John Emerson works in global distribution as vice chair of Capital Group International, Inc. He has 24 years of industry experience, all with Capital Group. From 2013 to 2017, he served as the United States ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. Mr. Emerson was awarded the State Department’s Susan M. Cobb Award for Exemplary Diplomatic Service in 2015, which is given annually to one non-career ambassador, and in 2017 he was awarded the CIA Medal and the U.S. Navy’s Distinguished Public Service award.

Guo Kai is Executive President and Senior Fellow of CF40 Institute. Before joining CF40 Institute, Dr. Guo was an economist at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC and then worked at the People’s Bank of China in various capacities, including in the Monetary Policy Department and the International Department. His main research areas include the Chinese economy and its macroeconomic policies as well as international finance. Dr. Guo is the author of three popular Chinese economics books and multiple academic papers in various English and Chinese journals. Dr. Guo holds a Ph.D. degree in economics from Harvard University.

Adam S. Posen has been president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics since January 2013. Over his career, he has contributed to research and public policy regarding monetary and fiscal policies in the G-20, the challenges of European integration since the adoption of the euro, China-US economic relations, and developing new approaches to financial recovery and stability. He was one of the first economists to seriously address the political foundations of central bank independence and to analyze Japan’s Great Recession as a failure of macroeconomic policy.
 
During Dr. Posen’s presidency, the Peterson Institute won global recognition as the leading independent think tank in international economics, including repeated top rankings from the Prospect Think Tank Awards and the Global Go To Think Tank Index. Under his leadership, PIIE has expanded to include 42 world-renowned resident and nonresident fellows and increased its endowment by 50 percent. Since 2013, PIIE has developed high-level recognition and research partnerships in the People’s Republic of China, while deepening longstanding ties with policymakers in other East Asian, European, and North American capitals. The Institute also has broken new ground in providing accessible economic analysis to the general public.
 
In September 2009, Posen was appointed by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer to serve a three-year term as an external voting member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). During this critical period for the world economy, Posen advocated an activist policy response to the financial crisis, led the MPC into quantitative easing, and accurately forecast global inflation developments. The Atlantic named him in its line-up of global “Superstar Central Bankers” in 2012. He also consulted for the UK Cabinet Office for the successful London G-20 summit of 2009 during the global financial crisis.

Dr. Posen has been widely cited and published commentary in leading news and policy publications and he appears frequently on Bloomberg television and radio, among other media programming. Posen received his BA and PhD from Harvard University.

Paula Campbell Roberts joined KKR in 2017 and is the Chief Investment Strategist for our Global Wealth business and a Managing Director on KKR’s Global Macro & Asset Allocation team. As Chief Investment Strategist, Ms. Roberts advises KKR’s wealth management partners on macroeconomics and asset allocation, with a focus on the role that private assets, including private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and credit, can play in individual investor portfolios. As a Managing Director on the Global Macro & Asset Allocation team, Ms. Roberts also works with KKR’s investment teams on the identification and evaluation of macro considerations as it relates to both deployment and monetization opportunities. Ms. Roberts is a member of KKR’s Global Wealth Executive Committee, the Global Macro, Risk and Balance Sheet (GBR) Senior Leadership team, and is a designated sponsor of KKR’s America’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee.

Prior to joining KKR, Ms. Roberts was an economist at Morgan Stanley, providing views on the economy and the consumer sector to asset management clients, using big data to predict inflections in key sectors of the economy, and advising Fortune 500 CEOs on their consumer strategy. Before Morgan Stanley, Ms. Roberts was a management consultant leading case teams and advising Fortune 500 companies at Bain & Co. Ms. Roberts is one of fifteen members of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Economic Advisory Panel and a member of the Economic Club of New York. Ms. Roberts earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Yale University. Ms. Roberts is currently a Lincoln Center Leadership Fellow, and she also serves on the boards of the New York City Ballet and the American Friends of Jamaica.

Torsten Slok is Partner and Chief Economist at Apollo. Prior to joining in 2020, Torsten worked for 15 years on the sell-side, where his team was top-ranked by Institutional Investor in fixed income and equities for ten years. Previously, he worked at the OECD in Paris in the Money and Finance Division and the Structural Policy Analysis Division. Before joining the OECD, Torsten was with the IMF in the division responsible for writing the World Economic Outlook, and the division responsible for China, Hong Kong, and Mongolia.
 
Mr. Slok studied at University of Copenhagen and Princeton University. He frequently appears in the media and has published numerous journal articles and reviews on economics and policy analysis, including in the Journal of International Economics, Journal of International Money and Finance, and The Econometric Journal.

Joseph Zidle is a Senior Managing Director and the Chief Investment Strategist in Blackstone Private Wealth.
 

Prior to joining Blackstone in 2018, he worked at Richard Bernstein Advisors, an independent investment advisor, where he was responsible for portfolio strategy, asset allocation, investment management and marketing to major wealth management firms and independent RIAs. Mr. Zidle previously spent nearly a decade at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, most recently serving as Head of Investment Strategy for Global Wealth Management and Deputy Director of the Research Investment Committee, where he was responsible for creating and communicating global investment strategies to the firm's private client division across all major investment disciplines.
 

Mr. Zidle holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and History from Emory University. From 1993 to 2001, he served as a specialist in military intelligence for the U.S. Army Reserves.