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Mississippi Today Conversation
August 31, 2016 @ 8:30 am - 10:30 am
WALTER ISAACSON
Walter Isaacson is the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational and policy studies institute based in Washington, DC. He has been the chairman and CEO of CNN and the editor of TIME magazine.
Isaacson’s most recent book, The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014) is a biographical tale of the people who invented the computer, Internet and the other great innovations of the digital age.
He is the author of Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), and Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986).
Isaacson was born on May 20, 1952, in New Orleans. He is a graduate of Harvard College and of Pembroke College of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He began his career at The Sunday Times of London and then the New Orleans Times-Picayune. He joined TIME in 1978 and served as a political correspondent, national editor, and editor of digital media before becoming the magazine’s 14th editor in 1996. He became chairman and CEO of CNN in 2001, and then president and CEO of the Aspen Institute in 2003.
He is chair emeritus of Teach for America, which recruits recent college graduates to teach in underserved communities. From 2005-2007 he was the vice-chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which oversaw the rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina. He was appointed by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate to serve as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and other international broadcasts of the United States, a position he held from 2009 to 2012. He is on the board of United Airlines, Tulane University, the New Orleans Tricentennial Commission, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Society of American Historians, the Carnegie Institution for Science, and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance.
ANDREW LACK
Andrew L serves as Chairman of NBC News. He oversees editorial and business operations for the network’s award-winning television and digital news properties. He is a member of the NBCU Executive Committee and reports to Steve Burke, CEO of NBCUniversal.
Lack, an NBC veteran, returned to the company in April 2015. He first joined in 1993 as President of NBC News. Under his leadership, the network transformed into America’s most-watched news organization, with NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, TODAY and Dateline NBC all leading their respective categories. He was also responsible for expanding the TODAYshow to three hours, and for creating the program’s street-side studio at Rockefeller Center in New York City in 1994.
In 2001, Lack was promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer of NBC. In that role, he oversaw entertainment, news (including MSNBC and CNBC), NBC stations, sales, and broadcast and network operations.
Most recently, Lack held the position of the first-ever Chief Executive Officer of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent federal agency that oversees all U.S. civilian international media.
Lack previously served as Chairman of the Bloomberg Media Group. He joined Bloomberg in October 2008 as CEO of its Global Media Group, where he led the expansion of its television, radio, magazine, conference and digital businesses. During Lack’s tenure, Bloomberg LP enhanced the quality of its media portfolio, expanded internationally with seven channels across Asia, Africa, India and the Middle East; and built out services to connect people with information in more places and across more platforms than ever before.
Prior to Bloomberg, Lack was Chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, where he oversaw management of the company’s prominent international artists and vast catalog of recorded music from around the world.
Lack spent much of his early television career at CBS News. After joining in 1976, within a year, he became a prominent producer for 60 Minutes and subsequently senior executive producer of CBS Reports. Lack’s broadcasts at CBS earned numerous honors, including 16 Emmy Awards and four Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Journalism Awards.
Lack received a bachelor’s degree from the College of Fine Arts at Boston University, where he is currently a trustee.
He lives in New York, with his wife, Betsy, and has two sons and a daughter.
