Sphere Summit I: Speaker Bios

Mustafa Akyol is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, where he focuses on the intersection of public policy, Islam, and modernity. He has been a frequent opinion writer for the New York Times since 2013. Akyol is the author of Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance; Why, As A Muslim, I Defend Liberty; The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims; and Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty.

Thomas Berry is a research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and editor‐​in‐​chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation and clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.Berry’s areas of interests include the separation of powers, executive branch appointments, and First Amendment freedom of speech. Berry’s academic work has appeared in the New York University Journal of Law and Liberty, Washington and Lee Law Review Online, and Federalist Society Review.

Romina Boccia is director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, where she specializes in federal spending, budget process, economic implications of rising debt, and Social Security and Medicare reform. Boccia was previously director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget at the Heritage Foundation, where she was the principal author of the organization’s flagship budget plan: Blueprint for Balance. She also contributed chapters to the book A Fiscal Cliff: New Perspectives on the U.S. Federal Debt Crisis and the peer‐​reviewed publication Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics. Boccia was most recently managing director at Dialog, an invite‐​‐​only, elite leadership network cofounded by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman that curated off‐​‐​the‐​‐​record conversations and transformative retreats for 1,000 global leaders in political, business, tech, military, creative, and academic disciplines from over 50 countries.

Michael Cannon is the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies. Cannon is “an influential healthcare wonk” (Washington Post), “ObamaCare’s single most relentless antagonist” (New Republic), “ObamaCare’s fiercest critic” (The Week), “the intellectual father” of King v. Burwell (Modern Healthcare), and “the most famous libertarian health care scholar” (Washington Examiner). Washingtonian magazine named Cannon one of Washington, DC’s “Most Influential People” in both 2021 and 2022. Cannon has appeared on ABC, Al Jazeera, BBC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, CSPAN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and other broadcast media. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal; the New York Times; USA Today; the Washington Post; the Los Angeles Times; the New York Post; the Chicago Tribune; the Chicago Sun Times; the San Francisco Chronicle; SCOTUSBlog; Huffington Post; Forum for Health Economics and Policy; JAMA Internal Medicine; Health Matrix: Journal of LawMedicine; Harvard Health Policy Review; the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics; the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law; and Quinnipiac Health Law Journal.

Jonathan Cohn, senior national correspondent at HuffPost, writes about politics and policy with a focus on social welfare. He is also the author of Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis—and the People Who Pay the Price (HarperCollins, 2007) and The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage (St. Martin’s, 2021). Cohn previously worked at the New Republic and American Prospect and has written for The Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, and Self, among other publications. His journalism has won awards from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the Association of Health Care Journalists, World Hunger Year, and the National Women’s Political Caucus. Cohn is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance as well as a lecturer at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

Will Duffield is a policy analyst in the Cato Institute’s Center for Representative Government, where he studies speech and internet governance. His research focuses on the web of government regulation and private rules that govern Americans’ speech online. Duffield recently contributed a chapter on internet decentralization to Libertarianism.org’s Visions of Liberty, and his work has appeared at the Cato Journal, Volteface, the Legatum Institute, and the Adam Smith Institute. Prior to becoming a policy analyst, he worked at Cato as a research assistant to John Samples.

Sharif El‐​Mekki is the director of the Center for Black Educator Development (CBED). Under the umbrella of the Fellowship‐ Black Male Educators for Social Justice, a group El‐​Mekki helped create in 2014 to inspire new generations of black men to work for social justice through teaching, CBED will expand on effortsto recruit and maintain black educators both locally and nationally. El‐​Mekki served as the principal of Mastery Charter School‐​Shoemaker in Philadelphia beginning in 2008. Under his leadership, Mastery Shoemaker received the 2016 bronze medal on the U.S. News & World Report high school rankings, the 2015Schools That Can School award, and two Effective Practice Incentive Community awards (silver, 2011; gold, 2009). In addition, Mastery Shoemaker ranked as the seventh‐​best high school for black student achievement in PennCAN’s Top 10 Schools Report Card. El‐​Mekki is the second prize winner of TheBestSchools.org’s 2017 Escalante‐​Gradillas Prize for Best in Education. El‐​Mekki also served as a 2013 U.S. Department of Education principal ambassador fellow and America Achieves fellow.

Chelsea Follett is the managing editor of Human​Progress​.org, a project of the Cato Institute that seeks to educate the public on the global improvements in well‐​being by providing free empirical data on long‐​term developments. Her writing has been published in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, Forbes, The Hill, Business Insider, National Review, the Washington Examiner, and Global Policy Journal. She was named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 list for 2018 in the category of Law and Policy.

Annelies Goger is an economic geographer focused on developing innovative policy solutions to address rising inequality and increase access to economic opportunity. Goger’s recent work investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the hospitality industry in the United States, how to fix the unemployment insurance safety net, and how to increase access to quality jobs and investments in talent to foster ongoing learning and innovation. She is an expert in U.S. workforce development policy, global supply chains, and inclusive economic development. Goger’s work has been prominently featured on CNN, on NPR, in Washington Monthly, in The Hill, and on several podcasts and local news outlets.

Kim Holder is the director of the University of West Georgia’s (UWG) Center for Economic Education and Financial Literacy and senior lecturer of economics in the Richards College of Business. She’s an alumna of UWG and Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Holder’s passion for her students is notable both inside and outside of the classroom. Her work on campus has been recognized with the UWG Student Government Association’s Faculty Member of the Year Award (2014), the UWG Alumni Association’s J. Owen Moore Faculty Award (2016), and the UWG Athletic Foundation’s Faculty Member of the Year Westpy Award (2016), which was created in recognition of her service. She is also the recipient of the Richards College of Business’s Excellence in Teaching (2014), Service (2015), and Research (2016) awards, along with multiple faculty‐​sponsored undergraduate research awards for mentoring undergraduate research students. Most recently, Holder earned the 2017 UWG Employee of the Year Award, the university’s highest honor for faculty and staff, and her work was featured in Georgia Trend magazine.

Jennifer Huddleston is a technology policy research fellow at the Cato Institute. Her research focuses on the intersection of emerging technology and law with a particular interest in the interactions between technology and the administrative state. Huddleston’s work covers topics including judicial deference, liability protection for internet platforms, autonomous vehicles and other disruptive transportation technologies, the regulation of data privacy, and the benefits of technology and innovation. Her work has appeared in USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Sacramento Bee, the Washington Times, Real Clear Policy, and U.S. News and World Report.

Sahar Khan is a defense and foreign policy research fellow at the Cato Institute. Her research interests include state‐ sponsored militancy/​terrorism, counterterrorism policies, anti‐​terrorism legal regimes, and private military and security contractors. Khan focuses on U.S. foreign policy in South Asia and Africa. She is also the editor at Inkstick Media.

Emily Kirkpatrick is an experienced senior executive with deep expertise in organizational strategy, programmatic innovation, external communications, and fundraising in the education and nonprofit space. A transformative leader, Kirkpatrick has dedicated her career to public service and civic engagement, seeking to increase national literacy and social mobility, amplify educator voices, and advance the inclusion and empowerment of women. Kirkpatrick assumed her position as the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English in November 2015. In this role, she oversees the professional home for English language arts teachers from pre‑K through university and amplifies the voices of educators through connection, collaborations, and a shared mission to improve the teaching and learning of English.

Nicol Turner Lee is a senior fellow in governance studies and the director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution and serves as coeditor‐​in‐​chief of TechTank. Turner Lee researches public policy designed to enable equitable access to technology across the United States and to harness its power to create change in communities across the world. Her work also explores global and domestic broadband deployment and internet governance issues. She is an expert on the intersection of race, wealth, and technology within the context of civic engagement, criminal justice, and economic development. Turner Lee previously served as vice president and chief research and policy officer at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, a national non‐​for‐​profit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in mass media, telecommunications, and broadband industries. 

Tabia Lee is a founding member of Free Black Thought, and has contributed to the design, implementation, and evaluation of numerous educational and professional development programs. Her commitment to teacher education and pedagogical design is grounded in her experience as a lifelong educator and a National Board– certified English, civics, and social studies teacher in urban American public middle schools. Lee prepares K–12 and higher education faculty to work with diverse students by focusing on better understanding the pedagogical and curricular implications of ideology in practice.

Robert Litan is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he has previously been a senior fellow on staff and vice president and director of economic studies. His current research focuses on federal regulation, entrepreneurship, and a broad range of economic policy subjects. Litan is also a practicing attorney, specializing in complex antitrust and business litigation as a shareholder of Berger Montague, based in Philadelphia. He previously was a partner at Korein Tillery and practiced law with two Washington, DC, law firms. He served during the first term of the Clinton administration as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, where he oversaw civil nonmerger litigation and the department’s positions on regulatory matters, primarily in telecommunications.

John G. Malcolm oversees the Heritage Foundation’s work to increase understanding of the Constitution and the rule of law as vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government, director of the think tank’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, and the Ed Gilbertson and Sherry Lindberg Gilbertson Senior Legal Fellow. Malcolm brings a wealth of legal expertise and experience in both the public and private sectors. Before being named director of the Meese Center in July 2013, Malcolm spearheaded the center’s rule of law programs. His research and writing as a senior legal fellow focused on criminal law, immigration, national security, religious liberty, and intellectual property.

Irshad Manji is a globally acclaimed educator, author, and speaker who founded the Moral Courage Network in 2021. Manji also lectures with Oxford University’s Initiative for Global Ethics and Human Rights. She previously served as a professor of leadership at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. The recipient of Oprah’s “Chutzpah Award” for boldness, Manji is also the New York Times bestselling author of two books about the need for reform within her faith of Islam. Her latest book is Don’t Label Me: How to Do Diversity without Inflaming the Culture Wars. Manji spearheaded the Emmy‐​nominated PBS documentary Faith without Fear and launched Moral Courage TV, a YouTube channel featuring individuals who stand up when others want them to sit down.

Alex Nowrasteh is the vice president for economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute. His publications have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and most other major publications in the United States. Nowrasteh regularly appears on Fox News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, NPR, and numerous television and radio stations. His peer‐​reviewed academic publications have appeared in the World Bank Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Public Choice, Kyklos, and others. He has also contributed numerous book chapters to various edited volumes. Nowrasteh is the coauthor (with Benjamin Powell) of the book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which is the first book on how economic institutions in receiving countries adjust to immigration.

Tom G. Palmer is the George M. Yeager Chair for Advancing Liberty and executive vice president for international programs at the Atlas Network. He is responsible for establishing operating programs in 14 languages and managing programs for a worldwide network of think tanks. Palmer is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and director of Cato University. Before joining Cato, Palmer was an H. B. Earhart Fellow at Hertford College at Oxford University and a vice president of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. He frequently lectures in North America, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, India, Asia, and the Middle East on political science, public choice, civil society, and the moral, legal, and historical foundations of individual rights.

Shannon Pugh is the immediate past president of the National Council for the Social Studies as well as the director of community and school programming for Anne Arundel County Public Schools. She supervises Title I community schools and other programs and grants designed to support schools with high concentrations of poverty. Prior to assuming her current position, Pugh was the manager of academics and strategic initiatives and a secondary social studies specialist in the district. An educator for 28 years, she was one of the first three social studies teachers in Texas to earn National Board Certification. Pugh is an adjunct faculty member at McDaniel College, where she teaches courses in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. She is a two‐​term member of the National Council for the Social Studies Board of Directors and serves on the Maryland Council for the Social Studies Board of Directors.

Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. He has written eight books and many articles on public policy, culture, and government. Rauch is a contributing editor of The Atlantic and has appeared as a guest on many television and radio programs. His latest book is The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth. Rauch is the recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His additional honors include the 2010 National Headliner Award, one of the magazine industry’s most venerable prizes. In 2011, he won the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association prize for excellence in opinion writing. In 1996, he was awarded the Premio Napoli alla Stampa Estera for his coverage in The Economist of the European Parliament. Rauch was born and raised in Phoenix and graduated in 1982 from Yale University.

Molly Reynolds is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. She studies Congress, with an emphasis on how congressional rules and procedure affect domestic policy outcomes. She is the author of the book Exceptions to the Rule: The Politics of Filibuster Limitations in the U.S. Senate, which explores creation, use, and consequences of the budget reconciliation process and other procedures that prevent filibusters in the U.S. Senate. Current research projects include work on oversight in the House of Representatives, congressional reform, and the congressional budget process. She also supervises the maintenance of Vital Statistics on Congress, Brookings’slong-running resource on the first branch of government.

David Rivkin is a member of BakerHostetler’s litigation, international, and environmental teams and serves as the firm’s appellate and major motions team co‐​leader. He has extensive experience in constitutional, administrative, and international law litigation and has been involved in numerous high‐​profile cases. With his prior experience in the government sector, Rivkin draws on a wealth of knowledge when providing compliance advice to companies and handling enforcement proceedings before government agencies on issues arising out of multilateral and unilateral sanctions, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, anti‐​boycott issues, bankruptcy and financial fraud matters, and environmental and energy issues. Rivkin has developed and implemented legislative, regulatory, and litigation initiatives for two presidential administrations. Over the years, he has published hundreds of articles, op‐​eds, book reviews, and book chapters on a variety of international, legal, constitutional, defense, arms control, foreign policy, environmental, and energy issues for various newspapers and magazines, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times, and has been a frequent commentator and guest on TV andradio shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, NPR, and PBS.

Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a nationally syndicated columnist. Her primary research interests include the U.S. economy, the federal budget, taxation, tax competition, and cronyism. Her popular weekly columns address economic issues ranging from lessons on creating sustainable economic growth to the implications of government tax and fiscal policies. She has testified numerous times in front of Congress on the effects of fiscal stimulus, debt and deficits, and regulation on the economy.

Jay Schweikert is a research fellow with the Cato Institute’s Project on Criminal Justice. His research and advocacy focuses on accountability for prosecutors and law enforcement, plea bargaining, Sixth Amendment trial rights, and the provision and structuring of indigent defense. Before joining Cato, Schweikert spent four years doing civil and criminal litigation at Williams & Connolly LLP. He holds a JD from Harvard Law School, where he was an articles editor for the Harvard Law Review and chaired the Harvard Federalist Society’s student colloquium program. Following law school, Schweikert clerked for Judge Diane Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. He holds a BA in political science and economics from Yale University.

Melanie W. Sisson is a fellow in the foreign policy program at Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution, where she researches the use of the armed forces in international politics, U.S. national security strategy, and military applications of emerging technologies. Sisson’s work focuses on U.S. Department of Defense integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities into warfighting and enterprise operations. She also serves on the advisory council of the North Rhine‐​Westphalian Academy for International Affairs based in Bonn, Germany, and as a consultant to STR, a national security AI firm based in Boston.

Two days after Lenore Skenazy wrote the column “Why I Let My 9‑Year‐​Old Ride the Subway Alone” she appeared on the Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR, defending herself. She got the nickname “America’s Worst Mom.” She went on to write Free‐​Range Kids, the book that became a movement. Now she is president and cofounder with professors Jonathan Haidt and Peter Gray of the nonprofit Let Grow, which promotes childhood independence. She has lectured everywhere from DreamWorks to Microsoft to the Bulgarian Happiness Festival. (for real!) She lives in New York City with her husband and beloved computer. She previously wrote for Mad Magazine and Cracked. (Note: She did not “write for crack.”)

Erec Smith is a visiting scholar of politics and society for the Cato Institute and a professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania. Although he has eclectic scholarly interests, his primary work focuses on the rhetorics of anti‐​racist activism, theory, and pedagogy as well as the role of rhetoric in a free, pluralistic, and civil society. He is the cofounder and coeditor of Free Black Thought, a website dedicated to highlighting viewpoint diversity within the black intelligentsia. Smith is a senior fellow for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism and an adviser for Counterweight, an organization that advocates for classical liberal concepts of social justice. He is the author of A Critique of Anti‐​racism in Rhetoric and Composition: The Semblance of Empowerment. His op‐​eds on the manifestations of anti‐​racism in contemporary America can be found in Newsweek, Areo Magazine, Penn Live, Heterodox: The Blog, and the York Daily Record.

Nadine Strossen is the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law at New York Law School. She has written, taught, and advocated extensively in the areas of constitutional law and civil liberties, including through frequent media interviews. She is the author of Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship and Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights. From 1991 through 2008, she served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the first woman to head the nation’s largest and oldest civil liberties organization. Strossen is a member of the ACLU’s National Advisory Council as well as the advisory boards of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and Heterodox Academy. In 2017, the American Bar Association presented Strossen with the prestigious Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award. Strossen was named one of America’s “100 Most Influential Lawyers” by the National Law Journal.

Adam Thierer is the senior fellow for Technology & Innovation at R Street and a former senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University from 2010 to 2022. He specializes in innovation, entrepreneurialism, internet, and free‐​speech issues, with a particular focus on the public policy concerns surrounding emerging technologies. Thierer serves on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Artificial Intelligence Commission on Competitiveness, Inclusion, and Innovation. He is also a member of the Federalist Society’s Regulatory Transparency Project. Thierer has authored and edited several books, including his foundational book on the freedom to innovate, Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom.

Jessica M. Vaughan is director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC–based research institute that examines the impact of immigration on American society and educates policymakers and opinion leaders on immigration issues. She has been with the center since 1992, and her area of expertise is immigration policy and operations, covering topics such as visa programs, immigration benefits, and immigration enforcement. Vaughan is an expert on immigration enforcement and public safety, having directed a Department of Justice–funded project on the use of immigration law enforcement in transnational gang suppression. In addition, she is an instructor for senior law enforcement officer training seminars at Northwestern University’s Center for Public Safety in Illinois. Prior to joining the Center for Immigration Studies, Vaughan was a foreign service officer with the State Department, where she served in Belgium and Trinidad and Tobago. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, National Review, Boston Globe, The Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, National Interest, Arizona Republic, and other publications. She has testified before Congress dozens of times on immigration issues. She is frequently cited in news media reports on immigration and has appeared on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and PBS NewsHour.

Stan Veuger is a senior fellow in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is also the editor of AEI Economic Perspectives and a fellow at the IE School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs and at Tilburg University. He was a visiting lecturer of economics at Harvard University in fall 2021 and a Campbell Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution in May 2022. Veuger’s research has been published in leading academic and professional journals, including the Journal of Monetary Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economics and Statistics. He is the editor, with Michael R. Strain, of Economic Freedom and Human Flourishing: Perspectives from Political Philosophy (AEI Press, 2016) and Preserving Links in the Pandemic: Policies to Maintain Worker‐​Firm Attachment in the OECD (AEI Press, 2023).

Darrell M. West is a senior fellow in governance studies in the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution and a coeditor‐​in‐​chief of TechTank. West is the former vice president and director of the Governance Studies program. His current research focuses on artificial intelligence, robotics, and the future of work. West is also director of the John Hazen White Global Manufacturing Initiative at Brookings. Prior to Brookings, he was the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions at Brown University. His books include Power Politics: Trump and the Assault on American Democracy, Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence (with coauthor John R. Allen), Divided Politics, Divided Nation, The Future of Work: Robots, AI, and Automation, Megachange: Economic Disruption, Political Upheaval, and Social Strife in the 21st Century, Going Mobile: How Wireless Technology Is Reshaping Our Lives, Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust, Digital Schools: How Technology Can Transform Education, among others. His Brain Gain book won the ForeWord Review Book of the Year for political science, and his Billionaires book won the ForeWord Book of the Year Silver Award for political science.

Dakota L. Wood, who served America for two decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, is the senior research fellow for defense programs at the Heritage Foundation. Wood’s research and writing focus on programs, capabilities, operational concepts, and strategies of the Department of Defense and military services to assess their utility in ensuring the United States can protect and promote its critical national security interests. Wood originated and serves as the editor for Heritage’s Index of U.S. Military Strength, the only annual assessment available to the public of the status of America’s military and its ability to carry out its core functions. Wood retired from the Marine Corps as a lieutenant colonel in 2005. He participated in the planning and execution of operations around the world, including Operation Enduring Freedom, when he served as a lead operational/​logistics planner for U.S. Central Command during the initial operational response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and then as a by‐​name request in late 2002 to augment and lead operational analysis and logistics planning and execution efforts in support of Marine Corps combat forces for the invasion phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom to depose Saddam Hussein.