Over the past decade, General Petraeus was named one of America’s 25 Best Leaders by the U.S. News and World Report, a runner-up for Time magazine’s Person of the Year, the Daily Telegraph man of the year, a Time 100 selectee and one of Foreign Policy magazine’s top 100 public intellectuals. General Petraeus has received numerous U.S. military, State Department, NATO and United Nations medals and awards, including four Defense Distinguished Medals, the Bronze Star Medal for Valor, and the Combat Action Badge, and Master Parachutist Wings. He has also been decorated by 13 foreign countries.

David M. Rubenstein is a Co-Founder and Co-CEO of The Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms. Mr. Rubenstein co-founded the firm in 1987. Since then, Carlyle has grown into a firm managing approximately $170 billion from 35 offices around the world.

He also currently serves as chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, chairman of the Smithsonian Institution, chairman of the Brookings Institution, and President of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. According to the Forbes ranking of the wealthiest people in America, Rubenstein has a net worth of $2.9 billion.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is an American economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is also the co-chair of the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and the Chief Economist of the Roosevelt Institute. A recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979), he is a former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank and a former member and chairman of the (US president’s) Council of Economic Advisers. In 2000, Stiglitz founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, a think tank on international development based at Columbia University. He has been a member of the Columbia faculty since 2001 and received that university’s highest academic rank (university professor) in 2003. Based on academic citations, Stiglitz is the 4th most influential economist in the world today, and in 2011 he was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Known for his pioneering work on asymmetric information, Stiglitz’s work focuses on income distribution, asset risk management, corporate governance, and international trade. He is the author of numerous books, and several bestsellers. His most recent title is The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them (2015).

Laurence D. Fink is Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock, Inc. He and seven partners founded BlackRock in 1988, and under his leadership, the firm has grown into a global leader in investment and technology solutions to help investors build better financial futures. Today, BlackRock is trusted to manage more money than any other investment firm in the world. Mr. Fink has been named one of the "World's Greatest Leaders" by Fortune, and Barron’s has named him one of the "World's Best CEOs" for 12 consecutive years.

Prior to founding BlackRock in 1988, Mr. Fink was a member of the Management Committee and a Managing Director of The First Boston Corporation.

He serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of New York University (NYU) and is Co-Chairman of the NYU Langone Medical Centre Board of Trustees. In addition, he serves on the boards of the Museum of Modern Art, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Nature Conservancy. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing and on the Executive Committee of the Partnership for New York City.

Mr. Fink earned an MBA with a concentration in real estate from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1976 and a BA in political science from UCLA in 1974.

Dr. Michio Kaku is a world renowned theoretical physicist and futurist. He is also a bestselling author, acclaimed public speaker, and popularizer of science. He has appeared in many television programmes on BBC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the Science Channel and a number of the network news channel.

The author of numerous international best sellers, Kaku’s latest is The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest toUnderstand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (February 2014), in which he gives an authoritative and compelling look at the astonishing research being done in top laboratories around the world—all based on the latest advancements in neuroscience and physics. Kaku takes us on a grand tour of what the future might hold, giving us not only a solid sense of how the brain functions but also how these technologies will change our daily lives.

Kaku writes regularly for major publications such as Time, Wall Street Journal, Discover Magazine, New Scientist Magazine, Astronomy and Wired. He has also hosted a CNBC series called The Edge: The Future of the Mind and had a cameo in the 2013 Brad Pitt blockbuster World Was Z.

He also appeared on CNN International to discuss about America's plan to send human to Mars by 2030 and discussed key initiatives around the world that are leading the way to new and better energy sources that will lead to greater sustainability and energy independence.

Dr. Michio Kaku will share with you his vision of the future and brings to you a different perspective on how future trends will bring new avenues to business and society.

Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist who is currently Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York, and a columnist for The New York Times. In 2008, Krugman was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to New Trade Theory and New Economic Geography. The Prize Committee cited Krugman's work explaining the patterns of international trade and the geographic distribution of economic activity, by examining the effects of economies of scale and of consumer preferences for diverse goods and services.

Krugman is the author or editor of 27 books, including scholarly works, textbooks, and books for a more general audience, and has published over 200 scholarly articles in professional journals and edited volumes. He has also written several hundred columns on economic and political issues for The New York Times, Fortune and Slate. A 2011 survey of economics professors named him their favorite living economist under the age of 60. As a commentator, Krugman has written on a wide range of economic issues including income distribution, taxation, macroeconomics, and international economics. Krugman considers himself a modern liberal, referring to his books, his blog on The New York Times, and his 2007 book The Conscience of a Liberal. His popular commentary has attracted widespread attention and comments, both positive and negative.

Few presidents have walked a more improbable path to the White House. Born in Hawaii to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya, Obama was raised with help from his grandparents, whose generosity of spirit reflected their Midwestern roots. The homespun values they instilled in him, paired with his innate sense of optimism, compelled Obama to devote his life to giving every child, regardless of his or her background, the same chance America gave him. After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants. That experience honed his belief in the power of uniting ordinary people around a politics of purpose, in the hard work of citizenship, to bring about positive change. In law school, he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, then he returned to Illinois to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago and begin a career in public service, winning seats in the Illinois State Senate and the United States Senate.

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States, winning more votes than any candidate in history. He took office at a moment of crisis unlike any America had seen in decades – a nation at war, a planet in peril, the American Dream itself threatened by the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. And yet, despite all manner of political obstruction, Obama’s leadership helped rescue the economy, revitalize the American auto industry, reform the health care system to cover another twenty million Americans, and put the country on a firm course to a clean energy future – all while overseeing the longest stretch of job creation in American history. On the world stage, Obama’s belief in America’s indispensable leadership and strong, principled diplomacy helped wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, decimate al Qaeda and eliminate the world’s most wanted terrorists, shut down Iran’s nuclear weapons program, open up a new chapter with the people of Cuba, and unite humanity in coordinated action to combat a changing climate.

In times of great challenge and change, President Obama’s leadership ushered in a stronger economy, a more equal society, a nation more secure at home and more respected around the world. The Obama years were ones in which more people not only began to see themselves in the changing face of America, but to see America the way he always has always - as the only place on Earth where so many of our stories could even be possible. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia, 18, and Sasha, 15.