Jim Clifton
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Gallup
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Jim Clifton is best known in the polling and survey research field for leading the acquisition of The Gallup Organization in 1988, at which time he became CEO of the organization founded by the renowned polling pioneer, Dr. George H. Gallup.
Under Clifton’s leadership, Gallup has enjoyed a tenfold increase in its billing volume and has expanded from a predominantly U.S.-based company to a global organization with more than 40 offices in 20 of the world’s largest nations. Gallup is one of the world’s most influential institutions and providers of public opinion polling and management consulting.
Clifton is best known in the business world as the creator of The Gallup Path. This metric-based economic model establishes the linkages among human nature in the workplace, customer engagement, and business outcomes. The Gallup Path is integral to the performance management systems in more than 500 companies worldwide and forms the basis of most of Gallup’s total revenues.
Few people care as much as Jim Clifton does about what the world is thinking. His most recent innovation, the Gallup World Poll, is designed to tell the 10 million people who lead, govern, and manage the world what the world’s 6 billion citizens are thinking. Clifton has pledged to continually collect people’s opinions for 100 years in more than 100 countries to determine the general well-being or “soul” of a country, city, or culture. Questions in this ground-breaking project delve into individual and social needs, including food and shelter, safety and security, mental and physical health, education, jobs, economics and finances, transportation, water and air quality, hope and futurism, leadership approval, religion, and war and peace.
Clifton serves as Chairman of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund. He has received honorary degrees from a number of institutions, including a Doctor of Commerce degree from Bellevue University in Nebraska and Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from Medgar Evers College in New York and Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Clifton and his wife, Susan, live in Washington, D.C. They have three children, Nicole, Jonathan, and Jackie.
Edward Diener, Ph.D
Professor
University of Illinois
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Ed Diener is the Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. He received his doctorate at the University of Washington in 1974, and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois for the past 34 years. Dr. Diener was the president of both the International Society of Quality of Life Studies and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. He was the editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the editor of Journal of Happiness Studies. Diener is the founding editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science. He has over 240 publications, with about 190 being in the area of the psychology of well-being.
Dr. Diener is a fellow of five professional societies. Professor Diener is listed as one of the most highly cited psychologists by the Institute of Scientific Information, with over 12,000 citations to his credit. He won the Distinguished Researcher Award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, the first Gallup Academic Leadership Award, and the Jack Block Award for Personality Psychology. Dr. Diener has won several teaching awards, including the Oakley-Kundee Award for Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Illinois.
Professor Diener's research focuses on the measurement of well-being; temperament and personality influences on well-being; theories of well-being; income and well-being; and cultural influences on well-being. He has edited three recent books on subjective well-being, and a 2005 book on multi-method measurement in psychology. Diener is currently writing a popular book on happiness with his son, Robert Biswas-Diener, and authoring a book on policy uses of accounts of well-being with Richard Lucas, Ulrich Schimmack, and John Helliwell.
Dr. Diener was born in 1946 in Glendale, California. He grew up on a farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California, near Fresno. He attended San Joaquin Memorial High School in Fresno, where he met his wife, Carol. Ed and Carol met at age 16 and have been married for 40 years; she is a child clinical psychologist and attorney who recently retired from the University of Illinois. The Dieners’ twin daughters, Marissa and Mary Beth, teach psychology at the University of Utah and the University of Kentucky, respectively. Marissa is a developmental psychologist and Mary Beth is a clinical psychologist. The Dieners’ son Robert has collected well-being data in collaboration with Dr. Diener. Because of the exotic groups involved in Robert's research, including the African Maasai, Greenlandic Inuit, the Amish, and slum dwellers in Calcutta, Robert has been called the Indiana Jones of well-being research. He was branded in a rite of manhood by the Maasai. Two other daughters, Kia and Susan, are not psychologists.
Liu Thai Ker(Moderator)
Director
RSP Architects Planners & Engineers (Pte) Ltd
Republic of Singapore
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Mr Liu Thai Ker is a renowned architect-planner. Since 1992, he has been Director of RSP Architects Planners & Engineers (Pte) Ltd, a consulting firm which has projects in Singapore and a dozen countries. He has been appointed as the planning advisor to Shandong Province and over a dozen major cities in China. He is also the Adjunct Professor of the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, as well as a member of several governmental bodies in Singapore.
As an architect-planner and Chief Executive Officer of the Singapore Housing & Development Board, 1969-1989, Mr Liu saw the completion of over half a million dwelling units. In 1989, he became the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Planner of Urban Redevelopment Authority for which he spearheaded the major revision of the Singapore Concept Plan 1991.
In the cultural arena, he served as the Chairman of the National Arts Council from 1996 to June 2005 and Singapore Tyler Print Institute since 2000.
He is also a recipient of several awards. They include the Gold Medal of the Singapore Institute of Architects in 2001 and the Medal of the City of Paris, France in 2001.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008 - Luncheon Session - Commission on Growth and Development
Danny Leipziger
Vice Chair, Commission on Growth and Development
Vice President, World Bank
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Danny Leipziger is Vice President and Head of Network, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) at the World Bank. He previously held managerial positions at the World Bank Institute and in the East Asia Region. Career highlights include leading the Bank's financial relief efforts in Korea, managing the program of bank restructuring in Argentina, opening the economic dialogue with Vietnam, and revitalizing the infrastructure agenda in Latin America. Before joining the Bank, Mr. Leipziger served in the Economic Bureau and Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State, as well as in USAID. Mr. Leipziger is the Vice-Chair of the Commission on Growth and Development.
Paul Romer
STANCO 25 Professor of Economics
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
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Paul Romer is currently the STANCO 25 Professor of Economics in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution. Before coming to Stanford, he taught economics at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester. He is one of the nation's leading economists and the primary developer of New Growth Theory, a body of work that provides a fresh foundation for business and government thinking about wealth creation. In 2002, Paul was recognized for his work in this field when he was awarded the Horst Claus Recktenwald Prize in Economics for outstanding achievement and contributions to the field. He also was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business (1999), named one of America's 25 most influential people by TIME magazine (1997), and elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000). He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was a member of the National Research Council Panel on Criteria for Federal Support of Research and Development, a member of the Executive Council of the American Economics Association, and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a Member of the Working Group of the Commission on Growth and Development.
Hiroto Arakawa
Executive Director
Japan Bank for International Cooperation Institute
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Mr. Hiroto ARAKAWA joined the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund (OECF, Japan) in 1976 after obtaining his B.A. in Economics from Hitotsubashi University. In his early career he was involved with Japanese ODA loans mainly to Asia, including several years as Chief Representative in New Delhi and Washington D.C. Since OECF became Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), he has held several management positions as Director General of the Development Assistance Strategy Department and Executive Director of JBIC. Aside from practical experience, he is a member of the steering committee for the “Financing for Development Initiative” of the World Economic Forum 2009. Mr. Arakawa has been Executive Director for JBIC Institute since October, 2007.
Khor Hoe Ee(Moderator)
Assistant Managing Director
Monetary Authority of Singapore
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Dr Khor is the Assistant Managing Director (Economics) of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He is a member of various senior management committees overseeing the monetary, investment and financial management of MAS. He directly oversees the Macroeconomic Surveillance department which is responsible for the macro-prudential aspects of the financial stability function at MAS. The department conducts surveillance of the financial sector and markets in Singapore and abroad, undertakes research on financial stability issues, and provides assessments and policy advice on macro-prudential issues affecting Singapore.
Before joining the MAS in 1996, Dr Khor had worked as an economist at the International Monetary Fund (1981-1996) covering the Caribbean countries, Mexico, China, Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asian countries. He was Deputy Resident Representative of the IMF to China from 1991 to 1993. He was also Deputy Division Chief in the former Central Asia and Southeast Asia and the Pacific departments from 1994-96 and led the Article IV consultation missions to the Maldives, Fiji and Hong Kong.
Dr Khor did his undergraduate studies at the University of Rochester (1973-77) and got his PhD in Economics from Princeton University in 1982.
