2024 SPEAKER SCHEDULE

KARIM R. LAKHANI

Artificial Intelligence: Friend or Foe?

Karim R. Lakhani is the Dorothy & Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a renowned expert at the nexus of technological innovation, artificial intelligence, and business strategy. He co-founded several Harvard initiatives, including the Digital, Data & Design Institute and the Laboratory for Innovation Science.

With over 150 publications, Lakhani’s groundbreaking work, which has garnered national and international media attention, includes field experiments with organizations like NASA, Harvard Medical School and The Broad Institute and insights into digital transformation, particularly the role of AI in business. He co-authored the award-winning book, Competing in the Age of AI, and has developed six online courses educating executives on AI and digital strategies. An advisor to top companies and AI startups, Lakhani holds a Ph.D. from MIT and has previously worked with GE Healthcare and The Boston Consulting Group. He serves on the board of directors of Mozilla Corporation, Mozilla.AI, VideaHealth and NEXT Canada.

KIMBERLY MANNING, MD

The Power of Human Connection

Kimberly D. Manning, MD is a general internist/hospitalist and professor in the Department of Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine. She is Vice Chair of RYSE (DEI) for the department. Her clinical work is at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta’s safety net facility, where she has been for last two decades.

Manning’s academic achievements include numerous institutional, regional and national teaching awards. She has a passion for storytelling as a means to build and strengthen diverse clinical environments as well as cultivating psychologically safe learning climates. She is on the board of trustees for the Arnold P. Gold Foundation and on the editorial board for the Journal of Hospital Medicine. In addition to being a prolific writer of narratives in journals and on Twitter, she co-hosts a podcast, The Human Doctor. 

Manning grew up in Inglewood, CA and is a proud alumnus of two historically Black colleges—Tuskegee University and Meharry Medical College. She trained in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics in Cleveland.  In addition to teaching and caring for patients, Dr. Manning is a happily married mother of two sons. She applies her lived experiences as a Black American woman, mother, daughter, wife, and community member to all her professional work.

DAVID WALLACE-WELLS

Our Uncertain Future 

David Wallace-Wells is a writer for New York Times Opinion, a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, and the author of the international best-seller The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, which the Guardian called "an epoch-defining book" and The Washington Post called "the Silent Spring of our time." He was previously deputy editor of New York Magazine and, before that, the Paris Review, and is a National Fellow at the New America Foundation. 

DAVID MAKOVSKY

Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East: What lies ahead?

David Makovsky is the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute and director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel Relations. He is also an adjunct professor in Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In 2013 and 2014, he worked in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of State, serving as a senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations. He is the author of three books, two co-authored with Ambassador Dennis Ross, and host of the Decision Points podcast, which examines Israeli history and U.S.-Israel relations.

BARRY C. SCHECK

Aligning AI Tools with Social and Democratic Values in the Criminal Legal System

Barry C. Scheck is Co-Founder and Special Counsel of the Innocence Project and a Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York City. The Innocence Project, started as a clinical program in 1992, is an independent non-profit organization affiliated with Cardozo that fights for fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone; frees the innocent; and prevents wrongful convictions. The work is guided by science and grounded in antiracism.

Mr. Scheck was a founding partner and is currently of counsel in the law firm of Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffman & Freudenberger, LLP, specializing in civil rights and constitutional litigation. The firm is frequently retained by victims of police brutality or other forms of police misconduct.

He has published extensively in these areas, including a book with Jim Dwyer and Peter Neufeld, Actual Innocence: When Justice Goes Wrong and How to Make It Right. Mr. Scheck has served many bar associations in prominent positions, including as President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), where he currently serves as a Trustee of the NACDL Foundation.

NOAH FELDMAN

To Be a Jew Today: Wrestling with God, Israel, and the Jewish People

Noah Feldman is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Chairman of the Society of Fellows, and founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, all at Harvard University. He specializes in constitutional studies, with emphasis on power and ethics, design of innovative governance solutions, law and religion, and the history of legal ideas.

A policy and public affairs columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, Feldman also writes for The New York Review of Books and was a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine for nearly a decade. He hosts the Deep Background podcast, exploring the historical, scientific, legal and cultural context behind the biggest stories in the news.

Through his consultancy, Ethical Compass, Feldman advises clients like Facebook and eBay on how to improve ethical decision-making by creating and implementing new governance solutions. He is the author of 10 books, including his latest forthcoming title, To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel and the Jewish People (Farrar Straus and Giroux, spring 2024).