CF co-founder John G. Jung originated the Intelligent Community concept and continues to serve as the Forum's leading visionary. Formerly President and CEO of the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance, Calgary Economic Development Authority and Canada’s Technology Triangle, he is a registered professional urban planner, urban designer and economic developer. He leads regular international business missions to US, European, Asian, Indian and Australian cities, and originated the ICF Immersion Lab program. John is a regular speaker at universities and conferences and serves as an advisor to regional and national leaders on Intelligent Community development. He has also given presentations to Prime Ministers, Presidents and Royalty around the world.

Eli Pariser is an author, activist, and entrepreneur focused on how to make technology and media serve democracy. He helped lead MoveOn.org, co-founded Avaaz.org (now the world’s largest citizen’s organization), wrote the 2011 bestseller The Filter Bubble, and co-founded Upworthy. He is currently co-director of the Civic Signals project at the National Conference on Citizenship.

Dr. Darío Gil is the Director of IBM Research, one of the world’s largest and most influential corporate research labs. He is the 12th Director in its 75-year history. IBM Research is composed of over 3,000 researchers at 19 locations on six continents advancing the future of computing. Dr. Gil leads innovation efforts at IBM, directing research strategies in areas including AI, cloud, quantum computing, and exploratory science. Under his leadership IBM was the first company in the world to build programmable quantum computers and make them universally available through the cloud. An advocate of collaborative research models, Dr. Gil co-chairs the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, which advances fundamental AI research to the broad benefit of industry and society.

Luis believes that together, technology and design can transform business and society, making people lives more productive, interesting and fun. Luis has worked for startups and more than 100 big companies across all industries and many countries, designing human experiences, creating innovative services and helping to transform their culture and processes for 20 years. During 2015-2016, Luis has worked in Geneva and New York with the World Economic Forum in analyzing the impact in business and society of Digital Transformation across seven industries. The results of the work have been presented at Davos Summit 2016. The project continues today as The Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Senior editor and economics columnist, The Economist. Ryan joined The Economist in 2009 as online economics editor. In 2011 he became economics correspondent, covering global economic issues for the newspaper and writing the Free Exchange economics blog. He's also a contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, among other publications. He is the author of a Kindle Single: The Gated City, which analyzes migration from American cities. Avent was previously an economic consultant and an industry analyst for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He lives in London, England. The Wealth of Humans is his first book. In 2015 he was named The Economist‘s news editor.

She is the visionary and CEO of Collective Shift and its LRNG endeavour, a social enterprise that works collaboratively with schools, businesses, cities, and community institutions to redesign learning for the 21st century so that all youth have the opportunity to succeed. She brings considerable experience from the MacArthur Foundation where she oversaw a $150 million program on Digital Media and Learning. Prior to joining the Foundation, Connie was an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, publishing scholarly work that examines the complex interplay among young people’s emerging identity, their social context and achievement. Connie briefly served as Policy Analyst in the U.S. Department of Education during the Clinton Administration.

Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences from the University of the Basque Country. Graduated from the Faculty of Chemical Sciences of San Sebastián. Extraordinary End of Degree Award. In 2008, Josu Jon Imaz joined the Repsol Group as president of its subsidiary Petronor. In 2010, he assumed the Repsol Executive Directorate of Refining, also leading the Executive Directorate of New Energies. In 2012 he joined the Repsol Management Committee as General Manager of the Industrial and New Energies Area. Within his professional activity, and apart from his belonging to the Repsol group, Josu Jon Imaz held, from November 2011 to September 2014, the presidency of the Spanish Association of Petroleum Products Operators (AOP).

Executive director of the Václav Havel Library and a diplomat, politician, writer, and translator. He is the former president of the Aspen Institute Prague, a member of the Forum 2000 Foundation Program Council, former chairman of the Civic Democratic Alliance and a one-time senator of the Civic Democratic Alliance in the Parliament of the Czech Republic. He has served as ambassador of the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom, the United States and the State of Israel. He was also the spokesman of President Václav Havel and political director at the Office of the President of the Czech Republic. He is a graduate of Charles University in Prague and of McGill University in Canada.

She brings over two decades of teaching, research and administrative experience to her classes in American Politics. As founding director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Dr. Sherman established the focal point for graduate education, research and public engagement on issues concerning women in public life. A former Research Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, Dr. Sherman completed research on economic challenges facing women in the workplace, and the potential for statewide policies on family leave and comparable worth. Dr. Sherman hosted her own award-winning public radio program, Commonwealth Journal.

Mickey Edwards is Vice President and Program Director at The Aspen Institute. He was a member of Congress for 16 years, serving on the House Budget and Appropriations Committees and as a chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. After leaving Congress he taught for 11 years at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government before moving on first to Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and then back to Washington, DC, as vice president of the Aspen Institute, where he directs a bipartisan fellowship for elected public officials. He is a frequent public speaker and has been a guest on many of the nation’s leading radio and television news and opinion broadcasts.

Doctor in Law from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Master in Politics (London School of Economics), he has expanded his studies in Constitutional Law at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg. Currently, a professor at the Faculty of Law of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, having previously been Director of its Department of Public Law as well as Dean of the Faculty of Law of the Universidad de Castilla La Mancha. He has been a member of the Central Electoral Board. He is Secretary of the Journal of Political Studies and a founding member of the Basque collective "Miguel de Unamuno". He has been Secretary-General of the Spanish Association of Political Science and Constitutional Law. He is a member of the European Institute of Federalism at the Swiss University of Freiburg.

Mike co-founded the Bezos Family Foundation in 2000 with his wife Jackie, their three children, and their spouses, all of whom serve as directors. Through investments in research, public awareness, advocacy and programs, the foundation works to elevate the field of education and improve life outcomes for all children along the continuum from birth through high school. Never shy to fill an unmet need, the foundation has pioneered two in-house programs, the Bezos Scholars Program at the Aspen Institute, The Aspen Challenge and Students Rebuild, to offer young adults a dynamic way to connect, learn about, and take action on critical local and global issues.