Pulitzer Prize winning historian, journalist, commentator on geopolitics and acclaimed keynote, Anne Applebaum examines the challenges and opportunities of global political and economic change through the lenses of world history and the contemporary political landscape.

Informed by her expertise in Europe and her years of international reporting, Applebaum shares perspectives on, and the far-reaching implications of, today’s volatile world events. And as technology allows a new scale of media manipulation to authoritarian governments and changes the tenor of political discourse, she scrutinizes the misinformation, propaganda, and criminal exploitation that influence global affairs, as well.

From Syrian refugees to Putin’s disinformation narratives, from the EU and the European financial crises to responding to terrorism, from solutions to transition-government corruption to political populists’ game-changing campaign language, Applebaum provides both background and up-to-the-minute insights that are vital to understanding the risks and opportunities of today’s world political and economic climate.

Anne’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag: A History is about the Soviet concentration camps. Her book, Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, is the winner of her second Duff Cooper Prize and the 28th Lionel Gelber Prize 2018. In it, Anne proves what many suspected: Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry. Anne is the only author to win the Duff Cooper Prize twice. Her other books include Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1946, which won a Cundill Prize for Historical Literature, and Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe (updated edition published in 2023).

In 2021, Anne was awarded the ICFJ’s Excellence in International Reporting Award. Also in 2021, Anne was presented with the 38th ‘Francisco Cerecedo’ journalism award by King Felipe VI of Spain.

Penguin published ‘Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism’ in 2020. In this book, she outlines with great eloquence why elites in democracies around the world are turning towards nationalism and authoritarianism. The book became an immediate NYT best-seller in the non-fiction section. Barack Obama listed this book as one of his favourite reads of the year.

In 2024, her new book ‘Autocracy, Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World‘ will be published by Penguin.

She is a Senior Fellow of International Affairs and Agora Fellow in Residence at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

Director of the Transitions Forum at the Legatum Institute from 2011-2015, an international think tank, Applebaum is the co-founder of the institute’s Democracy Lab, an online partnership between the institute and Foreign Policy magazine. An adjunct fellow of the Center for European Policy Analysis, she is former Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs at the London School of Economics.

For many years, Applebaum wrote a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post which is syndicated internationally. She is now a staff writer at The Atlantic. She has been a contributor to Foreign Affairs, the New Republic and The New York Review of Books. She was formerly a member of The Washington Post’s editorial board; foreign and deputy editor of the Spectator magazine; and political editor of the Evening Standard. From 1988 – 1991 she covered the collapse of communism as Warsaw correspondent for The Economist.

Anne attended Yale University and was a Marshall Scholar at the London School of Economics and St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

Ginny Clarke is a world-renowned conscious leadership expert, sought-after speaker, author, instructor and advisor who helps organizations based on conscious choices and personal accountability.

Her approach to leadership is rooted in the Five Dimensions Of Conscious Leadership, which encourages leaders to deepen their self-awareness, speak their truth, inspire love, expand their consciousness and activate their mastery.

Ginny's focus on personal accountability and self-awareness empowers people to become radically accountable, creating a space for healthy, authentic leadership that inspires and transforms individuals and organizations.

She has over 30 years of experience in executive recruiting, talent management and commercial real estate. She has held leadership roles at Google and Spencer Stuart where she recruited senior leaders across sectors and functions and specialized in diversity and internal mobility.

Ginny is the author of Career Mapping: Charting Your Course in the New World of Work and hosts the Fifth Dimensional Leadership podcast. She holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a BA in French and Linguistics from the University of California at Davis.

Through self-reflection, Ginny teaches people to demonstrate empathy, honor their competencies and those of others, and drive positive change and growth within their organizations.

Ayesha Rascoe is the host of Weekend Edition Sunday and the weekend host of Up First. As host of the morning news magazine show, she interviews newsmakers, entertainers, politicians and more about the stories that everyone is talking about or that everyone should be talking about.

Rascoe is also the editor of HBCU Made: A Celebration of the Black College Experience, a book of essays about the impact of historically Black colleges and universities. Rascoe is an alumnae of Howard University, an HBCU in Washington, D.C.

Known for her southern roots and signature wit, Rascoe has been a mainstay on NPR's programs since joining the outlet in 2018.

Prior to her role as host, Rascoe was a White House Correspondent. She covered three presidential administrations, gaining a reputation for her sharp questioning in the White House briefing room. Rascoe's reporting included a number of high-profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she was also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast.

She's also guest hosted NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast and radio show and been a frequent guest on Pop Culture Happy Hour.

Before joining NPR, Rascoe spent the first decade of her career at Reuters, rising from a news assistant to an energy reporter to eventually covering the White House. While at Reuters, Rascoe covered some of the biggest energy and environmental stories of the past decade, including the 2010 BP oil spill and the U.S. response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis in 2011. She also spent a year covering energy legal issues and court cases.

David Staley is a historian, writer, designer, futurist, educator, advisor, and journalist, and was recently described as an "eclectic academic." He is an Associate Professor in the departments of History and Design at The Ohio State University, and is the author of Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education, the co-author of Knowledge Towns: Colleges and Universities as Talent Magnets and author of Visionary Histories, a collection of his essays about the future. He is an honorary faculty fellow at the Center for Higher Education Leadership and Innovative Practice (CHELIP) at Bay Path University, where he contributes the "University Design" column. He is the host of the "Voices of Excellence" podcast, and president of Columbus Futurists, a local think tank. In 2022 he was awarded "Best Freelance Writer" by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists for his "Next" futures column with Columbus Underground.