Speakers
National Meeting 2017

Featured Speakers

Tom Bevan

Co-Founder and Executive Editor, RealClearPolitics

Tom Bevan is the co-founder and Executive Editor of RealClearPolitics. In addition to overseeing the editorial staff and writing regular features for RealClearPolitics, Mr. Bevan’s work has appeared in numerous publications and he is featured frequently as a political analyst on Fox News, CNN, CNBC, and the BBC. He hosts a weekly radio show on politics on 89 WLS in Chicago. He is also co-author with Carl Cannon of two eBooks on Election 2012—The Battle Begins and  A Time for Choosing. They are currently working on a book about the future of the Republican Party. 

Marilyn Fedak

Vice Chair Emeritus of Investment Services, AllianceBernstein

Marilyn Fedak is vice chair emeritus for investment services at AllianceBernstein & the founder of the Marilyn G. Fedak Capitalism Project.

Ms. Fedak joined Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., Inc. (a predecessor company of AllianceBernstein) in 1984 as a senior portfolio manager. She was chief investment officer for U.S. Large-Cap Value Equities from 1993 to 2009. In 2003, she also became the business head of Bernstein Global Value Equities. In 2009, she was named vice chair of investment services. Ms. Fedak also created and headed the firm’s talent development team and was president of the Sanford C. Bernstein Mutual Funds. She was a partner at AllianceBernstein and served on Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.’s board of directors.  She is also a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Prior to joining Bernstein, Ms. Fedak was a portfolio manager and research analyst at Morgan Guaranty Trust Company (1972 to 1983) and a systems programmer at IBM (1968-1970).  She has a B.A. from Smith College and an MBA from Harvard University.

Ms. Fedak is the founder of the Marilyn G. Fedak Capitalism Project that, in partnership with the Manhattan Institute started the Adam Smith Society. She is also a member of the Dean’s Council of the Weil Cornell Medical College.

Kenneth Griffin

Founder and CEO, Citadel

Kenneth Griffin is the Founder and CEO of Citadel, one of the world’s largest alternative asset managers and securities dealers. Citadel includes a number of hedge funds engaged in alternative investment strategies. As of October 1, 2016, firmwide investment capital was approximately $26 billion. Citadel Securities is a leading global market maker across a broad array of fixed income and equity securities. Established in 1990, Citadel has over 1,700 team members in the world’s major financial centers.

Mr. Griffin serves on the Board of Trustees for the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Whitney Museum and the University of Chicago. Mr. Griffin received a bachelor's degree from Harvard College.

Charles Kesler

Senior Fellow, Claremont Institute | Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College

Charles Kesler is a Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, Editor of the Claremont Review of Books, host of The American Mind video series, and the Dengler-Dykema Distinguished Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College. Dr. Kesler teaches in the Claremont Institute’s Publius Fellows Program and Lincoln Fellows Program. He also served as vice chairman of the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Congress's James Madison Commemoration Commission as well as the director of CMC’s Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World.

He is the author of I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism (Broadside Books); the editor of Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding (Free Press); co-editor, with John B. Kienker, of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Ten Years of the Claremont Review of Books (Rowman & Littlefield); and co-editor, with William F. Buckley, Jr., of Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought (HarperCollins). The edition of The Federalist Papers (Signet Classics) he edited is the best-selling edition in the country. Dr. Kesler received his B.A. in Social Studies and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.

William Kristol

Founder and Editor at Large, The Weekly Standard  

William Kristol is the editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard, a regular on ABC’s This Week and on ABC’s special events and election coverage, and appears frequently on other leading political commentary shows.  Before starting The Weekly Standard in 1995, Mr. Kristol led the Project for the Republican Future, where he helped shape the strategy that produced the 1994 Republican congressional victory.  Prior to that, Mr. Kristol served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the first Bush Administration, and to Education Secretary William Bennett under President Reagan.  Before coming to Washington in 1985, Mr. Kristol was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Alison Mangiero

Alison Mangiero is the senior director for the Manhattan Institute’s Adam Smith Society. Since its inception she has grown the Society from one student group at Harvard to over 25 chapters and 6,500 members. She is also Director of the College of the Holy Cross's New York City Program, which allows students to spend a semester in New York combining experiential learning with an academic seminar and capstone project. She teaches courses on Leadership Studies and Public Policy for the group. Ms. Mangiero was previously an instructor of political science at Holy Cross, and managed the Manhattan Institute’s higher education reform efforts as director of its Center for the American University. Ms. Mangiero earned a B.A. from the University of Richmond, and an M.A. in political science from Boston College, where she is currently a Ph.D. candidate. She serves on the Executive Board of Advisors for the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies.

Andrew McAfee

Principal Research Scientist, MIT 

Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at MIT, studies how digital technologies are changing business, the economy, and society. His most recent book, written with Erik Brynjolfsson, is Machine | Platform | Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future.  Their 2014 book on these topics, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Financial Times / McKinsey business book of the year award.

McAfee has written for publications including Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and The New York Times. He's talked about his work on The Charlie Rose Show and 60 Minutes, at TED, Davos, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and in front of many other audiences. He was educated at Harvard and MIT, where he is the co-founder of the Institute’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. He lives in Cambridge, watches too much Red Sox baseball, doesn't ride his motorcycle enough, and starts his weekends with the NYT Saturday crossword.

Lawrence Mone

President, Manhattan Institute 

Lawrence Mone has been President of the Manhattan Institute since 1995. He joined the Institute in 1982, serving as a public policy specialist, program director, and vice president before being named the Institute's fourth president. A summa cum laude graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, Mr. Mone taught high school history in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for several years before earning a master's degree in public policy from the University of California at Berkeley in 1982.

Under Mr. Mone’s leadership the Manhattan Institute has sponsored and disseminated research on such topics as tax and economic policy, education, welfare reform, and crime. The Institute has expanded its work with civic leaders in New York and across the country to promote free-market solutions to urban policy problems. In recent years, the Institute has played a vital role in the debate over issues such as healthcare and energy. The Institute's quarterly magazine, City Journal, has become one of the nation's premier public policy magazines and played a pivotal role in reforming New York City.

Henry Olsen

Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how to address, consistent with conservative principles, the electoral challenges facing modern American conservatism. his work will culminate in a book titled The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism, to be published in June 2017.

Mr. Olsen has worked in senior executive positions at many center-right think tanks. He most recently served from 2006 to 2013 as Vice President and Director, National Research Initiative, at the American Enterprise Institute. He previously worked as Vice President of Programs at the Manhattan Institute and President of the Commonwealth Foundation.

Mr. Olsen’s work has been featured in many prominent publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Review, and The Weekly Standard. His pre-election predictions of the 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections were particularly praised for their remarkable accuracy. In the 2016 campaign, he accurately identified the factors fueling the rise of Donald Trump early in the race, and his Election eve predictions were more accurate than those of virtually any other major analyst or commentator.

Mr. Olsen started his career as a political consultant at the California firm of Hoffenblum-Mollrich. He then worked with the California State Assembly Republican Caucus before attending law school. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Danny J. Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and as an associate at Dechert, Price & Rhoads. He has a B.A. from Claremont McKenna College and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served as Comment Editor for the University of Chicago Law Review.

Steven Rosenbush

Editor, CIO Journal column, The Wall Street Journal

Steven Rosenbush is editor of The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal, which reports on the strategic use of technology in business. His interests include the migration of next-generation IT from the tech sector to the broader economy, and how that shift is redefining businesses, markets and corporate culture. He has a particular fascination with self-driving cars. Previously, he worked as an editor and writer at BusinessWeek and USA Today. He is the author of a book, Telecom Opportunities for Entrepreneurs.

Anthony Scaramucci

Founder, SkyBridge Capital

Anthony Scaramucci is the Founder and former Co-Managing partner of SkyBridge Capital.

He is the author of three books: The Little Book of Hedge Funds, Goodbye Gordon Gekko and Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole, a 2016 Wall Street Journal best-seller in the business category. Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Mr. Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman, LLC in 2001. Earlier, he was a vice president in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs & Co. In 2016, Anthony was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year® – New York Award in the Financial Services category.

Mr. Scaramucci is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), vice chair of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board, a board member of The Brain Tumor Foundation and Business Executives for National Security (BENS), and a Trustee of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Foundation. He was a member of the New York City Financial Services Advisory Committee from 2007 to 2012. In November 2016 he was named to President-elect Trump’s 16-person Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee. He is a native of Long Island, New York, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.

Paul Singer

Founder and President, Elliott Management | Chairman, Manhattan Institute

Paul Singer is the founder and president of Elliott Management Corporation, a New York–based trading firm. Launched in 1977 with $1 million of capital, total assets under management for the Elliott funds have grown to approximately $32 billion today. Elliott also has affiliated offices in London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. The Wall Street Journal has recognized Elliott for its early forecasting of the systemic economic crisis of 2008. The New York Times has written that “of all the hedge fund managers on Wall Street, [Elliott] is one of the most revered.” Mr. Singer is on the boards of Harvard Medical School and of Commentary magazine, and on the advisory board of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He is also chairman of the Manhattan Institute.

J.D. Vance

Author, Hillbilly Elegy

J.D. Vance is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. He grew up in the Rust Belt city of Middletown, Ohio, and the Appalachian town of Jackson, Kentucky. He enlisted in the Marine Corps after high school and served in Iraq. A graduate of the Ohio State University and Yale Law School, Mr. Vance has contributed to the National Review and has recently signed on as a CNN Political Contributor. He lives in Ohio with his wife and two dogs.

Evan Baehr

Evan Baehr is an investor, author, and entrepreneur. Previously he cofounded Able, a financial technology company that fuels the Fortune 5,000,000 and Forbes calls "Capitalism at its best." He's co-author of Get Backed, the #1 best-selling book for entrepreneurs starting companies. Mr. Baehr founded the first chapter of the Adam Smith Society at Harvard, and now serves on its board of advisors. Formerly he founded Outbox, the postal mail disruptor shut down by the federal government, worked for Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Paypal's Peter Thiel, ran the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, Yale, and Harvard Business School. He lives with his wife, Kristina Scurry Baehr, and two children in Austin, TX.

William Cohan

William Cohan is the New York Times bestselling author of three non-fiction narratives about Wall Street -- Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World; House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street; and, The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co., the winner of the 2007 FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Mr. Cohan is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and writes a weekly opinion column for BloombergView. He also writes for The Financial Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Atlantic, ArtNews, the Irish Times, the Washington Post and the New York Times Magazine. He previously wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The New York Times and features for Fortune. He also appears regularly on MSNBC, on Bloomberg TV, where he is a contributing editor, and on CNN, CurrentTV and the BBC-TV. He has also appeared as a guest on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The NewsHour, The Charlie Rose Show, and the Tavis Smiley Show, as well as on numerous NPR, BBC and Bloomberg radio programs. Mr. Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

James Grant

James Grant, financial journalist and historian, is the founder and editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, a twice-monthly journal of the investment markets. His new book, The Forgotten Depression, 1921: the Crash that Cured Itself, a history of America’s last governmentally unmedicated business-cycle downturn, won the 2015 Hayek Prize of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

Among his other books on finance and financial history are Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend (Simon & Schuster, 1983), Money of the Mind (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992), Minding Mr. Market (Farrar, Straus, 1993), The Trouble with Prosperity (Times Books, 1996), and Mr. Market Miscalculates (Axios Press, 2008). Additionally, he is the author of a pair of political biographies.

Mr. Grant, a former Navy gunner’s mate, is a Phi Beta Kappa alumnus of Indiana University. He earned a master’s degree in international relations from Columbia University and began his career in journalism in 1972, at the Baltimore Sun. He joined the staff of Barron’s in 1975 where he originated the “Current Yield” column. He is a trustee of the New York Historical Society. He and his wife, Patricia Kavanagh M.D., live in Brooklyn. They are the parents of four grown children.

Molly Harsh

Molly Harsh is director of programs for the Manhattan Institute’s Adam Smith Society. She is an experienced event planning professional with nearly 15 years in the industry. From 2003 to 2006, she served as the Manhattan Institute’s director of development and was more recently a principal at Revere Advisors where she worked with RealClearPolitics, as well as numerous think tank and non-profit clients to successfully plan and execute scores of events. Ms. Harsh holds a master’s degree in political science with a concentration in political philosophy from Fordham University. Her undergraduate work was done at Kenyon College in Ohio, where she remains an active alumna—serving as an alumni interviewer, a member of the alumni career network, and co-director of the class reunion committee. Harsh is a member of Pi Sigma Alpha and the American Political Science Association. She resides near Columbus, Ohio.

Michael Hodin

Michael W. Hodin, Ph.D. is CEO of the Global Coalition on Aging, Managing Partner at High Lantern Group, and a fellow at Oxford University's Harris Manchester College. A featured blogger at The Huffington Post and The Fiscal Times (under the Age and Reason Blog), and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Mike was Legislative Assistant to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Visiting Scholar at Brookings Institution, and a senior executive at Pfizer, Inc. for 30 years.  He holds a BA from Cornell University, M.Sc.in International Relations from The London School of Economics and Political Science, and M.Phil and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.

Clark Judge

Clark Judge is founder and managing director of the White House Writers Group, Inc. and an opinion journalist.  He was a speechwriter in the Reagan White House.

Mr. Judge served as Speechwriter and Special Assistant to both President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush.  A member of the Moscow Summit speechwriting team, he was also the lead writer for the Toronto Economic Summit in 1988 and helped shape the White House approach to the 1988 presidential campaign.  A Harvard MBA, Mr. Judge had administration assignments involving assessing the management of the government, urban policy and international economic policy before joining the White House staff.

As an opinion journalist, he has written extensively on U.S politics, the international financial crisis, health care reform, the current state of the U.S. and global economies, and global security issues.  Among the publications in which his work has appeared are the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, NYTimes.com, USNews.com, Policy Review, National Review Online and Claremont Review of Books.  He has been interviewed on major broadcast and cable news outlets including CBS, ABC, Fox News, CNN, CNBC and the BBC. He lives in Washington, D.C, with his wife, Margo.  They have a grown son.

Michael Kaufman

Michael Kaufman is a fund manager and a friend and supporter of the Manhattan Institute. Mr. Kaufman is the founder and CEO of MAK Capital which he established in 2002. MAK Capital is a multi-strategy investment manager with primary exposure to distressed debt, public equities and various macro-oriented investments. He also serves on the boards of several corporations across a variety of industries.

Mr. Kaufman graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.A. in economics, and received his M.B.A. at Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He also holds a law degree from Yale University.  He lives in New York with his wife and two children.

Peter Lipsett

Peter Lipsett is director of growth strategies at DonorsTrust, the community foundation of the liberty movement.  He helps to grow the organization by discovering new clients, deepening relationships with existing clients, and defining the brand.  Mr. Lipsett leads the effort to grow DonorsTrust’s Novus Society, which helps donors under 40 grow their philanthropic network and know-how. Before joining DonorsTrust, he worked for nearly a decade in various capacities at the Charles Koch Foundation, Koch Industries, and Freedom Partners.

Originally from Marietta, Georgia, Mr. Lipsett moved to the Washington, D.C. area after a year on a Georgia congressional campaign.  He is a graduate of Davidson College and has an MBA from George Mason University.  He, his wife, Ann-Bailey, and their two little girls live in Springfield, Virginia.  He is an impassioned Atlanta Braves fan, plays softball in the summer, and is slowly reading through, in order, U.S. presidential biographies.

Daniel Mangiero

Daniel Mangiero is a managing director at Och-Ziff Capital Management, where he manages global operations for all Och-Ziff hedgefunds and is a senior member of the working group that focuses on strategic infrastructure initiatives across all business units. Mr. Mangiero began as Associate with Och-Ziff in 2006, advancing to Financial Controls Manager and Assistant Controller before holding his current position since February 2013. Prior to Och-Ziff, he was the Equity Derivatives Account Manager with Goldman, Sachs & Co. He received his undergraduate degree from University of Richmond and an MBA/MS in Finance from Wagner College.

Judith Miller

Judith Miller is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a City Journal contributing editor, a best-selling author, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter formerly with the New York Times. In 2002, Ms. Miller was part of a small team that won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism for her January 2001 series on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That same year, she won an Emmy for her work on a Nova/New York Times documentary based on articles for her book Germs. She was part of the Times team that won the DuPont Award for a series of programs on terrorism for PBS’s Frontline. Before leaving the Times in 2005, she spent 85 days in jail to defend a reporter’s right to protect confidential sources. That year, she received the Society of Professional Journalists First Amendment Award for her defense of an independent press.

Since 2008, Ms. Miller has been a commentator for Fox News, speaking on terrorism and other national security issues, the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, and the need for a delicate balance between protecting national security and civil liberties in a post-9/11 world. She is the author of One, by One, by One (1990), a highly praised account of how people in six nations have distorted the memory of the Holocaust; Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (1990), a New York Timesbestseller during the 1991 Gulf War; God Has Ninety-Nine Names (1996), which explores the spread of Islamic extremism in ten Middle Eastern countries; and her memoir, The Story: A Reporter’s Journey (2015). Ms. Miller is coauthor of Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War (2001), which topped the bestseller list in the wake of 9/11 and the anthrax-letter terrorist attacks. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and a master’s from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

Howard Milstein

Howard Milstein is Chairman, President and CEO of New York Private Bank & Trust, and chairs the Milstein family’s real estate companies. As an entrepreneur and innovator, he leads successful businesses across a range of sectors. Mr. Milstein chairs the boards of numerous philanthropies, including the New York Blood Center and the American Skin Association. As Chairman of the New York State Thruway Authority, he led the procurement effort for the new Tappan Zee Bridge, now almost complete, resulting in taxpayers' savings of $2 billion. President Barack Obama hailed the project as “a model for infrastructure projects nationwide.”

Mr. Milstein has been honored by a wide range of organizations for leadership in medical research, community and civic improvement, and homeland security. He was the recipient of the prestigious Marco Polo Award by the Chinese government and received the Insignia of Chevalier in France’s Legion of Honor. Mr. Milstein earned a B.A. in Economics, summa cum laude from Cornell University where he serves as Trustee of both the University and the Medical School: and was honored in 2008 as Cornell's Entrepreneur of the Year.  He earned Law and Business degrees at Harvard University in the JD/MBA Program (1977).

Marques Moore

Marques Moore is the Co-Owner and Chief Operations Officer at MMJ America, with responsibility for business development, personnel training, and compliance oversight.  MMJ America is a vertically integrated medical and recreational marijuana company, comprised of five dispensary locations and over 120,000 square feet of cultivation space spanning across two states. Prior to joining MMJ America, Mr. Moore served for seven years in the United States Army as a Combat Aviation Officer; he is a highly decorated Apache Helicopter pilot with experience in noncombat and combat operations in the US, South Korea, and in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Mr. Moore holds a bachelor’s degree with distinction from Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia. He resides in Denver and enjoys playing golf, traveling and having a good time with his family and friends.

Brahm Pillai

Brahm Pillai is a Director and Senior Product Manager at SkyBridge Capital. Based in the New York City flagship office, he is responsible for portfolio operations and trade execution, as well as daily operational management of SkyBridge fund of hedge fund and separate account products for retail and institutional clients. He also chairs the Leaders for Tomorrow, an organization dedicated to promoting leadership among students and graduates. In partnership with SkyBridge, Mr. Pillai recently launched the FinTech startup Alpha Quotient (AQ), a P2P crowdfunding platform focused on the higher education financing market. Prior to joining SkyBridge in 2010, Mr. Pillai was Vice President and Senior Product Manager at the Hedge Fund Management Group (HFMG) within Citigroup Alternative Investments LLC (CAI). Before joining CAI in October 2005, he was at Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP. Mr. Pillai earned a bachelor’s degree in Business & Media from the Gallatin School at New York University (2001), and an MBA from the Johnson School of Business at Cornell University (2014).

James Taranto

James Taranto edits The Wall Street Journal op-ed pages as the editorial features editor. Until January 2017 he wrote the popular "Best of the Web" column for WSJ.com. In August 2007 he was named a member of the Journal's editorial board. From 2000 through 2008, his column appeared at OpinionJournal.com, of which he was editor. He previously served as the Journal's deputy editorial features editor. He joined the Journal in 1996 as an assistant editorial features editor after spending five years as an editor at City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's quarterly of urban public policy. He has also worked for the Heritage Foundation, United Press International, Reason magazine and KNX News Radio in Los Angeles. Mr. Taranto is co-editor of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (Wall Street Journal Books, 2004). He attended California State University, Northridge.