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2026-2027 Speakers
Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau
23rd Prime Minister of Canada (2015–2025)
Justin Trudeau’s tenure as Canada's 23rd Prime Minister coincided with a period of unprecedented global challenge and change.
After leading the third-place Liberal Party of Canada to a historic majority government in 2015, Trudeau set about delivering an ambitious agenda that included appointing Canada’s first gender-balanced cabinet, lifting more than 435,000 children out of poverty through the Canada Child Benefit, launching a national $10-a-day childcare program, advancing Indigenous Reconciliation, and taking robust action to fight climate change, including through policies that attracted investment in clean economic growth and jobs....(See Full Bio)
Annie Leibovitz
Renowned American Portrait Photographer
Annie Leibovitz became a working photographer while she was still a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. She began taking pictures in the summer of 1968 and two years later one of her photographs was on the cover of Rolling Stone, which was then a groundbreaking counterculture magazine based in San Francisco. She was Rolling Stone’s chief photographer by 1973. By 1983, when she left Rolling Stone to join Vanity Fair and then Vogue, her photographs had become widely recognizable and distinctive interpretations of the contemporary landscape.​
Leibovitz was influenced early on by the personal style of photographic reportage developed by Robert Frank...(See Full Bio).
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Jack Smith
Former Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice, International War Crimes Prosecutor, and Veteran Federal Investigator
Jack Smith has served as a local, national, and international prosecutor for nearly 30 years.
Mr. Smith most recently served as Special Counsel at the United States Department of Justice, wherein he was charged to investigate whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2021; and the possible unlawful possession of highly classified documents, as well as possible acts of obstruction of justice in the Southern District of Florida...(See Full Bio).
Prime Minister Sanna Marin
46th Prime Minister & Head of Government of Finland (2019-2023)
Sanna Marin is the Former Prime Minister of Finland (2019-2023) and the former leader of the Finnish Social Democratic Party. Appointed at the age of 34, Marin served as the youngest Prime Minister of the world when taking office in 2019. She also made history as the longest-serving woman prime minister of Finland, leading a coalition government entirely headed by women.
During Sanna Marin’s term, she led Finland through the COVID-19 pandemic, and her government implemented many progressive reforms addressing climate change, social justice and equality, including world's most ambitious climate laws aiming for carbon neutrality by 2035 and progressive family leave reform. She helped the country navigate neighboring Russia’s devastating full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and Finland’s rapid joining of NATO – the swiftest entry for any country in the alliance’s history...(See Full Bio)
Vladimir Kara-Murza
Russian Politician, Historian, and Pro-Democracy Activist; Former Political Prisoner and 2024 Pulitzer Prize-Winning Washington Post Columnist
Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian politician, author, historian, documentary filmmaker, and former political prisoner.
A close colleague of the slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, he served as deputy leader of the People’s Freedom Party and was a candidate for the Russian Parliament. Leading diplomatic efforts on behalf of the opposition, Kara-Murza played a key role in the adoption of Magnitsky sanctions against top Russian officials by the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Canada, and Australia.
For this work he was twice poisoned and left in a coma; a joint media investigation by Bellingcat, The Insider, and Der Spiegel has identified FSB officers behind the attacks...(See Full Bio)
Ella Al-Shamahi
Paleoanthropologist, National Geographic Explorer, Stand-Up Comic, and PBS Documentary Host
Ella is a National Geographic Explorer, palaeoanthropologist, evolutionary biologist...and stand-up comic. Her debut book The Handshake is a Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year. She specializes in Neanderthals, caves, and expeditions in hostile, disputed, and unstable territories. She almost exclusively works in places it is hard to get insurance, such as Iraq, Yemen, Nagorno-Karabakh, and places she can’t publicly admit to. From heading up exploratory expeditions to joining cave excavations, the conditions can be unusual, from avoiding landmines to wearing a burqa for security reasons.
Ella believes that this is a risk worth taking because huge parts of the planet’s scientific potential are being ignored due to instability...(See Full Bio)
Kevin Fedarko & Pete McBride
National Geographic Adventurers of the Year, Author Kevin Fedarko and Photographer Pete McBride, Share the Story of their Epic Grand Canyon Thru-Hike
Join National Geographic photographer/filmmaker Pete McBride and Author Kevin Fedarko on a gritty and epic year-long quest through the entire length of the Grand Canyon—not “rim to rim” as has been tackled by many—but “end to end.” This route, if floated down the river, would cover 250 miles. On foot, where there are no trails, it covers 750 miles.
Enduring slot canyons, scorching sun, and snow, McBride and Fedarko made this epic journey to highlight the many challenges facing this iconic landscape today, from overdevelopment to the threat of contamination from uranium mines at the canyon’s edge. Their expedition also checks in with the many Native American tribes who still call the Grand Canyon National Park home, and they invite us to contemplate the value of wild spaces...(See Full Bio)