Gordon Brown is the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education. The former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010 also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Chancellor in modern history. As Prime Minister, his tenure coincided with the financial crisis, and he was one of the first to initiate calls for global financial action; his administration also simultaneously introduced a range of rescue measures within the country. Brown has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh. A Member of Parliament between 1983 and 2015, he lives in Fife, Scotland, and is married to Sarah Brown, a charity campaigner, and the couple have two sons.

Mohamed A. El-Erian serves as President of Queens’ College, Cambridge, professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, and Senior Fellow at the Lauder Institute. He is an advisor to Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO where he was CEO and co-CIO, and to Gramercy Fund Management. A columnist at Bloomberg News and a Financial Times contributing editor, Mohamed sits on the boards of Barclays and Under Armour as well as several non-profits. He previously served as chair of President Obama’s Global Development Council, a Deputy Director at the International Monetary Fund, and President of Harvard Management Company. He is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, The Only Game in Town and When Markets Collide.

Michael Spence has served as Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and advised the world’s leading companies and governments. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Philip H. Knight Professor Emeritus at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was the chairman of an independent Commission on Growth and Development focused on growth and poverty reduction in developing countries. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to the analysis of markets with asymmetric information. He has also received the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association awarded to economists under 40. His theories on economic growth and competition have changed how the world conducts business, and he has served as a board of directors member of a number of public and private companies. He is the author of several books including The Next Convergence.

Mariella Frostrup is one of the UK’s leading journalists, broadcasters and campaigners. She co-founded the GREAT Initiative, an advocacy organisation for gender equality and is an ambassador for Save the Children. Also a champion of literature and the arts, Mariella is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a member of BAFTA, sat on the Council for the Royal Academy for 6 years and has been on the judging panels of almost every significant cultural prize in the UK including the Booker, RIBA and Evening Standard Film Awards. She currently presents a daily news show for Times Radio. Mariella lives in Somerset and London with her husband and two children.