Ambassador Ron Kirk is the former United States trade representative (USTR) who was a pivotal member of the president’s economics team. With nearly 20 years in politics, he has been a Dallas mayor, U.S. Senate candidate, a lawyer with international reach. Boisterous and entertaining, Kirk analyzes the current political environment and offers audiences a glimpse behind the curtain in Washington and into what the president is really thinking. He also addresses trade, jobs, the economy, and doing business in China.

Dan Bartlett, the former counselor and key advisor to President George W. Bush, was responsible for strategic communications, policy formulation, and the implementation of the administration’s agenda. His experience serving in the highest levels of state and federal government and helping lead two successful presidential campaigns gives him a unique perspective in shaping public opinion and reputation management. Currently the executive vice president of corporate affairs for Walmart, Bartlett addresses politics, strategic communications, and life in the West Wing.

Matthew Dowd is a well-known and respected cultural commentator and strategist. For the past 30 years, he has helped shape strategies and campaigns for CEOs, corporations, foundations, governments, candidates, and presidents. Most recently, he served as chief political analyst for ABC News where he appeared on This Week, Good Morning America, and Nightline. He was the chief strategist for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, earning the title “strategist of the year.” He is also the author of the best-selling Applebee’s America. Dowd addresses politics; running winning campaigns; and demographic, commercial, and political patterns.

Bakari Sellers made history in 2006 when, at just 22 years old, he defeated a 26-year incumbent State Representative to become the youngest member of the South Carolina state legislature and the youngest African American elected official in the nation. Sellers represented South Carolina's 90th district in the lower house of the state legislature from 2006 to 2014 and was also the first vice chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Sellers has been an attorney with the Strom Law Firm, L.L.C. since 2007 and is an analyst on CNN. In 2010, Time magazine featured Sellers on its 40 Under 40 list, in 2012, Politico named Sellers on its "50 politicos to watch" list and in 2014 was named HBCU Top 30 Under 30.

Throughout his career, Mr. Oczkowski has worked at the intersection of where product development meets data science to forecast, predict, and analyze commercial markets and American elections. Prior to his work at Data Propria, Mr. Oczkowski also served as Head of Product for Cambridge Analytica where he most notably ran the team of embedded technical specialists inside the Trump Campaign that led to the scientific understanding of the eventual outcome of the election - a scenario that pundits missed. Using tactics from the worlds of: behavioral science, growth hacking, machine learning, sentiment analysis, and NLP, Mr. Oczkowski successfully connects behavioral dots together to make informed decisions about groups of people.

In 2018, Joe Cunningham became the first Democrat to be elected to South Carolina's First Congressional District in over 40 years. The Charleston Post and Courier called his victory the "biggest upset in modern South Carolina history." During his two-year term in office, Cunningham was widely recognized for his “people-first” approach to legislating. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranked him the 4th most bipartisan member of Congress and endorsed him in his re-election effort. The bipartisan Lugar Center ranked him as the most bipartisan freshman in the House in 2019. Delivering on a campaign promise to put “people over politics,” he made constituent services a bedrock of his tenure in Congress and his Congressional office closed more cases than any other freshman House Democrat. Cunningham served on the Veterans Affairs and Natural Resources Committees where he passed two bills into law in his first term, including the Veterans Tele-hearing Modernization Act and the Great American Outdoors Act. In 2019, Joe delivered on another signature campaign promise when the House passed his bipartisan bill banning offshore drilling. Cunningham was unafraid to make legislative points in creative ways. In 2019, he blew an airhorn in a Natural Resources subcommittee hearing to highlight the dangers of seismic airgun blasting to sea life. In his farewell speech in December of 2020, he became the first known member in Congressional history to crack a beer on the House floor in a toast to bipartisanship and cooperation. The video of Cunningham's farewell speech has been viewed over 1 million times. Even in defeat, Cunningham still enjoyed significant crossover support in his district. He lost his reelection bid by only 1% of the vote in a district that Joe Biden lost by 6%.

Jeffrey Engel brings the past alive. Today’s problems are nothing new. The United States has faced wars, pandemics, and political division before. While history is an imperfect guide to enacting a better future, it’s the best guide we have. It’s also a guide both for, and full of, people. While others might focus on the dry and statistical view of the past, Engel goes inside the lives of the people on the ground who made history happen. From the White House to the front lines to the factory floor, he shares new revelations and insights, with humor to help us find a way forward by studying those who walked the same path before.