Senior Editor at Large, Fortune Magazine
Geoff Colvin is an award-winning thinker, author, broadcaster, and speaker on today's most significant trends in business.
Geoff’s latest book is Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will. Amid rising anxiety over the advance of technology and its effects on human workers, the book identifies the skills of human interaction that will be key to success for people, businesses, and nations. The New York Times calls it “profound.” The Washington Post raves that it’s “valuable for its insights into the enduring value of human performance and teamwork.” The Wall Street Journal calls it a “big idea business book [that] weaves original reporting and humor into an intelligent narrative.”
His groundbreaking bestseller Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers From Everybody Else received the Harold A. Longman Award for Best Business Book of the year and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Geoff’s book The Upside of the Downturn: Management Strategies for Difficult Times was named the best management book of the year by Strategy + Business magazine.
As a speaker, Geoff has engaged hundreds of audiences on six continents. He is also a skilled on-stage interviewer whose subjects have included Janet Yellen, Henry Kissinger, Richard Branson, the Prince of Wales, Bill Gates, Colin Powell, Jack Welch, Alan Greenspan, Ted Turner, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and many others.
Geoff is one of America's preeminent business broadcasters. He is heard daily on the CBS Radio Network, where he has made over 10,000 broadcasts and reaches seven million listeners each week. He has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, ABC's World News, CNN, CNBC, PBS's Nightly Business Report, and dozens of other programs.
A native of Vermillion, South Dakota, Geoff is an honors graduate of Harvard with a degree in economics and has an M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Retired Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. Chair in Corporate Governance, University of Delaware
Professor Elson is the Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., Chair in Corporate Governance and the Director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. He is also "Of Counsel" to the law firm of Holland & Knight. He formerly served as a Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law in St. Petersburg, Florida from 1990 until 2001. His fields of expertise include corporations, securities regulation and corporate governance. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Virginia Law School, and has served as a law clerk to Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson III and Elbert P. Tuttle of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, the Cornell Law School, and the University of Maryland School of Law, and is a Salvatori Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. and a member of the American Law Institute. Professor Elson has written extensively on the subject of boards of directors. He is a frequent contributor on corporate governance issues to various scholarly and popular publications. He served on the National Association of Corporate Directors' Commissions on Director Compensation, Director Professionalism, CEO Succession, Audit Committees, Strategic Planning and Director Evaluation, was a member of its Best Practices Council on Coping With Fraud and Other Illegal Activity, and presently serves on that organization’s Advisory Council. He is Vice Chairman of the ABA Business Law Section’s Committee on Corporate Governance and a member of its Committee on Corporate Laws. Additionally, Professor Elson served as an adviser and consultant to Towers Perrin, the international human resource management consultants, a director of Circon Corporation, a medical products maker; Sunbeam Corporation, the consumer products manufacturer; Nuevo Energy Company, an independent oil and natural gas producer, the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a non-profit corporate governance research organization, Alderwoods Group, an international death care services provider and is presently, a member of the Board of Directors of AutoZone, Inc., the national automobile parts retailer, HealthSouth Corporation, a healthcare services provider.
Former Chief Justice, Delaware Supreme Court; Of Counsel, Potter Anderson
Myron T. Steele is of counsel in the firm's Corporate Litigation Group. He is the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Delaware.
Previously, he served as a Judge of the Superior Court and a Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery after eighteen years in private litigation practice. He has presided over major corporate litigation and LLC and limited partner governance disputes, and writes frequently on issues of corporate document interpretation and corporate governance.
Chief Justice Steele has published over 400 opinions resolving disputes among members of limited liability companies, and limited partnerships, and between shareholders and management of both publicly traded and close corporations. He speaks and writes frequently on issues of corporate document interpretation and corporate governance. His thesis for the LL.M. degree, Judicial Scrutiny of Fiduciary Duties in Delaware Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies, focused on the application of common law fiduciary duties within the contractual framework of alternative business organizations. It was published in the Delaware Journal of Corporate Law (32 Del. J. Corp. L. 1 (2007)). The November 2005 issue of The Business Lawyer included an article he co-authored with Sean J. Griffith entitled On Corporate Law Federalism: Threatening the Thaumatrope (61 Bus. Law. 1 (2005)). He co-authored an article with J.W. Verret entitled Delaware’s Guidance: Ensuring Equity for the Modern Witenagemot published in the Fall 2007 issue of the Virginia Law & Business Review (2 Va. L. & Bus. Rev. 188 (2007)). That article formed the basis for a keynote speech to the Business Law Section at the 2007 ABA Annual Meeting.
For the last ten years he served as judicial advisor to the Mergers and Acquisitions Committee of the ABA Business Law Section. He also co-authored an article entitled “Freedom of Contract and Default Contractual Duties in Delaware Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Companies” (46 Am. Bus. L.J. 221 (Summer 2009)) and an essay entitled “The Moral Underpinning of Delaware’s Modern Corporate Fiduciary Duties” (26 Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Pub. Pol’y 3 (2012)).
Chief Justice Steele served as Adjunct Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Law School from 2009–2013; University of Virginia Law School 2010–2017; and Pepperdine University Law School 2010–2014.
Executive Director, ESG Center, The Conference Board
Paul Washington joined The Conference Board in June 2019 as Executive Director of the ESG Center, a non-profit think tank that focuses on corporate governance, sustainability, and corporate citizenship and philanthropy.
His career has spanned the private, governmental, academic, and non-profit sectors. Before joining the ESG Center, Paul spent nearly 20 years at Time Warner Inc., serving for most of that time as Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary. He also served as Chief of Staff for the company’s Chairman and CEO. In addition to his tenure at Time Warner, Washington practiced law at the firm of Sidley & Austin and served as Vice President and Corporate Secretary of The Dime Savings Bank of New York.
In terms of public service, Paul’s served as a law clerk for former Supreme Court Associate Justices William Brennan and David Souter, and for Circuit Court Judge David Tatel. He worked on Capitol Hill for former U.S. Representative Stanley Lundine and, later, as his principal speechwriter when Lundine served as New York’s Lieutenant Governor, as well as for U.S. Senators Walter D. Huddleston and Jacob Javits. He has also served in local government in both paid and volunteer capacities.
Paul taught corporate governance as an Adjunct Professor at Fordham Law School for over a decade and has served on the boards of over 25 non-profit organizations. He was also a long-time active member of The Conference Board, including chairing its Advisory Board on Corporate/Investor Engagement.
Paul graduated magna cum laude from each of Yale College and Fordham University School of Law.
Partner and Co-Chair, Corporate Governance and Executive Compensation Practice, Sidley Austin LLP
Holly J. Gregory, co-chair of Sidley’s global Corporate Governance and Executive Compensation practice, counsels publicly held, private and not-for-profit corporations on the full range of governance issues, including governance structure and culture, fiduciary duties, risk oversight, conflicts of interest, board and committee structure, board leadership, special committee investigations, CEO transitions, board audits and self-evaluation processes, shareholder activism and initiatives, proxy contests, relationships with shareholders and proxy advisory firms, compliance with legislative, regulatory and listing rule requirements and governance “best practices.” She is frequently called on to advise boards regarding sensitive and unusual matters. While most of the matters she works on are highly confidential, high-profile matters that are in the public record include advising on governance and accountability mechanisms of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to replace U.S. government oversight, and advising the Board of The Pennsylvania State University on governance reforms.
Holly played a key role in drafting the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance and has advised the Internal Market Directorate of the European Commission on corporate governance regulation, and the joint OECD/World Bank Global Corporate Governance Forum on governance policy for developing and emerging markets. She also drafted the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Key Agreed Principles of Corporate Governance.
In addition to her legal practice and policy efforts, Holly has lectured extensively on governance topics, including at events in Europe and Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department, International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), The Conference Board, the NACD, Association of Corporate Counsel, Society for Corporate Governance and Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). The author of numerous articles on governance topics, she writes the governance column for Practical Law: The Journal.
Holly recently completed her term as chair of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Corporate Governance Committee. She is a former co-chair of the ABA’s Delaware Law and Business Forum, a former appointed member of the Corporate Laws Committee where she served as co-editor of the Corporate Director’s Guidebook (Sixth Edition). She chaired the ABA task force that delivered the Report on the Delineation of Governance Roles & Responsibilities to Congress and the SEC in 2009. Holly serves on the ABA Business Law Section Council, is a founding trustee and president of The American College of Governance Counsel and is a member of The American Law Institute. She has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and as a member of multiple NACD Blue Ribbon Commissions.
Holly clerked for the Honorable Roger J. Miner, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. A summa cum laude graduate of New York Law School and Executive Editor of its Law Review, Holly served on the Board of Trustees of New York Law School from 2009 through 2011.
Panel Two: The Shareholder and Stakeholder Views Today
Geoffrey Colvin, Charles Elson, Myron T. Steele, Paul Washington, Holly J. Gregory
The Shareholder and Stakeholder Symposium
A panel of scholars and practitioners will offer their divergent views on what the shareholder...