Fall Meeting Speakers

Ian Bremmer is a political scientist who helps business leaders, policy makers, and the general public make sense of the world around them. He is president and founder of Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk research and consulting firm, and GZERO Media, a company dedicated to providing intelligent and engaging coverage of international affairs.
 
Ian is credited with bringing the craft of political risk to financial markets, creating Wall Street’s first global political risk index (GPRI), and for establishing political risk as an academic discipline. His definition of emerging markets— “those countries where politics matters at least as much as economics for market outcomes”—has become an industry standard. “G-Zero,” his term for a global power vacuum in which no country is willing and able to set the international agenda, is widely used by policymakers and thought leaders.
 
A prolific writer, Ian is the author of eleven books, including two New York Times bestsellers, “Us vs Them: The Failure of Globalism” which examines the rise of populism across the world, and his latest book “The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats—and Our Response—Will Change the World” which details a trio of looming global crises (health emergencies, climate change, and technological revolution) and outlines how governments, corporations, and concerned citizens can use these crises to create global prosperity and opportunity.
 
He is the host of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, which airs weekly on US national public television. Ian is also a frequent guest on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the BBC, Bloomberg, and many other television stations around the world. He also serves as the foreign affairs columnist and editor at large for Time magazine.
 
Ian earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in political science from Stanford University, where he went on to become the youngest-ever national fellow at the Hoover Institution. He received his bachelor’s degree in international relations from Tulane University. He currently teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and previously was a professor at New York University.
 
Ian established Eurasia Group with just $25,000 in 1998. Today, the company has offices in New York, Washington, San Francisco, London, Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Tokyo, as well as a network of experts and resources in 90 countries.

Kathleen McCarthy

Global Co-Head of Real Estate

Blackstone

Kathleen McCarthy is the Global Co-Head of Blackstone Real Estate. Blackstone is the largest owner of commercial real estate globally, with a $550 billion portfolio and $298 billion in investor capital under management (as of March 31, 2022). Blackstone Real Estate is an industry leader in opportunistic, core plus and debt investing across the U.S., Europe and Asia, and owns assets across multiple sectors, including logistics, rental housing, office, hospitality and retail. Ms. McCarthy focuses on driving performance and growth for Blackstone’s Real Estate business.

Ms. McCarthy previously served as Global Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone Real Estate. Before joining Blackstone in 2010, Ms. McCarthy worked at Goldman Sachs, where she focused on investments for the Real Estate Principal Investment Area. Ms. McCarthy began her career at Goldman Sachs in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group.

Ms. McCarthy received a BA with Distinction from Yale University. She serves on the Boards of City Harvest, the Real Estate Roundtable, the PREA Foundation, and the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, and as a Trustee of The Nightingale-Bamford School.