Honorary International Conference Participants

Prior to his current role, Dominic was McKinsey's Chairman of Asia from 2004-2009, based in Shanghai, and he led McKinsey's office in Korea from 2000-2004.

Dominic is an active participant in many international fora including Davos, the Aspen Strategy Group and the World Bank and IMF meetings. He is also a prolific writer, authoring more than 80 articles on Asia, history and the issues and opportunities facing global and Asian markets. He is the co-author - with Roberto Newell and Greg Wilson - of Dangerous Markets: Managing in Financial Crises (Wiley & Sons, 2002).  His most recent book is China Vignettes: An Inside Look at China (Talisman, 2007).

Dominic is a member of the Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Leadership Committee and is the Chairman of the International Advisory Committee to the President of South Korea on National Future and Vision. He was recently appointed to the Asian Development Bank Advisory Group on Human Resources Management and in 2008 was awarded the Magnolia Silver Prize by the Shanghai Government for his outstanding contributions to the city's development.

Dominic is a Rhodes Scholar with an MPhil in economics from Oxford University. He is married and has two children.

He is a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research, London and Director of the CEPR Finance Programme. He has worked as a consultant for the Bank of Italy, the European Commission and the European Central Bank.

He is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Central Banking and has published in the Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Monetary Economics, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, and American Economic Review.

His current research interests focus on finance and growth, households' savings and financial decisions, firms' investment and adjustment policies, the transmission of monetary policy, culture and economic performance.

Klara Sabirianova Peter is Assistant Professor of Economics in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University. She came to GSU in the fall of 2005. Previously, she was a research assistant professor and co-director for Russia/CIS projects at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan Business School and an associate professor at the Urals State University in Russia.  She also served as a World Bank consultant for the project "Labor Market Study in Russia."  Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, USAID, U.S. Department of State, Soros Foundation, Ford Foundation and other public and private organizations.  She is a research fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany and a research affiliate with the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, UK.

Her earlier research focused on labor aspects of market reforms in Russia.  In particular, she examined wages, employment, investment to human capital, and labor mobility using the linked employer-employee dataset that she created for Russia.  In the context of other transitional economies, she also examined the effect of market reforms on the quality of life, returns to human capital, and firm efficiency.   Later, her research has broadened to more general issues of economic development such as bribery, corruption, contract violation, inequality, tax evasion, and informal economic activities.  Currently, she is pursuing a research agenda at the cross-roads of labor and public economics as applied to developing economies.  She is interested in the behavioral responses of individuals and firms to public policies in a weak institutional environment.

Fareed Rafiq Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International, a Newsweek and Washington Post columnist, weekly host for CNN, and a New York Times bestselling author.  He was described in 1999 by Esquire Magazine as "the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation" and in 2007, Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines named him one of the 100 leading public intellectuals in the world.

Since October 2000, Dr. Zakaria has overseen all of Newsweek's editions abroad.  His cover stories and columns - on subjects from globalization and emerging markets to the Middle East and America's role in the world - reach more than 25 million readers each week.   While his articles have received many awards, his October 2001 Newsweek cover story, "Why They Hate Us," remains the most decorated. 

Prior to joining Newsweek, Dr. Zakaria served an eight-year term as managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a widely-circulated journal of international politics and economics.  He was appointed to the position when he was 28 years old. 

In 2008, he began hosting Fareed Zakaria GPS, a weekly foreign affairs program that airs Sundays worldwide on CNN.  Dr. Zakaria's in-depth interviews with the Dalai Lama, heads of state including Barak Obama, Manmohan Singh, King Abdullah II, Dmitry Medvedev, Moammar Gadhafi and Lula da Silva, as well as countless intellectuals, business leaders, politicians and journalists have been broadcast in more than 200 million homes in over 210 countries.  Within its first year, GPS garnered an Emmy nomination for an interview with Premier Wen Jaibao.

The Post-American World, which is Dr. Zakaria's most recent book, was heralded in the New York Times book review as "...a relentlessly intelligent book" and The Economist called it "...a powerful guide" to facing global challenges.  Like The Post-American World, his previous book, The Future of Freedom, was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into over 20 languages. 

Born in India on January 20, 1964, Dr. Zakaria went on to receive a B.A. from Yale College and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.  He has received honorary degrees from numerous universities including Brown, the University of Miami, and Oberlin College.  He currently serves as a Trustee of Yale University. He lives in New York City with his wife, son and two daughters.