Speakers

Her book, Bankers’ Trust: How Social Relations Avert Global Financial Collapse, was published by Cornell University Press in 2025. In addition to her academic research, her writing and commentary have appeared in the Financial Times, H-Diplo, The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage (now Good Authority), and the Phenomenal World blog. She received her PhD in government from Cornell University in 2021.

Zhang is the author of two critically acclaimed books: Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism: How the Rise of China Challenges Global Regulation (Oxford University Press, 2021) and High Wire: How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy (Oxford University Press, 2024). Both works analyze how political and legal institutions shape regulatory enforcement in China.

Her scholarship has appeared in leading international law reviews and peer-reviewed journals such as Management Science and The China Quarterly. Prior to joining USC, Zhang taught at the University of Hong Kong, NYU School of Law, and King’s College London. Earlier in her career, she practiced law for six years in Asia, the United States, and Europe. Zhang received her LLB from Peking University and her LLM, JD, and JSD from the University of Chicago Law School.

She is also the editor or co-editor of three special issues: “Greening the Economy: Toward a New Political Economy” in Regulation & Governance, “Politics of Financialization” in Economic and Social Review, and “Credit, Consumption, and Debt” in the International Journal of Comparative Sociology.

Professor Kus grew up in Türkiye and completed her undergraduate studies at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. She obtained her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining Wesleyan, she completed postdoctoral fellowships at Yale and Princeton universities.

Braun is the principal investigator of the DFG-funded research project “Central Banking in Hard Times,” located at the Hertie School, and co-principal investigator of the Hewlett-funded project “New Generators of Inequality: Asset Managers and Private Equity,” based at Brown University. He is currently a visiting professor at the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he leads the annual theme, “Emerging Forces in Global Political Economy.”

Bradlow’s research investigates connections between climate change, urbanization, technological change, and the political challenges for democracy that confront societies across the globe. He is the author of Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg (Princeton University Press, 2024) and is currently writing his next book, The Climate Hinge: Green Industrial Transitions in the Global South.

His academic research has been published in leading journals in sociology, economics, environmental studies, urban studies, and public health. He is a regular public writer, most recently authoring essays in the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Phenomenal World.

Professor Rodrik is co-director of the Reimagining the Economy Program at the Kennedy School and the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity network. He was president of the International Economic Association from 2021–23 and helped found the association’s Women in Leadership in Economics initiative.

His most recent book is Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World: A New Economics for the Middle Class, the Global Poor, and Our Climate (2025). His previous books include Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017), Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science (2015), The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy (2011), and One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth (2007).

Previously, Widder was a postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech. He earned his PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He has also conducted research at Intel Labs, Microsoft Research, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

His recent research has been accepted to ACM FAccT, Nature, ACM CSCW, and Big Data & Society. His scholarly work has appeared in Wired, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and on National Public Radio.

Lipton spent five years in the Clinton Treasury Department, where he supervised work with the transition economies, rising to undersecretary for international affairs during the financial crisis in Asia. Before that, he and Jeffrey Sachs advised governments in Eastern Europe during their transition to market economies.

Lipton also has experience in the private financial sector, both at Citi and Moore Capital Management, a global hedge fund. He has a PhD in economics from Harvard University and a BA from Wesleyan University.

He was the paper’s first recipient of a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University and covered the wars in Kosovo and Iraq, the latter as an embedded reporter with the U.S. Marines. Lynch, who has reported from more than 60 countries, contributed to The Washington Post coverage that received the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for public service. He is the author of two books, most recently The World’s Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right).

Professor Trumbull’s primary area of expertise is political economy, with a focus on regulatory politics, consumer politics, and climate politics. He is the author of A Concise Business Guide to Climate Change. His book Strength in Numbers explores how even weak groups in society are able to gain economic and political influence. Trumbull has also written books on French innovation policy (Silicon and the State), consumer credit markets (Consumer Lending), and European consumer politics (Consumer Capitalism).

Professor Trumbull earned his AB in history and literature at Harvard College. After college, he helped found the NGO Geohazards International. He earned his PhD in political science at MIT and joined Harvard Business School in 2001 as a member of the Business, Government, and the International Economy unit. Recent honors include the Williams Award for excellence in teaching and the Student Association’s Faculty Award for outstanding teaching.

He has taught in Britain, Canada, Denmark, Korea, and Norway. He has received fellowships from, among others, the American Academy Berlin, the American Council of Learned Societies, the European University Institute, Fulbright, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.

Her research on decarbonization and climate technologies has appeared in journals including Nature Climate Change, Climatic Change, Nature Sustainability, and Environmental Research Letters. She is currently a coordinating lead author of the IPCC’s seventh assessment report, Working Group III on the mitigation of climate change. She teaches courses in AI and social structures, the use of generative AI, and environmental justice. She holds a PhD in development sociology from Cornell University and an MSc in human ecology from Lund University.

Estevez served as deputy director of industrial policy and trade at the Roosevelt Institute’s Climate and Economic Transformation Program and senior policy advisor for green industrial policy at the Sierra Club. She has advised various governments, the G20, and the World Bank, among others. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where she specialized in the use of industrial policy for economic transformation. Estevez is a fellow at the Climate and Community Institute, a member of Common Wealth’s Green Planning Commission, and senior research advisor at Oxford University’s TIDE Center. She has taught at the University of Cambridge and Goldsmiths, University of London.

Schor is the author of The Overworked American (Basic Books, 1992), which was a New York Times bestseller. In 2011, Schor began researching the platform economy, work included in After the Gig (University of California Press, 2020). In 2021, she became the lead researcher for trials of companies instituting income-preserving four-day, 32-hour workweeks. The findings are detailed in Four Days a Week (HarperBusiness, 2025).

Schor is an elected fellow of the AAAS and a 2024 honorary fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation, among others. Schor’s TED Talk on “the case for the four-day week” has more than three million views.

Gallagher recently served on the T20 Refueling Growth: Clean Energy and Green Transitions Task Force to the G20 India and on the Chair’s Council of the United States Export-Import Bank on China competition. He has also served on the T20 International Finance Task Force to the G20, the United Nations Committee for Development Policy, the U.S. Department of State’s Investment Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, and the National Advisory Council on trade policy at the Environmental Protection Agency.

He holds a BS in environmental and sustainability sciences from Cornell University and a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. Li contributes regularly to outlets including The Diplomat, Fulcrum, The Jakarta Post, East Asia Forum, China-US Focus, South China Morning Post, and the Asian Peace Programme.

She has published widely in political science journals, particularly on the politics of foreign aid, the bureaucracy of the World Bank, and public opinion on trade. Before teaching at Wesleyan, she was a fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. She holds a PhD from Columbia University and a BA from Swarthmore College.

Dubash is co-editor-in-chief of Climate Policy Journal, a member of the steering group of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report, and has been part of the author group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has also advised the Indian government on climate change, energy, and air and water policy over the last 15 years. Early in his career, Dubash helped establish the global Climate Action Network as its first international coordinator.

A co-founder of Global Privacy Control, a web standard, Zimmeck leads technical-alignment efforts to ensure that software systems are structurally compliant with applicable laws. He holds a PhD and MS in computer science from Columbia University, as well as a JD and PhD in law from the University of Kiel, Germany. His perspective is informed by his background as a former attorney at Freshfields and a Google Research Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology. Zimmeck advises governmental regulators and technology companies.

Riofrancos is the author of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2025) and Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), and the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her publications have appeared in scholarly journals including Global Environmental Politics, World Politics, and Perspectives on Politics, as well as media outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Phenomenal World, n+1, and Dissent.

He is also the co-editor of The Polycrisis, a publication at Phenomenal World that focuses on the political economy of climate with an emphasis on the Global South. Tim received his PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He hails from Mumbai and lives in New York City.