Danny Meyer is the CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group, which includes Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Blue Smoke, Jazz Standard, Shake Shack, The Modern, Cafe 2 and Terrace 5 (at the Museum of Modern Art), Maialino, Untitled (at the Whitney Museum of American Art), and North End Grill, as well as Union Square Events and Hospitality Quotient. Each USHG restaurant and business is lovingly crafted and distinctive, and each strives to distinguish itself with warm hospitality and consistent excellence.

How do you turn a t-shirt brand that’s sold from the trunk of a rusty car into a global, multi-million dollar business? Johnny Earle transformed Johnny Cupcakes into one of the world’s fastest growing independent businesses. Businessweek named him America’s No. 1 young entrepreneur, and he has been profiled by the New York Times, NPR, MTV, Forbes, Newsweek, the Boston Globe, and INC. By focusing on the customer experience (he wants buying a t-shirt to feel like your birthday), he created such a unique brand that consumers would (and do) line up around the block for his shirts.

An industry leader in accessible luxury handbags, accessories, footwear and apparel, Rebecca Minkoff’s playful and subtly edgy designs can be spotted around the world on young women and celebrities alike. After developing an affinity for design while in the costume department in high school, Rebecca Minkoff moved to New York City at only 18 years old to pursue her dream of becoming a fashion designer. Today, Rebecca Minkoff has developed into a global lifestyle brand with a wide range of accessories, footwear, apparel, handbags and jewelry as well as men’s leather goods under the label Ben Minkoff. The brand is distributed in over 900 stores worldwide and five free-standing boutiques in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Seoul. In 2011, she won industry recognition when she was awarded the Breakthrough Designer Award from the Accessories Council. Rebecca is an active member of the CFDA and supports multiple philanthropies including Jessica Seinfeld’s non-profit, Baby Buggy.

Kate Ancketill is the brains and driving force behind GDR Creative Intelligence, a globally recognised consultancy focused on innovation and emerging trends in retail, leisure and hospitality around the world. World-renowned, dynamic and commercially successful, Ancketill won the Jennifer d’Abo Memorial Scholarship for female entrepreneurs in 2007 and was selected as one of the UK’s top 100 in the Courvoisier Future 500 in 2009.

Paco Underhill is one of the era’s leading shopping anthropologists and the founding president of Envirosell, a behavioral research and consultancy firm focused on commercial environments. A pioneer and expert in global consumer behavior and trends, Underhill has spent decades researching shopping patterns. His first book, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping, was an internationally-recognized best-seller and has been published in 28 languages. The success of his three best-selling books and his retail insight makes him a highly sought-after resource, and his columns and editorials have appeared in The New York Times, Money Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. A highly-regarded speaker, Paco has delivered keynote speeches at conferences, universities, and corporations spanning the globe for over a decade. From buying behavior to consumerism in the modern world, his insightful and entertaining presentations have been lauded worldwide.

Anjali Kumar is a former Google executive and the Founding General Counsel and Head of Social Innovation at Warby Parker, a transformative lifestyle brand offering designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially-conscious businesses. She is currently an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business Administration, where she teaches Law of Innovation, a graduate seminar which follows an original syllabus of her own design.

A mission-driven innovator and entrepreneur, Seth Goldman is the founder of Eat the Change, a planet-friendly snack company and platform to inform and empower consumers to make dietary choices aligned with their concerns around climate and health. The first business launched under the Eat the Change umbrella was PLNT Burger, which is a plant-based quick-serve restaurant that offers delicious burgers, sandwiches, fries, and soft-serve. Goldman also serves as chair of the board of Beyond Meat, a publicly traded California-based enterprise on the cutting edge of plant-based protein.

Michael Beschloss is a specialist in the United States presidency and the author of nine books. In November 2013, he was appointed as a contributing columnist on history for The New York Times. Michael shares lessons learned from Presidential history and applies them to today's leaders.

For more than 25 years, Pauline Brown has acquired, built, and led the world’s most influential global luxury brands. Pauline served as the Chairman of North America for the world’s leading luxury goods company, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, where she provided regional leadership for about 70 brands in five sectors including fashion and leather goods, watches and jewelry, perfume and cosmetics, wine and spirits, and selective retailing.

Renowned journalist, author, and political commentator who keeps his finger on the pulse of modern American politics, speaking to every audience about current events and what the future holds. Widely known as the journalistic icon who broke the deeply disturbing news of the Watergate scandal. Bob Woodward is a reporter-historian with an aggressive but fair and non-partisan reputation for digging deep to uncover Washington’s secrets. He gives audiences unvarnished look at Washington politics and leaders.

In the early 1970s, Bernstein and Bob Woodward broke the Watergate story for The Washington Post, leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and setting the standard for modern investigative reporting, for which they and The Post were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Since then, Bernstein has continued to build on the theme he and Woodward first explored in the Nixon years – the use and abuse of power: political, media, financial, cultural and spiritual power. Renowned as a prose stylist, he has also written a classic biography of Pope John Paul II, served as the founding editor of the first major political website, and been a rock critic.

Ken Burns is a PBS documentary director of The Civil War, Baseball, The West, Thomas Jefferson. He has been making documentary films for more than twenty years and the most notable among his work is the PBS series Baseball. Among critical acclaim, Baseball earned Mr. Burns an Emmy, the Clarion Award, and The Television Critics Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sports and Special Programming.