Speaker Name
Title
Speaker Name
Title
Speaker Name
Title
Tim Shriver
Chairman, Special Olympics International
Tim Shriver is the Chairman of Special Olympics International, and serves with over 6.7 million Special Olympics athletes and their families in 200 countries since 1996.
During his time as Chairman, Special Olympics has developed proven programming for all aspects of a Special Olympics athlete’s life: leadership, health, education, and family support. His commitment to inclusion is evident in the Special Olympics athletes serving on the international Board of Directors, hundreds of thousands of health professionals trained in adaptive health care protocols, partnerships with organizations like the World Health Organization, and Unified Champion Schools creating a Unified Generation in which all people are included and accepted.
Shriver drove the largest expansion of Special Olympics, growing the movement from one million athletes to over six million athletes and unified partners leading the inclusion revolution around the world. Shriver has harnessed the power of Hollywood to challenge unconscious bias and share stories of inspiration, 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, Front of the Class, a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie and The Peanut Butter Falcon released in 2019, and “As Far As They Can Run,” shortlisted for the 95th Academy Awards for Best Documentary Short Film in 2022.
In 2014, Shriver wrote the New York Times bestseller Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most, where he shares the life changing impact of people with intellectual disabilities and their capacity to inspire others to see the world in a more meaningful way. Before joining Special Olympics, he cofounded and currently chairs the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). He is a member of the editorial board of the Disability and Health Journal. Shriver is Founder of UNITE, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, President of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, UNESCO Chair for “Transforming the Lives of People with Disabilities, their Families and Communities, Through Physical Education, Sport, Recreation and Fitness” at the Institute of Technology, Tralee, Ireland.
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.
Americus Reed
Whitney M. Young, Jr. Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School
Americus Reed is a Father, Professor, Researcher, Entrepreneur, Speaker, Angel Investor, Fitness Geek, Musician and Student of life. Unlike other educators and motivational speakers, he brings all of his own identities to bear to create a right brain and left brain fusion of deep scholarly research and pop-culture “edutainment.” His limitless passion energizes his work as the world’s leading “identity theorist.” His deliverables are designed to inform, advise and collaborate with the world’s obsessively intellectually curious individuals and most cutting edge organizations. Americus’ calling is to help them diagnose, identify and develop their unique gifts inherent in their own identities, so that they may flourish and thrive in all aspects of their lives.
He is the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School. He brings 25 years of research, teaching and consulting experience in leveraging deep social psychological analysis on how the topic of “Identity” and the complexity of how a person, organization, brand, or service creates self-expression and how this interfaces with various domains of business (Accelerating Growth, Creating True Loyalty, Work Identity and Organizational Culture and Calling, Persuasion and consumer targeting, and Brand Crisis).
As a part-time entrepreneur and full-time fitness enthusiast, Professor Reed co-founded Persona Partners— (http://personapartnersltd.com/) a consulting firm that focuses on strategies to create “Identity Loyalty” He has consulted with such companies as Americhoice, The Philadelphia Eagles, The Department of Education, Vistakon (a Johnson and Johnson co.), NIKE, the American College of Physicians and others related to the marketing and development of products associated with health and fitness.
An avid musician and athlete, he is a tireless educator with infinite energy. Drawing upon the super powers of both right brain left brain, Americus relentlessly motivates, inspires and engages his audiences with humor, wit and creativity, but importantly infused with science, data and evidence.
He has authored more than 50 articles, book chapters and cases on the topic. He also has been featured on CNN, CNBC, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, New York Times, NPR, the Hidden Brain Podcast, and Knowledge at Wharton.
Reed hosts a podcast called Marketing Matters, which airs live on Wednesdays on Wharton’s Sirius XM Channel 132 Business Radio. He teaches customer analysis, branding, and consumer psychology to undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and executive students.
Kathleen deLaski
Founder & Board Chair of the Education Design Lab
Kathleen deLaski is the founder and board chair of the Education Design Lab, which works with colleges, states, and employers to design shorter, more targeted forms of higher education. The Lab has pioneered the "micro-pathway" model with community colleges and leads work across the ecosystem to help employers look beyond college degrees to validate skills. Kathleen serves as a senior advisor for Harvard's Project on the Workforce and teaches higher ed redesign at George Mason University. She serves on several boards, including Credential Engine and the advisory board of the Taubman Center for Cities and States at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She also manages the deLaski Family Foundation, a national grant-maker in education reform and education mobility. Kathleen has been named to Washingtonian Magazine’s list of top policy influencers each year from 2022 to 2025.
Earlier in her career, as an executive at Fortune 500 company Sallie Mae, Kathleen founded their award-winning corporate foundation. She was a television correspondent for ABC News, covering the White House and foreign affairs, a consumer product developer in the early days of AOL, and, in the Clinton administration, the first woman to serve as chief Pentagon spokesperson.
Jonathan Martin
Politics Bureau Chief and Senior Political Columnist, POLITICO
Jonathan Martin is the politics bureau chief and senior political columnist at POLITICO, where he writes a reported column. Prior to starting his column in 2022, Martin was the national political correspondent for The New York Times. Covering elections in all 50 states, he served as the publication’s top political reporter for nearly a decade. He is the co-author This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, which spent three weeks on The New York Times best-seller list and gave readers in-the-room access to the extraordinary events of the 2020 election and its aftermath. Martin regularly provides on-air political analysis for ABC, NBC and CBS. He and his wife, Betsy, live in Washington and New Orleans.