documentary on the Made In America festival in
Philadelphia. And it recently launched THNKR, a Premium
YouTube Channel, offering viewers extraordinary access to
the people, stories, and ideas that are transforming the world.
Beyond his professional duties and
prolific production credits, Jon is on the Board of Trustees
of the Rhode Island School of Design, and has recently
has been appointed to the Board of the Mr. Holland’s
Opus Foundation. Jon has continuously fostered @
radical’s work with numerous organizations and public
service initiatives, including RED, ONE, and Conservation
International. In 2012, he accepted Mayor Bloomberg’s
Made in New York Award at Gracie Mansion.
Jon strives to increase the reach, impact, and
legacies of the advertising and entertainment industries.
During his two terms as National Chairman of the AICP,
he founded the “Art and Technique of the American
Television Commercial,” which has been presented for
the past 20 years at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1994,
Jon received the Crystal Apple Award for his outstanding
contributions to the city’s production industry.
JEFFREY KATZENBERG
Jeffrey Katzenberg (born December 21, 1950) is an American
film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation. He
is perhaps most known for his period as chairman of The
Walt Disney Studios when Disney produced some of its
biggest hits, including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the
Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. As a founder and CEO
of DreamWorks Animation, he has overseen the production
of such animated franchises as Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu
Panda, Monsters vs. Aliens and How to Train Your Dragon.
Katzenberg was born in New York City, the son
of Anne, an artist, and Walter, a stockbroker. He attended
the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, graduating in 1969.
Katzenberg began his career as an assistant to
producer David Picker, then in 1974 he became an assistant
to Barry Diller, the Chairman of Paramount Pictures. Diller
moved Katzenberg to the marketing department, followed
by other assignments within the studio, until he was
assigned to revive the Star Trek franchise, which resulted
in the hit film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). He
continued to work his way up and became President of
Production under Paramount President Michael Eisner.
In 1984, Michael Eisner became Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) at The Walt Disney Company. Eisner brought
Katzenberg with him to take charge of Disney’s motion
picture division. Katzenberg was responsible for reviving
the studio which, at the time, ranked last at the box office
among the major studios. He focused the studio on the
production of adult-oriented comedies under its Touchstone
Pictures banner, including films such as Down and Out in
Beverly Hills (1986), Three Men and a Baby (1987) and Good
Morning, Vietnam (1987). By 1987, Disney had become
the number-one studio at the box office. Katzenberg also
oversaw Touchstone Television, which produced such hit
TV series, The Golden Girls and Home Improvement.
Katzenberg was also charged with turning around
Disney’s ailing Feature Animation unit, creating some
intrastudio controversy when he personally edited three
minutes out of a completed Disney animated feature, The
Black Cauldron (1985), shortly after joining the company.
Under his management, the animation department eventually
began creating some of Disney’s most critically acclaimed and
highest grossing animated features. These films include Who
Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), The Little Mermaid (1989),The
Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991,
the first animated feature to be nominated for an Academy
Award for Best Picture), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King
(1994). In addition, Katzenberg also sealed the deal that
created the highly successful partnership between Pixar and
Disney and the deal that brought Miramax Films into Disney.
When Eisner’s second in command, Frank Wells,
died in a helicopter crash in 1994, Eisner refused to promote
Katzenberg to the vacated position of president. This led to
a falling out between the two executives, and Katzenberg
left the company in September 1994. He launched a lawsuit
against Disney to recover money he felt he was owed and
settled out of court for an estimated $250 million.
Later in 1994, Katzenberg co-founded
DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David
Geffen, with Katzenberg taking primary responsibility for
animation operations. He was also credited as executive
producer on the DreamWorks animated films The Prince
of Egypt (1998), The Road to El Dorado and Joseph:
King of Dreams (both in 2000) and Shrek in 2001.
After DreamWorks Animation suffered a
$125 million loss on the traditionally-animated Sinbad:
Legend of the Seven Seas, the studio switched to all
computer-generated animation. Since then, DreamWorks’
animated films have been consistently successful.
In 2004, DreamWorks Animation (DWA)
was spun off from DreamWorks as a separate
company headed by Katzenberg in an IPO and has
recorded mostly profitable quarters since then.
The live-action DreamWorks movie studio was
sold to Viacom in December 2005. In 2008, the liveaction
DreamWorks studio again became an independent
production company, releasing its films through Disney.
In 2006, Katzenberg made an appearance on the
fifth season of The Apprentice. He awarded the task winners
an opportunity to be character voices in Over the Hedge.
Katzenberg has been an industry leader in promoting
digital 3D production of film, calling it “the greatest advance
in the film industry since the arrival of color in the 1930s.”
When Katzenberg appeared on The Colbert Report on April
20, 2010, he confirmed that from now on “every single
movie” that DreamWorks Animation produced would be
in 3D and gave Stephen Colbert a pair of new 3D glasses.
Katzenberg married Marilyn Siegel, a kindergarten
teacher, in 1975, and they have two children.
Together, Marilyn and Jeffrey have been highly
active in charitable causes. They donated the multimillion-dollar
Katzenberg Center to Boston University’s
College of General Studies, citing that the school gave
their two children the “love of education.” They also
donated the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Center for
Animation at the University of Southern California.
In addition to serving as Chairman of the Board
for the Motion Picture and Television Fund Foundation,
Katzenberg sits on the boards or serves as a trustee of AIDS
Project Los Angeles, American Museum of the Moving Image,
California Institute of the Arts, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,
Geffen Playhouse, Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s
Research, University of Southern California School of
Cinematic Arts and The Simon Wiesenthal Center. Together
with DreamWorks Animation, Katzenberg founded the
DreamWorks Animation Academy of Inner-City Arts in 2008.
Katzenberg has an estimated worth of $800
million according to Forbes. Katzenberg is reported to
have donated over $3.5 million in political contributions
since 1979: 33% ($1.171+ million) to Democrats, 66%
($2.33+ million) to special interest groups without party
affiliations, and less than 1% ($7,000) to Republicans.
He was awarded an honorary doctorate from
Ringling College of Art and Design on May 2, 2008.
NORMAN LEAR
90
Norman Lear has enjoyed a long career in television and film,
and as a political and social activist and philanthropist.
Mr. Lear began his television writing career in 1950
when he and his partner, Ed Simmons, were signed to write
for the The Ford Star Revue, starring Jack Haley. After only
four shows, they were hired away by Jerry Lewis to write for
the Martin and Lewis Colgate Comedy Hour, which they
continued to write until 1953. Mr. Lear then began writing on
his own for comedy shows including The Martha Raye Show,
The George Gobel Show, and The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show.
In 1958, Mr. Lear teamed with director Bud Yorkin
to form Tandem Productions. Together they produced several
feature films, with Mr. Lear taking on roles as executive
producer, writer, and director. He was nominated in 1967
for an Academy Award for his script for Divorce American
Style. In 1970, CBS signed with Tandem to produce All in
the Family, which first aired on January 12, 1971 and ran for
nine seasons. It earned four Emmy Awards for Best Comedy
series as well as the Peabody Award in 1977. All in the Family
was followed by a succession of other television hit shows
including Maude, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, One Day
at a Time, Good Times, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
Concerned about the growing influence of radical
religious evangelists, Mr. Lear decided to leave television
in 1980 and formed People For the American Way, a nonprofit
organization designed to speak out for Bill of Rights
guarantees and to monitor violations of constitutional
freedoms. People For remains an influential and effective
voice for freedom. In 1982, he produced a two-hour
television special I Love Liberty, with a cast of stars and
an audience filling the Los Angeles Sports Arena.
Mr. Lear’s business career continued in 1984 when
he and his business partners created T.A.T. Communications,
later known as Embassy Communications, which was sold
in 1985. Mr. Lear then created and is currently chairman of
Act III Communications, a multimedia holding company
with interests in the recording, motion picture, broadcasting,
publishing, and licensing industries, including Concord
Music Group and Village Roadshow Pictures Group.
In addition to People for the American Way, Mr.
Lear has founded other nonprofit organizations, including
the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School
for Communication (2000–present), a multidisciplinary
research and public policy center dedicated to exploring
the convergence of entertainment, commerce and society;
the Business Enterprise Trust (1989–2000) to spotlight
exemplary social innovations in American business; and
with his wife, Lyn, co-founded the Environmental Media
Association (1989–present), to mobilize the entertainment
industry to become more environmentally responsible.
In 1999, President Clinton bestowed the National
Medal of Arts on Mr. Lear, noting that “Norman Lear has
held up a mirror to American society and changed the way
we look at it.” He has the distinction of being among the
first seven television pioneers inducted into the Television
Academy Hall of Fame (1984). In addition to his awards for
All in the Family, he has been honored by the International
Platform Association (1977), the Writers Guild of America
(1977) and many other professional and civic organizations.
In 2001, Lyn and Norman Lear created the
Declaration of Independence Road Trip, a four-year
educational initiative and national multimedia tour of one of
the surviving original copies of the Declaration, which they
purchased to share with the American people. As part of the
project, Mr. Lear launched Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan
youth voter initiative that registered well over four million
new young voters in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections.
At the Presidential Inauguration in 2009, Declare
Yourself premiered BornAgainAmerican.org, featuring
an inspiring music video that has been viewed by millions
across the country. It is part of an on-going drive to promote
active and thoughtful citizenship, as embodied in the
Declaration of Independence, which continues to tour.
Mr. Lear is married to Lyn Davis Lear and
resides in Los Angeles, California. He has six children:
Ellen, Kate, Maggie, Benjamin, Brianna, Madeline and
four grandchildren: Daniel, Noah, Griffin, Zoe.
YO-YO MA
Yo-Yo Ma’s multi-faceted career is testament to his continual
search for new ways to communicate with audiences, and
to his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal.
Whether performing new or familiar works from the
cello repertoire, coming together with colleagues for
chamber music or exploring cultures and musical forms
outside the Western classical tradition, Mr. Ma strives
to find connections that stimulate the imagination.
One of Mr. Ma’s goals is the exploration of music as
a means of communication and as a vehicle for the migrations
of ideas across a range of cultures throughout the world.
Expanding upon this interest, in 1998, Mr. Ma established
the Silk Road Project, a nonprofit arts and educational
organization. Under his artistic direction, the Silk Road Project
presents performances by the acclaimed Silk Road Ensemble,
engages in cross-cultural exchanges and residencies, leads
workshops for students, and partners with leading cultural
institutions to create educational materials and programs.
The Project’s ongoing affiliation with Harvard
University has made it possible to broaden and enhance
educational programming. In the 2011–2012 school year,
with ongoing partnerships with arts and educational
organizations in New York City, it continues to expand Silk
Road Connect, a multidisciplinary educational initiative
for middle-school students in the city’s public schools.
Developing new music is also a central undertaking of the
Silk Road Project, which has been involved in commissioning
and performing more than 60 new musical and multimedia
works from composers and arrangers around the world.
As the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Judson
and Joyce Green Creative Consultant, Mr. Ma is partnering
with Maestro Riccardo Muti to provide collaborative
musical leadership and guidance on innovative program
development for The Institute for Learning, Access and
Training at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and for Chicago
Symphony artistic initiatives. Mr. Ma’s work focuses on the
transformative power music can have in individuals’ lives,
and on increasing the number and variety of opportunities
audiences have to experience music in their communities.
Mr. Ma and the Institute have created the Citizen Musician
Initiative, a movement that calls on all musicians, music
lovers, music teachers and institutions to use the art form
to bridge gulfs between people and to create and inspire a
sense of community. www.citizenmusician.org features
stories of Citizen Musician activity across the globe.
Mr. Ma is also widely recognized for his strong
commitment to educational programs that bring the world
into the classroom and the classroom into the world.
While touring, he takes time whenever possible to conduct
master classes as well as more informal programs for
students—musicians and non-musicians alike. He has also
reached young audiences through appearances on “Arthur,”
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Sesame Street.”
Mr. Ma’s discography of over 75 albums (including
more than 15 Grammy Award winners) reflects his wideranging
interests. He has made several successful recordings
that defy categorization, among them “Hush” with Bobby
McFerrin, “Appalachia Waltz” and “Appalachian Journey”
with Mark O’Connor and Edgar Meyer and two Grammywinning
tributes to the music of Brazil, “Obrigado Brazil”
and “Obrigado Brazil—Live in Concert.” Mr. Ma’s recent
recordings include Mendelssohn Trios with Emanuel Ax and
Itzhak Perlman. His new album, “The Goat Rodeo Sessions,”
with Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile and Stuart Duncan was
released in October 2011. Across this full range of releases,
Mr. Ma remains one of the best-selling recording artists in the
classical field. All of his recent albums have quickly entered
the Billboard chart of classical best sellers, remaining in
the Top 15 for extended periods, often with as many as four
titles simultaneously on the list. In fall 2009, Sony Classical
released a box set of over 90 albums to commemorate Mr.
Ma’s 30 years as a Sony recording artist.
Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living
in Paris. He began to study the cello with his father at age
four and soon came with his family to New York, where he
spent most of his formative years. Later, his principal teacher
was Leonard Rose at The Juilliard School. He has received
numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978),
the Glenn Gould Prize (1999), the National Medal of the
Arts (2001), the Dan David Prize (2006), the Sonning Prize
(2006), the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award (2008)
and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2010). In 2011 Mr.
Ma was recognized as a Kennedy Center Honoree. He was
the recipient of the 2012 Polar Music Prize. Appointed a
CultureConnect Ambassador by the United States Department
of State in 2002, Mr. Ma has met with, trained and mentored
thousands of students worldwide in countries including
Lithuania, Korea, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and China. Mr. Ma
serves as a UN Messenger of Peace and as a member of the
President’s Committee on the Arts & the Humanities. He
has performed for eight American presidents, most recently
at the invitation of President Obama on the occasion of the
56th Inaugural Ceremony. Mr. Ma and his wife have two
children. He plays two instruments, a 1733 Montagnana
cello from Venice and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.
For additional information, see: www.yo-yoma.
com, www.silkroadproject.org, and www.opus3artists.com.

JOHN MAEDA
John Maeda (born 1966 in Seattle, Washington) is a
Japanese-American graphic designer, computer scientist,
academic, and author. His work in design, technology and
leadership explores the area where the fields merge. He is
the current President of the Rhode Island School of Design.
Maeda was originally a software engineering
student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when
he became fascinated with the work of Paul Rand and Muriel
Cooper. Cooper was a director of MIT’s Visual Language
Workshop. After completing his bachelors and masters degrees
at MIT, Maeda studied in Japan at Tsukuba University’s
Institute of Art and Design to complete his Ph.D. in design.
As an artist, Maeda’s early work redefined
the use of electronic media as a tool for expression by
combining computer programming with traditional artistic
technique, laying the groundwork for the interactive motion
graphics that are taken for granted on the web today. He
has exhibited in one-man shows in London, New York
and Paris. His work is in the permanent collections of
the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum
of Modern Art and the Cartier Foundation in Paris.
At RISD, Maeda is leading the movement to
transform STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Math) to STEAM by adding Art. He believes art and design
are poised to transform our economy in the 21st century
like science and technology did in the last century.
In 1999, he was named one of the 21 most important
people in the 21st century by Esquire. In 2001, he received
the National Design Award for Communication Design in
the United States and Japan’s Mainichi Design Prize.
In 2006, Maeda published Laws of Simplicity, his bestselling
book to date, based on a research project to find ways for
people to simplify their life in the face of growing complexity.
In 2009 he was inducted into the New
York Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame, and he
received the AIGA Medal in 2011. He is a trustee of
the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
JOHN MAZZIOTTA
NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE
Dr. John Mazziotta is Chair of the Department of
Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA,
and Director of the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain
Mapping Center. After receiving his B.A. and M.A. degrees
from Columbia University in 1972, he obtained an M.D.
and Ph.D. in Neuroanatomy and Computer Science from
Georgetown University in 1977. Following an internship at
Georgetown, he completed Neurology and Nuclear Medicine
training at UCLA and joined the faculty here in 1983.
Dr. Mazziotta chairs one of the nation’s largest
Neurology departments, which for nine of the last ten
years achieved the distinguished position of being first in
National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding. An
expert in brain imaging, he established the Brain Mapping
Center at UCLA that includes all of the methods available
to study human brain structure and function. He was the
principal investigator of the International Consortium for
Brain Mapping, whose goal is to develop the first atlas of
the human brain that will include behavioral, demographic,
imaging, and genetic data from 7,000 subjects.
Since beginning this work, Dr. Mazziotta has
published more than 255 research papers and eight texts.
He has received numerous awards and honors, including
the Oldendorf Award from the American Society of
Neuroimaging, the S. Weir Mitchell Award and the
Wartenberg Prize of the American Academy of Neurology,
the Von Hevesy Prize from the International Society
of Nuclear Medicine, the 1996 Medical Science Award
from the UCLA Medical Alumni Association, election
to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of
Sciences, Honorary Doctorate from l’Université de Caen
and membership in the Royal College of Physicians.
In January 2012, Dr. Mazziotta was appointed
Associate Vice Chancellor for Medical Sciences and Executive
Vice Dean of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is an
American architect best known as the founder and
Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Media Lab, and also known as the founder
of the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC).
Negroponte was born to Dimitri John Negroponte,
a Greek shipping magnate, and grew up in New York
City’s Upper East Side. He is the younger brother of John
Negroponte, former United States Deputy Secretary of State.
He attended Buckley School in New York City, Le
Rosey in Switzerland, and The Choate School (now Choate
Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Connecticut, from which he
graduated in 1961. Subsequently, he studied at MIT as both
an undergraduate and graduate student in Architecture where
his research focused on issues of computer-aided design. He
earned a Master’s degree in architecture from MIT in 1966.
Negroponte joined the faculty of MIT in 1966.
For several years thereafter he divided his teaching time
between MIT and several visiting professorships at Yale,
Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1967, Negroponte founded MIT’s Architecture
Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank which
studied new approaches to human-computer interaction.
In 1985, Negroponte created the MIT Media Lab with
Jerome B. Wiesner. As director, he developed the lab into
the pre-eminent computer science laboratory for new
media and a high-tech playground for investigating the
human-computer interface. Negroponte also became a
proponent of intelligent agents and personalized electronic
newspapers, for which he popularized the term the Daily Me.
In 1992, Negroponte became involved in the creation
of Wired Magazine as the first investor. From 1993 to 1998,
he contributed a monthly column to the magazine in which
he reiterated a basic theme: “Move bits, not atoms.”
Negroponte expanded many of the ideas from his
Wired columns into a bestselling book Being Digital (1995),
which made famous his forecasts on how the interactive
world, the entertainment world and the information world
would eventually merge. Being Digital was a bestseller and
was translated into some twenty languages. Negroponte
is a digital optimist who believed that computers would
make life better for everyone. However, critics such as
Cass Sunstein have faulted his techno-utopian ideas for
failing to consider the historical, political and cultural
realities with which new technologies should be viewed.
Negroponte’s belief that wired technologies such
as telephones will ultimately become unwired by using
airwaves instead of wires or fiber optics, and that unwired
technologies such as televisions will become wired, is
commonly referred to as the Negroponte switch.
In 2000, Negroponte stepped down as director
of the Media Lab as Walter Bender took over as Executive
Director. However, Negroponte retained the role of laboratory
Chairman. When Frank Moss was appointed director of the lab
in 2006, Negroponte stepped down as lab chairman to focus
more fully on his work with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
although he retains his appointment as professor at MIT.
In November 2005, at the World Summit on the
Information Society held in Tunis, Negroponte unveiled the
concept of a $100 laptop computer, The Children’s Machine,
designed for students in the developing world. The price
has increased to US$180, however. The project is part of
a broader program by One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit
organisation started by Negroponte and other Media Lab
faculty, to extend Internet access in developing countries.
Negroponte is an active angel investor and has
invested in over 30 startup companies over the last 30 years,
including Zagats, Wired, Ambient Devices, Skype and Velti.
He sits on several boards, including Motorola (listed on the
New York Stock Exchange) and Velti (listed on the London
Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ). He is also on the advisory
board of TTI/Vanguard. In August 2007, he was appointed
to a five-member special committee with the objective of
assuring the continued journalistic and editorial integrity
and independence of the Wall Street Journal and other Dow
Jones & Company publications and services. The committee
was formed as part of the merger of Dow Jones with News
Corporation. Negroponte’s fellow founding committee
members are Louis Boccardi, Thomas Bray, Jack Fuller,
and the late former Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn.
Negroponte has influenced modern
day futurists, such as David Houle.

TODD OLDHAM
Todd is a well-known designer whose career spans more
than 20 years. Distinguished as an innovator of accessible
design, Todd Oldham is the founder of Todd Oldham Studio,
a multifaceted, full-service design studio based in NYC.
Originally a New York fashion designer, the host
of “Todd Time” on MTV’s House of Style, Todd’s career has
evolved to include all areas of design, from interior design,
film and photography, to furniture and graphic design.
Todd is currently working on his 19th book Charley
Harper’s Animal Kingdom. His previous books include a 672-
page monograph on the life’s work of artist Alexander Girard; a
unique ongoing series called Place Space that explores singular
places and the uncommonly devoted people that create them;
an artist’s monograph on the brilliant, warped work of Wayne
White (all published by AMMO BOOKS). Most recently, Kid
Made Modern, a collection of art supplies and kits, books
and events, debuted this summer in all Target locations.
CRISTINA PATO
Cristina Pato has already opened historical new paths for the
Gaita (Galician bagpipe). In 1998 Cristina Pato became the
first female Gaita player releasing a solo album and since then
she has collaborated with world music, jazz, classical and
experimental artists (including Chicago Symphony, Yo-Yo Ma,
The Chieftains, Arturo O’Farril, World Symphony Orchestra,
Paquito D’Rivera). Her unique and powerful style full of
passion and energy has been acclaimed by The New York Times
as “a virtuosic burst of energy” or the BBC as “the Galician
bagpipe diva”. Cristina Pato fuses the influences of Latin
music, jazz, pop and contemporary music, and uses her artistry
and unprecedented virtuosic skill to bring her musical vision
to life. Pato is a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble.
Internationally acclaimed as a Gaita master and
classical pianist, Cristina Pato enjoys an active professional
career devoted to both Galician popular and classical music.
Her dual careers have led to performances throughout major
stages throughout the world, including USA (Carnegie Hall,
Lincoln Center), India (Kamani Auditorium), Jerusalem
(Jerusalem Festival), Angola, China, Corea, Portugal
(Festa do Avante), Brazil (Liszt Festival), UK (Celtic
Connections), France, Italy (Etnofestival), Germany,
Mexico (Palacio de Bellas Artes) and her native Spain.
An active recording artist and performer since age
12, Ms. Pato has released four solo Gaita recordings, two as a
pianist and has collaborated in more than thirty recordings
as a guest artist, including the Grammy award winner “Yo-
Yo Ma and Friends; Songs of Joy and Peace” (SONY BMG
2008), the “Miles Español: New Skectches of Spain” album
and the Grammy nominated Silk Road Ensemble album “Off
the Map”(World Village 2010). Ms. Pato has given more than
500 concerts with her own band many of them recorded and
broadcasted by television stations such as BBC, TVG, CNN
and RTVE, and she has been praised by newspapers as The
New York Times, El Pais, La Voz de Galicia or The Scotsman.
Ms. Pato is Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative
Piano from the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers
University (NJ, USA), where she studied with a fellowship
from Fundacion Barrie de la Maza. She was awarded with
the Edna Mason Scholarship and the Irene Alm Memorial
Prize for excellence in scholarly research and performance
(Rutgers University, May 2008). Cristina Pato holds both
a Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance and a
Master of Music Degree in Music Theory and Chamber
Music (with honors) from the Conservatorio de Musica
del Liceu (Barcelona). She also holds also a Master of
Fine Arts Degree in Digital Arts (Computer Music)
from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona).
Cristina Pato is part of the Leadership Council
of The SIlk Road Ensemble collaborating closely
with Harvard University, the ensemble’s residency.
Cristina is also a faculty member (adjunct) at the
vocal department of New Jersey City University.
During the 2011-2012 season Cristina Pato has toured
Africa and Spain with her own band; USA, China, and Korea
with Yo Yo Ma and The Silk Road Ensemble and India with
HUM Ensemble. She collaborated in the album Miles Español
along with Chick Corea and Jack DeJonnette and participated
at the Kennedy Center Honors Awards honoring Yo Yo Ma with
The Silk Road Ensemble, Johns Williams and James Taylor.
She is the founder and artistic director of
Galician Connection, a forum in world music celebrated
annually at Cidade da Cultura de Galicia.
Ms. Pato resides in New York City since 2004.
More info: www.cristinapato.com

STEVEN PINKER
Steven Pinker was born in 1954 in the English-speaking Jewish
community of Montreal,Canada. He earned a bachelor’s
degree in experimental psychology at McGill University and
then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1976, where he
has spent most of his career bouncing back and forth between
Harvard and MIT. He earned his doctorate at Harvard in 1979,
followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, a one-year stint
as an assistant professor at Harvard, and in 1982, a move back
to MIT that lasted until 2003, when he returned to Harvard.
Currently he is Harvard College Professor and the Johnstone
Family Professor in the Department of Psychology. He also
has spent two years in California: in 1981–82, when he was an
assistant professor at Stanford, and in 1995–96,when he spent
a sabbatical year at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Pinker is an experimental psychologist who is
interested in all aspects of language and mind. Much of his
initial research was in visual cognition, the ability to imagine
shapes, recognize faces and objects, and direct attention within
the visual field. But beginning in graduate school he cultivated
an interest in language, particularly language development
in children, and this topic eventually took over his research
activities. Aside from his experimental papers in language and
visual cognition, he wrote two fairly technical books early in
his career. One outlined a theory of how children acquire the
words and grammatical structures of their mother tongue. The
second focused on one aspect of this process, the ability to
use different kinds of verbs in appropriate sentences, such as
intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and verbs taking different
combinations of complements and indirect objects. For the
next two decades his research focused on the distinction
between irregular verbs like bring-brought and regular
verbs like walk-walked. The reason is that the two kinds of
verbs neatly embody the two processes that make language
possible: looking up words in memory, and combining words
(or parts of words) according to rules. He has also studied
language development in twins and the neuroimaging of
language processes in the brain, and has recently begun
lines of research on the nature of reminding and on the
function of innuendo and other forms of indirect speech.
In 1994 he published the first of five books
written for a general audience. The Language Instinct was
an introduction to all aspects of language, held together by
the idea that language is a biological adaptation. This was
followed in 1997 by How the Mind Works, which offered a
similar synthesis of the rest of the mind, from vision and
reasoning to the emotions, humor, and art. In 1999 he
published Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language which
presented his research on regular and irregular verbs as a
way of explaining how language works in general. In 2002
he published The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human
Nature, which explored the political, moral, and emotional
colorings of the concept of human nature. The Stuff of Thought:
Language as a Window into Human Nature, published in 2007,
discussed the ways in which language reveals our thoughts,
emotions, and social relationships. His most recent book is
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,
published in 2011. Pinker frequently writes for The New York
Times, Time, The New Republic, and other magazines on
subjects such as language and politics, the neural basis of
consciousness, and the genetic enhancement of human beings.
Pinker is the Chair of the Usage Panel of The
American Heritage Dictionary and has served as editor or
advisor for numerous scientific, scholarly, media, and
humanist organizations, including the American Association
the Advancement of Science, the National Science Foundation,
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American
Psychological Association, and the Linguistics Society of
America. He has won many prizes for his books (including
the William James Book Prize three times, the Los Angeles
Times Science Book Prize, and the Eleanor Maccoby Book
Prize), his research (including the Troland Research Prize
from the National Academy of Sciences, the Early Career
Award from the American Psychological Association, and
the Henry Dale Prize from the Royal Institution of Great
Britain), and his graduate and undergraduate teaching.
He is also a Humanist Laureate, the 2006 Humanist of
the Year, recipient of the 2008 Innovations for Humanity
Award from La Ciudad de las Ideas in Mexico, the 2008
Honorary President of the Canadian Psychological
Association, and the recipient of six honorary doctorates.
Pinker lives in Boston and in Truro
with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. The other
authors in the family are his sister Susan Pinker
and Rebecca’s daughter Yael Goldstein Love.
LISA RANDALL
Professor Lisa Randall studies theoretical particle physics
and cosmology at Harvard University. Her research
connects theoretical insights to puzzles in our current
understanding of the properties and interactions of
matter. She has developed and studied a wide variety of
models to address these questions, the most prominent
involving extra dimensions of space. Her work has
involved improving our under-standing of the Standard
Model of particle physics, supersymmetry, baryogenesis,
cosmological inflation, and dark matter. Randall’s research
also explores ways to experimentally test and verify ideas
and her current research focuses in large part on the Large
Hadron Collider and dark matter searches and models.
Randall has also had a public presence through her
writing, lectures, and radio and TV appearances. Randall’s
books, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s
Hidden Dimensions and Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How
Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the
Modern World were both on The New York Times’ list of 100
Notable Books of the Year. Higgs Discovery: The Power of Empty
Space was released as a Kindle Single in the summer of 2012
as an update with recent particle physics developments.
Randall’s studies have made her among the most
cited and influential theoretical physicists and she has received
numerous awards and honors for her scientific endeavors.
She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the
American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, was a fellow of the American Physical
Society, and is a past winner of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Young
Investigator Award, a DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator
Award, and the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Randall
is an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an
Honorary Fellow of the British Institute of Physics. In 2003,
she received the Premio Caterina Tomassoni e Felice Pietro
Chisesi Award, from the University of Rome, La Sapienza. In
2006, she received the Klopsteg Award from the American
Society of Physics Teachers (AAPT) for her lectures and in
2007 she received the Julius Lilienfeld Prize from the American
Physical Society for her work on elementary particle physics
and cosmology and for communicating this work to the public.
Randall has also pursued art-science connections,
writing a libretto for Hypermusic: A Projective Opera in Seven
Planes that premiered in the Pompidou Center in Paris
and co-curating an art exhibit for the Los Angeles Arts
Association, Measure for Measure, which was presented
in Gallery 825 in Los Angeles, at the Guggenheim Gallery
at Chapman University, and at Harvard’s Carpenter
Center. In 2012, she was the recipient of the Andrew
Gemant Award from the American Institute of Physics,
which is given annually for significant contributions to the
cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics.
Professor Randall was on the list of Time Magazine’s
“100 Most Influential People” of 2007 and was one of 40
people featured in The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue
that year. Prof. Randall was featured in Newsweek’s “Who’s
Next in 2006” as “one of the most promising theoretical
physicists of her generation” and in Seed Magazine’s
“2005 Year in Science Icons”. In 2008, Prof. Randall was
among Esquire Magazine’s “75 Most Influential People.”
Professor Randall earned her Ph.D. from Harvard
University and held professorships at MIT and Princeton
University before returning to Harvard in 2001. She is also the
recipient of honorary degrees from Brown University, Duke
University, Bard College, and the University of Antwerp.
PETER RAVEN
Peter H. Raven, a leading botanist and advocate of
conservation and biodiversity with a notably international
outlook, is president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical
Garden and George Engelmann Professor of Botany
Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition,
Dr. Raven is a Trustee of the National Geographic Society
and Chairman of the Society’s Committee for Research and
Exploration. For more than 39 years, Dr. Raven headed the
Missouri Botanical Garden, an institution he nurtured to
become a world-class center for botanical research, education,
and horticulture display. During this period, the Garden
became a leader in botanical research and conservation
in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and North America.
Dr. Raven first realized in the mid 1960s that
the rapid growth of the human population, consumption,
and the spread of polluting technologies were threatening
biological diversity to a degree that had not been realized
earlier. He soon became an outspoken advocate of the need
for conservation throughout the world based on efforts to
attain sustainability and social justice everywhere. He was
described by Time magazine as a “Hero for the Planet,” and
has received numerous prizes and awards, including the
International Prize for Biology from the government of Japan;
Volvo Environment Prize; the Tyler Prize for Environmental
Achievement; the Sasakawa Environment Prize; and the
BBVA Prize for Ecology and Conservation, Madrid. In October
2009 he was awarded the first RBG Kew International
Medal, given on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of
the Gardens; in January 2010, the Award for International
Scientific Cooperation of the Chinese Academy of Science
and the Friendship Award (for promoting international
cooperation) from the government of China. Earlier in 2012,
he received an award from the President of Mexico for his
work with Mexican scientists and institutions over the years.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Raven held Guggenheim and John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships.
In 2001, Dr. Raven received the National Medal of
Science, the highest award for scientific accomplishment in
the United States. He has been president of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi, the
American Institute of Biological Sciences, and a number of
other organizations. He served for 12 years as Home Secretary
of the National Academy of Sciences, to which he was elected
in 1977. He is also a member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society,
of the academies of science in Argentina, Australia, Austria,
Brazil, Chile, China, Denmark, Georgia, Hungary, India, Italy,
Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, the U.K. (the
Royal Society), and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and
the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).
Dr. Raven is Co-editor of the Flora of China,
a joint Chinese-American international project that is
leading to a contemporary, 50-volume account on all the
plants of China scheduled for completion at the end of
2012. He was the first chair of the U.S. Civilian Research
and Development Foundation, a private, congressionallychartered
organization that funds joint research with the
independent countries of the former Soviet Union.
Dr. Raven has written numerous books and
publications, both popular and scientific, including Biology
of Plants (co-authored with Ray Evert and Susan Eichhorn,
W. H. Freeman and Company/Worth Publishers, New York),
the internationally best-selling textbook in botany, of which
the eighth edition appeared in 2011; and Environment (coauthored
with Linda Berg, Wiley & Sons, New York), a leading
textbook on the environment, now in its eighth edition (2011).
Dr. Raven received his Ph.D. from the University
of California, Los Angeles, in 1960 after completing his
undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
He has been awarded honorary degrees by a number of
universities in the United States and around the world.
MOSHE SAFDIE
Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator,
theorist, and author. Embracing a comprehensive and
humane design philosophy, Safdie is committed to
architecture that supports and enhances a project’s
program; that is informed by the geographic, social, and
cultural elements that define a place; and that responds to
human needs and aspirations. Safdie has completed a wide
range of projects, such as cultural, educational, and civic
institutions; neighborhoods and public parks; mixed-use
urban centers and airports; and master plans for existing
communities and entirely new cities around the world.
Major projects by Safdie Architects currently under
construction or recently completed include Mamilla Alrov
Center, a dynamic urban center near the Old City in Jerusalem;
Marina Bay Sands, a mixed-use integrated resort in Singapore;
Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex, the national museum
of the Sikh people in the Punjab, India; the United States
Institute of Peace Headquarters on the Mall in Washington,
D.C.; the National Campus for the Archeology of Israel in
Jerusalem; Golden Dream Bay, a high-density residential
project in Qinhuangdao, China; the Kauffman Center for the
Performing Arts in Kansas City, Missouri; and the Crystal
Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1938, Safdie moved to
Canada with his family at a young age. He graduated from
McGill University in 1961 with a degree in architecture.
After apprenticing with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie
returned to Montreal to oversee the master plan for the
1967 World Exhibition. In 1964 he established his own firm
to realize Habitat ’67, an adaptation of his thesis at McGill,
which was the central feature of the World’s Fair and a
groundbreaking design in the history of architecture.
In 1970, Safdie established a Jerusalem branch office,
commencing an intense involvement with the rebuilding of
Jerusalem. He was responsible for major segments of the
restoration of the Old City and the reconstruction of the new
center, linking the Old and New Cities. Over the years, his
involvement expanded and included the new city of Modi’in,
the new Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, and the Rabin
Memorial Center. During this period, Safdie also became
involved in the developing world, working in Senegal, Iran,
Singapore, and in the northern Canadian arctic. In 1978,
after teaching at Yale, McGill, and Ben Gurion Universities,
Safdie relocated his residence and principal office to Boston.
He served as Director of the Urban Design Program at
Harvard University Graduate School of Design from 1978 to
1984, and Ian Woodner Professor of Architecture and Urban
Design from 1984 to 1989. In the following decade, he was
responsible for the design of six of Canada’s principal public
institutions, including the Quebec Museum of Civilization, the
National Gallery of Canada, and Vancouver Library Square.
Safdie has worked with a wide range of clients,
including municipal entities and government agencies,
colleges and universities, private developers, and nonprofit
organizations and civic institutions. Many of his
firm’s buildings have become beloved regional and
national landmarks, including Exploration Place Science
Center, Wichita, Kansas; Salt Lake City Public Library,
Salt Lake City, Utah; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem,
Massachusetts; Springfield Federal Courthouse, Springfield,
Massachusetts; Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles,
California; Lester B. Pearson International Airport,
Toronto, Canada; the National Gallery of Canada; and
Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, Jerusalem, Israel.
In addition to numerous articles on the theory
and practice of architecture, Safdie has written several
books, most notably, Beyond Habitat (1970), For Everyone a
Garden (1974), Form and Purpose (1982), and Jerusalem: The
Future of the Past (1989). The City After the Automobile (1997)
details Safdie’s ideas about urbanism and city planning. A
comprehensive monograph of his work, Moshe Safdie I, was
published in 1996. Moshe Safdie II, a second monograph
featuring work from 1996–2008, was published in 2009.
Safdie has been featured in several films, including
Moshe Safdie, The Power of Architecture, which is a portrait
film (directed by Donald Winkler, 2004), My Architect: A
Son’s Journey about Nathaniel Kahn and his father Louis
I. Khan (directed by Nathaniel Kahn, 2003), and The
Sound of the Carceri, about Bach and Piranesi, with Yo-
Yo Ma (directed by Francois Girard, 1997). In the fall of
2010, The National Gallery of Canada presented Global
Citizen: The Architecture of Moshe Safdie, an exhibition that
explores the architect’s buildings and design philosophy.
The exhibition is co-sponsored by Crystal Bridges Museum
of American Art and the Skirball Cultural Center.
Past exhibitions of Safdie’s designs include Building
a New Museum (Peabody Essex Museum, 2003-2004); Moshe
Safdie, Museum Architecture 1971–1998 (Tel Aviv University,
1998); Moshe Safdie, Projects: 1979–1989 (Harvard University
Graduate School of Design, 1989); and For Everyone a Garden
(Baltimore Museum of Art, National Gallery of Canada,
and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1973-1974).
Safdie has been the recipient of numerous
awards, honorary degrees, and civil honors, including
the Companion of the Order of Canada and the Gold
Medal of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
MEGAN SMITH
BENEDIKT TASCHEN
Megan recently joined Google’s advanced products team,
Google [x], where she is working on range of projects including
co-creating/hosting SolveForX, a forum to encourage and
amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork
(http://www.wesolveforx.com/). For nine years before that she
oversaw Google’s New Business Development team managing
early-stage partnerships, pilot explorations, and technology
licensing working closely with Google’s engineering and
product teams globally across all product areas. She led many
of the company’s early acquisitions, including Keyhole (Google
Earth), Where2Tech (Google Maps) and Picasa. Megan also
led the Google.org team transition to expand and innovate
engineering based projects including Google Crisis Response,
Google for Nonprofits, and Earth Outreach/Earth Engine,
Googler 1%-time (now called “GoogleServe20”) in addition to
operationalizing Google’s more traditional corporate giving.
Prior to joining Google in 2003, Megan was the CEO
and, earlier, COO of PlanetOut, the leading gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender online community, where the
team broke through many barriers and partnered closely
with all of the early major web players. She also held roles
at General Magic and Apple Japan. Over the years, Megan
has contributed to a wide range of engineering projects,
including an award-winning bicycle lock, space station
construction program, solar cookstoves and was a member
of the MIT student team who designed, built and raced a
solar car 2000 miles across the Australian outback. She holds
a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in mechanical
engineering from MIT, where she now serves on the board. She
completed her master’s thesis work at the MIT Media Lab.
Benedikt Taschen, 1961, Cologne, Germany, is a German
publisher. His professional life started at age 18 in a
250-square-foot (23 m 2 ) store in Cologne, Germany, named
TASCHEN COMICS. In 1984, he bought 40,000 remainder
copies of a Magritte monograph published in English with
money borrowed from his family. The books sold through at
double the price in two months and he was soon publishing
his own books. By the end of the 1980s TASCHEN titles
were available in over a dozen languages at prices that made
art books affordable to students and collectors alike.
By the late 1990s, he had become a household
name in publishing. When Vanity Fair’s Matt Tyrnauer
deemed him, “one of the few people in business who has the
courage to do exactly what he wants whenever he wants to”,
Benedikt Taschen tested the theory with Helmut Newton’s
SUMO, the largest bound book of the 20th century. “I have
done a lot of books, and I can tell you—without mentioning
names—that publishers are not all like him. There are very
few like him. Or there are none like him. He is also, I might
add, a madman”, says Helmut Newton to Vanity Fair.
SUMO is also the company’s most successful title
of the last ten years and the precursor to Benedikt Taschen’s
most ambitious personal project: GOAT—Greatest of All Time, a
tribute to Muhammad Ali, shipping in Spring 2004. Four years
in the making, GOAT weighs 75 lbs and is 20˝ x 20˝ in size, with
nearly 800 pages of archival and original photographs, graphic
artwork and articles and essays—including those of Ali himself.
Another of his books is the Icons series of art
books, some of the most accessible in the world.
Today, TASCHEN has offices in Cologne, Hong
Kong, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Paris and Tokyo and
stores in Amsterdam, Berlin, Beverly Hills, Brussels, Cologne,
Copenhagen, Hamburg, Hollywood, London, Miami, New
York, and Paris. TASCHEN employs 200 staff members
worldwide and many longtime freelance editors. As Billy
Wilder put it in Vanity Fair 2000: “Benedikt reminds me
of an old-time Hollywood figure—a studio head, someone
who is in firm command and has his hand in everything”.
He is married and lives in the Chemosphere, designed
by John Lautner in 1960. He bought the home for $1 million
in 1997, restored the building, and published a book on
Lautner. He lives and works in Cologne and Los Angeles.
JULIE TAYMOR
In 1998, Julie Taymor became the first woman to win the Tony®
Award for Best Direction of a Musical, and also won a Tony®
for Best Costumes, for her landmark production of The Lion
King. The musical has won three Molière Awards including
Best Musical and Best Costumes, garnered Drama Desk,
Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for Taymor’s
direction, and myriad awards for her original costume, mask
and puppet designs. For her latest Broadway production,
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Taymor served as director and
co-book writer. Taymor made her Broadway debut in 1996 with
Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, nominated for five Tony® Awards.
Other theater work includes The Green
Bird, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, The Taming of the
Shrew, The Transposed Heads and Liberty’s Taken.
Taymor’s feature film directorial debut, Titus, starred
Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and Alan Cumming. In 2002,
her biographical film Frida, starring Salma Hayek and Alfred
Molina, earned six Academy Award® nominations, winning
two. She took on the music of the Beatles, and earned a
Golden Globe® nomination for Best Motion Picture—Musical
or Comedy, in Across the Universe. Julie’s most recent
film, The Tempest, had its North American premiere at the
48th New York Film Festival in October 2010, following
a world premiere at the 67th Venice International Film
Festival. Taymor’s adaptation of the William Shakespeare
play features an all-star cast including Helen Mirren,
Russell Brand, Djimon Hounsou and Alfred Molina.
Beyond the theatre and screen, Taymor has
directed five operas internationally including Oedipus
Rex with Jessye Norman, for which she earned the
International Classical Music Award for Best Opera
Production. A subsequent film version premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival and won her an Emmy® award.
Taymor also directed Salomé, The Flying Dutchman,
Die Zauberflöte (which has been in repertory at The Met for six
years), The Magic Flute (the abridged English version of Die
Zauberflöte, which inaugurated a new PBS series entitled “Great
Performances at The Met”) and Elliot Goldenthal’s Grendel.
An illustrated book on her career, Julie Taymor:
Playing With Fire, was recently expanded and revised by Harry
N. Abrams. Her book, The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway,
is published by Hyperion. Taymor’s adapted screenplay for
Titus is published in an illustrated book by Newmarket Press.
An illustrated book, Frida: Bringing Frida Kahlo’s Life and Art
to Film, is available from Newmarket Press. Harry N. Abrams
also published an illustrated screenplay of Taymor’s film
adaptation of The Tempest which coincided with its premiere.
Taymor is a 1991 recipient of the
MacArthur “genius” Fellowship.
J. CRAIG VENTER
J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., is regarded as one of the leading
scientists of the 21st century for his numerous invaluable
contributions to genomic research. He is Founder, Chairman,
and President of the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), a notfor-profit,
research organization with approximately 300
scientists and staff dedicated to human, microbial, plant,
synthetic and environmental genomic research, and the
exploration of social and ethical issues in genomics.
Dr. Venter is also Founder and CEO of Synthetic
Genomics Inc (SGI), a privately held company dedicated
to commercializing genomic-driven solutions to address
global needs such as new sources of energy, new food and
nutritional products, and next generation vaccines.
Dr. Venter began his formal education after a tour
of duty as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968.
After earning both a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a
Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of
California at San Diego, he was appointed professor at the State
University of New York at Buffalo and the Roswell Park Cancer
Institute. In 1984, he moved to the National Institutes of
Health campus where he developed Expressed Sequence Tags
or ESTs, a revolutionary new strategy for rapid gene discovery.
In 1992 Dr. Venter founded The Institute for Genomic
Research (TIGR, now part of JCVI), a not-for-profit research
institute, where in 1995 he and his team decoded the genome
of the first free-living organism, the bacterium Haemophilus
influenzae, using his new whole genome shotgun technique.
In 1998, Dr. Venter founded Celera Genomics
to sequence the human genome using new tools and
techniques he and his team developed. This research
culminated with the February 2001 publication of the human
genome in the journal, Science. He and his team at Celera
also sequenced the fruit fly, mouse and rat genomes.
Dr. Venter and his team at JCVI continue to blaze
new trails in genomics. They have sequenced and analyzed
hundreds of genomes, and have published numerous
important papers covering such areas as environmental
genomics, the first complete diploid human genome, and the
groundbreaking advance in creating the first self-replicating
bacterial cell constructed entirely with synthetic DNA.
Dr. Venter is one of the most frequently cited
scientists, and the author of more than 250 research articles.
He is also the recipient of numerous honorary degrees,
public honors, and scientific awards, including the 2008
United States National Medal of Science, the 2002 Gairdner
Foundation International Award, the 2001 Paul Ehrlich and
Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize and the King Faisal International
Award for Science. Dr. Venter is a member of numerous
prestigious scientific organizations including the National
Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and the American Society for Microbiology.
CHARITY TILLEMANN DICK
GEOFFREY WEST
Charity Tillemann Dick is an American-born soprano and
a recipient of two double lung transplants. Charity has
performed across the United States, Europe, and Asia in venues
as diverse as the Rose Theater at Lincoln Center in New York
City; The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; Severance Hall
in Cleveland, Ohio; Il Giardino Di Boboli in Florence, Italy;
the National Palace of the Arts in Budapest, Hungary; the Tel
Aviv Opera House in Israel; the American Embassy in Beijing,
China; the United Nations in New York; and National Statuary
Hall in the United States Capitol. She has collaborated and
performed with noted conductors and musicians including
Eva Marton, Bruno Rigacci, Joela Jones, Marvin Hamlisch,
Bono, Zoltan Kocis, Joan Dornemann, and former Secretary
of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice. Some of her operatic roles
have included Titania in A Mid Summer’s Night Dream, Gilda
in Rigoletto, Violetta in La Traviata, and Ophelia in Ophelia
Forever. Charity has also performed for numerous presidents,
prime ministers, members of Congress, and world dignitaries.
After receiving a diagnosis of Idiopathic
Pulmonary Hypertension in 2004, Charity served as the
national spokesperson for the Pulmonary Hypertension
Association, working to raise awareness, increase federal
research funding, expand stem cell research, and promote
preventative and alternative medicine. In September of 2009,
Charity received a bilateral lung transplant at the Cleveland
Clinic in Ohio. After complications from rejection, Charity
received a second bilateral lung transplant in January 2012.
Since receiving her first transplant, Charity has
shared her amazing story and vocal talents at numerous
conferences, musical performance, and events, including:
TEDMED 2010 in San Diego, CA; the 6th National Learning
Congress on Organ Donation in Dallas, TX; the 2010 Empathy
and Innovation Summit in Cleveland, OH; and the EG
Conference in Monterey, CA. Charity has been featured on
CNN with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CBS This Morning, Glamour
magazine, ABCNews.com, TED.com, The Huffington Post,
The Wall Street Journal Health Blog, the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Sunday Times (London).
Her performances have been broadcast around the world on
CNN, CBS, BBC, FOX, MSNBC, PBS, C-SPAN and NPR.
Charity received a Bachelor’s degree with high
honors from Regis University in Denver, CO, where she was
raised with her 10 brothers and sisters. She later studied
music at the Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins
University and the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. She
currently resides in Washington, DC and New York City.
Geoffrey West is Distinguished Professor and former
President of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) and an Associate
Fellow of the Said Business School, Oxford University. Prior
to joining SFI in 2003, he was leader of high energy physics
at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he remains
a Senior Fellow. He received his B.A. from Cambridge
University in 1961 and his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford
University in 1966. After spells at Cornell and Harvard
Universities, he returned to Stanford in 1970 to join the
faculty. He was President of SFI from 2005–2009.
West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests
have been in fundamental questions in physics and biology,
ranging from the elementary particles, their interactions and
cosmological implications to the origins of universal scaling
laws and a unifying quantitative framework of biology. His
research in biology has included metabolic rate, growth, aging
and mortality, sleep, cancer, and ecosystem dynamics.
His recent work has focused on developing
an underlying quantitative theory for the structure and
dynamics of cities, companies and long-term sustainability,
including rates of growth and innovation, the accelerating
pace of life, and why companies die, yet cities survive.
He has given many colloquia, keynote addresses
and public lectures world-wide. Awards include the Mercer
Prize from the Ecological Society of America, the Weldon
Prize for Mathematical Biology, and the Glenn Award for
Aging research. He has been featured in many publications
world-wide including The New York Times, Nature, Science,
The Financial Times, Time, Newsweek and Scientific American
and has participated in television productions including
Nova, National Geographic and the BBC. His work was
selected as a breakthrough idea of 2007 by Harvard Business
Review and, in 2006, he was named to Time magazine’s
list of “100 Most Influential People in the World”.
will.i.am
will.i.am, a multi-faceted entertainer and creative innovator,
is a seven-time Grammy Award winner. Known for his
work with The Black Eyed Peas, who have sold 31 million
albums and 58 million singles worldwide, he also works
with some of the industry’s biggest names including
Michael Jackson, Rihanna, Usher, Nicki Minaj, Britney
Spears, David Guetta, and film composer Hans Zimmer.
Frontman and founder of The Black Eyed Peas
will.i.am has released two songs from his upcoming solo
cd, #willpower on Interscope Records. The first two singles
from the cd released in 2012 are: “T.H.E (The Hardest Ever),”
featuring Mick Jagger and Jennifer Lopez, and number one
hit song in the UK, “This is Love” featuring Eva Simons.
His songs and imagery have entertained and inspired
millions, and the power of his words resonated deeply in his
song “Yes We Can” that mobilized an entire generation to
action during the 2008 presidential campaign. Demonstrating
that music, brands and causes can be intertwined to entertain
and inform, “Yes We Can” garnered an Emmy Award for
“Best New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment.”
In 2011, will.i.am executive produced and starred in
his first prime time TV special “i.am FIRST: Science is Rock
and Roll” to get young people excited about math and science
education, as well as technology and science-related careers.
Earlier this year he starred as a Coach on the hit reality TV
show, “The Voice” UK edition on BBC One. While in London,
will.i.am was a featured performer in “Concert for The Queen”
in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.
As a musician, producer, director and advocate
for education, he is an enthusiastic user of technologies in
both his professional and personal lives. In recognition of
his ability to harness technology to enhance entertainment,
creativity and communication, Intel Corporation appointed
will as Director of Creative Innovation in 2011.
In collaboration with The Coca-Cola Company,
will.i.am is on a mission to elevate the importance of recycling
and to turn waste into a valued commodity through his
EKOCYCLE brand. Launched in July, 2012, EKOCYCLE
will give consumers more stylish options when shopping
for fashion apparel, accessories and sporting goods that
incorporate recycled plastic bottles and aluminum cans.
With a commitment to inspire kids to stay in
school and go to college to become the leaders of tomorrow,
will.i.am advocates regarding the importance and power of
a good education through his i.am angel foundation’s i.am
scholarship. The i.am scholarship provides future leaders
and innovators with comprehensive financial assistance to
complete post-secondary education. The i.am angel foundation
is also active in the U.K. through a STEM education and
computer skills joint initiative with The Prince’s Trust.
Recognized and honored by numerous industry
organizations, will.i.am is the recipient of multiple Grammy
Awards, a Latin Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, two
NAACP Image Awards, a VH1 Do Something Award, the
BMI President’s Award and a 2008 Webby Award.
C. K. WILLIAMS
C. K. Williams (born Charles Kenneth Williams on November
2, 1936) is an American poet, critic and translator. Williams
has won nearly every major poetry award. Flesh and Blood
won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1987. Repair
(1999) won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a National
Book Award finalist and won the Los Angeles Times Book
Prize. The Singing won the National Book Award, 2003 and
in 2005 Williams received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
C. K. Williams grew up in Newark, New Jersey and
graduated from Columbia High School in Maplewood. He
later briefly attended Bucknell University and graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn he studied
with the romantic scholar, Morse Peckham, and spent a great
deal of time in the circle of young architects who studied
with and worked for the great architect Louis Kahn. In an
essay, “Beginnings,” he acknowledges Kahn’s dedication and
patience as essential to his notion of the life of an artist.
Williams lived for a period in Philadelphia, where he
worked for a number of years as a part-time psychotherapist
for adolescents and young adults, a ghost-writer and editor,
then began teaching, first at the YM-YWHA in Philadelphia,
then at several universities in Pennsylvania, Beaver College,
Drexel, and Franklin and Marshall. He subsequently taught
at many other universities, including Columbia, NYU, Boston
University, the University of California, both at Irvine and
Berkeley, before finally becoming a professor at George Mason
University, then moving in 1995 to Princeton University, where
he has taught poetry workshops and translation ever since.
He met his present wife, Catherine Mauger, a
French jeweler, in 1973, and they have a son who is now a
noted painter, Jed Williams. He has a daughter from an earlier
marriage, Jessie Burns, who is a writer. He lives half the
year near Princeton, and the rest in Normandy in France.
He is a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Letters.
His first book, Lies, was published in 1969, and since
then he has published many collections of poetry, culminating
in his Collected Poems, of which Peter Campion wrote in The
Boston Globe: “Throughout the five decades represented
in his new Collected Poems, Williams has maintained the
most sincere, and largest, ambitions. Like Yeats and Lowell
before him, he writes from the borderland between private
and public life….[His poems] join skeptical intelligence
and emotional sincerity, in a way that dignifies all of our
attempts to make sense of the world and of ourselves. C. K.
Williams has set a new standard for American poetry.”
Another collection, Wait, appeared in 2010, and
another, Writers Writing Dying, will come out in 2012.
He has written a memoir, Misgivings, which
appeared in 2000, a collection of essays, Poetry and
Consciousness, 1999, and a critical study of Walt Whitman,
On Whitman, 2010. A new collection of essays, In Time:
Poets, Poems and the Rest, will be published in 2012.
Williams is also an acclaimed translator,
notably of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis and Euripides’
The Bacchae, as well as of the Polish poet Adam
Zagajewski and the French poet Francis Ponge.
He has also published several children’s books.
APES
One branch, I read, of a species of chimpanzees has something like territorial wars,
and when the…army, I suppose you’d call it, of one tribe prevails and captures an enemy,
“Several males hold a hand or foot of the rival so the victim can be damaged at will.”
This is so disquieting: if beings with whom we share so many genes can be this cruel,
what hope for us? Still, “rival,” “victim, “will”—don’t such anthropomorphic terms
make those simians’ social-political conflicts sound more brutal than they are?
The chimps Catherine and I saw on their island sanctuary in Uganda we loathed.
Unlike the pacific gorillas in the forest of Bwindi, they fought, dementedly shrieked,
the dominant male lorded it over the rest; they were, in all, too much like us.
Another island from my recent reading, where Columbus, on his last voyage,
encountering some “Indians” who’d greeted him with curiosity and warmth, wrote,
before he chained and enslaved them, “They don’t even know how to kill each other.”
It’s occurred to me I’ve read enough—at my age all it does is confirm my sadness.
Surely the papers: war, terror, torture, corruption—they’re like broken glass in the mind.
Back when I knew I knew nothing, I read all the time, poems, novels, philosophy, myth,
but I hardly glanced at the news, there was a distance between what could happen
and the part of myself I felt with: now everything’s so tight against me I hardly can move.
The Analects say people in the golden age weren’t aware they were governed; they just
lived.
Could I have passed through my own golden age and not even known I was there?
Some gold: nuclear rockets aimed at your head, racism, sexism, contempt for the poor.
And there I was, reading. What did I learn? Everything, nothing, too little, too much…
Just enough to get me here: a long-faced, white-haired ape with a book, still turning the
page.
C. K. WILLIAMS
EDWARD WILSON
Edward Osborne Wilson is a world leading biologist
and internationally recognized as one of the planet’s
most articulate authorities on the interrelatedness
of knowledge disciplines and of life systems.
He is acknowledged for two interdisciplinary
scientific disciplines (island biogeography and
sociobiology), three unifying concepts for science and
the humanities jointly (biophilia, biodiversity studies,
and consilience), and one technological advance in the
study of global biodiversity (the Encyclopedia of Life).
A native of Alabama, Wilson grew up in Mobile
and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology
from The University of Alabama (1949, 1950) and his
doctoral degree in biology from Harvard University (1955).
Wilson has received more than 100 awards for
his research on ants and biodiversity and for his writings
addressed to both scientific and non-scientific audiences.
He has received two Pulitzer Prizes in general non-fiction
for his books On Human Nature (1979) and The Ants (1991);
the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences; the International Prize of Biology of Japan; and the
Nonino and Serono Prizes for Letters and Sciences of Italy.
His work in the sciences, letters, the environment
and conservation earned him prominence in the annals of the
21st Century. He was named one of the 25 most influential
Americans by Time magazine and one of the world’s 100
leading intellectuals by Foreign Policy magazine. He is the
author of 28 books including the recent novel, Anthill, set in
the woods of South Alabama; The Social Conquest of Earth;
the soon-to-be-released profile of his boyhood hometown,
Why We Are Here: Mobile and the Spirit of a Southern City.
DAMIAN WOETZEL
Damian Woetzel was a Principal Dancer at New York City
Ballet and frequently performed internationally as a guest
star and visiting artist with numerous companies including
the Kirov Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, until his
retirement from the stage in 2008. Woetzel currently serves
as the Director of Arts Programs for the Aspen Institute, the
Artistic Director of the Vail International Dance Festival,
and as the Founding Director of the Jerome Robbins New
Essential Works Program. Woetzel is also active as a director
and producer outside these roles. Among his recent projects,
Woetzel produced and directed an arts salute to Stephen
Hawking at Lincoln Center for the World Science Festival,
and directed the first performance of the White House Dance
Series, which took place in the East Room of the White House
and was hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama. Woetzel also
works with Yo-Yo Ma on his Silk Road Connect program in
the New York City Public Schools, and has twice directed
culminating year-end performances; at the Museum of Natural
History in 2010, and for the Central Park SummerStage series
in 2011. Woetzel was appointed to the President’s Committee
on the Arts and Humanities by President Obama in 2009. In
July 2012, Woetzel was honored with the inaugural Gene Kelly
Legacy Award—an award jointly created by the Dizzy Feet
Foundation and the Estate of Gene Kelly in honor of the 100th
anniversary of Kelly’s birth—for his contributions to the arts as
a ballet star and director of dance and music performances.
In June 2011, Woetzel was named the Director
of Arts Programs at the Aspen Institute. Under Woetzel’s
direction, the Aspen Institute Arts Program brings together
leading artists, arts managers, sponsors, government officials
and patrons. Through these collaborations, the Program
seeks to generate, exchange, and develop ideas and policies
in order to encourage vibrancy and dynamism in all artistic
realms, and to enrich civic culture in ways only the arts can.
Among the events curated by the Aspen
Institute Arts Program under Woetzel’s direction:
In November 2011, Woetzel curated the inaugural US-
China Forum on the Arts and Culture in Beijing, in partnership
with Asia Society and the Chinese People’s Association for
Friendship with Foreign Countries. The four day forum was
the first in a series of cultural exchanges seeking to strengthen
mutual understanding between Americans and Chinese
through panel discussions, lectures, film screenings, museum
tours, dinners and performance. American and Chinese
artists and cultural representatives engaged in the forum
included Joel Coen, Meryl Streep, Yo-Yo Ma, Alice Waters,
Liu Ye, Ge You and others. Woetzel also directed a Public
Forum in partnership with the Public Theater titled “Does
Culture Make Us Who We are,” hosted by Anne Hathaway with
guests including Bill Irwin, David Brooks and Oskar Eustis.
In March 2012, Woetzel produced a panel with
Howard Gardner, the Hobbs Professor of Cognition and
Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
and Dr. Ellen Winner, Professor of Psychology at Boston
College, and Senior Research Associate at Project Zero,
examining the current state of the arts in education.
Woetzel also hosted renowned artists Eric Fischl and
Chuck Close in a conversation about artists and their
audience at the Mary Boone Gallery in New York.
In June 2012, the Arts Program for the first time
curated multiple sessions at the Institute’s premiere
public program, the Aspen Ideas Festival. For nineteen
sessions, Woetzel brought renowned artists, policymakers,
arts administrators as well as leading Chinese cultural
representatives for discussions, film screenings and
cultural exchanges focusing on how the arts impact society.
Sessions included “Culture and Conflict” with Palestinianborn
ballroom star and educator Pierre Dulaine and
Dutch composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven; a conversation
between renowned producer Julie Taymor and former
Disney CEO and current Aspen Institute Arts Program
chair Michael Eisner; “Radical Creative Spaces” with
architect Elizabeth Diller; “Arts and the City: Making
Cities Sing” with Rocco Landesman, Dennis Scholl, Darren
Walker and Richard Florida; among many others.
Since 2006, Woetzel has been the Artistic Director
of the summer Vail International Dance Festival, where
he presents dance performances and commissions. He
has instituted a number of initiatives as director, including
bringing the educational arts program “Celebrate The
Beat”—the Colorado associate of Jacques d’Amboise’s
National Dance Institute—to the Vail Valley, to reach
local underserved children in the public schools.
Under Woetzel’s direction, the festival has
received wide acclaim for its innovation and growth as a
nationally recognized showcase for dance, featuring such
performances as the debut of Morphoses/The Wheeldon
Company, and the launch of New York City Ballet MOVES.
The annual International Evenings of Dance galas have
become renowned for Woetzel’s curation of first-time
partnerships across companies and countries, as well as the
presentation of young, emerging stars making their debuts
in new repertory. In August 2012, The New York Times’
Alastair Macaulay wrote that the 2012 Vail International
Dance Festival presentations “were distinguished above
all by catholic taste and brilliant programming. They merit
superlatives” and that the International Evenings I gala
“was simply the best gala I have attended in decades.”
Writing the same week, Wendy Perron of Dance Magazine
compared Woetzel to the legendary impresario Serge
Diaghilev, and praised Woetzel for engaging and educating
audiences through spoken introductions to each work, and
for his commitment to collaboration with live musicians.
Woetzel has also instituted a series of “UpClose”
performances: lecture-demonstration events which combine
rehearsal, performance and commentary by Woetzel and
special guests. Recent UpClose performances have included:
“UpClose: Stravinsky by Balanchine,” an examination of
the legendary collaboration between George Balanchine
and Igor Stravinsky, co-hosted by Woetzel and New York
City Ballet Master-in-Chief Peter Martins (2012); “UpClose:
Premieres,” which provided a first look at a series of works
created in Vail by choreographers including Christopher
Wheeldon and Emery LeCrone during the weeks of the 2011
Vail International Dance Festival; among many others.
In 2009 and 2010, Woetzel produced and directed
the World Science Festival Gala Performances at Lincoln
Center’s Alice Tully Hall. For the 2010 event he created
an arts salute to science honoring the theoretical physicist
Stephen Hawking, featuring performances by Yo-Yo
Ma, John Lithgow, and Kelli O’Hara among others.
In the fall of 2009, Woetzel helped create and began
directing the Jerome Robbins Foundation’s New Essential
Works (NEW) Program, which supports choreographers
and dance companies during the current financial crisis
by giving grants to enable the production of new works.
In 2009, Woetzel launched as curator and director
the new Studio 5 performance series at New York’s City
Center, which features in-depth examinations of today’s
most compelling dance artists and companies highlighted by
in-studio performances and demonstrations. In 2009–2012,
guests included David Hallberg, Christopher Wheeldon,
Victoria Clark, Rob Berman, Angel Corella, Wendy Whelan,
Edward Villella, among others; topics of discussion ranged
from musical theatre to collaboration; and featured
companies included American Ballet Theatre, the Paul
Taylor Dance Company and Dance Theater of Harlem.
In June of 2010 Woetzel piloted “Arts Strike,”
a new effort to have celebrated artists engage educators
and students, schools and communities, highlighting and
sharing the unique power of the arts to empower, enrich
and educate. The first events have taken place in Vail,
Chicago, and Los Angeles, and have all featured Woetzel
with Yo-Yo Ma in schools, engaging with students and
their teachers to promote learning through the arts.
Woetzel works with Yo-Yo Ma on his Silk Road
Connect program in the New York City Public Schools. In
June 2010, Woetzel directed the culminating year-end event
which took place at New York’s Museum of Natural History,
and featured the participation of the Silk Road Ensemble
and 450 sixth-grade students. In June 2011, the culminating
year-end event opened the Central Park SummerStage series.
Titled “Night at the Caravanserai: Tales of Wonder,” the
performance again featured hundreds of sixth-grade students
from New York-area public schools, Ma with his Silk Road
Ensemble, vocalist Bobby McFerrin, the soprano Emalie Savoy,
actor Bill Irwin, and author Jhumpa Lahiri, among others.
In April 2011, Woetzel organized an “arts strike” at
Inner-City Arts in downtown Los Angeles with Yo-Yo Ma, The
Silk Road Ensemble, and Memphis Jooker Charles “Lil Buck”
Riley. The event included a demonstration and workshop for
more than one hundred elementary school students from
the Los Angeles Unified School District. Highlighting the
event was a first-time duet directed by Woetzel between Ma
and Lil Buck, who performed a Memphis Jookin’ version of
The Dying Swan with Ma accompanying on the cello; the
performance was immortalized in a video shot by Spike
Jonze which reached over one million views within weeks.
In the fall of 2010, Woetzel was a visiting Lecturer
at Harvard Law School, where he co-taught a course
on Performing Arts and the Law with Jeannie Suk.
Woetzel was the artistic director of the New York State
Summer School for the Arts School of Ballet from 1994–2007.
Woetzel was a Principal Dancer at New York City
Ballet from 1989 until his retirement from the stage in 2008.
At New York City Ballet, Woetzel had works created for him
by Jerome Robbins, Eliot Feld, Twyla Tharp, Susan Stroman,
and Christopher Wheeldon among others, and danced more
than 50 featured roles in the Company’s repertory, including:
George Balanchine’s: Agon, Coppelia, Prodigal Son, Slaughter
on Tenth Avenue, Stars and Stripes, Swan Lake; and Jerome
Robbins’: Afternoon of a Faun, Fancy Free, Dances at a
Gathering, A Suite of Dances, and West Side Story Suite.
Woetzel originated featured roles in: Eliot Feld’s
The Unanswered Question and Organon, Peter Martins’ Jeu
de Cartes and The Sleeping Beauty, Jerome Robbins’ Ives,
Songs and Quiet City, Susan Stroman’s “The Blue Necklace”
from Double Feature, Twyla Tharp’s The Beethoven Seventh,
Christopher Wheeldon’s An American in Paris, Carousel
(A Dance), Evenfall, Morphoses, and Variations Sérieuses.
Woetzel also originated roles in ballets by Kevin O’Day,
Richard Tanner, and Lynne Taylor-Corbett, among others.
Woetzel appeared in Dance in America’s presentation
of “Dinner with Balanchine,” dancing Union Jack and Stars
and Stripes. In October 1998, Mr. Woetzel appeared as one of
the stars of the Cole Porter musical Jubilee in a special benefit
performance at Carnegie Hall, during which he sang as well
as danced. In May 1999, he starred as Prince Siegfried in Peter
Martins’ Swan Lake on the PBS national telecast “Live from
Lincoln Center.” Woetzel also appeared in the 2002 nationally
televised Live from Lincoln Center broadcast “New York City
Ballet’s Diamond Project: Ten Years of New Choreography”
on PBS and in the May 2004 Live from Lincoln Center
broadcast of “Lincoln Center Celebrates Balanchine 100.”
Woetzel starred as the Cavalier in the film version of George
Balanchine’s The Nutcracker™, released in the winter of 1993.
During his career, Woetzel frequently performed
internationally as a guest star and was a visiting artist
with numerous companies including the Kirov Ballet
and American Ballet Theatre. In his guest appearances,
Woetzel danced principal roles in classics such as Don
Quixote, Giselle, and La Bayadere, among others.
Woetzel has choreographed a number of ballets
for New York City Ballet, among other companies. For New
York City Ballet, he choreographed Ebony Concerto to
Stravinsky, and Glazounov Pas de Deux to the composer’s
Les Ruses d’Amour. Woetzel also choreographed the
“Polovtsian Dances” for New York City Opera’s production
of Prince Igor, and in 1998, he choreographed and
starred in a new version of An American in Paris ballet
for Marvin Hamlisch’s Gershwin Centennial Gala.
Woetzel is the recipient of a Choo San Goh award
for new choreography. He serves on the Artists Committee
of the Kennedy Center Honors and as a judge for the Astaire
Awards. He has also served as a juror for the Princess Grace
Awards. Woetzel is a frequent speaker on the arts and arts
policy. Woetzel was the 2008 Harman-Eisner Artist in
Residence of the Aspen Institute, and in 2011, he became a
member of the Knight Foundation’s National Arts Advisory
Committee. Woetzel also serves on the boards of directors
of New York City Center, The Clive Barnes Foundation and
The Sphinx Organization, and served on the recent Harvard
Task Force on the Arts. In November 2009, President
Obama appointed Woetzel to the President’s Committee
on the Arts and Humanities. In July 2012, Woetzel was
honored with the inaugural Gene Kelly Legacy Award—an
award jointly created by the Dizzy Feet Foundation and
the Estate of Gene Kelly in honor of the 100th anniversary
of Kelly’s birth—for his contributions to the arts as a ballet
star and director of dance and music performances.
Woetzel holds a Master in Public Administration
Degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Woetzel has been married to
Heather Watts since 1999.
STEPHEN WOLFRAM
WILL WRIGHT
Stephen Wolfram has been responsible for three
revolutionary developments: the Mathematica
computation system, A New Kind of Science, and the
Wolfram|Alpha computational knowledge engine.
Wolfram was educated at Eton, Oxford and
Caltech, receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the
age of 20. Wolfram’s work on basic science led him to a
series of fundamental discoveries about the computational
universe of possible programs. Summarized in his bestselling
2002 book A New Kind of Science, these discoveries
have not only launched major new directions in basic
research, but have also led to breakthroughs in scientific
modeling in physical, biological and social domains—as well
as defining a broad new basis for technology discovery.
Launched in 1988, Mathematica has revolutionized
the way technical computation is done, and has been
responsible for countless advances over the past two decades.
Starting from a set of fundamental principles devised by
Wolfram, Mathematica has continually grown, integrating
more and more algorithmic domains, and spawning such
technologies as the Computable Document Format (CDF).
Building on Mathematica and A New Kind of
Science, Wolfram in 2009 launched Wolfram|Alpha—an
ambitious, long-term project to make as much of the world’s
knowledge as possible computable, and accessible to
everyone. Used every day on the web and through apps by
millions of people around the world, Wolfram|Alpha defines
a fundamentally new kind of computing platform that is
turning science-fiction computer intelligence into reality.
In addition to his scientific and technical
achievements, Wolfram has been the CEO of Wolfram
Research since its founding in 1987. Under Wolfram’s
leadership, Wolfram Research has become one of the world’s
most respected software companies, as well as a powerhouse
of technical and intellectual innovation, and a major
contributor to education and research around the world.
William Ralph “Will” Wright (born January 20, 1960, in
Atlanta, Georgia) is an American video game designer and
co-founder of the game development company Maxis, now
part of Electronic Arts. In April 2009, he left Electronic
Arts to run “Stupid Fun Club”, an entertainment think
tank in which Wright and EA are principal shareholders.
The first computer game Wright designed was
Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984, but it was SimCity that
brought him to prominence. The game was released by
Maxis, a company Wright formed with Jeff Braun, and he
built upon the game’s theme of computer simulation with
numerous other titles including SimEarth and SimAnt.
Wright’s greatest success to date came as the original
designer for The Sims games series. The game spawned
multiple sequels and expansions and Wright earned many
awards for his work. His latest work, Spore, was released
in September 2008 and features gameplay based upon the
model of evolution and scientific advancement. The game
sold 406,000 copies within three weeks of its release.
He was born as William Ralph Wright
on January 20, 1960, in Atlanta. He is of French,
English, Italian, and Native American descent.
After graduating at 16 from Episcopal High School,
he enrolled in Louisiana State University, transferring two
years later to Louisiana Tech. Beginning with a start at an
architecture degree, followed by mechanical engineering,
he fell into computers and robotics. He excelled in subjects
he was interested in—architecture, economics, mechanical
engineering, and military history—but was held back by his
impractical goals such as language arts. His earlier dream
of space colonization remained, and was joined by a love
for robotics. After another two years at Louisiana Tech, in
the fall of 1980, Wright moved on to The New School in
Manhattan. He lived in an apartment over Balducci’s, in
Greenwich Village, and spent his spare time searching for
spare parts in local electronics surplus stores. After one year
at the New School, Wright returned to Baton Rouge without
his degree, concluding five years of collegiate study.
During a summer break from college, he
met his first wife Joell Jones, an artist currently living
in California, on vacation to her hometown of Baton
Rouge. In an interview published in February 2003, Will
claims that games were absorbing so much of his time,
he decided that perhaps making games was the way to
go. Wright’s first game was the helicopter action game
Raid on Bungeling Bay (1984) for the Commodore 64.
Wright found that he had more fun creating levels
with his level editor for Raid on Bungeling Bay than he had
while actually playing the game. He created a new game
that would later evolve into SimCity, but he had trouble
finding a publisher. The structuralist dynamics of the game
were in part inspired by the work of two architectural and
urban theorists, Christopher Alexander and Jay Forrester.
“I’m interested in the process and strategies
for design. The architect Christopher Alexander, in
his book A Pattern Language formalized a lot of spatial
relationships into a grammar for design. I’d really like to
work toward a grammar for complex systems and present
someone with tools for designing complex things.”
Wright, in an interview with The Times,
expressed belief that computers extend the imagination,
and posits the emergence of the “metabrain”, stating:
“Any human institutional system that draws
on the intelligence of all its members is a metabrain. Up
to now, we have had high friction between the neurons
of the metabrain; technology is lowering that friction
tremendously. Computers are allowing us to aggregate our
intelligence in ways that were never possible before. If you
look at Spore, people are making this stuff, and computers
collect it, then decide who to send it to. The computer is
the broker. What they are really exploring is the collective
creativity of millions of people. They are aggregating
human intelligence into a system that is more powerful
than we thought artificial intelligence was going to be.”
In 1986, he met Jeff Braun, an investor interested
in entering the computer game industry, at what Wright
calls “the world’s most important pizza party.” Together
they formed Maxis the next year in Orinda, California.
SimCity (1989) was a hit and has been credited as one of
the most influential computer games ever made. Wright
himself has been widely featured in several computer
magazines—particularly PC Gamer, which has listed
Wright in its annual ‘Game Gods’ feature, alongside such
notables as Roberta Williams and Peter Molyneux.
Following the success of SimCity, Wright
designed SimEarth (1990) and SimAnt (1991). He codesigned
SimCity 2000 (1993) with Fred Haslam and
in the meantime Maxis produced other “Sim” games.
Wright’s next game was SimCopter (1996). Although
none of these games were as successful as SimCity, they
further cemented Wright’s reputation as a designer of
“software toys”—games that cannot be won or lost. In 1992,
Wright and his family moved to Orinda, California.
Wright has a great interest in complex adaptive
systems and most of his games have been based around
them or books that describe them (SimAnt: E.O. Wilson’s
The Ants, SimEarth: James Lovelock’s Gaia Theory, SimCity:
Jay Forrester’s Urban Dynamics and World Dynamics, Spore:
Drake’s Equation and The Powers of Ten) Wright’s role in the
development of the concepts from simulations to games is
to empower the players by creating what he dubs “possibility
spaces”, or simple rules and game elements that add up to a
very complex design. All Maxis, and later games that Wright
had a hand in designing, adhere to these design principles.
Maxis went public in 1995 with revenue of US$38
million. The stock reached $50 a share and then dropped
as Maxis posted a loss. Electronic Arts bought Maxis in
June 1997. Wright had been thinking about making a virtual
doll house ever since the early 1990s, similar to SimCity
but focused on individual people. Originally conceived
of as an architectural design game called Home Tactics,
Wright’s idea changed when someone suggested the player
should be rated on the quality of life experience by the
homeowners. It was a difficult idea to sell to E.A., because
already 40% of Maxis’s employees had been laid off.
When Wright took his idea to the Maxis board of
directors, Jeff Braun says, “The board looked at The Sims
and said, ‘What is this? He wants to do an interactive doll
house? The guy is out of his mind.’ ” Doll houses were for girls,
and girls didn’t play video games. Maxis gave little support
or financing for the game. Electronic Arts, which bought
Maxis in 1997, was more enthusiastic. Wright’s games are so
different from E.A.’s other releases that it was hard to imagine
the two being united in the same enterprise. But the success
of SimCity had already established Sim as a strong brand,
and E.A., which by then, fifteen years after its founding, was
becoming a Procter & Gamble-style brand-management
company, foresaw the possibility of building a Sim franchise.
E.A. published The Sims in February 2000
and it became Wright’s biggest success yet. It eventually
surpassed Myst as the best-selling computer game of all
time and spawned numerous expansion packs and other
games. He designed a massively multiplayer version
of the game called The Sims Online, which was not as
popular as the original. By November 2006, The Sims
franchise had earned E.A. more than a billion dollars.
In a presentation at the Game Developers Conference
on March 11, 2005, he announced his latest game Spore.
He used the current work on this game to demonstrate
methods that can be used to reduce the amount of content
that needs to be created by the game developers. Wright
hopes to inspire others to take risks in game creation.
As for his theories on interactive
design, Wright says the following:
“Well, one thing I’ve always really enjoyed is making
things. Out of whatever. It started with modeling as a kid,
building models. When computers came along, I started
learning programming and realizing the computer was this
great tool for making things, making models, dynamic models,
and behaviors, not just static models. I think when I started
doing games I really wanted to carry that to the next step, to
the player, so that you give the player a tool so that they can
create things. And then you give them some context for that
creation. You know, what is it, what kind of kind of world
does it live in, what’s its purpose? What are you trying to do
with this thing that you’re creating? To really put the player
in the design role. And the actual world is reactive to their
design. So they design something that the little world inside
the computer reacts to. And then they have to revisit the
design and redesign it, or tear it down and build another one,
whatever it is. So I guess what really draws me to interactive
entertainment and the thing that I try to keep focused on is
enabling the creativity of the player. Giving them a pretty large
solution space to solve the problem within the game. So the
game represents this problem landscape. Most games have
small solution landscapes, so there’s one possible solution and
one way to solve it. Other games, the games that tend to be
more creative, have a much larger solution space, so you can
potentially solve this problem in a way that nobody else has. If
you’re building a solution, how large that solution space is gives
the player a much stronger feeling of empathy. If they know
that what they’ve done is unique to them, they tend to care for
it a lot more. I think that’s the direction I tend to come from.”
Wright believes that simulations as games
can be used to improve education by teaching
children how to learn. In his own words:
“The problem with our education system is we’ve
taken this kind of narrow, reductionist, Aristotelian approach
to what learning is. It’s not designed for experimenting
with complex systems and navigating your way through
them in an intuitive way, which is what games teach. It’s not
really designed for failure, which is also something games
teach. I mean, I think that failure is a better teacher than
success. Trial and error, reverse-engineering stuff in your
mind—all the ways that kids interact with games—that’s
the kind of thinking schools should be teaching. And I
would argue that as the world becomes more complex, and
as outcomes become less about success or failure, games
are better at preparing you. The education system is going
to realize this sooner or later. It’s starting. Teachers are
entering the system who grew up playing games. They’re
going to want to engage with the kids using games.”
Wright will appear as a character in the video game
Mr. T, where he will team up with Mr. T to fight Nazis.
Wright was given a “Lifetime Achievement
Award” at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2001.
In 2002, he became the fifth person to be inducted into the
Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame.
Until 2006, he was the only person to have been honored
this way by both of these industry organizations. In 2007
the British Academy of Film and Television Arts awarded
him a fellowship, the first given to a game designer.
He has been called one of the most important
people in gaming, technology, and entertainment by
publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Time, PC Gamer,
Discover and GameSpy. Wright was also awarded the PC
Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award in January 2005.
In 1980, along with co-driver and race organizer
Rick Doherty, Wright participated in the U.S. Express,
a cross-country race that was the predecessor to The
Cannonball Run. Wright and Doherty drove a specially
outfitted Mazda RX-7 from Brooklyn, New York to Santa
Monica, California in 33:39, winning the illegal race. Wright
only competed once in the race, which continued until 1983.
Since 2003, in his spare time, Wright has collected
leftovers from the Soviet space program, “including a
100-pound hatch from a space shuttle, a seat from a