Town Hall Speakers

Justin Trudeau’s tenure as Canada’s 23rd Prime Minister coincided with a period of unprecedented global challenge and change.

After leading the third-place Liberal Party of Canada to a historic majority government in 2015, Trudeau set about delivering an ambitious agenda that included appointing Canada’s first gender-balanced cabinet, lifting more than 435,000 children out of poverty through the Canada Child Benefit, launching a national $10-a-day childcare program, advancing Indigenous Reconciliation, and taking robust action to fight climate change, including through policies that attracted investment in clean economic growth and jobs.

Confronted with a series of global economic and security shocks, including Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, Trudeau worked to address international and domestic issues through bold, decisive action while continuing to deliver on a progressive vision for Canada. The former Prime Minister has amassed powerful insights into societal resilience, high-stakes international diplomacy, the promotion of shared economic growth, and driving meaningful, lasting change.

Before entering politics, Trudeau studied literature at McGill University, completed the University of British Columbia’s education program, and spent several years teaching in Vancouver. 

Andrew Ross Sorkin is an award-winning journalist for The New York Times and a co-anchor of Squawk Box, CNBC’s signature morning program. He is also the founder and editor-at-large of DealBook, an online daily financial report published by The New York Times that he started in 2001.
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Sorkin is the author of Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves, which chronicled the events of the 2008 financial crisis. The book won the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize and the 2010 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. The book spent more than six months on the New York Times Best Seller list in hardcover and paperback. The book was adapted as a movie for HBO Films in 2011. Sorkin was a co-producer of the film, which was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards.

His most recent book, 1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History, is a “vivid and forensic account . . . a real eye-opener” (Financial Times). With unparalleled access to historical records and newly uncovered documents, Sorkin’s book takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again. The Wall Street Journal calls it “one of the best narrative histories [we’ve] read.”

Sorkin is also co-creator of the drama series Billions on Showtime starring Paul Giamatti and Damien Lewis.

Sorkin is one the preeminent interviewers in the nation, known for his incisive, nuanced long-form conversations with the biggest newsmakers in the world, from Elon Musk to LeBron James to Kim Kardashian and Hillary Clinton. In 2022, he won the Emmy award for “Outstanding Live Interview” for his DealBook Summit 2021 conversation with Adam Neumann, the WeWork co-founder’s first public interview after the company’s collapse.

Over the years, Sorkin has broken news of many major mergers and acquisitions in the pages of The Times and has been at the forefront of Wall Street news. He reported extensively on the financial crisis of 2008, its aftermath on Wall Street and the government bailout of major investment banks, with coverage including the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the A.I.G. bailout. He has broken news of deals including Chase’s acquisition of J.P. Morgan and Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Compaq. He also led The Times’s coverage of Vodafone’s $183 billion hostile bid for Mannesmann, resulting in the world’s largest takeover ever.

Named as a Forbes ‘Women in AI’ to watch, as well as, one of the top 30 women building advanced AI, Dr. Radhika Dirks is CEO of Icons AI, where she advises Fortune 500 executives and international organizations on AI. She also founded and led XLabs, a moonshot factory that uses AI to solve massive problems—like curing cancer. At Ribo, her technology found 40 new potential drugs for 11 types of cancers within its first year. Radhika’s artificial intelligence expertise started by founding Seldn, an AI start-up that accurately predicted the rise of ISIS two weeks before The New York Times coined the term.

Radhika is the author of The AI Laments, where she marries the allure of AI-generated art with the depths of human-generated poetry. With a uniquely human perspective, she explores how these new tools are shaping society and culture, revealing what we’re not building into AI today. It’s a vital look into the future of AI and a call to action to anyone who wants to have a hand in shaping the field.

Radhika was also a founding member of Shell’s $1.5B venture capital group. She holds a Ph.D. in Quantum Computing and an M.S. in Nanotechnology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Katie Ledecky, an unparalleled force in global athletics, is renowned as one of the greatest athletes of her generation. With 14 Olympic medals and 23 World Championship titles—the most ever by a female Olympian—she has shattered records and set new standards of excellence. Ledecky’s journey began at the 2012 London Olympics, where, at just 15, she became the youngest U.S. Olympian and won her first gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle, signaling the start of a historic career.

 At subsequent Olympics, Ledecky further solidified her legacy. In Rio 2016, she captured four gold medals and a silver, making her the most successful U.S. female athlete at a single Games. In Tokyo 2020, she made history again by winning the inaugural women’s 1500-meter freestyle and becoming the first woman to three-peat in the 800-meter freestyle. 

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Ledecky continued to break records by winning four additional medals and holding the 30 fastest times in the women’s 800m freestyle and the 20 fastest times in the 1500m freestyle.

Off the podium, Ledecky shares her journey and insights through her memoir Just Add Water, drawing from her experiences as an iconic swimmer and offering lessons in perseverance and achievement. She continues to inspire through speaking engagements, leveraging her Olympic-level wisdom to motivate audiences worldwide.