Mariana Mazzucato (PhD, CBE, FREcon) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), where she is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose. She is winner of international prizes including the Grande Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana in 2021, Italy's highest civilian honour, the 2020 John von Neumann Award, the 2019 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values, and 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She is a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and the Italian Academy of Sciences Lincei. In 2025, she was appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to economics in the King’s Birthday Honours List. In April, 2026, she was appointed as the first Economist-in-Residence at Whitechapel Gallery. Pope Francis appointed her to the Pontifical Academy for Life for bringing ‘more humanity’ to the world.
 

Her award-winning books include: The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (2013 The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (2018), Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (2021), The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies (2023) and The Common Good Economy: a new compass (2026). She advises policymakers around the world on innovation-led inclusive and sustainable growth. Her policy roles include: Chair of the World Health Organization's Council on the Economics of Health for All, Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, member of the South African President’s Economic Advisor y Council, Co-Chair of the Group of Experts to the Brazilian 2024 G20 Task Force for the Global Mobilization against Climate Change, and Special Representative of President Ramaphosa to the 2025 G20 Taskforce 1 on Inclusive Economic Growth, Industrialization, Employment, and Reduced Inequality. 

Natalie Diaz was born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, on the banks of the Colorado River. Diaz is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She is the author of When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon Press), winner of the American Book Award, and Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and finalist for the National Book Award and Forward Prize. Diaz has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, Native Arts and Culture Fellowship, and both Princeton University’s Holmes National Poetry Prize and Hodder Fellowship. She is Professor at Arizona State University where she Directs the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands and is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry. She is the youngest ever elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, a member of the Board of Trustees for the United States Artists, where she is an alumna of the Ford Fellowship and is currently a Mellon Foundation Presidential Fellow. 

Darrick Hamilton is the University Professor and Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at The New School, where he also founded and directs the Institute on Race, Power & Political Economy. He additionally serves as Chief Economist at the AFL-CIO. 

Widely regarded as one of the nation’s foremost public intellectuals, Professor Hamilton reimagines how an economy should work—identifying bold opportunities to invest in our human capacity and fostering collaborations that advance economic inclusion, social equity, and civic engagement in the United States and around the world.

A pioneer in the economics subfield of identity group stratification, Professor Hamilton’s research has been featured in The New York Times, Mother Jones, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Wall Street Journal. He has developed and advised on transformative policy proposals—such as baby bonds, guaranteed income, and a federal job guarantee—that have inspired legislation and shifted billions of dollars toward building a fair and inclusive economy.

In 2025, Professor Hamilton was named the Katherine Hampson Bessell Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and was recognized as a Freedom Scholar by the Marguerite Casey Foundation in its 2020 inaugural class.  He has advised national and global leaders on economic policy, including the U.S. Joint Economic Committee and the Senate Banking Committee and also serves on the board of directors of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Born and raised in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Professor Hamilton earned his bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Julie Su is New York City’s first ever Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice. In her newly created role, she oversees agencies such as the Economic Development Corporation, the Department of Small Business Services, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, helping the Administration deliver on its affordability agenda by ensuring that the local economy works for every New Yorker. As former US Secretary of Labor, Julie played a central role in fighting for workers, ensuring a just day’s pay for a hard day’s work and saving the pensions of more than a million union workers and retirees. Prior to her work at the federal level, she served as the California Labor Secretary appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom. Building on her nearly two decades of experience as a nonprofit attorney representing low wage, vulnerable workers, Julie’s work as California Labor Commissioner from 2011-2018 was synonymous with a renaissance in enforcement, creative approaches to combating wage theft, and fiercely protecting immigrant workers. Julie graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Law School. She speaks Mandarin and Spanish.