Jim Cicconi retired in October 2016 as senior executive vice president of AT&T after 18 years with the company. In that position, he was responsible for AT&T’s public policy organization and chaired the AT&T Foundation following the close of the merger between SBC Communications and AT&T Corp. in November 2005.
Previously, Cicconi served as General Counsel and Executive Vice President for law & government affairs at AT&T Corp. Prior to joining AT&T in 1998, he was a partner at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, L.L.P. Cicconi also served in the White House under two presidents, including two years as Deputy Chief of Staff to President George H.W. Bush, and four years as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and to White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker, III.
Cicconi currently serves as a Director of El Paso Electric Company, the National Archives Foundation, and as a fellow at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He is a member of the Presidential Leadership Scholars Advisory Committee, the University of Texas at Austin Development Board, and is Vice President of the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation. In the past, Cicconi served as a presidential appointee to the UNESCO Review Advisory Committee and to the Administrative Conference of the United States, and also chaired the finance committee for the commissioning of USS GEORGE H.W. BUSH (CVN 77).
Cicconi earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1974 and a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of Texas School of Law in 1977. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the State Bar of Texas.
Sylvia M. Burwell is American University’s 15th President and the first woman to serve as President. Burwell served as the 22nd U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2014 to 2017. During her service as Secretary, she led the implementation of efforts to reform the health care delivery system and the Affordable Care Act, and mitigated public health threats like outbreaks of the Ebola virus and the Zika virus.
From 2013 to 2014, Burwell served as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, where she worked with members of both parties in Congress to negotiate a two-year budget deal following the first shutdown of the federal government in 17 years.
Prior to her service as Director of OMB, Burwell was President of the Walmart Foundation. She spent 11 years at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, including roles as Chief Operating Officer and President of the Global Development Program, where she focused on reducing hunger and poverty through increased agricultural development, helping more communities receive clean water and sufficient sanitation, and expanding access to financial services
Burwell also served in the Clinton Administration, as Deputy Director of OMB, Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Treasury, and Special Assistant to the Director of the National Economic Council.
She currently serves on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Institute’s Future of Work Initiative.
She earned undergraduate degrees in government from Harvard University and in philosophy, policy, and economics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Sylvia and Stephen Burwell are the parents of two young children.
Joshua Bolten is President & CEO of the Business Roundtable (BRT), an association of CEOs of leading US companies. Before joining BRT in January 2017, Bolten was Managing Director of Rock Creek Global Advisors, a consulting firm that he co-founded in 2011. Bolten spent the preceding two years as a visiting professor at Princeton University.
Bolten’s twenty years of government service includes eight years in the White House under President George W. Bush as Chief of Staff (2006-09), Director of the Office of Management & Budget (2003-06), and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy (2001-03). For the preceding two years, he was Policy Director of the Bush 2000 presidential campaign. Bolten’s previous private sector experience includes work at Goldman Sachs in London and O’Melveny & Myers in Washington, DC.
Bolten received his undergraduate degree from Princeton in 1976 and his law degree from Stanford in 1980. He is a member of the board of Emerson Electric Co. He also serves on the boards of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the ONE Campaign, and Princeton University. Bolten previously served as Co-Chair of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.
Born in Mobile, Alabama, Alexis M. Herman began her career working for Catholic Charities. President Jimmy Carter appointed her the youngest director of the Women’s Bureau in the history of the Labor Department. In 1997, President Bill Clinton nominated Herman to be America’s 23rd Secretary of Labor and the first African-American ever to lead the United States Department of Labor. During her tenure as a member of President Clinton’s Cabinet she also served on the National Economic Council. As Secretary of Labor, she led the effort to institute a global child labor standard; moved people from welfare to work with dignity; and launched the most aggressive unemployed youth initiative since the 1970’s. Under her tenure, unemployment in the country reached a thirty-year low and the Nation witnessed the safest workplace record in the history of the Department of Labor. Currently, Herman serves as chair and chief executive officer of New Ventures, LLC. She has continued to lend her expertise and talent to a vast array of corporate enterprises and nonprofit organizations. A recipient of more than twenty honorary doctorate degrees from major colleges and universities around the country, Herman is a trustee of the National Urban League. She Co-Chaired the Bush Clinton Katrina Fund and was a member of the board of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. While serving as Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman met and married her life partner Dr. Charles L. Franklin, Jr. She resides in McLean, Virginia.