Aspen Ideas Festival speakers will exceed 300 leaders for June event
Austin Colbert/The Aspen Times
The Aspen Institute’s signature summer festival returns to Aspen, in partnership with NBCUniversal News Group, with hundreds of speakers and thousands of attendees set to participate.
The Aspen Ideas Festival runs from June 24-June 30; passes to attend are available now.
More than 300 are ultimately set to attend, including leaders and innovators spanning policymaking, business, the arts, science, education, and more. A complete list of speakers confirmed to date is available here. Among the speakers confirmed to attend:
- John Mather, Senior Astrophysicist and Goddard Fellow; Senior Project Scientist, James Webb Space Telescope, NASA
- Eric Schmidt, co-founder, Schmidt Futures; former CEO, Google
- Angela Williams, CEO, United Way
- Ryan Gellert, CEO, Patagonia
- Eddie Glaude Jr., James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and Department Chair, African American Studies, Princeton University
- Imani Perry, Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University
- Chris Evert, former World No. 1 Tennis Player
- Pamela Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law; Co-director, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Stanford University
- HRH Ambassador Reema Bandar, Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States
- Rainn Wilson, Actor
- Sal Khan, Founder, Khan Academy
- Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation
- Justin Crow, US Representative (D), Colorado
- Tony Gonzales, Representative (R), Texas
- David Adjaye, Principal, Adjaye Associates; Designer, National Museum of African American History and Culture
- Jill Tiefanthaler, CEO, National Geographic Society
- Katie Couric, Journalist; Founder and Executive Producer, Katie Couric Media
- Jim Farley, President and CEO, Ford Motor Company
- James Ijames, Playwright; Director; Associate Professor of Theater, Villanova University; Co-Artistic Director, Wilma Theater
- Christine Emba, Opinion columnist and Editor for the Washington Post; Author
- Doug Ducey, Former Governor of Arizona
- Yohanan Plesner, President, Israel Democracy Institute
- Tristan Harris, Founder, Center for Humane Technology; Writer
- Jendayi Frazer, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
- Kate Bowler, Professor, American Religious History
- Martin Indyk, US Special Envoy for Israeli–Palestinian Negotiations; Former US Ambassador to Israel
- Simon Goodwin, Artistic Director, Shakespeare Theatre Company
- Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director, Anti-Defamation League
- Neal Katyal, Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of Law, Georgetown University; Partner, Hogan Lovells US LLP
- Oskar Eustice, Artistic Director, The Public Theater
- Baratunde Thurston, host of “America Outdoors” on PBS and the “How to Citizen” podcast
- Brian Greene, director of the Center of Theoretical Physics at Columbia
- Annie Murphy Paul, science writer and author of The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain
- Dan Savage, “Savage Love” columnist; writer, TV personality, and activist
- Lisa Damour, Clinical psychologist; Co-Host of the “Ask Lisa” podcast and author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers
- David Rubenstein, Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of The Carlyle Group
- Alexis Nikole Nelson, TikTok star “The Black Forager”
- John McWhorter, Linguist; Professor, English and comparative literature, Columbia
Now in its 19th year, the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival will explore seven substantive themes: We the People, The Edge of Intelligence, Age of Uncertainty: Imagining a New World Order, Life Well Lived, Driving the Economy Forward, Powering the Future, and The Mind.
Attendees will have opportunities to participate and engage with speakers in venues that make the most of the Rocky Mountain landscape and bring the outdoors in, through workshops, roundtables, field trips, and seminars, as well as more night-time programming taking place in-town.
The Aspen Ideas Festival and NBCUniversal News Group are now in the second year of a multi-platform partnership that includes an editorial and programming collaboration to jointly create engaging and informative festival content and even further extend the reach of the festival’s on-the-ground events, partners and sponsors to audiences across NBCUniversal News Group’s wide-reaching broadcast, cable, digital, audio and streaming platforms.
Top anchors and journalists from NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC and Noticias Telemundo participating in the festival this year include co-host of TODAY with Hoda & Jenna Jenna Bush Hager, anchor of NBC News NOW’s Top Story Tom Llamas, co-host of 3rd Hour of TODAY Sheinelle Jones, NBC News NOW anchor and co-host of Stay Tuned Savannah Sellers and CNBC’s Squawk Boxanchors Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Joining headline speakers and participating in the Aspen Ideas Festival will be fellows from all over the United States and around the world, selected for their work, accomplishments, and ability to transform ideas into action.
Presenting Underwriters for the 2023 Aspen Ideas Festival are Allstate, Amazon, Comcast NBCUniversal, Danone, Deloitte, Meta, Mount Sinai Health System, Walton Family Foundation, Wells Fargo, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Supporting Underwriters are Google, IBM, Prudential Financial, and Ralph Lauren.
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