Justine Adelizzi is the founder and principal advisor of Pluck Works. She is a strategic communication advisor, award-winning speechwriter, and executive coach. With more than 15 years of experience, Justine has led high-stakes communication for executives across technology, healthcare, finance, and the public sector. A trusted sparring partner to leaders, Justine brings her pluck to every engagement—blending candor and warmth with incisive questions and strategic insight.

As a U.S. Engagement Lead for The Chief of Staff Association, Justin Ailes enables chiefs of staff to solve complex problems. As their professional growth concierge, Justin is an experienced professional with 25 years of experience in industry trade associations and government. A diplomatic spouse based in London, Justin previously held behind-the-scenes roles in private equity, complex sales, and legislative, regulatory, and political analysis across the following sectors: financial services, capital markets, banking policy, housing, insurance, and commercial real estate finance. He also sat at the right hand of US Senator Dick Lugar from 2002-2007 while Lugar chaired the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee as an outspoken opponent of apartheid in South Africa and of nuclear weapons. Justin had a behind the curtain view of Lugar and his speechwriters who included: Dan Diller, Andy Fisher, Mark Helmke, and Jay Branegan, as well as their relationship with the Chief of Staff, Marty Morris. Lugar was a serious contender to become Ronald Reagan’s vice presidential running mate, alongside Paul Laxalt of Nevada, and former Congressman and Ambassador George H.W. Bush.

Admiral (ret.) Rob Bauer is an international advocate for a whole of society approach to resilience. From 2021 to 2025, he served as Chair of the Military Committee (CMC) of NATO, residing in Brussels. In that role he was the highest military officer in NATO and the most senior military advisor to the NATO Secretary General. From 2017 to 2021, Bauer served as Netherlands Chief of Defence. Here, he was the primary military advisor to the Minister of Defence and commanded the Navy, Army, Air Force, Defence Materiel Organization, Defence Support Command, Special Operations Command and Defence Cyber Command. In his 43 year-long military career, Bauer was also involved in counter-terrorist and anti-piracy operations in the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Horn of Africa. ‘Expect the unexpected’ is for Admiral Bauer a personal mantra, as well as a sacred principle for every military force.

Mary Kate Cary is a former White House speechwriter who authored over 100 speeches by President George H.W. Bush. She was the executive producer of an award-winning documentary on CNN about President Bush, called 41ON41, which is now available on YouTube. Mary Kate is the director of Think Again, an initiative to promote free expression and viewpoint diversity among college students; she teaches Political Speechwriting in the Politics Department at the University of Virginia and served as a Senior Fellow for Presidential Studies at UVA’s Miller Center. Currently, she is the host of the “Speaking of America” docuseries on the greatest speeches in American history.

Charles Crawford served as the speechwriter for the UK Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe in the mid 1980s. In his later diplomatic career he was UK Ambassador in Sarajevo, Belgrade and Warsaw before leaving the Foreign Service in 2007 to start a new private career in communication skills. He has run masterclasses in public speaking and negotiation for many international organisations and has written many speeches for private sector clients. He currently supports speeches by Dr Robert Floyd, Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation. He has won six Cicero Awards: in 2016 and 2017, then two awards in both 2025 and 2026 including the 2026 Grand Award.

Jeff Davenport has over a decade of experience as an executive communication coach, acclaimed speechwriter, and keynote speaker. He’s worked with Fortune 10 C-Suite executives, engineers, and sales teams, improving their communication skills. Whether he’s doing 1:1 coaching, delivering a keynote address, or leading dynamic workshops, Jeff helps a diverse range of professionals enhance their communicative impact.

The Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, PhD, is Visiting Professor of Theology at Harvard Divinity School. She currently serves as the Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral and Anglican Communion Canon at Newcastle Cathedral in Newcastle, England. Douglas is the author of many articles and several books including the 2023 Grawemeyer Award winning book, Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter. Her current research interest involves expanding the moral imaginary in fostering a more just future.

Michael Franklin serves as the Executive Director of Speechwriters of Color, a global community of expert and aspiring communicators founded in 2020. Michael is also the Founder and Chief Thought Leadership Officer of Words Normalize Behavior LLC (WNB), a Black and Gen Z-owned and certified LGBT Business Enterprise by the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC). He’s a contributor for Policy, Politics, and Culture at The Contrarian, and his thought leadership can be found in the NY Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Newsweek, CNN, Matter of Fact with Soledad O’Brien, Axios, LA Times, BBC News, ABC News, PR News, and more.
A proud graduate of Howard University, and award-winning communicator named as a 2024 “Mover & Shaker” by Washington Life Magazine and a 2024 “Excellence in Communications” honoree by the Washington Association of Black Journalists (WABJ), Michael has established himself as a credible leader in executive communications and strategic engagement.

How to grab the audience’s attention, engage in conversation, and win hearts and minds? These are the questions that have driven Isabelle Gaudeul-Ehrhart throughout her career from print journalism to speechwriter to the President of the European Commission. Today in the European Parliament’s Thinktank, where she has founded and leads the Speaking with impact community of practice, she helps speakers and leaders to speak with impact. She is the author of: Parler avec impact: découvrir, apprendre et maîtriser l’art du discours.

Viv Groskop is a British comedian, writer and broadcaster. She is the author of the international bestseller How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of Brilliant Speaking (Penguin Random House) and host of the award-winning podcast How to Own the Room. With over two million downloads, the podcast features guests like Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarrett, Margaret Atwood, Nigella Lawson, Julie Andrews, Succession’s Brian Cox, Sanna Marin (former Prime Minister of Finland) and Sarah Hurwitz (speechwriter to the Obamas) talking about presence, power and public speaking. Viv is also the author of Lift As You Climb: Women and the Art of Ambition and Happy High Status: How to Be Effortlessly Confident. She is a regular presenter on BBC Radio 4 and on Sky News. She teaches workshops and seminars in Europe and across the U.S. on “owning the room” without having to pretend to be someone you’re not.

Lee Huebner worked as a Special Assistant to the President of the United States and Deputy Director of the White House Writing and Research Staff during the Nixon administration; his White House tenure extended into the Ford administration. Now the Airlie Professor of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University, Lee Huebner served for fourteen years as Publisher and CEO of the Paris-based International Herald Tribune. During this time, the IHT, then owned by the New York Times and the Washington Post, became the world’s first newspaper with a broad global presence.

David Kusnet was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton in the 1992 campaign and the first two years of the Administration. He was a speechwriter for former Democratic presidential nominees Walter Mondale (1984) and Michael Dukakis (1988). He has written speeches for labor business, education, civil rights, and nonprofit leaders. He is the author of Speaking American (Thunder’s Mouth, 1992) and Love the Work, Hate the Job (Wiley, 2008) and co-author of America Needs a Raise (Houghton-Mifflin, 1996) and To Build New York (McGraw-Hill, 2008).

Peter Loge is an associate professor, the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs, and the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at the George Washington University. He launched the Project in 2019 to promote the study, teaching, and practice of political communication ethics. Loge teaches one of the
nation’s only undergraduate courses on political communication ethics and has written about the topic for The Hill, Media Ethics Magazine, and elsewhere. He routinely speaks around the country, and is regularly quoted in national and international media. His edited volume, Political Communication Ethics: Theory and Practice is the
only textbook to bring together writing from both academics and practitioners. Prior to joining GW fulltime in 2017, Loge spent more than two decades working in politics, including serving in senior staff positions in the House, Senate, and administration.

Based in Washington, DC, Mike Long is a speechwriter and an award-winning author, playwright, and screenwriter. He is a former director of the White House Writers Group and a lecturer at Georgetown University, where he served as the director of writing for the graduate program in PR. He is also co-author of The Molecule of More, on how the brain chemical dopamine explains why we do what we do. Mike is the resident writing coach at the Professional Speechwriters Association.

John P. McConnell is an executive speechwriter who served more than ten years on the White House staff, in two administrations. As a senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, he was part of the three-person team responsible for all of the 43rd President’s major addresses, including five State of the Union messages and the address to the Joint Session of Congress after September 11, 2001. In his career he has also worked as a speechwriter for Vice President Dan Quayle and presidential nominee Bob Dole. He is a graduate of Carleton College and Yale Law School.

Dan Moulthrop is CEO of The City Club of Cleveland, one of the nation’s great free speech forums. Founded in 1912, The City Club convenes more than 100 programs every year on just about every issue and topic of importance to Northeast Ohio. Prior to joining the City Club in 2013 he was co-founder of The Civic Commons, a Knight Foundation project creating a social media environment designed for civil civic dialogue. He was also the award-winning host of Sound of Ideas as part of the team at Ideastream Public Media. Dan is also co-author, with Dave Eggers and Nínive Calegari, of the best-selling book Teachers Have it Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers (The New Press, 2005), which provided the basis for the 2010 documentary “American Teacher.”

Pauleanna Reid is a celebrity ghostwriter who helps high-profile leaders and doers turn their personal stories into powerful brand assets. As a result of years of experience building brands, and serving as a communications advisor across various industries, authority figures trust Pauleanna with their legacies. Leveraging these achievements, she founded WritersBlok, a full-service ghostwriting agency, composed of a team of content ninjas responsible for some of the most talked-about pop culture moments, books, and noteworthy speeches. With features in Hello7, Shondaland, ByBlacks, Essence, Black Enterprise, and former leadership partnerships alongside WealthSimple, Google, LinkedIn, and more, Pauleanna’s ability to manage high stakes crises, and her mastery of impossible deadlines are exactly the traits that today’s tastemakers find so remarkably appealing.

Peter M. Robinson (a provisional panelist) spent six years in the White House, serving from 1982 to 1983 as chief speechwriter to Vice President George Bush and from 1983 to 1988 as special assistant and speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan. He wrote the historic Berlin Wall address in which President Reagan called on General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” Robinson is the Murdoch Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he writes about business and politics, and hosts Hoover’s video series program, Uncommon Knowledge™. Robinson is also the author of three books: How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life (Regan Books, 2003); It’s My Party: A Republican’s Messy Love Affair with the GOP, (Warner Books, 2000); and the best-selling business book Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA (Warner Books, 1994; still available in paperback).

Eleonora Russell is a strategic communications advisor with a special focus on defence and societal resilience. From 2021 until 2025, Russell she advised the NATO Military Committee on military strategic communications. From 2017 to 2021, Eleonora Russell was a senior speechwriter at the Department of Defense, where she wrote speeches, op-eds, and articles for the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the Chief of Defense. Before this, she worked as a speechwriter to the President of the Dutch Senate. Russell’s speechwriting has received international recognition, including the prestigious Grand Cicero Award. Her work as a communications advisor has been recognized with the NATO Meritorious Service Medal and the Gold Decoration of Merit from the Ministry of Defence.

Joel Schwartzberg is a communication coach, speechwriter, and author who’s worked with organizations including American Express, Meta, Synchrony Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the Brennan Center for Justice. A former Senior Director of Executive and Strategic Communications for the ASPCA, Joel also held senior editorial roles at PBS, Time Inc., and Nickelodeon. He is the author of the bestseller Get to the Point! Simplify, Sharpen, and Sell Your Message and The Language of Leadership: How to Engage and Inspire Your Team, and contributes regularly to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Toastmaster Magazine, and Inc.com.

Rob Southcott is a Canadian speechwriter, researcher and journalist based in Ottawa, Ontario. A former radio producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, he has been a comms strategist and speechwriter with the Government of Canada and the executive writer at the University of Ottawa. He is now a graduate student in Communications, comparing how speeches and rhetoric affect national narratives in the U.S. and Canada.

Terry Szuplat is a sought-after speaker and trainer and the author of the national bestseller Say It Well: Find Your Voice, Speak Your Mind, Inspire Any Audience in which he shares the public speaking lessons he learned as one of President Barack Obama’s longest-serving White House speechwriters. From 2009 to 2017, Terry served as a special assistant to the president and as a member of the National Security Council staff, and from 2013 to 2017 he was the deputy director of the White House Speechwriting Office. Today, as an executive coach, Terry helps leaders in business, advocacy, philanthropy, and politics inspire audiences around the world, and he teaches speechwriting at his alma mater, American University’s School of Public Affairs. He lives outside Washington, D.C. with his wife and two children.