Latest Interviews

Shaping Skylines and the World: Steve Wynn and Steven Roth

Steve Wynn, Steven Roth

Steven Wynn, a major casino owner and conference benefactor, delivered a broad-ranging discourse at a high-cost event to discuss the urgent need for government efficiency and private-sector-driven solutions to looming mass unemployment. Addressing a diverse array of topics including healthcare reform, education policy, and labor market trends, Wynn advocated for regulatory deregulation, tax incentives for job creation, and a cultural shift in the workplace that prioritizes employee self-esteem over traditional management hierarchies. The session concluded with Wynn expressing optimism about the current administration's capacity for compromise while detailing his personal business philosophy that links corporate profitability directly to the psychological well-being and retention of frontline staff.

Leverage: How Philanthropies Use New Tools to Create Change

Melissa Stevens, Marlo Gottfurcht Longstreet, Thomas Meredith, Brian Sheth, Todd Wagner

A panel of experts from Vista Equity Partners, Charity Network, and The Nature Conservancy convened to argue that traditional philanthropic models are insufficient for addressing systemic global crises, calling for a shift toward disruptive, data-driven strategies. The group advocated for consolidating redundant organizations, adopting market-competitive executive compensation, and leveraging digital technologies to replace inefficient fundraising with measurable outcomes. By prioritizing high-impact scientific research, genetic accessibility, and corporate integration of social purpose, the sector aims to solve "wicked problems" through collaboration between governments, private companies, and evolved investors.

Feng Shui Your Life: A Formula for Prosperity

Curtis S. Chin, Naomi Campbell, Sherry Chris, Pun-Yin

Master Ponyin Poon and industry leaders like Sherry Chris convened to define Feng Shui as a universal energy framework that drives high-value real estate transactions, particularly among Asian buyers who now comprise over 30% of international US purchasers. The session detailed practical applications for travelers and business executives, ranging from specific room-clearing rituals to creating "energy zones" that align with current astrological cycles to mitigate stress and enhance decision-making. By shifting the focus from material accumulation to legacy and community healing, the panel advocates for integrating these ancient principles into modern urban development and personal conduct to foster global harmony.

Addressing Global Challenges with Investment Dollars

Jessica Matthews, Reyaz Ahmad, Thomas Hyland, Hardeep Walia

Moderated by Jessica Matthews of Cambridge Associates, a panel featuring leaders from Motif, Espada Investment Advisors, and IFC Asset Management discussed the feasibility and strategies of market-rate mission-related investing across retail, emerging market infrastructure, and climate sectors. The discussion highlighted recent performance data confirming that impact funds in private equity and real assets can achieve competitive financial returns while addressing specific social goals, driven by strong generational demand and significant institutional allocations like the Ford Foundation's $1 billion initiative. Despite identifying persistent challenges such as deal flow quality and data fragmentation, the experts concluded that hybrid structures and permanent capital vehicles are successfully bridging the gap between philanthropic intent and commercial viability for the remaining 95% of endowment capital.

When Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary: Olympic and Paralympic Heroes

Gene Sykes, Janet Evans, Allyson Felix, Apolo Ohno, Sarah Reinertsen

Four elite athletes and LA 2024 Bid Committee CEO Gene Sykes explored the psychological resilience, evolving training methodologies, and unique pressures that define Olympic competition. The panelists detailed how modern data-driven recovery techniques and mental conditioning allow mature athletes to overcome doubt and extend their careers, while contrasting these approaches with the raw ambition that fueled their youth. Sykes further outlined Los Angeles's strategy for the 2024 Games, emphasizing a low-cost, transit-centric infrastructure model that leverages existing facilities to create a compact, legacy-rich event.

Start-up Nations: Creating Laboratories for Developing Economies

Glenn Yago, Clare Akamanzi, Jeremy Bentley, Richard Blum, Eli Groner, Angela Homsi, Karen Ross

A structural inversion where emerging markets now surpass the "Old World" in GDP share has created a critical need to deploy trillions in idle global capital toward addressing climate adaptation and Sustainable Development Goals. Panelists identified that despite available financing, the primary barrier is a lack of scalable "applied innovation" and viable business models to serve deep rural areas, prompting a strategic pivot toward government-led frameworks in Rwanda, Israel, and California. These nations are successfully leveraging public-private partnerships, financial innovation centers, and educational initiatives to transform niche technologies into bankable projects that bridge the gap between capital availability and last-mile implementation.

Space Travel: From Mars to the Stars

Michael Milken, Buzz Aldrin, Daniel Goldin, Mae Jemison, Yuri Milner

Panelists including Buzz Aldrin, Dan Goldin, and May Yi outline a strategic roadmap for human expansion from the Moon to the stars, featuring Aldrin's 2039 Mars colonization plan and Breakthrough Starshot's billion-dollar interstellar probe initiative. The discussion emphasizes a collaborative framework where private sector funding drives high-risk exploration while governments support infrastructure, aiming to solve technical hurdles like relativistic sail integrity and biological survival for deep space travel. Ultimately, the experts argue that pursuing audacious goals like interstellar flight is essential to galvanize global innovation, ensuring the long-term survival of the human species by expanding beyond Earth's carrying capacity.

Where in the World Are the Best Infrastructure Deals?

Harry Goldgut, Sharmila Chatterjee Kassam, Joe Hockey, Stu Porter, Thomas Wu

Institutional investors are increasingly targeting $7 trillion in Asian infrastructure gaps and 12–15% returns in frontier markets by prioritizing greenfield assets and co-investment structures over traditional core holdings. To unlock this capital, experts advocate for asset recycling models that link public asset sales to visible new construction, supported by development banks to underwrite political risk and legal frameworks tailored to local conditions. Strategic focus is shifting toward energy storage, technological upgrades for AI, and specific opportunities in Brazil, Colombia, and India where customized financing and equipment adaptation mitigate developmental barriers.

Credit Market Outlook

Michael Milken, Mark Attanasio, George Hicks, Sir Michael Hintze, Joseph Naggar, Jim Zelter

Leading credit managers from Apollo, Crescent Capital Group, and GoldenTree warned that the global credit cycle is maturing and prone to a correction in 2018 due to excessive private equity leverage and a market overexposed to passive investment vehicles. To navigate an environment characterized by covenant-lite structures and rising interest rates, these panelists advocate for active management strategies focused on strict underwriting, floating-rate instruments, and distressed opportunities in Europe and emerging markets. By prioritizing complex origination and deep fundamental analysis over index-driven approaches, active managers aim to identify value in mispriced assets while mitigating the risks of an imminent market downturn.

Trusting Brands: Companies That Create and Inspire Change

Aimée Christensen, Joanne Bradford, David Denholm, Brian Norgard, Cameron Saul, Jeff Seabright

Representatives from SoFi, Kashi, Tinder, Bottle Top, and Unilever convened to discuss strategies for building trustworthy brands through radical transparency and collective action on social and environmental issues. The panelists detailed specific initiatives ranging from SoFi's policy advocacy for student loans and Unilever's supply chain transformations to Kashi's "Certified Transitional" mark and Tinder's expansion into older demographics. While consensus emerged on the necessity of long-term value creation over quarterly results, leaders also debated whether purpose-driven strategies must originate from top-level management or evolve through a "two-way street" with employees and consumers.

Space Travel: From Mars to the Stars

Buzz Aldrin, Yuri, Dan, May

Prominent figures including Buzz Aldrin, Yuri Milner, and Dan Goldin convened to advocate for a shift toward private-sector-driven space exploration to overcome current stagnation and accelerate a permanent human presence on Mars by 2039. The discussion highlighted Milner's $100 million commitment to the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which aims to launch gram-scale probes to Alpha Centauri, alongside Aldrin's proposal for a global coalition to reduce costs and establish infrastructure. Panelists concluded that securing humanity's long-term survival requires expanding beyond Earth's carrying capacity through unified international efforts and technological innovation in both near-term lunar capabilities and century-scale interstellar travel.

Part 2: Global Capital Markets

Mohamed El-Aryan, Thomas Fink, Scott Miner, Arunma Otec, David Solomon

Prominent financial leaders including David Solomon, Mohamed El-Erian, and Arunma Otec discuss post-election market volatility and the critical need for tax reform and deregulation to sustain reflationary growth. The panel emphasizes that while current optimism is high, success depends on reconciling strong equity performance with weak GDP data and executing complex legislative compromises on corporate tax rates and regulatory frameworks like the Volcker Rule. Furthermore, experts warn that long-term prosperity requires addressing structural challenges such as the digital divide, workforce readiness for automation, and coordinated global monetary policies to manage currency dynamics amidst geopolitical instability.

Institute Chairman Michael Milken on Building Meaningful Lives

Michael Milken

At the 2017 Milken Institute Global Conference, the speaker delivered the first address of the decade under the theme "Building Meaningful Lives," arguing that access to capital serves as the primary engine for economic mobility and global prosperity. The presentation detailed a shift in the global economic landscape where private equity, technological innovation, and medical breakthroughs have driven job creation and health improvements despite stagnating median incomes and rising social isolation in the United States. By advocating for targeted investment in human capital across emerging markets and the development of new financial technologies, the Institute aims to expand economic opportunity to 90% of the world's population while transforming historical challenges like cancer into manageable conditions.

Caveat Configurator: How to replace configs with code, and why you might not want to

Jane Street engineers evolved from a naive dynamic plugin system plagued by versioning failures and tooling friction into a structured framework utilizing Config Generation and the centralized PlugD infrastructure to balance flexibility with safety. This transition replaced unmanageable runtime code execution with statically generated pure data files for standard cases, while reserving runtime plugins for scenarios requiring true dynamism under strict code review and library version management. By decoupling plugin distribution from application builds and enforcing mandatory testing, the firm successfully mitigates existential risks while allowing traders to safely deploy custom OCaml logic within production systems.

Fake News: Negotiating Politics and Society in a Post-Truth World

Willow Bay, Rebecca Blumenstein, Campbell Brown, Stephen Hayes, Scott McClellan, Jon Steinberg

A panel of industry leaders and academics convened to analyze the drivers of the fake news crisis, attributing its proliferation to Facebook's engagement-focused algorithms, the decline of local journalism jobs, and a polarized political culture that normalizes dishonesty. In response, the tech giant has pivoted its mission to support authentic reporting by launching the Facebook Journalism Project, removing over 30,000 malicious accounts, and committing to a workforce of 3,000 content managers to surpass the staff sizes of major news organizations. While rejecting government regulation in favor of market-based solutions and advertiser pressure, the group emphasized a multi-pronged strategy involving new revenue models, mandatory media literacy education, and collaborative product development to restore public trust and combat misinformation.