Jeff has written about higher education for two decades. He is the author of three books, the newest of which, There Is Life After College, is a New York Times bestseller. Jeff is a regular contributor to the Washington Post and a special advisor at Arizona State University, where he is the founding director of the Academy for Innovative Higher Education Leadership in partnership with Georgetown University. He is also a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities.

Teresa is the University of Virginia’s eighth president. Since taking office in 2010, she has led UVA through a period of significant progress. In fall 2012, she launched a planning effort to provide a road-map for the University’s future while gathering input from 10,000 alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, and others. Under President Sullivan’s leadership, the University has developed a new financial model to ensure stability and transparency, launched a substantial program in Organizational Excellence, and created a program to expand the full-time faculty in multidisciplinary clusters.

Dr. E. Gordon Gee is one of America’s most prominent higher education leaders, having served as president of some of the most prestigious public and private universities for more than three decades. Gee is serving as chair of the Big 12 Board of Directors Executive Committee for the 2017-18 year. Active in many national professional and service organizations, he is on the executive committee of the National 4-H Council Board of Trustees and serves on the board of directors of the American Council on Education, the nation’s largest higher education organization, as well as on the board of trustees of the Royal University for Women in Bahrain, with which WVU has a long-standing academic partnership. 

Ángel Cabrera is the president of George Mason University, the largest public university in Virginia. Serving 34,000 students and located in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region, George Mason in 2016 moved into the highest research category as determined by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Cabrera is also the author of numerous academic papers. His article “Knowledge-Sharing Dilemmas” (with Elizabeth Cabrera) has been cited more than 1,000 times. His book “Being Global: How to Think, Act and Lead in a Transformed World” (with Gregory Unruh) was published by Harvard Business Review in 2012.

Michael M. Crow became the 16th president of Arizona State University on July 1, 2002. He is guiding the transformation of ASU into one of the nation’s leading public metropolitan research universities, an institution that combines the highest levels of academic excellence, inclusiveness to a broad demographic, and maximum societal impact—a model he terms the “New American University.” Under his direction the university pursues teaching, research, and creative excellence focused on the major challenges of our time, as well as those central to the quality of life, sustainable development, and economic competitiveness of Arizona and the nation. He has committed the university to sustainability, social embeddedness, and global engagement, and championed initiatives leading to record levels of diversity in the student body.

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, has served as President of UMBC (The University of Maryland, Baltimore County) since 1992. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He chaired the National Academies’ committee that produced the 2011 report, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads. He was named in 2012 by President Obama to chair the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.