Susan Lucia Annunzio (Lucia) is the President and CEO of the Center for High Performance and Associate Adjunct Professor of Management, Executive Education, Chicago Booth.

Acclaimed leadership coach, author, and president and CEO of the Center for High Performance (cfHP), Lucia Annunzio is known by her clients as the “CEO-Whisperer.” She has spent more than 25 years observing, analyzing, and influencing C-Suite and board dynamics, experience that she applies in coaching CEOs and C-suite executives. She is the mastermind of “Elite High-Performance Coaching” – CfHP’s proprietary approach to propel leaders to greatness. She works exclusively with CEO’s, senior executives and rising stars.

Lucia’s work is based on CfHP’s proprietary global research on the factors that accelerate or inhibit profitable growth. It achieved critical acclaim and was presented at such prestigious venues as the World Economic Forum, The International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change at the University of Greenwich, and Avature’s “Talent Economy” launch event in Belgium.

Lucia is the author of Contagious Success (Portfolio, 2004), a dynamic, award-winning management book that revealed the global standard for high performance. Contagious Success was voted Fast Company's Readers' Choice. Lucia also authored two additional prominent business books: Communicoding (Fine, 1990; Penguin USA, 1991) and Evolutionary Leadership (Simon & Schuster, 2001; Fireside, 2002). She is frequently quoted in the business press such as the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and CNBC. She is currently a Wall Street Journal Contributor.

Lucia is an Associate Adjunct Professor of Management at the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business, where she teaches the most popular program, High Performance Leadership. She has been a guest lecturer at INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and Instituto De Empresa in Madrid. She also taught at General Electric’s Crotonville Corporate Training Center.

She is a long-standing member of the Economic Club of Chicago as well as the Chicago Club. She has sat on various not-for-profit boards including the Joffrey Ballet and the Museum of Contemporary Art. She also sits on the Advisory Board of KindWorks AI and Harvard Business Review. Lucia is currently focusing her philanthropy on the National MS Society.

Jake Braun has over 15 years of experience in the development and implementation of strategic direction for complex, high profile national security initiatives. He works across technology, intelligence systems and transformational communications programs to develop solutions for clients in both the public and private sectors related to cybersecurity, government data analytics, and immigration.

Previously, Mr. Braun served as the Director of White House and Public Liaison for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) where he was instrumental in the passage of the unprecedented Passenger Name Record (PNR) Agreement, one of the largest big data agreements in history. Mr. Braun currently serves as a fellow at the Council on CyberSecurity, in the President’s Circle on the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and as a strategic advisor to the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon on cybersecurity.

John Burrows is senior lecturer in leadership at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and an associate fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. He also teaches healthcare leadership in a newly launched double masters degree program in health policy taught jointly by the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics & Political Science. Previously, he was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Before entering academia, John’s career spanned the public, private, and NGO sectors. He originally came to the USA from the UK to volunteer at the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Project. During college he interned with other anti-death penalty groups and also at the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC. Later he joined Arthur Andersen’s Office of Government Service (OGS) and led engagements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

John later switched into the private sector, where he was a partner with the consulting firm Accenture and held senior roles in sales and marketing at enterprise software companies including Siebel and Oracle. He negotiated, sold, managed, and implemented complex, multi-national, multi-million dollar projects around the globe, and gained experience building and growing operations in the UK, USA, and Japan, grappling with all that entails: BD, IJVs, M&A, etc. During his PhD studies John served as an advisor for Houses for Africa, a social enterprise firm based in Cape Town, South Africa.

At the University of Chicago and Oxford, John teaches leadership, negotiations, strategy, decision-making, and organizational psychology to MPP, MBA, and MA students, and to senior executives in open enrollment and custom executive-education programs. Custom executive education clients of John's include AbbVie, Alfa, American College of Surgeons, American Orthopaedic Association, Aon, BBVA, Brainlab, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), Civil Service Bureau of Hong Kong, Edelman, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), Kiewit, Kuwait University College of Business Administration, Merrill Lynch, State Farm, Syngenta, Trelleborg, and Workiva.

For three years now, John has also taught each cohort of the University of Chicago's International Innovation Corp (IIC) Fellows Program. The IIC recruits top-performing graduates of leading host-country universities and US based institutions and organizes them into teams of up to 3-5 Project Associates. Project Associates train for 5 weeks in skills required to translate their academic and professional knowledge into on-the-ground contributions. The IIC embeds each team within a government, non-profit, or foundation office in India or Brazil to work on an innovative development project with a discrete, tractable scope for 1-3 year projects. Last year, John taught in the University of Chicago Data and Policy Summer Scholar Program which offers top global undergraduate students a 4-week experience with rigorous training on data analytics and public policy.

John is a sought-after speaker across industries but especially within healthcare. He has presented to the American College of Surgeons (ACS), including to their Board of Regents, and delivered a grand rounds lecture to the University of Chicago’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Rehabilitation. John has also delivered keynote speeches for the American Orthopaedic Association (AOA) and the Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS).

John currently serves on the advisory board of Profitable Ideas Exchange (PIE), which builds communities of senior executive to tackle many of the world’s greatest challenges, and consults with clients across industries and geographies.

John received a Ph.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and an A.B. from Vassar College.

Ed Miller serves as a lecturer and leadership coach in the Executive Education program and in the Management Lab in the MBA program at Booth. Clients have included Abbott, Bank of Communications (China), Barclays, Cargill, CME, Harman-Kardon, Honeywell, HSBC, IIC (International Innovation Corps), KONE, Philips, U.S. CBP, and Wrigley. Miller, who joined Booth in 2005, brings over 30 years of experience to his work with executives and their organizations. He specializes in helping leaders become more agile in dealing with the challenges of a constantly changing environment. He also works with leaders to create and sustain high performing cultures that will enable their organization to achieve its strategic and operating goals in today's complex, global marketplace.

His clients range from start-up and midsize organizations to Global 100 firms, including ADA, AT&T, Bell Canada, Amoco (now BP), Chase, Clintec, DRW, Microsoft, Nestle, OHA, SAIC, T. Rowe Price, and Xerox. His assignments have taken him to Canada, China, Europe, South Africa and South America.

Prior to coaching and consulting, Miller worked in sales and marketing at IBM and as Business Director at Quaker Oats (now Pepsi). He has also served on the boards of several non-profit organizations.

Miller holds a BA from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Chicago Booth. He completed the Executive Peak Program at the Center for Creative Leadership and received his Professional Coaching Certification (PCC) from New Ventures West.

Susan Lucia Annunzio (Lucia) is the President and CEO of the Center for High Performance and Associate Adjunct Professor of Management, Executive Education, Chicago Booth.

Acclaimed leadership coach, author, and president and CEO of the Center for High Performance (cfHP), Lucia Annunzio is known by her clients as the “CEO-Whisperer.” She has spent more than 25 years observing, analyzing, and influencing C-Suite and board dynamics, experience that she applies in coaching CEOs and C-suite executives. She is the mastermind of “Elite High-Performance Coaching” – CfHP’s proprietary approach to propel leaders to greatness. She works exclusively with CEO’s, senior executives and rising stars.

Lucia’s work is based on CfHP’s proprietary global research on the factors that accelerate or inhibit profitable growth. It achieved critical acclaim and was presented at such prestigious venues as the World Economic Forum, The International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change at the University of Greenwich, and Avature’s “Talent Economy” launch event in Belgium.

Lucia is the author of Contagious Success (Portfolio, 2004), a dynamic, award-winning management book that revealed the global standard for high performance. Contagious Success was voted Fast Company's Readers' Choice. Lucia also authored two additional prominent business books: Communicoding (Fine, 1990; Penguin USA, 1991) and Evolutionary Leadership (Simon & Schuster, 2001; Fireside, 2002). She is frequently quoted in the business press such as the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and CNBC. She is currently a Wall Street Journal Contributor.

Lucia is an Associate Adjunct Professor of Management at the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business, where she teaches the most popular program, High Performance Leadership. She has been a guest lecturer at INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and Instituto De Empresa in Madrid. She also taught at General Electric’s Crotonville Corporate Training Center.

She is a long-standing member of the Economic Club of Chicago as well as the Chicago Club. She has sat on various not-for-profit boards including the Joffrey Ballet and the Museum of Contemporary Art. She also sits on the Advisory Board of KindWorks AI and Harvard Business Review. Lucia is currently focusing her philanthropy on the National MS Society.

John Burrows is senior lecturer in leadership at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and an associate fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. He also teaches healthcare leadership in a newly launched double masters degree program in health policy taught jointly by the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics & Political Science. Previously, he was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Before entering academia, John’s career spanned the public, private, and NGO sectors. He originally came to the USA from the UK to volunteer at the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Project. During college he interned with other anti-death penalty groups and also at the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC. Later he joined Arthur Andersen’s Office of Government Service (OGS) and led engagements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

John later switched into the private sector, where he was a partner with the consulting firm Accenture and held senior roles in sales and marketing at enterprise software companies including Siebel and Oracle. He negotiated, sold, managed, and implemented complex, multi-national, multi-million dollar projects around the globe, and gained experience building and growing operations in the UK, USA, and Japan, grappling with all that entails: BD, IJVs, M&A, etc. During his PhD studies John served as an advisor for Houses for Africa, a social enterprise firm based in Cape Town, South Africa.

At the University of Chicago and Oxford, John teaches leadership, negotiations, strategy, decision-making, and organizational psychology to MPP, MBA, and MA students, and to senior executives in open enrollment and custom executive-education programs. Custom executive education clients of John's include AbbVie, Alfa, American College of Surgeons, American Orthopaedic Association, Aon, BBVA, Brainlab, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), Civil Service Bureau of Hong Kong, Edelman, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), Kiewit, Kuwait University College of Business Administration, Merrill Lynch, State Farm, Syngenta, Trelleborg, and Workiva.

For three years now, John has also taught each cohort of the University of Chicago's International Innovation Corp (IIC) Fellows Program. The IIC recruits top-performing graduates of leading host-country universities and US based institutions and organizes them into teams of up to 3-5 Project Associates. Project Associates train for 5 weeks in skills required to translate their academic and professional knowledge into on-the-ground contributions. The IIC embeds each team within a government, non-profit, or foundation office in India or Brazil to work on an innovative development project with a discrete, tractable scope for 1-3 year projects. Last year, John taught in the University of Chicago Data and Policy Summer Scholar Program which offers top global undergraduate students a 4-week experience with rigorous training on data analytics and public policy.

John is a sought-after speaker across industries but especially within healthcare. He has presented to the American College of Surgeons (ACS), including to their Board of Regents, and delivered a grand rounds lecture to the University of Chicago’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Rehabilitation. John has also delivered keynote speeches for the American Orthopaedic Association (AOA) and the Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS).

John currently serves on the advisory board of Profitable Ideas Exchange (PIE), which builds communities of senior executive to tackle many of the world’s greatest challenges, and consults with clients across industries and geographies.

John received a Ph.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and an A.B. from Vassar College.

Sara founded the Family Office Exchange (FOX) as an industry clearinghouse and peer network for family offices in 1989. Within a few years, Sara could see that families needed help developing their enterprise vision and managing their family transitions, in addition to overseeing their family offices. As a result, FOX became an advisor to family owners of the enterprise, in addition to sharing family wealth best practices and being an industry advocate for the importance of private enterprise in a global economy.

In her role as family advisor, Sara provides consulting advice to a select group of enterprise families and helps identify enterprise best practices for the FOX Knowledge Center. She supports the development of new FOX learning programs and delivers educational programs at the University of Chicago Booth School in Chicago and at VU University in Amsterdam. At the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Sara is an adjunct faculty member in the Private Wealth Management and Wealth Essentials courses.

As Board Chair for FOX, Sara oversees the values, vision, and mission for the firm; provides oversight for the strategic investments made by the business; and serves as an advocate and advisor to the unique membership community that FOX represents. FOX has a unique team of 20 subject matter experts who oversee 480 member relationships in 24 countries. The FOX management team is based in Chicago, New York, Denver, Richmond, Pittsburgh, So Florida and Madrid.

Sara is co-author of Family Legacy and Leadership: Preserving True Family Wealth in Challenging Times. Sara is on the international governing board for the Foundation for Advancing Impact and Sustainability in Bologna, Italy and the national governing board for Private Directors Association in Chicago.

Howard M. Helsinger is a partner in the Chicago law firm of Sugar Felsenthal Grais & Helsinger, LLP, and taught courses on trusts and estates at the University of Chicago Law School from 1997 to 2016. He is a member of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, a past chair of the Chicago Bar Association Probate Practice Committee, and a frequent lecturer for the Illinois Institute of Continuing Legal Education and other state and national bar associations. He concentrates his practice in estate planning, estate administration, probate, charitable planning, and trust and estate related litigation.

He was a member of the committee that drafted the Illinois Uniform Transfers to Minors Act. He served as a planned giving advisor for the National Humanities Center, and the Newberry Library. He has also taught at the Northwestern University School of Law, and in the graduate tax program at IIT-Chicago Kent College of Law.

He has a B.A. in English from Haverford College, a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School (1978). Before law school he taught English Literature at Boston University, and after law school he clerked for two years in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Kim Kamin is a Principal at Gresham Partners, LLC where she serves as Chief Wealth Strategist and a Client Advisor. She leads Gresham’s development and implementation of estate, wealth transfer, philanthropic and fiduciary planning activities, and advises clients. Previously she was a partner in the Private Clients, Trusts and Estates Group at Schiff Hardin LLP where for many years her legal practice involved all aspects of trust and estate planning, administration and dispute resolution; advising families and closely held businesses on a wide array of wealth preservation, asset protection and succession planning issues; representing fiduciaries, custodians, and beneficiaries in estate administration and contested trust and estate matters; and serving as counsel for the formation and operation of not-for-profit entities. Ms. Kamin is an adjunct professor at the Northwestern University School of Law where she has been awarded the William M. Trumbull Lectureship, and has taught Advanced Trusts and Estates, the Income Taxation of Trusts and Estates, and Estate Planning.

Ms. Kamin is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Trusts and Estates Magazine. She has published on a wide variety of topics and is also a frequent lecturer in a variety of venues (including Family Office Exchange, ALI-CLE, American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, Chicago Estate Planning Council, Chicago Bar Association, Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education, Annual Notre Dame Tax & Estate Planning Institute, Tulane Tax Institute, and CLE International’s Visual Arts and the Law Conference). She is also an "Xpert" for Trust & Estates' IdeaXchange, http://wealthmanagement.com/author/kim-kamin. She has co-edited the recently released book, Estate Planning for Modern Families for the Leimberg Library Tools & Techniques series.

Ms. Kamin serves on the Board of Directors for the Chicago Estate Planning Council, the Chicago Community Trust Professional Advisory Council, the Art Institute of Chicago Gift Planning Advisory Committee, the Northwestern Memorial Foundation Council for Philanthropy, the Goodman Theatre Spotlight Advisory Council, and the Chicago Foundation for Women Professional Advisory Council. She also serves on the Chicago Stanford Association’s Board of Leaders. She is a member of The Economic Club of Chicago, where she has served on several committees. Ms. Kamin is a Fellow with the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel where she chairs the New Fellows Steering Committee and the Wealth Strategist and Fiduciary Counsel Subcommittee.

Professional awards and recognitions include Illinois Attorney Under 40 To Watch by the Law Bulletin Publishing Company (2008), The Best Lawyers in America® in the practice areas of both Trusts and Estates, and Litigation - Trusts & Estates (2011-present), selected as an Illinois Rising Star in Illinois Super Lawyers (2009, 2011), selected to Illinois Super Lawyers (2011- 2014), Leading Lawyer in Trust, Will & Estate Planning Law with the Illinois Leading Lawyer Network (2010-2014), and "AV Rated" by Martindale-Hubbell. Ms. Kamin is a member of the Chicago Bar Association and the American Bar Association.

Ms. Kamin received her B.A., with distinction and departmental honors, from Stanford University and her J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

John Nersesian is head of advisor education at PIMCO, providing advanced wealth management and investment consulting education to financial professionals. Prior to joining PIMCO in 2019, he was senior managing director of wealth management services for Nuveen Investments. Previously, he was a first vice president at Merrill Lynch Private Client Group, where he also led advanced training for financial consultants. He served as a board member of the Investments and Wealth Institute (IWI, formerly IMCA) from 2006–2017 and as chairman for the 2014–2015 term, and he is a faculty member for the IWI Certified Private Wealth Advisor (CPWA) and Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) education programs held at Yale University and The University of Chicago. He has 35 years of investment and financial services experience and holds an undergraduate degree in business and economics from Lehigh University.

Stephen R. Quazzo is Co-Founder and CEO of Pearlmark, a Chicago–based private equity real estate investment firm that pursues domestic, value-added strategies through a series of institutional and high net worth investment vehicles. Since its inception in 1996, the firm has made more than 530 office, industrial, retail, multifamily and mezzanine loan investments nationwide, representing a gross investment of over $13.2 billion. Currently the firm oversees an approximately $1.5 billion portfolio of U.S. real estate investments.

From 1991 to 1996, Mr. Quazzo served as President of Equity Institutional Investors, Inc., a subsidiary of investor Sam Zell’s private holding company, Equity Group Investments, Inc. Mr. Quazzo was responsible for raising equity capital and performing various portfolio management services in connection with the firm’s real estate investments, including institutional opportunity funds and public REITs. Prior to joining the Zell organization, Mr. Quazzo was in the Real Estate Department of Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he was a Vice President responsible for the firm’s real estate investment banking activities in the Midwest.

Mr. Quazzo holds undergraduate and MBA degrees from Harvard University, where he serves as a member of the Board of Dean’s Advisors for the business school. He is a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), Trustee and immediate past Chairman of the ULI Foundation, a member of the Pension Real Estate Association, and a licensed real estate broker in Illinois. Mr. Quazzo is a public company director of Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corp. (NYSE: VAC) and Phillips Edison & Company. For 22 years (1994-2016), he also served as a director of Starwood Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: HOT), which in 2016 merged with Marriott International (NYSE: MAR). Mr. Quazzo serves on a number of non-profit boards, including: Rush University Medical Center, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Endowment, the Chicago Parks Foundation, Deerfield Academy, and City Year Chicago.

Susan Lucia Annunzio (Lucia) is the President and CEO of the Center for High Performance and Associate Adjunct Professor of Management, Executive Education, Chicago Booth.

Acclaimed leadership coach, author, and president and CEO of the Center for High Performance (cfHP), Lucia Annunzio is known by her clients as the “CEO-Whisperer.” She has spent more than 25 years observing, analyzing, and influencing C-Suite and board dynamics, experience that she applies in coaching CEOs and C-suite executives. She is the mastermind of “Elite High-Performance Coaching” – CfHP’s proprietary approach to propel leaders to greatness. She works exclusively with CEO’s, senior executives and rising stars.

Lucia’s work is based on CfHP’s proprietary global research on the factors that accelerate or inhibit profitable growth. It achieved critical acclaim and was presented at such prestigious venues as the World Economic Forum, The International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change at the University of Greenwich, and Avature’s “Talent Economy” launch event in Belgium.

Lucia is the author of Contagious Success (Portfolio, 2004), a dynamic, award-winning management book that revealed the global standard for high performance. Contagious Success was voted Fast Company's Readers' Choice. Lucia also authored two additional prominent business books: Communicoding (Fine, 1990; Penguin USA, 1991) and Evolutionary Leadership (Simon & Schuster, 2001; Fireside, 2002). She is frequently quoted in the business press such as the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and CNBC. She is currently a Wall Street Journal Contributor.

Lucia is an Associate Adjunct Professor of Management at the University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business, where she teaches the most popular program, High Performance Leadership. She has been a guest lecturer at INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau, France, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and Instituto De Empresa in Madrid. She also taught at General Electric’s Crotonville Corporate Training Center.

She is a long-standing member of the Economic Club of Chicago as well as the Chicago Club. She has sat on various not-for-profit boards including the Joffrey Ballet and the Museum of Contemporary Art. She also sits on the Advisory Board of KindWorks AI and Harvard Business Review. Lucia is currently focusing her philanthropy on the National MS Society.

John Burrows is senior lecturer in leadership at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and an associate fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. He also teaches healthcare leadership in a newly launched double masters degree program in health policy taught jointly by the University of Chicago and the London School of Economics & Political Science. Previously, he was an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Before entering academia, John’s career spanned the public, private, and NGO sectors. He originally came to the USA from the UK to volunteer at the Southern Center for Human Rights and the Mississippi Capital Defense Resource Project. During college he interned with other anti-death penalty groups and also at the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC. Later he joined Arthur Andersen’s Office of Government Service (OGS) and led engagements with the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

John later switched into the private sector, where he was a partner with the consulting firm Accenture and held senior roles in sales and marketing at enterprise software companies including Siebel and Oracle. He negotiated, sold, managed, and implemented complex, multi-national, multi-million dollar projects around the globe, and gained experience building and growing operations in the UK, USA, and Japan, grappling with all that entails: BD, IJVs, M&A, etc. During his PhD studies John served as an advisor for Houses for Africa, a social enterprise firm based in Cape Town, South Africa.

At the University of Chicago and Oxford, John teaches leadership, negotiations, strategy, decision-making, and organizational psychology to MPP, MBA, and MA students, and to senior executives in open enrollment and custom executive-education programs. Custom executive education clients of John's include AbbVie, Alfa, American College of Surgeons, American Orthopaedic Association, Aon, BBVA, Brainlab, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), Civil Service Bureau of Hong Kong, Edelman, Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC), Kiewit, Kuwait University College of Business Administration, Merrill Lynch, State Farm, Syngenta, Trelleborg, and Workiva.

For three years now, John has also taught each cohort of the University of Chicago's International Innovation Corp (IIC) Fellows Program. The IIC recruits top-performing graduates of leading host-country universities and US based institutions and organizes them into teams of up to 3-5 Project Associates. Project Associates train for 5 weeks in skills required to translate their academic and professional knowledge into on-the-ground contributions. The IIC embeds each team within a government, non-profit, or foundation office in India or Brazil to work on an innovative development project with a discrete, tractable scope for 1-3 year projects. Last year, John taught in the University of Chicago Data and Policy Summer Scholar Program which offers top global undergraduate students a 4-week experience with rigorous training on data analytics and public policy.

John is a sought-after speaker across industries but especially within healthcare. He has presented to the American College of Surgeons (ACS), including to their Board of Regents, and delivered a grand rounds lecture to the University of Chicago’s Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Rehabilitation. John has also delivered keynote speeches for the American Orthopaedic Association (AOA) and the Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS).

John currently serves on the advisory board of Profitable Ideas Exchange (PIE), which builds communities of senior executive to tackle many of the world’s greatest challenges, and consults with clients across industries and geographies.

John received a Ph.D. and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and an A.B. from Vassar College.

Sonny is a board member and advisor to companies. He was previously Phunhousian in Chief at DNS Capital. Prior to DNS, Sonny spent 25 years as a senior executive or board member across many organizations in the private, public and nonprofit sectors. He launched and was responsible for the Energy division at Uptake Technologies. Prior to that, he was a member of the Executive Committee and the Chief Information & Innovation Officer at Exelon Corporation. Sonny also served in the administrations of Mayor Richard M. Daley and President William J. Clinton.

Sonny currently serves on the boards of The Invisible Institute, the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago and the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and is an Executive in Residence at the Booth School’s Rustandy Center. He also a Henry Crown Leadership Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Sonny has a B.A. and M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and an M.P.P. from Harvard University.

Prior to joining Cedars-Sinai, Dr. Gewertz served on the faculty at the University of Chicago (1981-2006). There he enjoyed a regional and national referral practice in vascular surgery and established a basic science laboratory focused on cellular mechanisms of ischemia-reperfusion injury, which was funded, by the NIH and American Heart Association. For the last 14 years of his tenure at the University of Chicago, he served as the Dallas Phemister Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery.

Joining Cedars-Sinai Health System in 2006, he has focused on ensuring that hospital operations support the institution’s academic mission. In his position as Vice-president for Interventional Services, he has provided professional leadership and oversight for our surgical and interventional operation which encompasses a large number of clinical venues and departments. The Department of Surgery at Cedars-Sinai has added to its academic stature by targeted recruitments across all specialties more than doubling clinical revenues while expanding the clinical faculty by 50%. Five surgical clinical programs are now ranked in the top 16 in US NEWS and World Report including the #2 programs in GI surgery and the # 3 programs in heart surgery and orthopedics. Annual expenditures from federal grants have increased from $250,000 per year in 2006 to a projected $13.8M (direct and indirect) this year. This places Cedars-Sinai in the top 15 surgery departments in the country in NIH funding and contributes the largest fraction of our $17.3M of total research funding.

In his role as Vice-Dean of Academic Affairs, Dr. Gewertz has been focused on enhancing interdepartmental and institute relations to further clinical and research achievements. He has been particularly interested in supporting academic recruiting and restructuring successful academic units into new departments such as orthopedics and cardiac surgery. More recently he has shifted to outreach to our new health system partners, assessing needs and building productive relationships.

Dr. Gewertz has established a new direction in his personal research and now focuses on the role of human factors in clinical performance and the importance of emotional intelligence in personal and professional development. The basic approach has been developing objective measures of efficiency and safety in diverse situations such as the emergent care of traumatic injuries and other surgical scenarios. These efforts have resulted in more than 250 publications, significant grant funding (exceeding $4M) as well as prestigious speaking engagements indicating broad national recognition. His more than 175 external talks have included more than 30 named lectureships. Along with David Logan, he authored a bestselling book on physician leadership (The Best Medicine: A Physicians Guide to Effective Leadership, Springer, New York, NY, 2015).

In the clinical arena, he is nationally and internationally known for his personal experience in the treatment of carotid artery disease and mesenteric ischemic syndromes. His large clinical practice has led to authorship of two popular textbooks (Atlas of Vascular Surgery, published by Elsivier with now 2 editions in 7 different languages and Surgery of the Aorta and its Branches, published by Saunders).

Jackie Gnepp is president of Humanly Possible, Inc., a boutique firm offering organizational consulting, leadership education, and executive coaching. Dr. Gnepp enjoys sharing her knowledge of management psychology, organizational change, decision making, gender issues, and leadership with executives worldwide. She has taught internationally for the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Accenture, the Corporate Leadership Center, and Fortune 100 companies. Her leadership presentations have been highly acclaimed in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Dr. Gnepp is a licensed consulting psychologist, who specializes in making leaders more effective. Serving clients of all sizes from individual entrepreneurs to large multinational corporations, she consults with leaders to revitalize organizations, increase diversity and inclusion, create high-performance teams, resolve conflicts, facilitate innovation, and promote active participation in change. Among her specialties is the use of psychological science to provide highly motivated women with greater career success.

Dr. Gnepp has authored or co-authored over 60 articles, book chapters, and presentations on people management, emotional intelligence, and performance improvement. She is currently completing research in three areas: more effective approaches to constructive managerial feedback, interventions that enable organizations to promote qualified women into leadership roles, and advantages of embracing dilemmas to improve organizational strategy.

Dr. Gnepp's career also includes full-time positions as executive coach and corporate training manager for Accenture, as regional manager for Medco Behavioral Care Services, and as tenured associate professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Bryn Mawr College and her doctorate in psychology from the University of Minnesota.

Boaz Keysar is a Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Cognition program at the University of Chicago. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1989 and was a visiting scholar at Stanford University before joining the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1991.  

Keysar’s research is about the relationship between thinking, decision making and communication. His research has been published in major scientific journals such as Psychological Review, Psychological Science, Cognition, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of Experimental Psychology. Keysar’s research has also received substantial interest in the media, both domestic and international. Reports about his work have appeared in media outlets such as the Science Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, National Post-Canada, Der Spiegel – Germany, China Daily – China, Smart Money – Russia, Science daily, LiveScience.com, MSNBC, National Public Radio, Freakonomics Radio and others.  

Keysar's teaching experience spans three educational institutions—Princeton, Stanford and the University of Chicago. His classes on The Psychology of Decision Making, as well as The Psychology of Negotiation receive top ratings from students and are among the most sought-after courses on campus. Professor Keysar's honors and awards include the prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship. His research has been supported by over three million dollars in research grants from federal agencies and private foundations such as the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation.  

Keysar is a charter member of the Association for Psychological Science, as well as a member of several other professional associations such as the Psychonomic Society and the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. He has also served on editorial boards and grant reviews. Though the majority of Professor Keysar’s time is devoted to research and teaching, he has also provided seminars to corporations in a variety of industries. He is routinely invited to present his work in universities and conferences around the world. He has been named Chicagoan of The Year, and was awarded the President's Service award, the nation’s highest honor for volunteer service.  

Joshua Klayman is an internationally-known expert in managerial psychology. He has been a member of the faculty at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business since 1980. He is also co-owner, with Jackie Gnepp, of Humanly Possible, Inc., a boutique firm offering organizational consulting, leadership education, and executive coaching.

Professor Klayman has taught MBA and Executive Education courses in Chicago, Singapore, Barcelona, and Melbourne for Chicago Booth; in Fontainebleau, France for INSEAD; in Durham, North Carolina for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business; and, in Melbourne, Australia for the Melbourne Business School. He has taught for client companies including Johnson & Johnson, Airbus, Underwriters’ Laboratories, and Bridgestone-Firestone in the US, France, and Germany.

Professor Klayman’s primary research, teaching, and consulting interests are in understanding and improving people’s ability to make sound decisions, to learn and improve, to think creatively, and to embrace change, especially in the context of organizations. His research on these topics has been published in Psychological Review, the flagship journal of psychological research, and in other top-tier journals in psychology and management including Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Review of Organizational Behavior, Psychology of Learning and Motivation, and Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Professor Klayman has served as director of Chicago Booth’s Decision Research Laboratory and as president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. He was a visiting professor at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and at the Fuqua School of Business. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where he was also a professorial fellow at the Melbourne Business School from 2008-2013.

Professor Klayman is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. He earned his PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Minnesota. He received an SB in psychology and social inquiry from MIT.

Jake Braun has over 15 years of experience in the development and implementation of strategic direction for complex, high profile national security initiatives. He works across technology, intelligence systems and transformational communications programs to develop solutions for clients in both the public and private sectors related to cybersecurity, government data analytics, and immigration.

Previously, Mr. Braun served as the Director of White House and Public Liaison for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) where he was instrumental in the passage of the unprecedented Passenger Name Record (PNR) Agreement, one of the largest big data agreements in history. Mr. Braun currently serves as a fellow at the Council on CyberSecurity, in the President’s Circle on the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and as a strategic advisor to the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon on cybersecurity.

Georg Müller is a Managing Director at Deloitte where he specializes in helping firms develop and implement profitable growth strategies.  He serves clients in manufacturing, automotive, distribution, technology, healthcare, and consumer products.  Past work includes transactional assessments to identify near-term margin opportunities, pricing for new product introductions , designing channel incentive programs, creating new revenue models to capture value more efficiently, and building strategies to address competitive entry.

Georg started his career as Assistant Professor at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University where his courses on marketing strategy won teaching awards.  Prior to joining Deloitte, Georg served as Vice President of a start-up company specializing in health analytics.  The company was acquired by one of the nation’s leading clinical laboratory companies.

Georg is a frequent presenter at industry conferences such as the Professional Pricing Society, the Association of International Product Marketing and Management, and Eye for Retail. He has published articles on pricing, marketing strategy, and economics.

He received his MBA and PhD in Marketing and Statistics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Programs taught by this instructor include:

• Pricing: Strategy and Tactics (Chicago)