Past Speakers

Prime Minister Theresa May is the second female in British history to hold the position. May served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019, during an extraordinary time in global affairs. She is currently the Member of Parliament for Maidenhead—a position she's held for more than two decades.

Secretary Panetta served as the 23rd US Secretary of Defense and was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He began his long and distinguished public service career as a First Lieutenant in the army and served in Congress for 16 years. He has served multiple presidential administrations, including the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Katie Couric is an award-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, founder of Katie Couric Media and cancer research advocate.

Couric was the first woman to solo anchor a network evening newscast, serving as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News from 2006 to 2011 following 15 years as co-anchor of NBC’s Today show. She also hosted a syndicated show and served as the Yahoo Global News Anchor until 2017.

Throughout the course of his esteemed career in journalism, Martin “Marty” Baron ’76 ’76G ’14H was a top editor at the Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and most recently, The Washington Post.

His work in launching and leading The Globe’s investigation into the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal helped earn the paper a 2003 Pulitzer Prize in public service, and the investigation was portrayed in the Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight.” Newsrooms under his leadership have won a total of 18 Pulitzer Prizes, including 11 at The Post, six at The Globe and one at the Herald.

V Spehar of Under the Desk News is a Rochester-based, award-winning podcaster, online personality and citizen journalist who has built a following of more than 3 million subscribers on the video-sharing platform TikTok since launching in 2020.

Specializing in short-form content, Spehar offers brief recaps of notable headlines. They began delivering one-minute news segments while under a desk. The videos quickly attracted a bipartisan audience.

In 2022, Spehar launched “V Interesting,” a long-form podcast with original reporting that tackles various current topics of importance, which has held a steady place in the top 25 news podcasts since.

Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, the founder of the Huffington Post and the author of 15 books, including international bestsellers. In 2016, she launched Thrive Global, a behavior change technology company with the mission of improving health outcomes and productivity.

Sen. Dave McCormick advocates for Pennsylvania as a leader in AI, innovation and energy. He hosted the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit in 2025, during which he announced $90+ billion in investments in Pennsylvania’s data centers, energy-generating assets and workforce development.