Tom Friedman,
New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist

Tom Friedman, one of America's leading interpreters of world affairs, is The New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist. Friedman's first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, won the National Book Award in 1988 and was on the The New York Times bestseller list for over a year. His second book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, is a distillation of the new global economy. And his third book, Longitudes and Latitudes: Exploring the World After September 11, is about the world before, during, and after the tragic events in New York City and Washington. Friedman has won three Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting for The New York Times. After a recent trip to India, Friedman wrote a series of columns about offshoring and has developed a documentary with the Discovery Channel on the topic.

Jeffrey Garten,
Dean of Yale School of Management

Jeffrey Garten is Dean of the Yale School of Management and William S. Beinecke Professor in the Practice of International Trade and Finance. The author of several books, Garten's latest, The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda for Business Leaders, gives his perspective of why CEOs need to be better public citizens, especially after the September 11th terrorist attacks and all of the corporate scandals. Prior to Yale, Dean Garten was the Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade in the first Clinton administration, where he focused on promoting American business interests in Japan, Europe and the emerging markets of China and India. From 1972-1992, he worked on Wall Street as a managing director of Lehman Brothers and the Blackstone Group.

Diana Farrell,
Director of McKinsey Global Institute

Diana Farrell is the director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey & Company's internal economics think tank. McKinsey Global Institute's independent research combines McKinsey & Company's rigorous microeconomic understanding of companies and industries with the rigor of leading economic thinking to derive perspectives and publish reports on important global economic issues. The Institute is widely acclaimed as a leading contributor to the economic debate and is prominently featured in international publications.

McKinsey Global Institute continues to build on in-depth, sector-based productivity studies of economies around the world. To date, MGI has published reports on 15 countries across nearly 30 industry sectors. Under Farrell's leadership, MGI's research agenda has spanned additional, related topics including foreign direct investment, offshoring, capital markets, and the relationship between IT and productivity. Farrell is the co-author, with Lowell Bryan, of Market Unbound, published by Wiley & Sons, 1996. She has also published numerous articles and op-eds.

Farrell was previously a McKinsey partner in the Washington, D.C., office and a leader of McKinsey's Global Financial Institutions and Strategy practices. She has served clients around the world in a variety of capacities.

Farrell has a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Economics and in the College of Social Studies. She also holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Prior to joining McKinsey, Farrell worked with Goldman, Sachs & Company in New York.

Farrell is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, a trustee for the Committee for Economic Development, a Board Advisor to the Bay Area Economic Pulse, and a regular contributor in major U.S. and global economic forums.

Ron Blackwell,
Director of Corporate Affairs of the AFL-CIO

Ron Blackwell is Director of Corporate Affairs of the AFL-CIO, a department charged with supporting unions in their strategic relations with employers. Before coming to the AFL-CIO, Blackwell was assistant to the president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union and chief economist of UNITE. Prior to joining the labor movement, Blackwell was an academic dean in the New School for Social Research in New York where he taught economics, politics and philosophy. He serves on several advisory boards and councils including the Economic Policy Institute and the International Center for Corporate Governance and Accountability at George Washington University.

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