Pedro Sanchez is the director of the Agriculture & Food Security Center, senior research scholar, and director of the Millennium Villages Project at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Sanchez was director general of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya from 1991-2001, and served as co-chair of the UN Millennium Project Hunger Task Force. He is also professor emeritus of soil science and forestry at North Carolina State University, and was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Ninotchka "Nina" García is a Colombian-American fashion journalist, the editor-in-chief of Elle, author, and a judge on the Bravo/Lifetime reality television program Project Runway since its first season.
Oscar Azarcón Solís is a Filipino-American prelate of the Catholic Church who has served as Bishop of Salt Lake City since 2017. He was an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from 2003 to 2017.
Kyriacos A. Athanasiou is a Greek Cypriot-American bioengineer who has contributed significantly to both academic advancements as well as high-technology industries. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine. He joined UCI from the University of California, Davis where he also served as the Chair of the Biomedical Engineering department. Before joining the University of California in 2009, he was the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor at Rice University. He has published hundreds of scientific articles detailing structure-function relationships and tissue engineering approaches for articular cartilage, the knee meniscus, and the temporomandibular joint.
Herro Kader Mustafa Garg is an American diplomat who has served as the United States ambassador to Egypt since November 2023. She served as the United States ambassador to Bulgaria from October 2019 to March 2023.
Ilesanmi Adesida is a Nigerian American physicist of Yoruba descent. He has been the provost at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, from September 2016.
Ajaypal Singh "Ajay" Banga is an Indian-born American business executive. He is currently the president of the World Bank Group. He was the executive chairman of Mastercard, after having previously served as president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company from July 2010 until December 31, 2020. He retired from this position on December 31, 2021, and joined General Atlantic as its vice chairman.
Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón is a Dominican born American attorney and diplomat who is the United States Ambassador to Spain and Andorra. Most recently, she was the chief of staff to First Lady Jill Biden. She formerly served as a litigation and international arbitration partner with the international law firm Winston & Strawn LLP. She was previously a partner with Chadbourne & Parke LLP, practicing in the firm's International Arbitration and Latin America groups. Reynoso is also affiliated with the faculty at Columbia University School of Law and the School of International and Public Affairs. From March 2012 until December 2014, she served as United States Ambassador to Uruguay. She is a former deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the United States Department of State. President Biden nominated her to be the next United States Ambassador to Spain on July 27, 2021, being confirmed on December 18, 2021.
Betty Kwan Chinn (關惠群) is a philanthropist who lives in Eureka, California. She has helped the homeless—including the mentally ill, disabled veterans, runaways, and drug abusers—since the 1980s. She won the 2008 Minerva Award. She used the $25,000 grant as seed money and worked with the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul to establish the homeless a bathroom and kitchen. U.S. President Barack Obama awarded her and 12 others the Presidential Citizens Medal on August 4, 2010, at the White House.
Jean-Claude Brizard is an American former school superintendent. He served as chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools from 2011 to 2012. Directly before coming to Chicago, Brizard served as the superintendent of the Rochester City School District. Brizard is best known as an education reformer, a strong charter school advocate and a champion of labor reform, particularly in regards to limiting teacher tenure status. Brizard started his career as a teacher, then an administrator, in the New York School System. He now works part time as a consultant for education reform organizations in America but primarily focuses on raising his children.
José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal is a Chilean and American actor. After nearly two decades of taking small roles in film and television, Pascal had his breakout role as Oberyn Martell in the fourth season of the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones (2014). He gained further prominence with his portrayal of Javier Peña in the Netflix crime series Narcos (2015–2017). He went on to appear in the films The Great Wall (2016), Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), The Equalizer 2 (2018), and Triple Frontier (2019).
The Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy is a private award for philanthropy, bestowed every second year to multiple people by the Carnegie family of institutions. In recent years the medal has been presented in New York.
Azita Raji was an Iranian-born American diplomat, banker, and philanthropist. She was nominated by President Barack Obama in October 2014 to serve as the United States ambassador to the Kingdom of Sweden, and confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate in February 2016. She presented her credentials to King Carl XVI Gustaf on March 15, 2016, and completed her tour of duty on January 20, 2017.
Inge Thulin, is the executive chairman of the board at 3M. He has been an executive with the company since 1979 and was its chairman, president and CEO between 2012 and 2018. He is a director of Chevron Corporation and Merck.
Daniel Diermeier is an American political scientist and university administrator. He is serving as the ninth chancellor of Vanderbilt University. Previously, Diermeier was the David Lee Shillinglaw Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where he also served as provost. He succeeded Eric Isaacs on July 1, 2016, and was succeeded by Ka Yee Christina Lee on February 1, 2020.
Bita Daryabari is an Iranian-American philanthropist, entrepreneur and computer scientist. She is the founder of several community organizations which focus on Persian immigrants in society and arts in the United States. Daryabari has provided financial assistance to various educational institutions for research on the Iranian studies in higher education, including endowments to Stanford, Pembroke College, U.C. Davis, and U.C. Berkeley. She has a named Chair at U.C. Davis in Persian Language and Literature and at U.C. Berkeley in Iranian Studies.
Min Jung "MJ" Lee is a South Korean-born American political correspondent for CNN and is currently a White House correspondent for the network.
Nsé Ufot is an activist, community organizer, and the former chief executive officer of the New Georgia Project, a voter support and legal action nonprofit organization founded by Stacey Abrams in 2013. Ufot's organizing efforts in the Georgia 2020 United States presidential election and the 2021 run-off election contributed to turning the state blue. In 2021, she was named one of Time's 100 Next, nominated by Ai-jen Poo. Ufot was fired from the New Georgia Project in 2022, with the group stating that she owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-work related expenses.
Hakki Akdeniz is an American restaurateur. He is owner and founder of the Champion Pizza pizzeria chain in New York City.
Karen Lozano is a Mexican American researcher who is the Julia Beecherl Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Nanotechnology Center at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She studies carbon nanofiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites. She was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2020 and the National Academy of Engineering in 2023.
