In the Red Speaker Bios
Jeff Sachs
Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. He is widely recognized for bold and effective strategies to address complex challenges including debt crises, hyperinflations, the transition from central planning to market economies, the control of AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, the escape from extreme poverty, and the battle against human-induced climate change. He is Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, and an SDG Advocate for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. From 2001-18, Sachs served as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General, for Kofi Annan (2001-7), Ban Ki-moon (2008-16), and Antonio Guterres (2017-18).
Professor Sachs was the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize, the leading global prize for environmental leadership. He was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders and has received 28 honorary degrees. The New York Times called Sachs “probably the most important economist in the world,” and Time magazine called Sachs “the world’s best-known economist.” A survey by The Economist ranked Sachs as among the three most influential living economists.
Professor Sachs serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is University Professor at Columbia University, the university’s highest academic rank. Sachs was Director of the Earth Institute from 2002 to 2016.
Sachs has authored and edited numerous books, including three New York Times bestsellers, The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011). Other books include To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (2013), The Age of Sustainable Development (2015), Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair & Sustainable (2017), and most recently A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2018).
Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University, most recently as the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Sachs received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard.
Dr. Wayne Frederick
Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick was appointed the seventeenth president of Howard University in 2014. He previously served as provost and chief academic officer.Most recently, the Howard University Board of Trustees selected Dr. Frederick to serve as the distinguished Charles R. Drew Professorof Surgery.
Dr. Frederick has advanced Howard University's commitment to student opportunity, academic innovation, public service, and fiscal stability. He has overseen a series of reform efforts, including the expansion of academic offerings, establishing innovative programs to support student success and the modernization of university facilities.
Dr. Frederick receivedhis B.S and M.D. from Howard University. Following his post-doctoral research and surgical oncology fellowships at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dr. Frederick began his academic career as associate director of the cancer center at the University of Connecticut. Upon his return to Howard University, his academic positions included associate dean in the College of Medicine, division chief in the Department of Surgery, director of the Cancer Center and deputy provost for Health Sciences.He also earned a Master of Business Administration from Howard University’s School of Business in 2011.
Dr. Frederick is the author of numerous peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, abstracts, and editorials and is a widely recognized expert on disparities in healthcare and medical education. His medical research focuses on narrowing racial, ethnic and gender disparities in cancer-care outcomes, especially pertaining to gastrointestinal cancers.
Dr. Frederick was honored with the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He currently serves on theBoard ofDirectorsfor theFederal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Humana Inc. He is a member of surgical and medical associations includingthe American Surgical Association and the American College of Surgeons. In 2017, he was named “Washingtonian of the Year” by Washingtonianmagazine and in 2015 was named “Male President of the Year” by HBCU Digest.
Dr. Helen Bond
Dr. Helen Bond is an Associate Professor at Howard University in Washington DC and the former director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Assessment at Howard. She is a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar to India. She received the Teaching with Technology Award at Howard for her work with technology integration and the Interdisciplinary Research Award for her research in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Howard University is a private, doctoral university classified as a high research activity institution and a Historically Black College and University (HBCU).
With a Ph.D. in Human Development, Dr. Bond’s expertise is education and human development, Holocaust Education, teacher education, and preventing violent extremism through education (PVE). She has lectured on these and other topics in over 20 countries including Austria, Bangladesh, Cuba, England, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Liberia, South Africa, and South Korea among others.
Dr. Bond is one of the contributing authors of the UNESCO publication, Teaching Respect for All: Implementation Guide, which outlines a curricular framework to promote respect which countries can adapt to their respective contexts and needs. She was also the contributing author to the UNESCO publication entitled, Teacher’s Guide on the Prevention of Violent Extremism, the first contribution to the implementation of the UN Secretary-General’s Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, announced in January 2016. She authored a series of Teacher Guides for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Education for Justice (E4J) initiative that seeks to promote a culture of lawfulness through education.
She is also liaison to the Howard University Center for African Studies. Howard University is one of only ten universities in the US (and the only HBCU) designated by the US Department of Education as a comprehensive National Resource Center for African Studies. She was inducted in the 2020 Alumni Hall of Fame by The Ohio State University-Mansfield for her outstanding work in education and human development.
Alainna Lynch
Alainna Lynch is a Senior Research Manager at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), where she considers the question: What will it take to achieve the SDGs in the United States? Alainna’s research interests also include understanding how poverty and inequality become entrenched in social systems, and how to prevent harm when designing policy and programs. Prior to SDSN, Alainna worked with Overseas Development Institute (ODI) on the Leave No One Behind Agenda. Alainna has a degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago and a Master’s degree in Evidence-Based Social Intervention from Oxford University.
Judith Aidoo-Saltus
Judith Aidoo-Saltus is Chief Executive of Caswell Capital Partners, LLC, (“Caswell”), a financial and investment advisory firm specializing in the African diaspora (www.caswellcapital.com), as well as CEO of its US affiliate Caswell Communications, Inc. (“CasCom”), a private investment company.
Since 2003, Judith has directed nearly $220 million in investment capital through a hedge fund that she co-manages to provide senior and mezzanine debt for small and medium sized companies. Her investment focus includes financial services; real estate, with a particular interest in housing; media, franchises and intellectual property; and, increasingly, agriculture and agro-processing.
Judith, a licensed member of the New York law bar, began her career as an investment banker in 1987 with Goldman, Sachs & Co., where she specialized in structured finance. In 1991, she started her own firm to advise institutions like the World Bank and IFC, and more recently the Global Steering Group for Impact Investing (www.gsgii.org) and Aspire Impact India (https://aspireimpact.in/impact-future-project/launch-keynote-speakers-ifp-africa-2021/) to raise patient investment capital to help African countries achieve their UN Social Development Goals.
She has also regularly advised African sovereign governments, including Ghana, Zambia and Uganda, on the development of their local capital markets; as well as pan-regional organizations like the Regional African Satellite Communications Organization based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, and, separately, the Preferential Trade Area Bank for Trade and Development (now TDB Group) based in Nairobi, Kenya on raising hundreds of millions of dollars respectively on the international capital markets. For the latter, Ms. Aidoo-Saltus developed and managed an innovative securitization program that raised $500 million to refinance dollar-denominated trade loans of large exporters in 22 eastern and southern African countries. This deal was historic in its structure and it received the highest possible short-term credit rating from Standard & Poor’s (A1+) and Fitch Investor Service (F1+), a regional first at the time.
Judith Aidoo-Saltus graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with high honors from Rutgers College in 1984 and received a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School in 1987. She is an avid photographer, traveler, reader, and writer (see her latest article on impact investing in culture at https://www.creativityculturecapital.org/field-notes-from-an-african-investor/).
Dr. Michael McAfee
Dr. Michael McAfee became President and CEO of PolicyLink in 2018, seven years after becoming the inaugural director of the Promise Neighborhoods Institute at PolicyLink. His results-driven leadership, depth of knowledge about building and sustaining an organization, and devotion to serving the nation’s most underserved populations made him the obvious choice to lead the 20-year-old PolicyLink as Angela Glover Blackwell transitioned to founder in residence.
During his time at PolicyLink, Michael has played a leadership role in securing Promise Neighborhoods as a permanent federal program, led efforts to improve outcomes for more than 300,000 children, and facilitated the investment of billions of dollars in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. He is the catalyst for a new and growing body of work — corporate racial equity — which includes the first comprehensive tool to guide private-sector companies in assessing and actively promoting equity in every aspect of their company’s value chain. Michael carries forward the legacy to realize the promise of equity — just and fair inclusion into a society in which all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.
Michael also understands the urgency of now. The nation is rapidly becoming a majority people of color. In cities and towns across the country many people are embracing the concept of equity and intent on achieving racial and economic equity for all. At the same time, as the word is used more, the concept of equity is in danger of becoming diluted, just another catchphrase of civil society, leaving the true promise of racial and economic inclusion unrealized. Michael is determined that this will not happen.
Michael is ensuring equity does not become watered down. He is turning movement leaders’ eyes toward redesigning the “rules of the game” so that all people in America — particularly those who face the burdens of structural racism — participate in a just society, live in a healthy community of opportunity, and prosper in an equitable economy. He is achieving this by enacting liberating public policies targeted to the 100 million people living in or near poverty, the majority of whom are people of color.
His legacy will lie in his efforts to stand in transformative solidarity with others, collectively charting a course to Win on Equity. He is building a well-planned, well-coordinated, well-executed, and sustained campaign that frees America’s democracy from the oppressive blend of patriarchy, capitalism, and racism.
Before joining PolicyLink, Michael served as senior community planning and development representative in the Chicago Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). While at HUD, he managed a $450 million housing, community, and economic development portfolio where he partnered with local leaders to create more than 3,000 units of affordable housing and 5,000 jobs and to ensure access to social services for more than 200,000 families. Before his public service, Michael served as the director of community leadership for The Greater Kansas City Community Foundation and Affiliated Trusts. He was instrumental in positioning the organization to raise $121 million from individual donors, an accomplishment recognized by the Chronicle of Philanthropy for receiving more contributions than any community foundation in America. Michael’s commitment to the needs of people of color and those living in poverty extends to his work on the boards of Bridge Housing, Independent Sector, North Lawndale Employment Network, One Degree, and Sweet Beginnings, LLC, each of which is committed to creating opportunity for those among the 100 million economically insecure people in America.
Previously, Michael served in the United States Army and as Dean's Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He earned his Doctor of Education in human and organizational learning from George Washington University and completed Harvard University's Executive Program in Public Management.
He is a sought-after speaker on community and economic development, leadership, organizational development, racial equity, and youth development. His articles have appeared in Academic Pediatrics, Cascade, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia; Community Development Innovation Review, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Harvard Education Press, New York Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and Voices in Urban Education, published by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University.
Michael lives in the Oakland Hills with his wife, Maja, and their two Brussels Griffons (Gigi and Griff). He is an avid off-road hiker and practitioner of yoga.
Gerald Torres
Gerald Torres is a Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment and Professor at the Yale Law School. He is former President of the Association of American Law Schools and has taught at Stanford Law School and at Harvard Law School, where he served as the Oneida Nation Visiting Professor of Law. Professor Torres served as Counsel to the Attorney General on environmental matters and Indian affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice. Professor Torres has served on the board of the Environmental Law Institute, the EPA's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, and the National Petroleum Council. He is board chair of EarthDay Network and founding Chairman of the Advancement Project, the leading Civil Rights advocacy organization in the country. He is a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Professor Torres has just been appointed to the Advisory Council of The Connecticut Sea Grant. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations on environmental matters and is a life member of the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.