Ryan Blitstein is Director of Renewable Energy at the predictive analytics platform company Uptake, where he helped create the Energy business unit and now leads strategy and operations in wind power. Previously, he was an investigative reporter for publications including The New York Times, Fast Company, and BusinessWeek. He also served as founding President & CEO of the political reform organization CHANGE Illinois, and, from 2009-2012, worked closely with Susan and the board to launch SCE as its first Executive Director. He regularly speaks, writes, and advises on work at the intersection of ideas, markets, and social impact.

Jenny Jacoby Hurd served as Executive Director of the Arie and Ida Crown Memorial (now called Crown Family Philanthropies) from 2001 through 2008. While at Crown, Ms. Hurd spearheaded the Foundation’s Education Initiative, a strategic program targeting areas of demonstrated need within Chicago’s public education system. Previously, Ms. Hurd was a management consultant with Bain & Company and The Wilkerson Group. She was recognized in 2005 in Crain’s Chicago Business’s “Forty Under 40” for her outstanding work in philanthropy.

Jessica Malkin currently serves as Executive Managing Director & Chief Marketing Officer for Cresset where she leads marketing and communications as well as strategic growth initiatives—including enhancing client experience, curating learning events, and expanding the firm’s national business and civic engagement initiatives.

Jessica was previously the founding Chief Executive Officer of Chicago Ideas, as well as the founding Co-Director of the Bluhm/Helfand Social Innovation Fellowship. A passionate connector, Jessica was a member of Crain’s 40 Under 40 in 2016, a list of Chicago’s “builders, thinkers and leaders who make us hopeful about our city’s future.” A recognized Disruptor Foundation Fellow through the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, Jessica sits on the Board of Directors of Chicago Ideas, Embarc, Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School and the Susan Crown Exchange.

Formerly, Jessica served as Chief of Staff to the Founder & CEO of Uptake, an industrial AI software company that harnesses the power of data and predictive analytics. During her time at Uptake, the organization was recognized as a CNBC Disruptor 50, a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, and named as one of the hottest startups by Forbes.

Jessica lives in Chicago with her husband Josh, three daughters Josie, Blake, and Scarlett, and their two dogs Sadie (a Beagle) and Blue (a Goldendoodle).

Paul Jansen is an Adjunct Professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California and a Director Emeritus of McKinsey & Company. During his 25 years with McKinsey, he helped initiate the firm’s practice in China/Southeast Asia, led the energy and natural resources practice on the West Coast, and co-founded and led the global nonprofit practice, now known as the Social Sector office. Mr. Jansen has particular expertise in strategy and organization design issues, public-private partnerships, public health, education, philanthropy and knowledge management. He serves on the Board of Care USA and is an advisor to Inside Track, Strive for College, Samasource, Imagine H2O, Aspire Public Schools and Norcob Capital. He is also a  member of the Forum for the Future of Higher Education.

Martha Minow has taught at Harvard Law School since 1981, where she served as dean for eight years. Her courses include civil procedure, constitutional law, fairness and privacy, family law, international criminal justice, jurisprudence, law and education, nonprofit organizations, and the public law workshop. An expert in human rights and advocacy for members of racial and religious minorities and for women, children, and persons with disabilities, she also writes and teaches about digital communications, democracy, privatization, military justice, and ethnic and religious conflict.

Her books include Saving the News: Why The Constitution Calls for Government Action to Preserve the Freedom of Speech (2021); When Should Law Forgive? (2019); In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of America’s Constitutional Landmark (2010); Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good (2002); and Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (1998).

Currently she chairs the board of the MacArthur Foundation and serves as co-chair of the access to justice project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and co-chair of the advisory board to Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Schwartzman College of Computing. Minow has served on the Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Countering Violent Extremism and on the Independent International Commission Kosovo. She helped to launch Imagine Co-existence, a program of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, to promote peaceful development in post-conflict societies. Her five-year partnership with the federal Department of Education and the Center for Applied Special Technology worked to increase access to the curriculum for students with disabilities and resulted in both legislative initiatives and a voluntary national standard opening access to curricular materials for individuals with disabilities.

She was appointed to hold the 300th Anniversary University Professor chair at Harvard University in 2018.

Eli Evans was born and grew up in Durham, N.C. and graduated from the University of North Carolina.

After a tour of duty in U.S Navy in the far east and graduation from Yale Law School, he served in the White House as a speech writer for President Lyndon Johnson.

He has been a senior executive with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and served as the first president of the Charles H. Revson Foundation  from 1977 to 2003 and is currently president emeritus. Under his leadership, the  foundation launched such creative ventures as the PBS series   Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (broadcast in 19 countries including Russia, and to 50 million viewers in the US); Rechov Sumsum, the Israeli Sesame Street and its American version Shalom Sesame; and Bill Moyers’ Genesis:A Living Conversation.

A well known Southern historian, Mr. Evans is the author of three books: The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South; Judah P. Benjamin: the Jewish Confederate; and The Lonely Days Were Sundays:Reflections of a Jewish Southerner.  Looking back at his literary career, Abba Eban, the renowned scholar and Israeli diplomat  said “the Jews of the South have found their poet Laureate.”

When inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, he was honored “for his dual contribution to American letters and as a philanthropist of uncommon originality and leadership.”

He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the Covenant Foundation.