You don't want to miss out on this year's magnificent meeting, please take a moment to register as soon as possible to ensure a spot to join your friends in Washington DC from October 26-29! Remember, registration closes this Friday, September 2nd. To register, please refer to the original invitation email sent in early July ("Join your G50 friends in Washington, DC: Registration for the XXIII Annual Meeting is now open"). Registration for our concurrent sessions will be opening soon. Stay tuned!
Here are some of the program highlights for this year's meeting!
Every year the G50/ML50 challenge is to give our members a personal and intellectual experience that exceeds that of past years. It has not been an easy task, but your survey responses and direct feedback show that, year after year, we meet that challenge and surpass your already high expectations. This year, we are again committed to delivering an even better annual meeting. While in the past three years, we have focused on the nature and consequences of financial, technological, and scientific disruption, in 2016 we will dissect the political earthquakes that are rocking the world. And there is no better place to gauge the global political temperature than in Washington DC, just a few weeks before the US presidential election.
But, as you know, our annual meetings are never monothematic. We strive to showcase the cutting-edge thinking in economics, geopolitics, management, society, science and culture. This year is no different. We have already confirmed the participation of some of the world’s leading experts and practitioners. But the program is not yet finalized, and we will soon have more exciting details to share with you. Here is just a preview of some of the memorable sessions that we already have in store for you.
Has the world gone mad? How to make sense of all that is going on and how to think about what is coming. Our opening dinner will not only reunite our community after a year of climactic world events, but we will start the annual meeting with one of the most influential columnists and authors of our times. The great Tom Friedman, three-time Pulitzer winner, New York Times columnist, and multiple bestselling author will share his perspective on how to think about a world that every day seems to bring a new surprise.
Is political disruption the new normal? The following morning, the meeting starts with our "curtain-raising" geopolitical session. What are the main economic and political forces disrupting the world? We know the headlines and the code words: BREXIT, ISIS, Secular Stagnation, Populism, Immigrants, Quantitative Easing, Racial Tensions, Ultra-low interest rates, Trump and Hillary, Volatility, the Taliban, Drones, Nationalism, Low Oil, Global Warming, China and Russia's economic slowdown and military expansionism and more. What we don't know is how all these forces will play out. To guide our conversations we have invited nine of the best known economists, political scientists, and financial and military experts. You will be able to discuss with them in small groups the nature and consequences of the current global turmoil. It will be an indispensable session.
But how about solving the disruption? With polarization at an all-time high, and people and groups dividing along intractable fault lines - race, ethnicity, politics, religion, class, age – Dan Shapiro may have the key to ending all conflict. This world-renowned negotiation specialist who teaches one of the most popular courses at Harvard has advised everyone from hostage negotiators to families in crisis, disputing CEOs to clashing heads of state. He shares time-tested strategies for ending conflict through better and more effective negotiation.
Latin America: Think Again. High commodity prices and easy money are gone. The region has entered a more difficult period of slower growth and budget cuts, devaluations, higher inflation and less investment. In the midst of all this, the members of the G50 and ML50 are strengthening their companies, finding new opportunities and developing new businesses. How should the leaders of the larger and more dynamic companies in Latin America navigate this transitional period? How long will the economic slowdown last? With what permanent consequences? Where are the opportunities? Which are the unexpected or still invisible risks? To distill the collective wisdom and the information that resides in our community, we have asked the president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Luis Alberto Moreno, to lead a conversation with G50/ML50 members and with the chief economists of the World Bank and the IDB as well as the IMF's leader for the Western Hemisphere.
How to win elections in the 21st century? Modern electoral campaigns have become more technological than ever. And the human impulses that drive voters are better understood --and more intensely influenced-- than ever before. In a profession fraught with bitter competition and strong dissent, there is one fact on which all top political campaign practitioners agree:Jim Messina is perhaps the world's best electoral strategist. He is the big-data, micro-targeting guru and ground operation organizer who masterminded Barack Obama’s successful 2012 election campaign. He will tell us how it is done.
What happens when the editor-in-chief of one of the most widely read business magazines meets with one of the most visible private equity investors and one of the world’s richest men?Alan Murray, editor-in-chief of Fortune Magazine interviews David Rubenstein - civic patriarch and private equity titan – and Carlos Slim in a probing conversation about big money, big ideas and big gifts.
And speaking of big gifts… Darren Walker runs the Ford Foundation and Chris Stone presides over the Open Society Foundation. These are two of the world's largest philanthropic enterprises. Together they control over 30 billion in assets and distribute over 2 billion in grants every year. Their mission is straightforward: change the world, one dollar at a time. How do they do it? And how does the world look from where they sit?
Another organization that has changed the world --or at least the way millions of humans go from one place to another-- is UBER. The company has been around for seven short years, and it’s already the most valuable startup on the planet. Its chief strategist David Plouffe will tell us how it got there and what he has learned about the politics of disrupting how humans travel --and the local politics --- in 66 countries and 449 cities worldwide.
New humans? Talk about disruption… J. Craig Venter was the first person to decode the human genome. In the 15 years since, he’s set out to create a global DNA database that will prevent cancer, slow aging and –more implausibly- even predict the adult face of a newborn baby. Be awed by the life-changing discoveries on the horizon. A session that will force you to think again about the meaning of life.
And what about the children? Today's world is peopled by 2.2 billion children under the age of 15. They are the future. Yet, children account for nearly half of the world’s extreme poor. Last year, nearly 6 million children died before reaching age 5, mostly as a result of preventable and treatable diseases. And millions more – especially girls – are routinely denied access to education. But inequity is not inevitable. Thanks to new technologies and innovative ways to finance crucial interventions, the trends are slowly reversing. We will have with us the leader that the world has entrusted to do better by our children. And how is he doing? What has he learned? What can we all do? An open-ended and candid conversation with Tony Lake, the head of UNICEF, about his experience trying to give the future, our children, a better chance.
We hope all of this gives you a taste of what you’ll be thinking about in the unforgettable, mind-opening days of the upcoming G50/ML50 meeting this October 26-29. Stay tuned for more exciting updates about our program as well as a few surprises…