Richard Parsons

Former CEO & Chairman of Time Warner, Chairman of Citigroup (Honorary Conference Chairman)

Richard D. Parsons is a Senior Advisor at Providence Equity Partners Inc., a leading private equity investment firm specializing in media, cormnunications and information companies. He is also Chairman of the Board of Citigroup, Inc. Prior to serving in those roles, he was the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Time Warner, Inc., the world’s largest media and entertainment company, from 2002 to 2008. In its January 2005 report on America’s Best CEOs, Institutional Investor magazine named Mr. Parsons the top CEO in the entertaimnent industry.

Before joining Time Warner, in 1995, Mr. Parsons was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Dime Bancorp, Inc., one of the largest thrift institutions in the United States. Previously, he was the managing partner of the New York law finn Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler. Prior to that, he held various positions in state and federal government, as counsel for Nelson Rockefeller and as a senior White House aide under President Gerald Ford. Mr. Parsons received his undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii and his legal training at Union University’s Albany Law School.

In 2008, Mr. Parsons served as a member of then President-Elect Barack Obama’s Economic Transition Team. His other civic and non-profit commitments include Chairman Emeritus of the Partnership for New York City; Chainnan of the Apollo Theatre Foundation and of the Jazz Foundation of America, and service on the boards of the Museum of Modem Art and the American Museum of Natural History.

Mr. Parsons is also a member of the boards of The Estee Lauder Companies, Inc. and Madison Square Garden, Inc.

Charles Blow

Visual Op-Ed Columnist for the New York Times

Charles M. Blow is The New York Times’s visual Op-Ed columist. His column appears in The Times on Saturday.  He is also the author of the blog “By The Numbers”

Mr. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years.  Mr. Blow went on to become the paper’s Design Director for News before leaving in 2006 to become the Art Director of National Geographic Magazine. Before coming to The Times, Mr. Blow had been a graphic artist at The Detroit News.

Mr. Blow often appears on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and has appeared on Adrea Mitchel Reports, Hardball with Chris Matthews, CNN’s American Morning, Headline News’ The Joy Behar show, Fox News’ Fox and Friends, the BBC and Al Jazeera, as well as numerous radio programs.

Mr. Blow graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University in Louisiana, where he received a B.A. in mass communications. He lives in Brooklyn with his three children.

Roger Ferguson

CEO of TIAA-CREF

Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., is President and Chief Executive Officer of TIAA-CREF, the leading provider of retirement services in the academic, research, medical, and cultural fields and a Fortune 100 financial services organization with more than $460 billion in combined assets under management.

Mr. Ferguson served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. He was a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, served as Chairman of the Financial Stability Forum, and chaired Federal Reserve Board committees on banking supervision and regulation, payment system policy, and reserve bank oversight.

Prior to joining TIAA-CREF in April 2008, Mr. Ferguson was head of financial services for Swiss Re, Chairman of Swiss Re America Holding Corporation, and a member of the company’s executive committee. From 1984 to 1997, he was an Associate and Partner at McKinsey & Company. He began his career as an attorney at the New York City office of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Mr. Ferguson is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a member of the Academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. He is a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and served on its predecessor, the Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Mr. Ferguson is co-chair of the Committee on Economic Development, and he serves on the Board of Directors of International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. as well as the boards of several nonprofit organizations, including the Institute for Advanced Study and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and serves as co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Long-Run Macro-Economic Effects of the Aging U.S. Population. He is vice chairman of the Economic Club of New York and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Harvard University Visiting Committee for the Memorial Church, and the Group of Thirty.

Mr. Ferguson holds a B.A., J.D., and a Ph.D. in economics, all from Harvard University.

Phil Griffin

President of MSNBC

Phil Griffin was named President, MSNBC in July 2008. Griffin, who has had executive oversight for MSNBC since 2006, oversees all day-to-day management issues at MSNBC. In addition to his responsibilities at the 24-hour cable news channel, Griffin also oversees NBC News’ Specials coverage.

Griffin was named Senior Vice President at NBC News with oversight responsibility for America’s number-one morning program, “Today,” in April 2005. A year later he added oversight of MSNBC to his responsibilities. Prior to that, he was vice president of primetime programming for MSNBC, overseeing all primetime programming for the network including “The Abrams Report,” “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” and “Scarborough Country.”

Griffin has been with MSNBC since its launch in July 1996. He has produced several programs for the cable network including “Hardball with Chris Matthews” from 1999-2004. At MSNBC’s launch, Griffin produced “Internight,” hosted by Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel, Bob Costas and Bill Moyers featuring newsmakers, artists and authors. Griffin also produced “The Big Show with Keith Olbermann” from 1997-98.

Prior to becoming an executive producer at MSNBC, Griffin was the senior broadcast producer of “NBC Nightly News,” where he oversaw domestic stories on a daily basis. Griffin traveled extensively with anchor Tom Brokaw on major breaking news events to Somalia, Moscow and the Middle East.

In 1995, Griffin went to Los Angeles to head up NBC News’ coverage of the O.J. Simpson Trial. Prior to that, he was the American Close-Up segment producer for “Nightly News” beginning in 1991. From 1988-1991, Griffin was a writer/producer for “Today,” where he covered stories including the Persian Gulf War, the San Francisco earthquake and the invasion of Panama. This marked Griffin’s return to “Today,” where he worked from 1983-1987 as a writer/producer. Griffin left “Today” in 1987 to join “USA Today: The Television Show” as senior producer until 1988. He began his career at CNN in 1980, where he was a producer for three years.

Griffin is a graduate of Vassar College, with a B.A. in English. He and his wife Kory Apton reside in Manhattan with their two children.

Billy Hunter

Executive Director of the NBA Players Association

Taking the helm in 1996, Billy Hunter is the Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), the union for current professional basketball players in the National Basketball Association (NBA). His principal duty is to enhance the financial, educational and emotional well-being of the 430 basketball players employed by the NBA. Mr. Hunter continues to align his efforts with the NBPA’s mission of ensuring that the rights of NBA players are protected and that every conceivable measure is taken to assist players in maximizing their opportunities and achieving their goals, both on and off the court.Under his leadership, NBA players have utilized their collective bargaining power to challenge how the NBA is run and the method in which the money it generates is distributed. Sen/ing as the chief negotiator during the high-profile negotiations that culminated in the 1999 Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NBA and its players, the agreement resulted in assuring that NBA players would maintain their status as the best compensated professional athletes in team sports worldwide. Today, Mr. Hunter and his team are in the midst of renegotiating the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NBA and its players, and stand poised and prepared for the possibility of confronting an NBA lockout.

Mr. Hunter also has been widely credited for forging the solidarity that carried NBA players through the management-imposed lockout, which delayed the start of the 1998-1999 NBA season by more than three months. The NBA-imposed lockout is one of the most significant challenges that the union has confronted during Mr. Hunter’s tenure, in addition to numerous other disputes involving players’ rights, personally and professionally

ln order to maintain the organization’s status as the preeminent representative of professional basketball players, in 1998 Mr. Hunter formed the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA), the first major sports union in this country to represent female athletes, which he has headed since its inception. In 2008, the WNBPA signed a new collective six-year collective bargaining agreement with the WNBA, which increased players‘ salaries and established free agency for the first time ever in women’s professional sports.

Mr. Hunter has placed an emphasis on increasing player services delivered by the union to its membership, educating players about the business of professional basketball and preparing players for life after their careers in the NBA. Under his direction, the NBPA created Sponscaster U., offering current players interested in pursuing a post-playing career in broadcast a hands-on opportunity to learn in a professional setting; established the Leadership Development Program to prepare and train current players for a post-playing career in an NBA team’s front office; introduced the NBPA Top 100 Camp, the preeminent high school basketball camp in the country which assists the top 100 high school studentathletes in the development of their individual and life skills, as well as offers current NBA players the opportunity to participate in the NBPA Coaching Development Program; launched the Annual NBPA Holiday Food Giveaway; contributed funds to worldwide disaster relief efforts, including September 11 World Trade Disaster, Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami, the Haiti earthquake and much more; spearheaded the “Feeding One Million” initiative, which included the distribution of 11 million pounds of rice in Kenya to feed 120,000 children per day for one year; and conducts summer basketball clinics worldwide, among numerous other global community outreach projects.

Arriving at the NBPA well prepared for the high visibility role as head of a renowned sports union, Mr. Hunter’s diverse background includes a stint as a professional football player with the NFL’s Washington Redskins and Miami Dolphins, and as the former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California at San Francisco.

Mr. Hunter graduated from Syracuse University, where he was captain of the football team. He received his Juris Doctor degree from Howard University Law School in 1969 and an LLM (Master of Law) from Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California-Berkeley in 1970. Mr. Hunter served several years as a prosecutor in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, and as the Chief-Assistant in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Mr. Hunter to the position of U.S. Attorney in 1977, wherein he supervised the investigation and prosecution of members of Jim Jones‘ People’s Temple, the Hell’s Angels and the Church of Hakeem. During his tenure as U.S. Attorney Mr. Hunter served on the U.S. Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. He was selected by the U.S. Attorney General to advise President Carter on the pardon of Patricia Hearst. Prior to his appointment as U.S. Attorney Mr. Hunter served in the San Francisco and Alameda County District Attorney Offices. From 1984 until his appointment with the NBPA, he managed his own law firm specializing in municipal finance, entertainment law, white~collar criminal defense, and other high-profile civil litigation. In 1990, he was a candidate for the U.S. Congress.

In 1955, Mr. Hunter became the very first African-American to compete in the Little League World Series Championship. He pitched for Cherry Hill New Jersey in the final game of the Little League World Championship Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania ln July 2003, Mr. Hunter was inducted into the Little League Hall of Fame along with George Brett (Kansas City Royals) and Kevin Costner (actor).

Mr. Hunter is a member of the Syracuse University Board of Trustees, Naismith Memorial Basketball Hail of Fame Board of Trustees, USA Basketball Board of Directors, and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Board of Directors, a non-profit organization that seeks to revitalize economically deprived communities in Upper Manhattan. He has been active in local and national politics, including serving several years on the Oakland Board of Port Commissioners. ln this capacity, as well as through his work with the NBPA, Mr. Hunter has traveled the world.

Maintaining residences in New York City and Oakland, California, he and his wife, Janice, have three children and four grandchildren.

Nicholas Lemann

Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism

Nicholas Lemann was born, raised and educated in New Orleans. He began his journalism career as a 17-year-old writer for an alternative weekly newspaper there, the Vieux Carre Courier. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1976, where he concentrated in American history and literature and was president of the Harvard Crimson. After graduation, he worked at the Washington Monthly, as an associate editor and then managing editor; at Texas Monthly, as an associate editor and then executive editor; at The Washington Post, as a member of the national staff; at The Atlantic Monthly, as national correspondent; and at The New Yorker, as staff writer and then Washington correspondent.

On September 1, 2003, he became dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, at the end of a process of re-examination of the school’s mission conducted by a national task force convened by the university’s president, Lee C. Bollinger. During Lemann’s time as dean, the Journalism School has launched and completed its first capital fundraising campaign, added 15 members to its full-time faculty, built a student center, started its first new professional degree program since the 1930s, and launched significant new initiatives in investigative reporting, digital journalism, executive leadership for news organizations, and other areas.

Lemann continues to contribute to The New Yorker as a staff writer. He has published five books, most recently “Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War” (2006); “The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy” (1999), which helped lead to a major reform of the SAT; and “The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America” (1991), which won several book prizes. He has written widely for such publications as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and Slate; worked in documentary television with Blackside, Inc., “FRONTLINE,” the Discovery Channel, and the BBC; and lectured at many universities.

Lemann serves on the boards of directors of the Authors Guild, the National Academy of Sciences’ Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, and the Academy of Political Science, and is a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities. He was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in April, 2010.

William C. Rhoden

Sports Columnist of the New York Times

William C. Rhoden has been writing about sports for The New York Times since March 1983. Previously, he was a copy editor in the Sunday Week in Review section since October 1981 when he joined the newspaper.

Before joining The Times, Mr. Rhoden spent more than three years with The Baltimore Sun as a columnist. Before that, he was associate editor of Ebony magazine from 1974 to 1978.

He attended Morgan State University in Baltimore and while there acted as assistant sports information director.

Mr. Rhoden is married and has a daughter.

Desiree Rogers

CEO of Johnson Publishing

Desiree Rogers, Chief Executive Officer of Johnson Publishing Company, LLC has earned a reputation as one of America’s most successful businesswomen. With a Harvard Business School degree and stellar business experience, Rogers has redefined every leadership position that she has held while playing a major philanthropic role in the communities in which she has lived.

Consistently acknowledged as an innovative leader with a proven track record, her career milestones include turning the Illinois Lottery, a mature organization facing rising competition and anti-­‐gaming forces, into a stable, reliable and popular, revenue producer that revolutionized the sale of instant tickets through promotional partnerships. During her tenure, instant ticket sales doubled to 600 million.

In 2004, Rogers was elected president of People Energy’s two natural gas utilities where she facilitated the 150-­‐year old company’s transition from a traditional, under the radar, entity to a responsive, customer-­‐centric organization. During the company’s acquisition by the $7 billion Integrys Energy Group, Rogers led the integration of the two utilities.

In 2008, President Obama named Rogers the first Black American Social Secretary. As Social Secretary her mandate was to help “people visualize what the Obama presidency is about, the values Americans voted for-­‐-­‐-­‐inclusion, transparency and the embracement of all people. She was recruited to reposition the Obama’s nontraditional vision of the White House to the “People’s House.” Her office produced 350 events in her 14-­‐month tenure and turned the White House into a showcase for American art and culture.

A bold visionary, Rogers has the ability to develop creative solutions for mature organizations facing changing industry dynamics or consumer tastes. Spearheading the development of a social networking strategy for Allstate and creating innovative concepts for events at the White House, Rogers continued to redefine operational approaches. Thomas Wilson, Chairman and CEO of the Allstate Corporation recruited Rogers and in a few short months, she had “started to extend her influence and drive change inside the company from her position on the executive committee.”

Rogers is widely credited for her ability to identify and motivate talent to challenge existing assumptions using brand discipline and superior communication skills to create new pathways for success.

She has served on several corporate and non-­‐for-­‐profit boards most recently serving on Equity Residential, the largest publically traded REIT, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and as Vice Chairman of the Lincoln Park Zoo and the Museum of Science and Industry. Today, she serves on the boards of the Ad Council, DonorsChoose, Northwestern Memorial Foundation, and World Business Chicago.

DeMaurice Smith

Executive Director of the NFL Players Association

DeMaurice Smith is the Executive Director of the National Football League Players Association. He was elected unanimously by a board of active player representatives on March 16, 2009.

Prior to his election, he was a trial lawyer and litigation partner in the Washington, DC offices of law firms Patton Boggs, LLP and Latham & Watkins LLP. In private practice, he represented Fortune 500 companies in criminal and complex civil cases, compliance matters, and internal investigations. He has argued numerous cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Smith previously served as Counsel to then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder in the U.S. Department of Justice before entering private practice. His duties revolved around national security issues, congressional relations, and DOJ budget and finance allocation.

He served in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia for ten years where he held senior positions in the Violent Crime and Transnational and Major Crime Sections. He prosecuted more than 80 jury trials and handled some of the most significant homicide, narcotics and white collar criminal investigations in the history of that office.

Smith is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, has served on the Board of Governors of the D.C. Bar Association, and is the former president of the Assistant United States Attorney’s Association. He is also a member of the Board of Advisors for the Office for Access and Advancement for Public Black Universities of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities. He is a recipient of the United States Attorney General’s Award, the John Evans Trial Advocacy Award from the United States Attorney’s Association, and the 2010 Cedarville College Alumnus of the Year Award. He was also honored as a recipient of the Keeper of the Dream Award by the National Action Network and named one of the Top Ten Most Influential Persons by the Sports Business Journal. He was inducted into the Ohio Foundation of Independent Colleges’ Hall of Excellence in 2010, and was the 2011 Commencement Speaker at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.

Smith is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and received his bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Cedarville University, a Christian college in Ohio. He is a member of the Maryland and District of Columbia Bar Associations. He continues to teach at the National Trial Advocacy Institute at the University of Virginia.

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.

Publisher of the New York Times

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. was named chairman of The New York Times Company on October 16, 1997. As the Company’s senior executive, he is responsible for its long-term business strategy. Mr. Sulzberger, who became publisher of The New York Times in 1992, continues to run the Company’s flagship enterprise on a day-to-day basis. Over the past decade, he has shaped and implemented innovative print, broadcast and online initiatives that are enabling the Company to compete successfully in the 21st century global media marketplace. These include:

* Transforming The Times into a national newspaper

* Developing a major Times company presence on the Internet, which now includes

NYTimes.com, a top five global news and information site, Boston.com, About.com and

IHT.com

* Acquiring the International Herald Tribune.

During Mr. Sulzberger’s tenure as publisher, The Times has earned 44 Pulitzer Prizes and provided its readers with innumerable examples of momentous journalism such as its breakthrough series “How Race is Lived in America,” its internationally acclaimed coverage of the September 11 terrorist attack in a “A Nation Challenged” and “Portraits of Grief,” “Class Matters,” a 11-part series exploring class in American society, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” an expose of the Bush Administration’s use of wiretaps and “China Rises,” a four-part, multimedia series.

It should also be noted that The New York Times Company has been repeatedly cited for its commitment to excellence, innovation and social responsibility.

Before coming to The Times, Mr. Sulzberger was a reporter with The Raleigh (N.C.) Times from 1974 to 1976, and a London correspondent for The Associated Press from 1976 to 1978.

He joined The Times in 1978 as a correspondent in its Washington bureau. He moved to New York as a metro reporter in 1981 and was appointed assistant metro editor later that year.

From 1983 to 1987, he worked in a variety of business departments, including production and corporate planning. In January 1987, he was named assistant publisher and, a year later, deputy publisher, overseeing the news and business departments. In both capacities, he was involved in planning The Times’s automated color printing and distribution facilities in Edison, N.J., and at College Point in Queens, N.Y., as well as the creation of the six-section color newspaper.

Mr. Sulzberger played a central role in the development of the Times Square Business Improvement District, officially launched in January 1992, serving as the first chairman of that civic organization. He also helped found and serves as chairman of the New York City Outward Bound Center.

Mr. Sulzberger earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from Tufts University in 1974. He is also a 1985 graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development.

Toure

Contributor for MSNBC

Touré is the author of the book Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? What It Means To Be Black Now which was published by the Free Press. He has already written three books: Never Drank the Kool-Aid, a collection of essays about hiphop and life; Soul City, a novel; and the Portable Promised Land, a collection of short stories. He is an NBC contributor and a regular on MSNBC’s the Dylan Ratigan Show. He is also the host of the Fuse shows the Hiphop Shop and On the Record. He is also a contributor to Tennis Channel.

He was CNN’s first Pop Culture Correspondent and was the host of MTV2’s Spoke N Heard and was the host of BET’s The Black Carpet. He remains a Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone and also writes for Vibe and Ebony. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Artforum, Tennis, Playboy, the Best American Essays of 1999, the Best American Sportswriting of 2001, the Da Capo Best Music Writing of 2004 and the Best American Erotica of 2004.

He studied at Columbia University’s graduate school of creative writing and lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn with his wife and two children.

Carlos Watson

Managing Director, Goldman Sachs

Carlos works in the Investment Banking Division in New York, focused on media and for-profit education companies. He joined Goldman Sachs as a managing director in 2010.

Prior to joining the firm, Carlos worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he advised a wide range of Fortune 500 companies. He also built and ran a successful venture-backed education company, Achieva College Prep Services, which he later sold to the Washington Post/Kaplan. In addition to his work in education, Carlos has also had a distinguished media career, serving as an anchor and analyst for CNN and MSNBC. He won an Emmy Award in 2007 for his television interview specials.

Carlos graduated, with honors, from both Harvard University and Stanford Law School.