Stephen Goldsmith is the Daniel Paul Professor of Government and the Director of the Innovations in American Government Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He is also Chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service. He previously served as Special Advisor to President Bush on faith-based and not for profit initiatives and as chief domestic policy advisor to the 2000 Bush for President campaign.

 

While serving two terms as Mayor of Indianapolis, Goldsmith earned a national reputation for innovations in government. As Mayor of America’s 12th largest city, he reduced government spending, cut the city’s bureaucracy, held the line on taxes, eliminated counter-productive regulations, and identified more than $400 million in savings. He reinvested the savings by putting more police officers on the street and implemented a $1.3 billion infrastructure improvement program called Building Better Neighborhoods. His neighborhood empowerment initiatives involved hundreds of community and faith based partnerships in the widely acclaimed Front Porch Alliance.

 

Prior to his two terms as Mayor, Goldsmith was Marion County District Attorney for 13 years.

Jessica Milano is Vice President and Director of ESG Research for Calvert Research and Management, an investment management firm based in Washington, DC that invests across global capital markets. She is responsible for overseeing the firm’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) research on global securities, which focuses on identifying issuers that create value for long-term investors in a positive manner that is sustainable to our environment and inclusive of all people and communities.  From 2012 to 2017, Jessica served in the Obama Administration, first at the Small Business Administration and then at the U.S. Treasury Department where she oversaw policy initiatives to connect more families, small businesses, and communities to safe and affordable credit.

 

As Deputy Assistant Secretary for Small Business, Community Development, and Housing Policy she managed three Treasury programs focused on access to capital; the Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF), the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI), and the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund.  Collectively, the SBLF and SSBCI provided $5.5 billion in capital to support nearly $30 billion in small business lending or investment nationally during her tenure.  Jessica also facilitated the historic award of $7 billion in New Markets Tax Credits by the CDFI Fund and signed on behalf of the Secretary more than $1.1 billion in bond guarantees under the newly created CDFI Bond Guarantee program, which provides long-term credit at below-market interest rates to economically underserved communities.  She also directed Treasury’s research on how advances in financial technology and the availability of data are changing the way consumers and small businesses access credit.

 

Jessica has extensive economic consulting and financial services experience. She previously held positions as Director of Research at Compass Lexecon, an economic consulting firm, and with Promontory Interfinancial Network, a financial services firm with a network of over 3,000 financial institutions. She also was a policy consultant at Civic Enterprises where she ran projects for a wide variety of clients including AARP, the Gates Foundation, OpportunityNation, and the White House Council for Community Solutions.

  

Jessica is the author of several policy reports for the Progressive Policy Institute on topics including economic opportunity, job creation, and investment and innovation and a member of the Board of Directors of Small Business Majority, a national small business advocacy organization.  She holds a MA in Applied Economics from The Johns Hopkins University and received her BSc in Government from the London School of Economics. She lives in Maryland with her husband and daughter.

Robert D. Putnam is a Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and public policy. He is the founder of The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, a program that brings together leading practitioners and thinkers for a multi-year discussion to develop broad-scale, actionable ideas to fortify the nation's civic connectedness.

 

Raised in a small town in the Midwest, Putnam graduated from Swarthmore College in 1963, attended Balliol College, Oxford, and received his PhD from Yale University in 1970. He is the recipient of honorary degrees from Swarthmore, Ohio State University, Stockholm University, and the University of Antwerp. Putnam has authored or co-authored ten books and more than 30 scholarly works, including Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000).

Timothy P. Shriver is the Chairman of Special Olympics. In that capacity, he serves 2.5 million Special Olympics athletes and their families in more than 165 countries. He has helped transform Special Olympics into a movement that focuses on acceptance, inclusion, and respect for individuals with intellectual disabilities in all corners of the globe.

 

In his eleven years at the helm of Special Olympics, Shriver launched the organization’s most ambitious growth agenda leading to the recruitment of over 1.5 million new athletes around the world. He has worked with the leaders of China to initiate a thriving program in their country and supported their efforts to bring the 2007 Special Olympics World Games to Shanghai. He has also worked with world leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Bertie Ahern, Rafiq Hariri, Thabo Mbeki, Julius Nyerere, Hosni Mubarak, and Shimon Peres to advance the growth of the Special Olympics mission and vision while challenging nations to adopt more supportive and just policies. He has spearheaded programs in developing or war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Bosnia Herzegovina, and Iraq.

 

Shriver has also created exciting new Special Olympics initiatives in athlete leadership, cross-cultural research, health, education, and family support. Among them, Special Olympics Healthy Athletes® has become the world’s largest public health screening and education program for people with intellectual disabilities, and Special Olympics Get Into It®, together with Unified Sports®, promotes inclusion and acceptance around the world. In addition, he has worked to garner more legislative attention and government support for issues of concern to the Special Olympics community, testifying before Congress on numerous occasions.

 

As part of his passion for promoting the gifts of the forgotten, Shriver has harnessed the power of Hollywood to share the stories of inspiration and change, co-producing DreamWorks Studios’ 1997 release, “Amistad,” and Disney Studios’ 2000 release, “The Loretta Claiborne Story.” He is Executive Producer of “The Ringer,” a Farrelly Brothers’ film, and “Front of the Class,” a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie. He has produced or co-produced shows for ABC, TNT, and NBCnetworks, and made broadcast appearances on The Today Show, CNN, MTV, and Nickelodeon’s World of Difference.

 

Before joining Special Olympics, Shriver was and remains a leading educator focusing on the social and emotional factors in learning. He has worked in substance abuse prevention, violence, dropout prevention, and teen pregnancy prevention. He created the New Haven Public Schools’ Social Development Project, now considered the leading school-based prevention effort in the U.S., and co-founded the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the leading research organization in the U.S. in the field of social and emotional learning. Shriver currently chairs CASEL.

 

Shriver earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University, a Master's degree in Religion and Religious Education from Catholic University, and a Doctorate in Education from the University of Connecticut. He is the recipient of numerous honors, including honorary degrees from Loyola University, New England College, and Albertus Magnus College; the Medal of the City of Athens, Greece; the Order de Manuel Amador Guerrera of the Republic of Panama; the 1995 Connecticut Citizen of the Year; the Surgeon General’s Medallion; and the 2007 Lions Humanitarian Award. He has authored articles in many leading publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Commonwealth magazine.

 

Shriver serves on the Boards of the Education Commission of the States’ Compact for Learning and Citizenship, WPP Group, and Neogenix Oncology, Inc. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

He and his wife, Linda Potter, reside in the Washington, D.C. area with their five children.