Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation, and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004. 

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), and the Pardee Rand Graduate School. He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

He has received six lifetime achievement awards, and three of his books have received national best-book awards. Kettl holds a PhD in political science from Yale University. He consults broadly for government organizations, at all levels and around the world. He has appeared frequently in national and international media. 

and a faculty member at the University of North Carolina Law School. He is a graduate of William & Mary and the University of Virginia Law School and holds a JSD from New York University Law School. Among his career highlights is serving as Special Master in New Jersey v. New York, an original jurisdiction case in the Supreme Court, which determined sovereignty to Ellis Island. He is a Life Member of the American Law Institute and the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation and the National Academy of Public Administration. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Goldman School of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley.

He held a tenured professorship of Public Management and Finance at the University of Maryland and was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.  At the Brookings Institution, he was the Executive in Residence at the Executive Education Program. 

At each level of government, Mr. DeSeve oversaw complex fiscal affairs. He was instrumental in balancing Philadelphia’s budget during two fiscal crises. At OMB, he helped balance the federal budget for the first time in more than a generation.  While at OMB, he oversaw the fiscal reforms of the District of Columbia that led to its return to investment grade ratings with strong budget and cash surpluses. In the Private Sector, he founded the nation’s largest financial advisory firm for state and local governments- Public Financial Management.  He was also a managing director at Merrill Lynch in their public finance department.  

He is the author of numerous publications including, The Presidential Appointees’ Handbook (Second Edition Brookings 2017).  At the National Academy of Public Administration, he served as Vice Chair and was awarded the George Graham award for outstanding service in 2021.  He was also awarded the Kenneth Howard award for career public service in financial management by the American Society of Public Administration. 

He is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and has a Master’s in Public Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Michael Bennon is a Research Scholar at CDDRL for the Global Infrastructure Policy Research Initiative. Michael’s research interests include infrastructure policy, project finance, public-private partnerships and institutional design in the infrastructure sector. Michael also teaches Global Project Finance to graduate students at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Michael served as a Captain in the US Army and US Army Corps of Engineers for five years, leading Engineer units, managing projects, and planning for infrastructure development in the United States, Iraq, Afghanistan and Thailand.