cola, IBM, Motorola and Unilever among many others.

Marc Morial
President and Chief Executive Officer, National Urban League

According to a major publication, "Marc H. Morial, a lawyer by profession, is leading the National Urban League into a new era with street smarts and boardroom savvy." Selected in May of 2003 as the 8th President and CEO of the nation's largest and oldest civil rights and direct services organization empowering African Americans and other ethnic communities, Morial has helped thrust the League into the forefront of major public policy issues, research and effective community-based solutions.

From Hurricane Katrina and the extension of the Voting Rights Act to creating jobs and housing through effective economic strategies, he is considered one of the nation's foremost experts on a wide range of issues related to cities and their residents. He has also been recognized by the Non-Profit Times as one of America's top 50 non-profit executives and has been named by Ebony Magazine as one of the 100 "Most Influential Blacks in America."

Vikram Pandit
CEO, Citi

Mr. Vikram Pandit serves as Director of Citigroup Inc since 2007. He is also Chief Executive Officer of Citigroup Inc. He was most recently Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Institutional Clients Group, which comprises Citi Markets & Banking and Citi Alternative Investments.

Previously, he was a founding member and chairman of Old Lane, LP, a multi-strategy hedge fund and private equity fund manager acquired by Citi in 2007. Prior to founding Old Lane, Mr. Pandit held a number of senior positions at Morgan Stanley over more than two decades, including President and Chief Operating Officer of Morgan Stanley’s Institutional Securities Group, which included Morgan Stanley’s investment banking, fixed income and capital markets businesses.

Jack Welch
Former Chairman & CEO, General Electric

Jack Welch is a business writer of a widely read weekly column The Welch Way, which he writes with his wife, Suzy Welch. This column appears in BusinessWeek magazine and is published by the New York Times syndicate in more than 45 major newspapers around the world, reaching more than 8 million readers. The Welches are also the co-authors of Winning, a #1 Wall Street Journal and international bestseller, and its companion volume, Winning: The Answers. In 2001, he wrote his #1 New York Times and also international best-selling autobiography, Jack - Straight from the Gut.

Jack is currently the head of Jack Welch, LLC, where he serves as Special Partner with the private equity firm, Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and is a consultant to IAC (Interactive Corp). He is a contributor on a variety of television network business shows and speaks to business audiences and students around the world. Jack also teaches a leadership course at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.