The Think For Yourself Podcast

Ali Khan is Dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a former Assistant Surgeon General with the US Public Health Service. Dr. Khan’s career has focused on health security, global health, & emerging infectious diseases. He completed a 23-year career as a senior director at the CDC where he was one of the main architects of their national health security. He continues to actively support global outbreak responses as a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Outbreak and Response Network (GOARN). Dr. Khan is the author of The Next Pandemic: On the Front Lines Against Humankind’s Gravest Dangers.

[RECORDING DATE: November 3, 2021]

Michael McCarthy is the co-chairman of Bridges Trust.  In addition to his role at Bridges Trust, he is also the chairman and founder of McCarthy Group, LLC, an investment holding company headquartered in Omaha since its founding in 1986. Mike serves on the boards of a number of public, private and not-for-profit entities including Union Pacific Corp., Peter Kiewit Sons’, Inc., Election Systems & Software, Creighton University, Heritage Services, and Lasting Hope Recovery Center. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from St. John’s University in Minnesota.

[RECORDING DATE: August 25, 2021]

Charlene is the author of You are Enough: Reclaiming Your Career and Your Life With Purpose, Passion, and Unapologetic Authenticity.  In 2020, following a four-year health crisis, Charlene retired from Corporate America as the principal vice president of global corporate affairs for Bechtel Corporation, one of the world's leading engineering and construction companies. Today, she leads her namesake firm, Charlene Wheeless LLC. She is also the senior advisor for equity and justice at APCO Worldwide, a global advocacy and communications consultancy.  An important voice in shaping the future of the communications profession, Wheeless is the chairman of the board of trustees for the Page Society, the world’s leading professional association for senior public relations and corporate communications executives.   

[RECORDING DATE: July 28, 2021]

Kevin Czinger is the founder, lead inventor and CEO of Divergent Technologies.  He founded Divergent to revolutionize car manufacturing by inventing and deploying an end-to-end digital production system, thereby catalyzing and leading the global manufacturing transition from analog to digital production.  Divergent 3D’s patented manufacturing platform radically reduces the materials, energy, and capital needed to build a car as well as accelerating innovation.  It was named Google’s Solve for X "Moonshot" for its disruptive impact on global transportation and awarded the Petersen Automotive Museum’s inaugural Award for Innovation and Leadership. Prior to Divergent 3D, Czinger co-founded Coda Automotive, an all-electric car company with vehicles fully safety certified for the U.S., Chinese and European markets. Czinger was also an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Benchmark Capital and an investor and operating executive in private and public technology companies.  Early in his career, he served as an Executive Director of Goldman Sachs in Asia and Europe, where he focused on technology and telecom growth investments.  Czinger is a graduate of Yale University and serves Yale as a Sterling Fellow, a Member of the President’s International Advisory Council and a Board Member of the Jackson Institute for World Affairs. 

[RECORDING DATE: June 23, 2021]

Diane Hessan, an award-winning entrepreneur and innovator in the market research field, is a nationally recognized expert on the American voter. A member of the Boston Globe Editorial Board, she has written extensively about the voices of the electorate and is the author of Our Common Ground: Insights from Four Years of Listening to the American Voter. She is the founder and chairman of C Space, the first company to leverage social media for consumer insights. She received her BA from Tufts University and her MBA from Harvard Business School.

[RECORDING DATE: June 18, 2021]

Hakim Idris is the author of Menace: China's Colonization of the Islamic World & Uyghur Genocide.  His wife Rushan Abbas is the founder and executive director of the Campaign for Uyghurs. Hakim and Rushan are among the world's most informed individuals about Chinese activities against Muslim minorities in East Turkistan.

[RECORDING DATE: June 2, 2021]

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School. The Copenhagen Consensus Center is a think-tank that researches the smartest ways to do good. For this work, Lomborg was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. His numerous books include False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cool It, How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, The Nobel Laureates' Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World 2016-2030 and Prioritizing Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis of the UN's SDGs.

[RECORDING DATE: May 28, 2021]

Much to his chagrin, Grant Williams has spent the last 35 years in finance.  Over that period, he has held senior positions at a number of investment banks and brokers including Robert Fleming, UBS, Banc of America and Credit Suisse in locations as diverse as London, Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, Sydney and Singapore.  Grant is a senior advisor to Vulpes Investment Management in Singapore, an advisor to Matterhorn Asset Management in Switzerland and also one of the founders of Real Vision—an online, on-demand TV channel featuring in-depth interviews with the brightest minds in finance.

[RECORDING DATE: May 13, 2021]

Chad Foster is the author of Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary. Chad currently works at Red Hat/IBM and was the first blind executive to graduate from the Program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School. Despite going blind in his twenties, he has built a very successful career in the technology industry. He lives with his wife and 2 children in Atlanta.

[RECORDING DATE: April 30, 2021]

Mike is a former Congressman from Michigan.  A former officer in the US Army and Special Agent for the FBI, Mike chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he authorized and oversaw a budget of $70 billion that funded the nation's 17 intelligence agencies. He currently serves as the Vice Chairman of the Board at the MITRE Corporation, and as a Director at leading companies including IAP, IronNet Cybersecurity, and Constella Intelligence.

[RECORDING DATE: April 15, 2021]