Student Holistic Development Through World-Class Experts

Arne Duncan served as U.S. Secretary of Education from January 2009 through January 2016 as part of the Obama Administration. Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Duncan served as chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools.

From 2001 to 2008, Duncan won praise for uniting the city’s stakeholders behind an education agenda that included opening 100 new schools; expanding after-school, summer learning, early childhood, and college access programs; dramatically boosting the caliber of teachers; and building public-private partnerships around a variety of education initiatives.

He currently leads Chicago CRED, a nonprofit trying to achieve a transformative reduction in gun violence in Chicago. Through partnerships with local business leaders, community organizers, and nonprofit groups, Duncan aims to provide outreach, therapeutic, educational, and employment opportunities for the young men most likely to be engaged in gun violence.

He is also the managing partner at Emerson Collective, an organization dedicated to removing barriers so people can live to their full potential. Secretary Duncan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1987, majoring in sociology. At Harvard, he served as co-captain of the basketball team and was named a first-team Academic All-American.

Nelson Dellis is a 6x USA Memory Champion and one of the leading memory experts in the world, traveling around the world as a competitive Memory Athlete, Memory Consultant, Published Author, and highly sought-after Keynote Speaker.

As a Memory Champion, Mountaineer, and Alzheimer's Disease Activist, he preaches a lifestyle that combines fitness, both mental and physical, with proper diet and social involvement.

Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; Michigan’s Distinguished Professor of the Year; and Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor.” Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior.

Dr. Oakley’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal. She is a New York Times best-selling author who has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Her book A Mind for Numbers, on effective learning in STEM disciplines, has sold over a million copies worldwide; Uncommon Sense Teaching is a critically praised guide to teaching based on insights from neuroscience.

Dr. Oakley has won numerous teaching awards, including the American Society of Engineering Education’s Chester F. Carlson Award for technical innovation in engineering education and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers William E. Sayle II Award for Achievement in Education. Together with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, she co-teaches Coursera’s “Learning How to Learn,” one of the world’s most popular massive open online courses with some four million registered students, along with a number of other leading MOOCs.

Dr. Oakley has adventured widely through her lifetime. She rose from the ranks of Private to Captain in the U.S. Army, during which time she was recognized as a Distinguished Military Scholar. She also worked as a communications expert at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and has served as a Russian translator on board Soviet trawlers on the Bering Sea. Dr. Oakley is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

Maryanne Miller is a retired 4-star General for the United States Air Force. Her last position before retirement in October of 2020 was Commander, Air Mobility Command. As the Air Component Commander for U.S. Transportation Command, General Miller was responsible for directing global air mobility operations in support of national objectives.

General Miller was commissioned in 1981 as a distinguished graduate of the ROTC program at The Ohio State University. She is a command pilot with more than 4,800 flying hours in numerous Air Force aircraft.

Maryanne spent 39 years serving as an officer and pilot in our Air Force, but now serves on the Boards of Bristow and Leaven Kids. And since 2013, has been a volunteer and co-worker for St. Teresa of Calcutta’s Missionaries of Charity, serving the poorest of the poor around the world.

Consuelo Vanderbilt is a seventh-generation descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt and the great-great-niece of Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough. She is the founder of C&R Production and co-founder of SohoMuse, an exclusive network designed to connect and empower the global creative community.

Ms. Vanderbilt serves on the board of the Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium and has been appointed as an Advisor to the Forbes Council, reflecting her commitment to fostering innovation and collaboration across various sectors.

Margaret Spellings serves as President and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center, bringing her knowledge and experience developed over an exceptional career in public service at both the state and national levels. From 2005 to 2009, Spellings served as U.S. Secretary of Education, leading the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, a bipartisan initiative to provide greater accountability for the education of 50 million U.S. public school students.

Prior to serving as Secretary, Spellings served as White House Domestic Policy Advisor from 2001 to 2005. Spellings has also served as the President of the 17-institution University of North Carolina System, President of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, and President and CEO of Texas 2036.

After growing up poor and Black in a Southern rural community, Jerome Adams went on to lead the 6,000-person U.S. Public Health Service as “America’s Doctor” during a worldwide pandemic. As Surgeon General, he brought a passionate commitment to fighting issues that his own family and community experienced, including limited healthcare access, chronic disease, substance use disorder and ensuing stigma, tobacco addiction, maternal health, mental illness and the opioid epidemic. Dr. Adams’ talks merge his expertise at the forefront of national and global health policy with his own personal experiences: growing up with life-threatening asthma, as a brother to someone with substance use disorder, and as someone navigating politics to tirelessly champion the health of the vulnerable and voiceless during times of crisis.

Dr. Adams’ experience with healthcare began as a patient. As a child with chronic asthma, he suffered an attack so severe that he was airlifted, barely breathing, from his home in rural southern Maryland to a hospital in Washington D.C. As a student, he excelled in science, math and technology and was awarded a scholarship to study biochemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. It was there that he first met a Black physician (“You have to see it to be it!”) and was inspired to pursue a career in medicine. Adams was featured in the film Black Men In White Coats which tackles the issues around why black men aren’t becoming medical doctors and what that means for society.

Adams was awarded a scholarship to Indiana University Medical School, earned his Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley and went on to work in private practice as an anesthesiologist in rural Indiana. He was recruited back to Indiana University Medical School, rising to the rank of associate professor. During this time, Dr. Adams caught the eye of Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who appointed him as Indiana State Health Commissioner. Adams triumphed in that role, handling Ebola, Zika, the nation’s largest HIV and Hepatitis C outbreak associated with IV drug use, and a lead contamination situation in Northern Indiana that drew comparisons to the crisis in Flint, Michigan. His leadership during the HIV/Hepatitis C outbreak has been heralded for dramatically reducing infection via a needle exchange program that Dr. Adams championed through a highly conservative state legislature, paving the way for many other states to subsequently start or expand such services.

In 2016, Dr. Adams followed then-Vice President Pence to Washington as America’s 20th Surgeon General. He brought with him an ambitious goal to tackle the raging opioid crisis and make naloxone widely available. His agenda also included addressing health disparities such as maternal health and promoting community health and wellness through engagement with businesses and employers. As Surgeon General, Adams faced three category five hurricanes in a row, an e-cigarette/vaping epidemic among youth, and a once-in-a-century COVID-19 pandemic that was combined with a once-in-a-generation level of political strife and national division. Through it all, he stayed at the table, as one of the only high-level Black voices in the administration. Dr. Adams leveraged his position to advocate for disproportionately hard-hit communities of color and address the systemic health disparities that COVID shone a bright light on. As Dr. Adams often says, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” Throughout his career, he has continued a hands-on approach to medicine, maintaining hospital privileges and becoming the only Surgeon General in recent history to actively practice while in office.

The Bipartisan Policy Center launched an opioid task force to address drug addiction and overdose deaths in the U.S., and Dr. Adams is a member. This new group will develop policy to reduce drug overdose deaths and combat the national opioid crisis, which it described as an epidemic within the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Adams is also working with the Pro Football Hall of Fame on their new mental health initiative called Hall of Fame Health to help spread the word about mental health, addiction, and health equity.

Dr. Adams is chairman of the Indiana State Trauma Care Committee and as co-chairman of the Indiana Perinatal Quality Improvement Collaborative Governing Council. Dr. Adams is a fellow of The University of Virginia Darden School of Business Dean’s D.C. Fellows program, which assembles innovative and intellectually accomplished experts who have distinguished themselves in fields outside of academia. These fellows collaborate with Darden faculty and students in a variety of ways. Most recently, he became a Distinguished Professor, Presidential Fellow, and Executive Director of Health Equity Initiatives at Purdue.

Now, as a speaker, Dr. Adams continues his 25-year mission in community and public health with unforgettable keynote speeches and frank, courageous, and insightful fireside chats. Never backing down from tough questions, he brings a passion for engagement that pulls him from behind the podium to genuinely interact with audiences during Q&A. Known for speaking plainly on an array of health topics, he customizes his talks to meet the interests of an array of audiences. With a calm and caring manner, Dr. Adams speaks from the heart with the goal of making every audience member feel that he is speaking directly to them.