MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG is the founder of Bloomberg LP, Philanthropist, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change, World Health Organization Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases, and three-term mayor of New York City.
He is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who served as mayor of New York City from 2002-2013 after leading the company he started in 1981 for 20 years. Since leaving City Hall, he has resumed leadership of Bloomberg LP.
Bloomberg was elected mayor less than two months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Under his leadership, the city rebounded faster and stronger than expected on issues ranging from education to health to economic development.
A lifelong philanthropist, Bloomberg founded Bloomberg Philanthropies, which focuses on five main areas: public health, education, the environment, the arts, and government innovation. He also leads a number of bi-partisan coalitions on urgent issues, including climate change, illegal guns, immigration reform, and infrastructure investment.
Bloomberg graduated from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School.
VESLA WEAVER (PhD, Harvard, Government and Social Policy) is the Bloomberg Distinguished Associate Professor in Racial Politics & Criminal Justice at Johns Hopkins University and a 2016-17 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Weaver is broadly interested in understanding racial inequality in the United States, how state policies shape citizenship, and the political causes and consequences of the growth of the criminal justice system in the United States. Her book with Amy Lerman, Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control, is concerned with the effects of increasing punishment and surveillance in America on democratic inclusion, particularly for the black urban poor. She is also the author of Frontlash: Civil Rights, the Carceral State, and the Transformation of American Politics (under contract with Cambridge), which uncovers a connection between the movement for civil rights and the development of punitive criminal justice. Weaver is also the co-author of Creating a New Racial Order, which explores how multiracialism, immigration, the genomics revolution, and generational changes are reshaping the racial order in the United States (with Professors Jennifer Hochschild and Traci Burch). Weaver’s research has been supported by fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation, National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Brookings Institution. She has served on the Harvard/NIJ Executive Session on CommunityCorrections, the APSA Presidential Taskforce on Racial Inequality in the Americas, and the Center for Community Change’s Good Jobs for All initiative. She is at work on a new project on the politics of intra-racial class inequality with Jennifer Hochschild and another that will map patterns of citizenship and governance across cities and neighborhoods called the Faces of American Democracy.