Speakers

Abby Joseph Cohen is Professor of Business in the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York City. She was previously a longstanding partner and chief U.S. investment strategist at Goldman Sachs. She was also president of the Global Markets Institute at Goldman Sachs, which provides research on the intersection of economics, public policy, and financial markets. Abby served on the firm’s Partnership Committee, which oversees the development of future leaders.

Derrick Freeman is a senior fellow and director of the Energy Innovation Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. He has over 11 years of experience in Washington, D.C., working in both the public and private sectors. Freeman is an experienced policy, legislative, and advocacy professional with a strong breadth and depth of expertise and experience in the electric power industry.

Ed Gerwin is a senior fellow for trade and global opportunity at the Progressive Policy Institute. He is also president of Trade Guru LLC and Senior Contributing Editor for Republic 3.0.

The co-director of Columbia Law School’s Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership, Jeffrey N.

Michael J. Graetz is the Wilbur H. Friedman Professor of Tax Law and the Columbia Alumni Professor of Tax Law at Columbia Law School. Before coming to Columbia in 2009, he was the Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor of Law at Yale University, where he had taught since 1983. Before Yale, he was a professor of law at the University of Virginia and the University of Southern California Law Schools and Professor of Law and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology.

Philip K. Howard is a well-known leader of government and legal reform in America. Howard's new book, The Rule of Nobody, has been praised by Fareed Zakaria as “an utterly compelling and persuasive book that, if followed, could change the way America works.” He is also author of the bestseller The Death of Common Sense, and Life Without Lawyers. He is Chair of Common Good (commongood.org), Senior Counsel at Covington & Burling LLP, and has advised two presidents and numerous public officials on legal and regulatory reform.

Dr. Michael Mandel is chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, where he supervises PPI’s research and policy work across a wide range of topics, including the data-driven economy, the impact of regulation on innovation, and policies to improve production, investment and job growth. Mandel is currently co-principal investigator for a Sloan Foundation grant on “Measuring the Impact of Globalization.” Mandel recently testified before Congress on impact of regulation on innovation.

Will Marshall is president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), established in 1989 as a center for political innovation in Washington, D.C. In this capacity, he has been one of the chief intellectual architects of the movement to modernize progressive politics for the global age. Called “Bill Clinton’s idea mill,” PPI’s policy analysis and proposals were the source for many of the “New Democrat” innovations that figured prominently in national politics over the past two decades.

Christopher Mayer is the Paul Milstein Professor Emeritus of Real Estate at Columbia Business School. His research explores a variety of topics in real estate and financial markets, including housing cycles, mortgage markets, debt securitization, and commercial real estate valuation. Dr. Mayer is also CEO of Longbridge Financial, an innovative reverse mortgage company focused on delivering responsible home equity products to older Americans to help finance retirement.

David Osborne is a senior fellow and director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s project on Reinventing America’s Schools. He is the author or co-author of five books on public sector reform, including the New York Times bestseller, Reinventing Government. Osborne has also authored numerous articles for the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, Harpers, U.S. News, Education Week, The New Republic, Governing, and other publications. He is currently working on a book on education reform.

Edmund Phelps is the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics, Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University, and Dean of the New Huadu Business School. Born in 1933 in Evanston, Illinois, Edmund Phelps earned his B.A. from Amherst in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1959. His career began at the RAND Corporation. From 1960-1966 he held appointments at Yale and its Cowles Foundation, then a professorship at Penn. In 1971 he joined Columbia University.

Jonah E. Rockoff is Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility at the Columbia Graduate School of Business and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Rockoff's interests center on the finance and management of public schools. His most recent research focuses on systems for hiring new teachers, the effects of No Child Left Behind on students and schools, the impact of removing school desegregation orders, and how primary school teachers affect students' outcomes in early adulthood. He received his Ph.D.

David M. Schizer served as a dean of the Law School from 2004 to 2014 and is one of the nation’s leading tax scholars. His research also focuses on nonprofits, energy law, and corporate governance.

Andrew L. Stern is a Senior Fellow at the Columbia University Richman Center and the former President of the 2.2 million member Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest union of health care, hospital, nursing home, homecare, janitors, security officers, child care, food service, and state workers, and the fastest-growing union in North America.

Pierre Yared is the MUTB Professor of International Business, Senior Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs, and Vice Dean for Executive Education at Columbia Business School. His research, which has been published in leading academic journals, focuses on macroeconomic policy and political economy. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Yared teaches Global Economic Environment, a Core MBA course in macroeconomics for which he received the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence.