Samantha Ravich
Chairman of the Board, Center for Cyber and Technology Innovation, Vice Chair, the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board

Dr. Samantha Ravich is the chairman of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation and its Transformative Cyber Innovation Lab and the principal investigator on FDD’s Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare project. She is also a senior advisor at FDD, serving on the advisory boards of FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP) and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). Samantha serves as vice chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB). She was also appointed to the congressionally-mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission and to the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. Samantha is a defense and intelligence policy and tech entrepreneur. She served as deputy national security advisor for Vice President Cheney, focusing on Asian and Middle East Affairs as well as on counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation. Following her time at the White House, Samantha was the Republican co-chair of the Congressionally-mandated National Commission for Review of Research and Development Programs in the United States Intelligence Community. She is advisor on cyber and geo-political threats and trends to numerous technology, manufacturing, and services companies; a managing partner of A2P, a social data analytics firm; and a former non-executive Board member for the publicly listed firm DroneShield (ASX: DRO)

Her book, Marketization and Democracy: East Asian Experiences (Cambridge University Press) is used as a basic textbook in international economics, political science, and Asian studies college courses. Samantha is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and advises the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense. She is a frequent keynote speaker on: What Corporate Boards need to know about Cyber Security and Warfare; The Longer-Term Trends in International Security; and the Future of Intelligence Collection and Analysis. Samantha received her PhD in Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School and her MCP/BSE from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Robert Chesnut
Chief Ethics Officer, Airbnb

Rob Chesnut is the Chief Ethics Officer of Airbnb, Inc., a role he took on in late 2019 after almost four years as Airbnb’s General Counsel. Rob is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Virginia. He worked for 14 years with the U.S. Justice Department, where he prosecuted bank robberies, kidnappings, murder, and espionage cases, including the prosecution of CIA employee Aldrich Ames. He joined eBay in 1999 as its third lawyer, where he led eBay’s North America legal team and later founded the Internet’s first ecommerce person to person Trust and Safety operation. Rob subsequently spent nearly 6 years as the General Counsel and first attorney at digital education leader Chegg, where he helped take the company public in 2013. He joined Airbnb in 2016, where he grew the legal team from 30 to over 150 legal professionals in 20 offices around the world. His team led initiatives to promote home sharing and address regulatory issues with local governments and landlords around the world. Rob developed a popular interactive employee program, Integrity Belongs Here, to help drive ethics throughout the culture at the company. His book “Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution” is set for publication by St Martin’s Press in the spring of 2020. Rob works with companies to help them develop strategies to drive integrity into their culture.

Kenneth Bacon
Member of the Board, Comcast and Co-founder & Managing Partner, RailField Realty Partners

Mr. Bacon is Co-founder and Managing Partner of RailField Partners, an investment management firm that invests in and operates multifamily properties on behalf of institutional investors. Prior to forming RailField, Ken spent 19 years at Fannie Mae, most recently as the Executive Vice President of the Multifamily Mortgage Business. During his tenure, he grew the portfolio from $56 billion to over $195 billion, consisting primarily of multifamily mortgages and over $6 billion of conventional equity, tax credits and mezzanine debt. His organization realized net income was more than $1.5 billion as of 2012. Before joining Fannie Mae, he was Director of the Office of Securitization for the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and held officer positions at Morgan Stanley and Kidder Peabody. 

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Comcast Corporation, Ally Financial, Welltower, Inc. and Dominium. 

He is active in several non-profit and trade groups, including the Board of the Real Estate Executive Council, the National Multifamily Housing Council and the advisory board of the Stanford Center on Longevity. He is an alum and former trustee of Stanford, where he received his B.A. He also holds a M.Sc. in international relations from the London School of Economics where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, and a M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. In recognition of his service to the Marshall Scholars program, he was awarded an Order of the British Empire (“OBE”) by the British government. A native of Houston, Texas, Ken and his wife Judy reside in Washington, DC.