Bill T. Jones is one of the most innovative dancers, directors, and choreographers of our time. His performances are eloquent expressions of movement and thoughtful thematic meditations. Since founding a dance company with his late partner Arnie Zane in 1982, Jones has used dance to explore contemporary ideas about identity, race, and sexuality. He often focuses on themes of grief and death, especially in his acclaimed 1994 performance “Still/Here,” which included the participation of terminally ill men and women. Jones has received a MacArthur Fellowship, two Tony Awards, the National Medal for the Arts, and many other honors.
Winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Chisholm was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first black woman elected to Congress, and in 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major party's nomination for President of the United States.
Levchenko is a former Russian KGB major who defected to the United States in 1979. He is the highest ranking KGB officer to defect to the West.
Albee was an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story, The Sandbox, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and A Delicate Balance. Three of his plays won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and two of his other works won the Tony Award for Best Play.
A winner of the Nobel Prize for physics in 1988, Lederman was a lead scientist on the establishment of the super-conducting super collider.
A human rights activist, Jehan is the widow of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. She was First Lady of Egypt from 1970 until Sadat's assassination in 1981.
McCullough was an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
An American writer, Oates has published over 40 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, garnering her a National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal.
One of the finest classical dancers of our time, d’Amboise is the founder of the National Dance Institute and a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet.
A teacher and author, McCourt won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Angela's Ashes in 1997.
A world-renowned marine geologist and marine physicist, Ballard discovered the Titanic in 1985.
Johanson is a paleoanthropologist best known for discovering the 3.2 million-year-old skeleton named Lucy.
One of Latin America’s most distinguished novelists, Fuentes became legendary for his novel Old Gringo, the first by a Mexican author to become a best-seller in the United States.
A senior fellow at the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Institute for International Studies at Brown University, Khrushchev has lectured in the fields of Russian economic and political reforms.
Son of ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, Jean-Michel is an explorer, environmentalist, educator, film producer, and founder and president of Ocean Futures Society.
Whitman has spent a distinguished career in public service, including time as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the 50th Governor of the State of New Jersey.
An eloquent, energetic speaker who makes complex scientific ideas accessible to a more general public, Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University.
An internationally acclaimed author of more than a dozen books, Bryson is considered a humorist and a general expert on language.
An award-winning news journalist, Simpson is best known for her work as anchor for ABC’s World News Tonight Sunday.
Gioia is an award-winning poet, critic, and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.
A National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Davis travels the globe to live alongside indigenous people, and document their cultural practices in books, photographs, and film.
Dr. Porco is the head of the imaging team for the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and winner of the Carl Sagan Award for Science Education.
A leading Chinese-American memoirist and literary novelist, Da Chen is the author of best-selling memoirs Colors of the Mountain and Sounds of the River.
Suarez is a PBS senior correspondent for NewsHour and former host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation.
Sandlin is a rocket scientist and mechanical engineer. He’s traveled the world in pursuit of interesting experiments and has received accolades for his popular science YouTube channel Smarter Every Day.
West is an award-winning playwright and the author of numerous plays.
Bergen is an American journalist, author, documentary producer, professor, think tank executive, and national security analyst.
One of America’s leading experts on innovation. He served as a senior advisor for innovation to the Secretary of State and is a distinguished visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Ross is the author of the book The Industries of the Future.
Junot Díaz is a best-selling author, professor of writing at MIT, and fiction editor at Boston Review. In 2008, he received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
Dr. Temple Grandin is an American professor of animal science at Colorado State University. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to share insights from her personal experience with the public.
Steven Johnson is the author of eleven books, including Farsighted, Wonderland, Where Good Ideas Come From, and The Ghost Map. He is also the host of the PBS series How We Got To Now and the podcast American Innovations.
Ming Tsai is an award-winning chef, restauranteur, author, and television host best known for his restaurants Blue Ginger and Blue Dragon, and his public television cooking show Simply Ming.
Bruder is a journalist who writes about subcultures for publications like The New York Times, WIRED, and Harper's Magazine. Bruder is perhaps best known for the book Nomadland.
Ndaba is the grandson of Nelson Mandela and the founder of the Mandela Institute for Humanity. His most recent book is Going to the Mountain: Life Lessons from My Grandfather, Nelson Mandela.