Walter Isaacson - Walter Isaacson is the President and CEO of the Aspen Institute. He has been the Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of Time Magazine.
He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003) and of Kissinger: A Biography (1992) and is the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). His biography of Albert Einstein - Einstein: His Life and Universe - was released in April 2007.
Isaacson was born on May 20, 1952, in New Orleans. He is a graduate of Harvard College and of Pembroke College of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
He began his career at the Sunday Times of London and then the New Orleans Times-Picayune/States-Item. He joined Time Magazine in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor and editor of new media before becoming the magazine's 14th managing editor in 1996. He became Chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003.
He was appointed after Hurricane Katrina to be the vice-chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. He is on the Board of Directors of United Airlines, Tulane University, the National Constitution Center, and he is chairman of the board of Teach for America.
T. Boone Pickens - Mr. Boone Pickens is the founder of BP Capital.
Pickens is active in the management of both the BP Capital Equity Fund and the BP Capital Commodity Fund. Specifically, Pickens is principally responsible for the formulation of the energy futures investment strategy of the BP Capital Commodity Fund and the BP Capital Equity Fund.
Pickens frequently utilizes his wealth of experience in the oil and gas industry in the evaluation of potential equity investments and energy sector themes. He also participates in the marketing of the BP Capital Equity Fund to certain groups of potential investors. Pickens was the founder of Mesa Petroleum in its various forms beginning in 1956. Pickens' career at Mesa spanned four decades.
Under his leadership, Mesa grew to become one of the largest and most well-known independent exploration and production companies in the U.S.
T. Boone Pickens is currently the chairman and CEO of BP Capital, which operates energy focused commodity and equity funds. He is also the largest shareholder in Clean Energy, the largest provider of vehicular natural gas in North America with a broad customer base in the refuse, transit, shuttle, taxi, police, and interstate trucking, airport and municipal fleet markets- The Aspen Institute