Ideagen Global Podcast

President & CEO of the United Nations Foundation. Advocate. Storyteller. Champion for girls. Motorcycle rider. Tri-sector athlete.

Kathy Calvin’s career has spanned across all sectors and walks of life, including, public, private, and nonprofit work. Kathy was named CEO by the UN Foundation Board in 2009 and President in 2013, which has been instrumental for advancing support for the UN’s mission as well as advocate for public and private sector partnerships to bring about solutions to issues plaguing the world. As the President and CEO of the UN foundation, Kathy works to bring about the inclusion of women into all sectors and opportunities around the globe. Her work at the helm of the UN foundation advocates for the UN and connects peoples, ideas, and resources from all over to help the UN on its many humanitarian missions. Being a public charity with partners, the UN Foundation’s work is committed to decreasing child morality, empowering women and girls, creating a clean energy future, using mobile technology for development, and improving U.S. – UN relations. Kathy has received numerous awards and recognitions for her various philanthropic works, including being named on Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Rock the World” in 2011 and in 2012 was listed in Fast Company’s “League of Extraordinary Women” list. Kathy is on the board of the International Women’s Media Foundation and plays an active role in empowering women through her innovation and leadership.

Born in Paris in 1970, Romuald Sciora is viewed as one of the most knowledgeable specialists on the United Nations. 

As a filmmaker, he has produced more than a dozen political documentaries including a TV series devoted to the United Nations, "At the Glass Building", broadcast in more than 20 countries. 

He is the only person to have had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with - for a work of this kind - all of the UN Secretaries-General, from Kurt Waldheim to Ban Ki-moon. 

He also edited a special issue of the French monthly Le Monde diplomatique devoted to the UN, and he gave numerous conferences on the subject at Columbia University, the United Nations Headquarters and UNESCO among others. 

His latest book about the UN, "The United Nations in the New World Disorder", was published in December 2015 in France and launched in  the United States and Canada in early 2016.

He is currently working on a new political documentary about and with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter - with the participation of President Carter and former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger -. This movie should be the first of a series of documentaries dedicated to American Foreign Policy since the end of the Cold War.   

Romuald Sciora has been awarded the insignia of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres -Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters - and Officer in the National Order of the Cedar. 

He lives in the United States where he runs the European-American Forum for Global Progress, a non-profit organization associated with numerous major media outlets, universities and think tanks and devoted to organizing conferences and symposiums on political and economic affairs, particularly those concerning the United States, France and the European Union.

As president and chief executive officer of the National Restaurant Association, Dawn Sweeney has been instrumental in focusing the mission of the Association through a unique, multi-year strategic plan, highlighting key areas of opportunity within the restaurant industry.

The National Restaurant Association’s members include quick service, fast casual, managed foodservice, casual and fine dining – along with manufacturers, suppliers and distributors. The American restaurant industry is composed of one million restaurant and foodservice outlets and 14 million employees. 

Sweeney has realigned the Association’s priorities and structure to strengthen its core operations, including consolidating its Foundation around a mission to develop a strong workforce and build the next generation of industry leaders. The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation’s major goal is to educate students on the restaurant business through the ProStart program – running in high schools nationwide – and to provide educational scholarships.  Under her leadership, the Association’s annual tradeshow – the largest restaurant and hospitality industry tradeshow in the U.S. – has seen growth both in revenue and impact.

Before joining the National Restaurant Association, Sweeney was president and CEO of AARP Services, the wholly owned taxable subsidiary of AARP. She grew annual revenues from $175 million to $785 million during her tenure – serving 11 million AARP members annually. A native of Maine, she is a graduate of Colby College and earned her MBA at George Washington University. Sweeney lives in northern Virginia with her husband and teenage son.

Sidhant Gupta is a researcher in the Medical Devices Group at Microsoft Research where he broadly investigates novel sensing techniques and builds hardware for better understanding the human body and progressing frontiers of medical science. He graduated with a Doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 2014. His graduate research was built on his philosophy of "sensing everywhere without putting sensors everywhere", that is to find ways to sense signals with minimal hardware that is easy to install and low-cost. During his Ph.D. work, he invented a device that plugs into a home's electrical outlet that let homeowners see not just how much energy their home consumes but also how it is used -- i.e. it shows power usage of each and every appliance using only a single plug-in sensor. His published work has received various best paper awards and has been the basis of various commercialization efforts.

Sidhant was recently named one of the top 30 technology disrupters under the age of 30 by Forbes.

Julie Teer is a highly-respected nonprofit leader with more than 20 years of diversified experience and expertise in high-level fundraising and communications, including the national political arena, national nonprofit sector and resource development consulting. As part of the executive management team, Teer serves as Chief Development & Public Affairs Officer for Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), overseeing a team of more than 100 BGCA professionals responsible for the national organization’s corporate, foundation and individual fundraising and government relations as well as providing resource development services to local Clubs. In addition, Teer leads the strategic development of BGCA’s advocacy and public policy platforms, and assists in leading BGCA’s thought leadership strategy, board engagement and board recruitment.

Teer joined BGCA in 2012 as the organization launched its six-year strategic initiative, Great Futures: the Campaign for America’s Kids. This unprecedented impact, awareness and fundraising Campaign is fueling an increased level of service to kids and teens who need it most, with Teer’s team sustaining the impact by raising $383 million toward the Campaign’s $450 million goal as of August 2015 – 85% of the goal in just 55% of the time.

Prior to joining BGCA, Teer served as Vice President, Development for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, where she built and led a highly successful development program and contributed to strategic revenue decisions as a key member of the leadership team. Teer established the major gift program at Komen, building major giving and foundation programs that generated more than $20 million in new revenue over a three-year period.

Kevin J. Donnellan is executive vice president and chief of staff for AARP. He provides the link between the CEO and AARP's Executive and Leadership Teams, working to implement the enterprise strategy, solve problems and deal with sensitive issues before they are brought to the chief executive.

Prior to becoming chief of staff, Kevin served eight years as AARP's chief communications officer (CCO). Under his leadership, AARP has become a 21st-century media conglomerate, exploding the myth that Americans 50-plus are not wired into new communications channels. In 2011, 2012 and 2013, he was named to Influence 100—the world's 100 most influential corporate communicators—by the Holmes Report. As chief of staff, Kevin continues to provide leadership and management for all internal communications, executive positioning and public outreach functions in the enterprise.

Before becoming CCO in 2006, Kevin served AARP in a number of roles in advocacy (director of advocacy, director of grassroots and elections) and legislative and public policy (legislative counsel) that proved critical to the growth and success of the organization.

Kevin is a member of the Ad Council Advisory Committee on Public Issues and chairs the group's Committee on Community & Stewardship. He is a member of the prestigious Arthur W. Page Society. He also serves on the advisory board of George Mason University's College of Health and Human Services. He is a former chair of the board of directors of the Long-Term Care Campaign and represented AARP on the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations.

Kevin came to AARP from Capitol Hill, where he was executive assistant to Rep. Geraldine Ferraro. He holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in government and politics from St. John's University in New York.

Global Head, Corporate Social Responsibility, Amway 

Jeff Terry is the global head of corporate social responsibility at Amway Corporation. Jeff’s primary responsibility is to develop and guide the implementation of the company’s enterprise-wide Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, aligning the organization's capacity to effectively implement its social investment and innovation efforts around nutrition, entrepreneurialism and overall stakeholder and community engagement. Jeff joined Amway in May 2011.

His career in corporate social responsibility spans more than 18 years. Prior to joining Amway, Terry served as Director, Associate and Community Engagement for Sears Holdings Corporation. He developed the company wide community engagement strategy including redevelopment of the company Foundation, virtual giving initiatives and policies, volunteerism for 300,000 employees, and nonprofit partnership planning and negotiations.

Prior to Sears Holdings, he served as Population Services International’s (PSI) Director of Corporate Marketing where he developed and directed the global re-branding efforts of PSI. He also managed the development of campaigns focused on child survival, maternal and child health, and the prevention of AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Terry has spoken at conferences on topics including corporate citizenship, corporate-community relations and involvement, cause branding, environmental sustainability and marketing. He has authored numerous publications and lectured at the University of Notre Dame, Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University, Clemson University, Boston University and Georgetown University.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in economics and a Master of Science in applied economics from Clemson University.

Dr. Nathan Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures (IV) in 2000 after retiring from his position as chief strategist and chief technology officer of Microsoft Corporation. During his 14-year tenure at Microsoft, Myhrvold helped spearhead many of the company’s most successful products and founded Microsoft Research.

Today, Myhrvold is focused on building a market for invention, where inventors realize the value of their ideas.  Under his leadership, IV manages one of the largest and fastest growing intellectual property (IP) portfolios in the world, with more than 40,000 assets and over $6 billion in total committed capital. 

Myhrvold earned a postdoctoral fellow from the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University while working with Professor Stephen Hawking on research in cosmology, quantum field theory in “curved spacetime” and quantum theories of gravitation. Prior to Cambridge, Myhrvold earned a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics and a master's degree in mathematical economics from Princeton University.

Myhrvold is an accomplished author having co-authored and published the acclaimed five-volume 2,438-page cookbook Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (2011), Modernist Cuisine at Home (2012), and The Photography of Modernist Cuisine (2013).  In 2000, he partnered with Paul Allen and pledged $1 million to the SETI Foundation to fund the development phase of the world’s most powerful telescope – the Allen Telescope Array.

Mohamed Younis 

Senior Analyst, Gallup World Poll 

Mohamed Younis is a Senior Analyst for the Gallup World Poll. He is also Gallup’s subject matter expert on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). His research at Gallup focuses on employment challenges in the Arab world and relations between Muslim majority and Western societies. 

Since 2012, Younis has led one of Gallup’s newest initiatives focused on advanced analytics. Relying on Gallup’s sciences as well as external data sources, Younis leads a team of strategic advisers who monitor and consult on real-time geopolitical shifts around the world. 

During his time at Gallup, Younis helped design the most comprehensive and wide-spanning public opinion study on youth unemployment in the MENA region. The study’s goals included measuring entrepreneurial aspirations among young people in the region and exploring the local challenges they face in attaining job training, using job placement services and accessing capital for their start-ups. Younis briefs policymakers on how Gallup’s findings can inform decisions when tackling youth unemployment. 

As the MENA region expert for the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, Younis regularly briefed global leaders on the statistical drivers of Muslim-West tensions and perceptions across and within Muslim majority societies and Western ones on attitudes toward Islam, extremism and prejudice. 

Younis studied political sociology at the University of California, Riverside, with an emphasis on social change in the MENA region and the Muslim-American experience. He received a juris doctorate degree from Washington and Lee University School of Law and is a member of the Virginia State Bar. Younis has studied and worked in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and is fluent in Arabic.

Dane Linn is a Vice President for the Business Roundtable.  In this role, he oversees the Education & Workforce Committee, advancing the BRT’s positions on education reform, U.S. innovation capacity and workforce preparedness.

Linn joins the BRT most recently from The College Board, where he served as Executive Director of state policy. Prior to The College Board, Linn served as Director of the Educational Policy Division of the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices. During his 16 years in this role, Linn represented governors’ education policy issues at the federal level and to state and local associations. He also co-led the development of the Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted by 46 states.

In addition, Linn has led national efforts to ensure more students are college- and career-ready and worked on issues related to STEM, early childhood, Perkins and the Workforce Investment Act, and high school redesign. Before joining the NGA, Linn worked for 14 years in the education system as Coordinator of the Office of Special Education Programs for the West Virginia Department of Education, Principal of Guyan Valley Elementary School in West Virginia, and teacher and later the Assistant Principal at Matheny Grade School also in West Virginia.

Linn is a Ph.D. candidate at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and holds a master’s degree in Education Administration from West Virginia Graduate College and bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education and Special Education from Cabrini College.