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Axel Weber

Chairman, UBS (2012-2022); President, German Bundesbank (2004-2011)

Axel Weber serves as the President of the Center for Financial Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt since July 2022. He is the Chairman of the Trilateral Commission Europe, and a member of the Group of Thirty. From 2012 to 2022, Axel Weber served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of UBS AG and UBS Group AG. Furthermore, he was a member and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Institute of International Finance. Prof. Weber was President of the German Bundesbank between 2004 and 2011, during which time he also served as a Member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, a Member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements, German Governor of the International Monetary Fund and as a member of the G7 and G20 Ministers and Governors. He was a Member of the steering committees of the European Systemic Risk Board in 2011 and the Financial Stability Board from 2010 to 2011. On leave from the University of Cologne from 2004 to 2012, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business from 2011 to 2012. Axel Weber holds a PhD in economics from the University of Siegen, where he also received his habilitation. He graduated with a master’s degree in economics at the University of Konstanz and holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Duisburg-Essen and Konstanz.

Niall Ferguson

Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

Niall Ferguson, MA, D.Phil., is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is the author of sixteen books. Niall Ferguson’s most recent book is "Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe". Ferguson was the Philippe Roman Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics in 2010-11. His many prizes and awards include the GetAbstract International Book Award (2009), the Benjamin Franklin Prize for Public Service (2010), the Hayek Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2012), the Ludwig Erhard Prize for Economic Journalism (2013), the Estoril Global Issues Distinguished Book Prize (2013), the Philip Merrill Award of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni for Outstanding Contributions to Liberal Arts Education (2016); and Columnist of the Year at the 2018 British Press Awards. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Buckingham (UK), Macquarie University (Australia), and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile).

Ginni Rometty

Former Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM and bestselling author

Ginni Rometty was the ninth Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of IBM. Under her leadership, the 100-year-old company reinvented 50 percent of its portfolio, built a US$25 billion hybrid cloud business, and established leadership in AI and quantum computing. Rometty also drove record results in diversity and inclusion and supported the explosive growth of an innovative high school program to prepare the workforce of the future in over twenty-seven countries. Through her work with the Business Roundtable, Rometty helped redefine the purpose of the corporation. She has been named Fortune’s #1 Most Powerful Woman three years in a row, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and has been honored with the designation of Officier in the French Légion d’Honneur. Ginni is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World (Harvard Business Review Press). Ginni graduated Northwestern University with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Sciences, and joined IBM as a systems engineer in 1981. In 2012, she became the first woman CEO in IBM’s one-hundred-year history. She retired from the company in 2020. Today, Rometty serves on multiple boards and cochairs OneTen, a coalition committed to upskilling, hiring, and promoting one million Black Americans by 2030 into family-sustaining jobs and careers.