JA John R. Allen General, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) Read full bio John R. Allen is a retired U.S. Marine Corps four-star General and former Commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. He commanded Marines during the intense fighting in the Al Anbar Province in Iraq in 2007-2008. Immediately following his retirement from the military, he served as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Defense on Middle East Security, and was appointed by President Obama to be his Special Presidential Envoy to the global coalition to counter ISIL.
Today Allen serves as a Strategic Advisor to the Microsoft Corporation, is a Senior Fellow with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a permanent member of the Council On Foreign Relations and is a past President of the Brookings Institution. General Allen was appointed by President Biden to the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Naval Academy where he was declared a Distinguished Graduate in 2021. He was the first Marine Corps officer to serve as Commandant of Midshipmen at Annapolis.
General Allen has earned master’s degrees from Georgetown University, the National Defense University, and the National Intelligence University, where he is a Distinguished Graduate. He is the co-author of the book Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence alongside Dr. Darrell M. West (Brookings Press, 2020). He is also the co-author of Future War and the Defense of Europe alongside LTG (Ret.) Frederick “Ben” Hodges and Professor Dr. Julian Lindley French (Oxford University Press, 2021). Future War has been translated into German, Romanian, and, most recently, Ukrainian. He is one of the originators of the term “hyperwar.” As a co-inventor, Allen shares five AI-related patents. He advises multiple tech start-ups.
General Allen is a 2015 co-recipient of the Business Executive for National Security (BENS) Eisenhower Award. In 2016 he shared The Washington Institute’s Scholar-Statesman Award, and he has received numerous U.S. and foreign military awards. DB Dan Boneh Professor of Computer Science, Stanford Read full bio Dr. Boneh is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University where he heads the applied cryptography group and co-directs the Center for Blockchain Research.
Dr. Boneh’s research focuses on applications of cryptography to computer security and to blockchains. He is the author of over 200 publications in the field and is a recipient of the 2014 ACM prize and the 2013 Godel prize. In 2016 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. TC Dr. Theresa Cullen, M.D. Physician and Clinical Informatician Read full bio Dr. Theresa Cullen is a family physician and clinical informatician who has led numerous large-scale health IT software development and deployment initiatives throughout her time in public service. She began her career with Indian Health Service (IHS) in 1984 as a family practice physician, and from 2006-2011 she served as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Director of the Office of Information Technology for IHS.
In 2012, she retired from the U.S. Public Health Service with the rank of Rear Admiral and Assistant U.S. Surgeon General. Dr. Cullen went on to work as the Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) for the Veterans Health Administration from 2012-2015. She later served as Associate Director of Global Health Informatics at the Regenstrief Institute, where her work focused on the use of technology to meet clinical needs and improve health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries.
Dr. Cullen became the Public Health Director of Pima County, Arizona, in May 2020. She successfully guided this county of over one million residents through the COVID-19 pandemic. She also developed a local public health data modernization initiative and initiated and integrated a data analytics team, focusing on community engagement, human-centered design, and public sharing of data through dynamic dashboards. In addition, she has developed a strategic approach to transformational health status change to help achieve health equity. She has worked closely with federal, state, and local partners to integrate community needs into work. She is the author of over fifty peer-reviewed articles. DG Dan Geer Security Researcher, In-Q-Tel Read full bio Dan Geer is a security researcher with a quantitative bent. His group at MIT produced Kerberos, and a number of startups later he is still at it, today as a Senior Fellow at In-Q-Tel.
He writes a lot at every length, and sometimes it gets read: the semi-famous paper on whether a computing monoculture rises to the level of a national security risk, for instance. He’s an electrical engineer, a statistician, a farmer, and someone who thinks truth is best achieved by adversarial procedures. SO Shannon O’Brien Former Massachusetts State Treasurer Read full bio Shannon O’Brien is Chair of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. She is the former State Treasurer and Receiver of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As treasurer, she led efforts to improve fiscal controls, accountability, and management; created a statewide financial literacy program; and led improvements at the State Lottery resulting in an increase of $100 million in local aid to cities and towns.
Prior to that she served as a state representative and state senator. Shannon was the 2002 Democratic nominee for governor of Massachusetts. She worked as a litigation attorney at Morrison Mahoney and Miller, was an Emmy-nominated television journalist at Boston’s WB 56, and served as CEO of the Girl Scouts of Greater Boston. She served on the board of a publicly traded investment bank in New York as well as a de novo community bank in Newton, MA. From 2008-2010, she served as chair of the NY Pension Reform Commission to enhance transparency and accountability within one of the nation’s largest public funds. She was co-founder and president of BeeDoo Cloud Services Corporation.
Shannon was previously the founder and principal of the O’Brien Advisory Group, providing strategic advice, government affairs, and business development services for cutting edge technology companies primarily in clean energy, health care, telecommunications, voting access, and financial services. Shannon is a graduate of Yale University and Boston University School of Law. SS Sonal Shah Former CEO, The Texas Tribune Read full bio Sonal Shah was most recently the chief executive officer at The Texas Tribune. She has started and led social impact efforts in academia, government, and the private and philanthropic sectors for over twenty-five years. Previously, she served as interim executive vice president at United Way Worldwide. Sonal founded The Asian American Foundation (TAAF) in Houston and founded and led Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation.
Her background in government and policy includes leading the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation in the Obama administration, serving as an international economist at the Department of the Treasury, and as policy director for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. In the private sector, Sonal led Goldman Sachs’ environmental strategy and Google’s global technology and impact investment initiatives.
Sonal grew up in Houston and earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Chicago and an M.A. in economics from Duke University.
