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​Author, Talk Show Host, and Creator of BackPax

​Former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California

Alan Bersin serves as senior advisor at the global law firm of Covington & Burling; as an inaugural senior fellow in the Homeland Security Project at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government; as a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars; and as inaugural North America fellow at the Canada Institute and the Mexico Institute (Wilson Center). He is executive chairman of Altana Trade, an enterprise devoted to providing machine learning and artificial intelligence-based insights on border management and global trade; and chairman of BorderWorks Group, a consulting firm specializing in matters of border security and management, including infrastructure projects on U.S. land borders with Canada and Mexico. Between 2012 and 2017, Bersin served (at various times) as assistant secretary for policy and international affairs and chief diplomatic officer in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In those capacities, he led DHS’s transnational engagement, served as the principal advisor to the Secretary on international affairs, and oversaw strategic planning and policy formulation functions. Between 2012 and 2015, Bersin served as vice president of INTERPOL for the Americas Region and as a member of the INTERPOL Executive Committee. He currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of the INTERPOL Foundation based in Geneva. Previously, Bersin served as commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2010 to 2011, a position from which he oversaw the operations of CBP’s 58,000-employee work force and managed an operating budget of more than $12 billion. Bersin guided CBP’s efforts to secure the nation’s borders and mitigate threats while expediting lawful trade and travel. In 2009, Bersin served as assistant secretary and special representative for border affairs, acting as lead representative for DHS on border affairs and strategy regarding security, immigration, narcotics, and trade matters as well as coordinating the department’s security initiatives along U.S. borders. Prior to his DHS experience, President Bill Clinton appointed, and the U.S. Senate confirmed, Bersin to serve in the Department of Justice as U.S. attorney for the southern district of California a position he held for nearly five years. During this time, he was the attorney general’s southwest border representative (the so-called border czar) responsible for coordinating federal law enforcement on the border from south Texas to southern California. Bersin has held numerous distinguished state and local government positions, including serving as California's secretary of education, superintendent of public education in San Diego, and chairman of the San Diego Airport Authority. Before entering public service, Bersin was a senior partner in the law firm of Munger Tolles & Olson. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He earned his AB in Government from Harvard College and attended Balliol College at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1974, he received his JD from the Yale Law School. Bersin is a current member of the Bars of California, Alaska, and District of Columbia.

Topics: ​From Colombia to the Arctic and From Bermuda to Hawaii; Beyond 9/11 Homeland Security in the Twenty-First Century; Border Lines and Global Flows Toward A Revised Approach to Countering Transnational Crime; Going Global The Transnational Nature of Contemporary Homeland Security

​Composer, Conductor, Lecturer

​Theresa Brown is a registered nurse, nursing instructor, and author. Her New York Times bestseller The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives (2015), portrays one real shift worked by a hospital nurse. It shows a day-in-the-life of an RN, but also all the life in one day in the hospital. Brown is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, where she writes about nursing and health care. Her Opinion series, “Bedside,” examined health care from a nurse’s point of view. One of her columns for the New York Times “Well” blog earned Brown an invitation to the White House, where President Obama quoted her in defense of the Affordable Care Act. Brown has written for CNN.com, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Slate.com, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and has a quarterly column in The American Journal of Nursing called “What I’m Reading,” that discusses books of interest to nurses. She has been interviewed on the NPR program “Fresh Air” and has appeared on “Hardball,” “20/20” and NPR’s Talk of the Nation. She speaks nationally on topics relating to nursing, health care and end of life. Her first book, Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between (2010), is used as a text-book at schools of nursing around the country. Brown earned a PhD in English from the University of Chicago and taught English for three years at Tufts University before returning to school to become a nurse.

​Legal Business Developer; Expert on Social Media, Technological Innovation, and Diversity and Inclusion

Sameena Kluck currently serves as vice president for business development for Paladin, a women-owned startup devoted to addressing the justice gap through technology. Paladin increase access to justice by providing a digital platform that matches those in need of legal services with those who have the skills to help and by helping legal teams run more efficient pro bono programs to, in turn, do more work. In her work, Kluck focuses on relationships with Fortune 500 corporate legal teams and AmLaw 200 ranked law firms. She has a long career in sales in the legal industry: For 16 years prior to this, Kluck was an account executive at Thomas Reuters, serving as client representative, client manager, and strategic account executive. In this role, she consulted with AmLaw 100 ranked global on change management with a focus on technological innovation, diverse team building, and social media. Kluck previously practiced civil litigation defense for Behr, McCarter & Potter and clerked as a staff attorney assigned to the Honorable James B. Loken of the Eighth Circuit. In addition to her knowledge of the legal field and sales, Kluck is engaged with social media advocacy. She speaks often about social media, career development, and personal branding. Kluck earned her BA from Maryville University and her JD from Washington University School of Law.

Topics: ​Personal branding and authenticity; social media; diversity and inclusion in business; emerging technologies; volunteerism; access to justice

Advocate for human rights and social justice; foundation executive

​​Cathy Middlecamp’s work lies at the intersection of science, people, and the planet. She is professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she served as director for Sustainability Education and Research and professor in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Although her career has been in academia, she has worn many hats other than that of a faculty member, most notably as director of the Chemistry Learning Center. Middlecamp served as editor-in-chief of Chemistry in Context, a project of the American Chemical Society, and was the lead author on topics of air quality, stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain, plastics, nuclear energy, and sustainability. She served for two decades as a senior associate with Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities (SENCER), a national curriculum reform project. In 2019, she was as a Fulbright Specialist in chemistry education at the Academic Arab College in Israel. Middlecamp is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS), inaugural class, and holds multiple national ACS awards: The 2019 Pimentel Award in Chemical Education, the 2015 Award for Encouraging Women in Careers in the Chemical Sciences, and the 2006 Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students in Careers in the Chemical Sciences. She is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Association for Women in Science.

Topics: Sustainability: What, How and Why Now?; Radioactivity, People and the Planet; Uranium and U; Environmental Justice; Teaching and Learning in Real-world Contexts; The Universe is Made up of Stories, Not of Atoms

​​Christian Picciolini is a former member of the white-power movement and the founder and executive director of the Free Radicals Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit that aids individuals, families, and communities exit violence-based extremism through a non-aggressive, community-led approach of individual resilience-building, reconnection, cross-cultural immersion, and making amends. After leaving the hate movement he helped create during the 1980s and 90s, he began the painstaking process of making amends and rebuilding his life. Picciolini went on to earn a degree in international relations from DePaul University and launched Goldmill Group, a counter-extremism consulting and digital media firm. In 2016, he won an Emmy Award for producing an anti-hate advertising campaign aimed at helping people disengage from extremism. Picciolini chronicles his involvement and exit from the early American white-supremacist skinhead movement in his memoir, White American Youth, and is the featured subject in season 3 of WBEZ’s 'Motive' podcast. He showcases his disengagement work in a second book, Breaking Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism, published in 2020 by Hachette Books, as well as the MSNBC documentary series of the same name, for which he serves as host and co-producer. Picciolini has shared his expertise with the U.S. Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other community and government organizations. His editorals have appeared in the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, among others. Picciolini was the Montaigne Medial Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in 2020 and received the Siri Singh Sahib Peace Award and the Raven Foundation Pluralism Award in 2018.

Topics: extremism, white nationalism, white supremacy, radicalization, deradicalization, far-right groups

​Cultural Anthropologist; Documentary Filmmaker; Expert in African diaspora

​Expert in Global Economics, Journalism, and American Judaism

​Christine Todd Whitman currently serves as president of The Whitman Strategy Group, a consulting firm that helps businesses, organizations, and governments find innovative solutions to environmental challenges. During the 2020 election cycle, she served as chair of Republicans and Independents for Biden and as an advisory board member for the Voter Protection Project. Previously, Whitman served in the cabinet of President George W. Bush as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (2001–2003) and was governor of the State of New Jersey (1994–2001), notably the first woman to serve in that role. As governor, Whitman earned praise for her commitment to preserve a record amount of New Jersey land as permanent green space and having instituted the most comprehensive beach monitoring system in the nation. As EPA administrator, she promoted common-sense environmental improvements. Whitman is the author of the New York Times best seller book It’s My Party Too, which was published in 2005. She received the Panetta Institute’s Jefferson-Lincoln Award for her dedication to the key principles of the American democracy and the ideals of the nation in 2018 and the Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service in 2017. Whitman is on the advisory boards of the Corporate Eco Forum and The Northeast Maglev and serves as chair of the American Security Project and vice-chair of the Trustees of the Eisenhower Fellowships. She is co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative Leadership Council, the Aspen Institute K12 Climate Action Task Force, and the National Institute for Civil Discourse. Among other affiliations, Whitman is a member of advisory boards of the Women’s Coalition for Common Sense, the Presidential Climate Action Project, the Rick Herema Foundation, World War Zero, the Earth Day Network, and the ERA Coalition. She was co-chair of the Commission on the Rule of Law and Democracy at the Brennan Center at New York University.

Topics: Is there still a Republican Party?; How far should we go to deal with climate change?; Women in Leadership