2025 Special guest speakers
Podcast: Navigating global tensions - insights from Ambassador Nicholas Burns
"Even though it's been hard to keep track of all the changing narrative around US/China relations, proposed US tariffs and overall geopolitics, the underlying storylines seemingly remain." Hear a more in-depth perspective from our exclusive interview with Ambassador Nicholas Burns, who most recently served as the US Ambassador to China.
Listen nowSpecial guest speaker: Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice is the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution and a Senior Fellow on Public Policy. She is the Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In addition, she is a founding partner of Rice, Hadley, Gates & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm.
From January 2005 to January 2009, Rice served as the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, the second woman and first black woman to hold the post. Rice also served as President George W. Bush’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) from January 2001 to January 2005, the first woman to hold the position.
Rice served as Stanford University’s provost from 1993 to 1999, during which time she was the institution’s chief budget and academic officer. As Professor of Political Science, she has been on the Stanford faculty since 1981 and has won two of the university’s highest teaching honors.
From February 1989 through March 1991, Rice served on President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She served as Director, then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Special Assistant to the President for National Security. In 1986, while an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, Rice also served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
She has authored and co-authored numerous books, most recently To Build a Better World: Choices to End the Cold War and Create a Global Commonwealth (2019), co-authored with Philip Zelikow. Among her other volumes are three bestsellers, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom (2017); No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (2011); and Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (2010). She also wrote Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity (2018) with Amy B. Zegart; Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (1995) with Philip Zelikow; edited The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin; and penned The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army; 1948-1983: Uncertain Allegiance (1984).
In 1991, Rice co-founded the Center for a New Generation (CNG), an innovative, after-school academic enrichment program for students in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California. In 1996, CNG merged with the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula, an affiliate club of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BCGA). CNG has since expanded to local BGCA chapters in Birmingham, Atlanta, and Dallas. Rice remains an active proponent of an extended learning day through after-school programs.
Since 2009, Rice has served as a founding partner at Rice, Hadley, Gates, & Manuel LLC, an international strategic consulting firm based in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. The firm works with senior executives of major companies to implement strategic plans and expand in emerging markets. Other partners include former National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, and former diplomat, author, and advisor on emerging markets, Anja Manuel.
In 2022, Rice became a part-owner of the Denver Broncos as a part of the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group. In 2013, Rice was appointed to the College Football Playoff Selection Committee, formerly the Bowl Championship Series. She served on the committee until 2017.
Rice currently serves on the boards of C3.ai, an AI software company; and Makena Capital Management, a private endowment firm. In addition, she is Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and a trustee of the Aspen Institute. Previously, Rice served on various boards, including Dropbox; the George W. Bush Institute; the Commonwealth Club; KiOR, Inc.; the Chevron Corporation; the Charles Schwab Corporation; the Transamerica Corporation; the Hewlett-Packard Company; the University of Notre Dame; the Foundation of Excellence in Education; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; and the San Francisco Symphony.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice earned her bachelor’s degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver; her master’s in the same subject from the University of Notre Dame; and her Ph.D., likewise in political science, from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.
Rice is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded over fifteen honorary doctorates.
Special guest speaker: Ambassador Nicholas Burns
Nicholas Burns will return to Harvard in spring 2025 as the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He will become Faculty Chair of the Future of Diplomacy Project and Faculty Member at Harvard’s Fairbank Center on China.
Ambassador Burns will also be Co-Chair of the Aspen Strategy Group/Aspen Security Forum and Vice Chairperson of the Cohen Group. He is a longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Honorary lifetime member of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Burns served for over three decades in the United States government. Most recently (2021-2025), he was U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China where led a team from forty-eight U.S. government agencies at the U.S. Mission to China, including the embassy in Beijing and at the American Consulate Generals in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Shenyang. During his three-year tenure in China, he helped to stabilize relations with China and, at the same time, to compete with the Chinese government on the full range of military/security, economic, technology, trade, commercial, consular and human rights issues.
Prior to his service in China, Burns was a Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for thirteen years from 2008 until his confirmation as Ambassador to China in 2021. During this period, he also served as a member of the Foreign Policy Advisory Board of Secretary of State John Kerry from 20142017. He has had a long career in American diplomacy serving six Presidents and nine Secretaries of State of both parties. While serving as a career Foreign Service Officer, he was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (2005-2008) where he led negotiations on the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Deal, a long-term military assistance agreement with Israel and on Iran’s nuclear program. As Ambassador to NATO (2001-2005), he led U.S. efforts in Brussels on 9/11 when the Alliance invoked Article 5 of the NATO Treaty in defense of the United States for the first time in its history. He led the combined State-Defense Department U.S. Mission when NATO expanded with seven new members from Eastern Europe and when NATO embarked on military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was Ambassador to Greece (1997-2001) and State Department Spokesperson (1995-1997). He worked for five years (1990-95) on the National Security Council at the White House where he served as Senior Director and Special Assistant to President Clinton for Russia and Ukraine Affairs and Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H. W. Bush. Burns also served in the American Consulate General in Jerusalem (1985-1987) where he coordinated U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and, before that, at the American Embassies in Egypt (1983-1985) and Mauritania (1980). He started his government career as an intern at the Commerce and State Departments in Washington D.C. during the Jimmy Carter Administration.
Ambassador Burns has received 15 honorary degrees, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award, the Aspen Strategy Group’s Leadership Award, Boston College’s Ignatian and Alumni Achievement Awards, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from Johns Hopkins University, the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University and many other honors. He has a Bachelor of Arts in History from Boston College (1978), a Master of Arts in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1980) and earned a Certificat Pratique de Langue Francaise at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (1977).