The Concordia Annual Summit convenes the world’s most prominent business, government, and nonprofit leaders to foster dialogue and enable effective partnerships for positive social impact. This global affairs forum takes place in New York City and examines the world’s most pressing challenges to identify avenues for collaboration.
Register for $875 and up.
Day One | Day Two | Day Three
8:00am – 8:55am
The Women’s Table: Networking Breakfast at 2026 UNGA Week
Cherie Blair, Nitzia Logothetis, Alyse Nelson
The Women’s Table: Networking Breakfast at the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit will offer a dedicated space for women to gather ahead of a full day of convening during UNGA week. Designed to cultivate connection, spark allyship among women driving impact across sectors, and build momentum around gender equity in policy and business leadership, this “leave-your-credentials-at-the-door” event will feature strategic networking and insights from prominent voices.
This Breakfast will take place in the Members Lounge and is open to all Annual Summit pass holders.
9:00am – 9:05am
Welcome Remarks to Day 2
Rodney Ferguson
9:00am – 9:20am
2026 Concordia Leadership Award: Maria Corina Machado
Maria Paula Correa, Ana Corina Sosa Machado, Maria Corina Machado
The Concordia Leadership Award recognizes global leaders within the public, private, and nonprofit sectors who inspire others through their ability to turn vision into impact. In this session, the Concordia Leadership Awardee’s daughter Ana Corina, will receive her award on behalf of her mother, Maria Corina Machado.
9:05am – 9:30am
Healthy Habits in Early Childhood: A Global Opportunity to Prevent Chronic Disease
Sherrie Westin, Melissa Brotz, Elmo The Muppet
Over 2 billion children and adolescents globally are affected by diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and the behaviors and risk factors that lead to chronic diseases later in life are often established in childhood. In this fireside chat, Sherrie Westin, President and CEO of Sesame Workshop, will sit down with Melissa Brotz, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and External Affairs at Abbott and President of Abbott Fund, plus special guest Elmo, to discuss the global opportunity to prevent chronic disease by starting with our youngest generations and building healthy habits in early childhood. This session will explore Abbott and Sesame Workshop’s unique partnership and opportunities for a broad range of stakeholders to provide children, caregivers, and communities with the strategies, resources, and tools to help prevent disease and promote habits for lifelong health.
9:30am – 9:55am
Studio Session: The Human Advantage: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters More Than Ever
Deborah Sawaf, Nancy Santiago
As AI transforms the way we work and lead, the skills that make us uniquely human are becoming increasingly valuable. This fireside chat will explore why emotional intelligence, including empathy, self-awareness, trust, and resilience, is essential for effective leadership in an era of rapid technological change. How can leaders harness these qualities to build stronger organizations, navigate uncertainty, and ensure innovation remains grounded in human connection?
9:30am – 9:50am
Malaria’s Innovation Moment
Steiger Bill
The fight against malaria has entered a new era. Breakthroughs in medicines, vaccines, vector control, data, and other technologies are creating new opportunities to save lives and accelerate progress, but turning promising innovations into impact requires strong partnerships, country leadership, and the ability to bring solutions to scale. This conversation will explore the innovations shaping the future of the malaria fight and what it will take to move them from breakthrough to impact.
Malaria No More is a Programming Partner for the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit.
9:40am – 10:00am
Breaking the Silence: Men’s Mental Health in a Changing World
Ian Robertson, Mike Lake, Joel Bervell
Mental health is increasingly recognized as a critical economic, social, and security issue, and men’s mental health remains one of its most under-addressed dimensions. This session examines how shifting cultural norms, workplace pressures, social isolation, and digital life are affecting men’s mental well-being. Leaders from business, healthcare, sports, and civil society will explore solutions to reduce stigma, expand access to care, and build healthier communities.
9:50am – 10:10am
Beyond Adoption: Measuring the Impact of Cardiovascular Health Action Plans
Borjana Pervan-Shtilianov
Around the world, policymakers are increasingly acknowledging that cardiovascular health is both a public health imperative and an economic necessity. New national and regional strategies and political commitments are creating momentum for action. However, as attention shifts from policy development to implementation, the focus must also turn to accountability: how do we know whether these commitments are delivering measurable results?
This session will explore how governments, regional institutions, international organizations, civil society, academia, and the private sector can work together to define success, measure progress, and strengthen accountability for cardiovascular health. Drawing on experiences from national cardiovascular health plans, the European Union’s Safe Hearts Plan, and broader global efforts to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease, the discussion will focus on practical approaches to tracking outcomes, leveraging digital technologies and AI to strengthen monitoring and accountability, and translating political ambition into measurable impact.
The World Heart Federation is a programming partner for the 2026 Annual Summit.
10:00am – 10:20am
From Risk to Reward: Investing in Resilient Food Systems
Elizabeth Yee, Rob Johnson
Climate shocks, market volatility, and economic uncertainty are reshaping food systems around the world. Each El Niño cycle exposes the same challenge: vulnerable food systems put livelihoods, nutrition, and economic stability at risk.
This conversation will explore how investing in resilient food systems before crisis strikes can strengthen food security while unlocking long-term economic opportunity. Through the lens of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Regenerative School Meals and Reimagining Humanitarian and Nutrition Security initiatives, participants will examine how investments in farmers, supply chains, and local institutions can improve nutrition, strengthen livelihoods, and build resilience. Rather than focusing on how to respond to the next food crisis, the discussion will ask: what does it take to build resilience before the next shock arrives?
10:10am – 10:30am
Beyond K-Pop: How Korean Innovation Can Shape the Future of Global Health
Han-oh Park, Sang Joon Park, Jaqueline Huh
The Republic of Korea has emerged as a global leader in research and development, manufacturing, and innovation, with growing potential to help transform how health challenges are addressed worldwide. This panel will explore how Korean companies, health technologies, and public sector partners can accelerate access to AI-enabled tools, diagnostics, and other health solutions, with tuberculosis serving as an entry point in high-burden, high-growth countries. Panelists will discuss what is needed to move promising innovations from development to large-scale adoption. The conversation will also highlight opportunities for cross-sector partnerships that can strengthen health systems and advance more equitable health outcomes. The Stop TB Partnership is a programming partner for the 2026 Annual Summit.
10:20am – 10:35am
The Hemispheric Energy Opportunity: NEDC on Security and Growth
Jarrod Agen
In this fireside conversation, White House National Energy Dominance Council Executive Director Jarrod Agen will examine emerging energy market opportunities in Venezuela and how the Administration’s focus on American energy dominance and hemispheric leadership can help shape the region’s energy future. The discussion will highlight opportunities to strengthen U.S. energy security, expand American commercial engagement, and leverage the Western Hemisphere’s vast energy resources to advance U.S. economic and strategic interests. The conversation will also explore how greater U.S. energy dominance can contribute to a more secure, stable, and resilient global energy market, strengthening energy security for partners and allies around the world.
10:45am – 11:05am
Scaling Impact Through Technology: Lessons from Brazil on Digital Screening for Harmful Alcohol Use
Sam Stephens
Technology is creating new opportunities to identify and address harmful alcohol use earlier, more efficiently, and at greater scale. As digital tools become increasingly integrated into public health strategies, there is growing interest in understanding how technology-enabled approaches can improve access, engagement, and outcomes for individuals and communities. This session will explore the impact of the partnership between AB InBev Foundation and local stakeholders in Brazil to advance app-based screening for harmful alcohol use. Building on promising results from two years of implementation and following the soft launch of the digital screening approach, panelists will discuss key outcomes, lessons learned, and the opportunities and challenges of scaling technology-driven public health solutions.
The AB InBev Foundation is a programming partner for the 2026 Annual Summit.
11:05am – 11:30am
Rewiring Global Trade: Resilience, Regionalization, and Risk
Hanne LeCount, Shubham Singhal, Mauricio Gomez Amin, Kristen Silverberg, Jerry Todd
The era of hyper-efficient global trade is giving way to a new model shaped by resilience, risk management, and strategic diversification. Geopolitical rivalry, supply-chain realignment, and digital trade rules are fundamentally changing how goods, data, and capital move across borders. Looking ahead, this discussion examines how governments and businesses are adapting to a more fragmented global marketplace: reassessing multilateral cooperation, regional trade blocs, and the strategies emerging economies are deploying to remain competitive in an uncertain world.
11:05am – 11:20am
From Hype to Habit: Building Institutional Trust in AI
Hossein Nowbar, Paschal Donohoe, Vera Songwe
Every transformative technology follows the same arc: excitement, a sobering reality check, and — for the ones that endure — a slow climb toward becoming indispensable. AI is entering its own reckoning, caught between genuine promise and a growing list of stalled pilots that have yet to earn lasting trust. This fireside chat brings together leaders from technology on what it takes to build institutional trust and turn AI pilots into permanent infrastructure, and from international development organizations on what AI for jobs and inclusive growth actually requires on the ground, including in developing economies, confronting not whether AI can transform economies, but how to get there without repeating the pilot-to-nowhere cycle that has stalled so many efforts before it.
ServiceNow is a programming sponsor for the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit.
11:20am – 11:35am
David Appel, Matthew Swift
Modern government operations run on data. As strategic competition intensifies and adversaries accelerate investment in their own digital capabilities, the infrastructure underpinning defense, intelligence, and allied coordination has become as consequential as any weapons system. Cloud technology is transforming how agencies operate, how coalitions share information, and how sensitive information is protected across borders and theaters. Yet the gap between what is possible and what is deployed remains a critical vulnerability, and no government can close it alone. In this conversation, leaders from the technology sector examine how public-private partnerships are driving the digital transformation of government infrastructure at home and abroad, what it takes to build interoperable systems resilient enough to meet the demands of strategic competition, and whether the frameworks governing these partnerships are moving at the speed the mission requires. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a programming sponsor for the 2026 Annual Summit.
11:30am – 11:50am
Rare Currency: Critical Minerals in a Shifting Global Economy
Alix Steel, Bala Wunti, Steven Fox, Scott Monteith
The United States is more import-dependent on critical mineral than at any point in its modern history, while China dominates the global rare earth industry, with consequences that reach across defense readiness, grid reliability, and industrial competitiveness. Closing that gap has become a national priority, and the pace of action has accelerated: the U.S. government has deployed executive orders, DFC financing, export controls and bilateral mineral agreements are reshaping the landscape. But domestic production takes decades, allies are indispensable, and the distance between policy ambition and commercial reality remains significant. Where is the U.S. strategy gaining traction? Where do structural barriers remain? And, what will it take to build supply chains resilient enough for the demands of the next decade?
11:35am – 11:55am
From Datacenters to Doorsteps
Andrew Herscowitz, Sebastian Groh
The energy transition has to serve two very different kinds of demand at once. There’s the first-mile surge of AI and digital infrastructure, demand from those who already have power and need more of it, fast. And there’s the last-mile need of communities still gaining reliable access for the first time. Meeting both doesn’t require choosing between them. It requires an energy system flexible enough to hold the two together: centralised capacity where scale matters most, and decentralised, peer-to-peer innovation where reach matters most.
Zayed Sustainability Prize is a programming partner for the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit.
11:35am – 11:55am
From Datacenters to Doorsteps
Andrew Herscowitz, Sebastian Groh
The energy transition has to serve two very different kinds of demand at once. There’s the first-mile surge of AI and digital infrastructure, demand from those who already have power and need more of it, fast. And there’s the last-mile need of communities still gaining reliable access for the first time. Meeting both doesn’t require choosing between them. It requires an energy system flexible enough to hold the two together: centralised capacity where scale matters most, and decentralised, peer-to-peer innovation where reach matters most.
Zayed Sustainability Prize is a programming partner for the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit.
11:50am – 12:10pm
The Next Century of Investment in Latin America
Sergio Londoño, Mark Viso, Ana Irene Delgado, Roberto Macedonio, Alicia Montalvo
Latin America’s most compelling development story isn’t in the headlines – it’s in the investors that have been there for a century. This session brings together long-standing private sector investors, a leading regional development bank, and resilience economy innovators to explore what sustained commitment has built, and what it will take to carry that promise into the next hundred years. As ODA declines and compounding crises demand more integrated responses, the panel will examine how business, finance, and government can move from siloed initiatives to shared architecture, and what the compact between them must look like in an era of AI, climate pressure, and shifting geopolitics.
11:55am – 12:10pm
Jacob Helberg
From Brussels to New Delhi, as nations race to build AI capacity of their own, the next chapter of American technological leadership may not be about staying ahead alone, but about how much of the world builds on American foundations. This session explores the opportunity in front of the US AI stack, from infrastructure and compute to training and governance frameworks, as allies and emerging markets look for a partner to build with, not just a rival to catch up to. What does AI sovereignty look like in today’s interconnected economy? How can this phase of technological evolution open up economic opportunity globally, and what new alliances are forming around infrastructure and compute that make that possible?
Meta is a programming sponsor for the 2026 Annual Summit.
12:10pm – 12:30pm
The AI Infrastructure Race
Paula Dobriansky, Norihiko Ishihara, Calista Redmond
Artificial intelligence is only as powerful as the infrastructure behind it. From advanced semiconductors and hyperscale data centers to energy capacity, secure cloud computing, and high-speed connectivity, nations are competing to build the foundations of the AI economy. The winners of this race will shape not only technological leadership, but also economic growth, national security, and geopolitical influence. This discussion will examine the investments, partnerships, and policy decisions required to develop resilient AI infrastructure while balancing sustainability, supply chain security, and global competitiveness. As governments and industry accelerate deployment, how can they ensure the benefits of AI are both widely shared and strategically secure?
Datasection is a programming sponsor for the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit.
12:30pm – 1:45pm
Isaac Stone Fish, Gordon Robb
As global businesses navigate an increasingly complex U.S.-China trade relationship, this session brings together investors, executives, and policy experts to examine the current state of investment and trade between the two economies. During a panel and discussion period, hear directly from trade associations on the ground in China that represent international and US businesses about first-hand knowledge about the changing landscape. Discussion will explore where opportunity remains, how companies are managing risk and regulatory uncertainty, and what the path forward could look like for cross-border commerce.
1:30pm – 1:50pm
Laurie Patton, Bart Friedman
The Concordia Leadership Award recognizes global leaders within the public, private, and nonprofit sectors who inspire others through their ability to turn vision into impact. In this session, the Concordia Leadership Awardee, Laurie Patton, will receive her award.
1:30pm – 1:45pm
The Business of Better Health: A Conversation with Dr. Albert Bourla
Albert Bourla, Alice Park
Healthcare innovation is becoming a defining force in economic growth and global competitiveness. In this fireside chat, Dr. Albert Bourla will explore how AI is transforming research and development, why healthy populations underpin strong economies, and how geopolitical trends are influencing investment, supply chains, and innovation across the life sciences sector.
1:30pm – 1:55pm
Studio Stage: Music as a Bridge Across Divides
Music has a unique ability to transcend language, culture, and political divides. In this Studio Stage conversation, Maestro Tom Cohen and young musicians from the Jerusalem Orchestra East & West will explore how Cohen’s artistic approach brings together musical traditions from across the Middle East through a Western orchestral framework, creating a new musical language, one that becomes an expression of human connection, challenges assumptions, and gives young people a shared language for dialogue.
1:45pm – 2:05pm
What’s Next for Global Health?
Rachel Vreeman, Frank Anthony, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh
The landscape of global health is rapidly evolving. In the last year, major shifts in global policy approaches, funding, and partner commitments have dramatically reshaped the global health landscape. These changes have presented new challenges for the way countries approach health policy and continue to change how the world partners to address shared health challenges. Reductions in funding and support have forced many countries to rethink how they deliver essential healthcare programs and have turned traditional donor-driven partnership models on their head. Are these changes temporary or do they represent durable shifts in the way the world approaches our big health challenges? What does this mean for the coordination of global responses to new and emerging threats to health? What do these changes mean for global health partnership? Join the Ministers of Health from Ghana and Guyana in conversation with Dr. Rachel Vreeman, Director of the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, about what this new era may hold for global health partnership and policy.
Mount Sinai’s Arnhold Institute for Global Health is a programming partner for the 2026 Annual Summit.
1:50pm – 2:10pm
Aligning the Three Legs of Carbon Accounting
Karthik Ramanna, M. Sanjayan, Kathryn Clay, Alex Saer
Credible carbon accounting depends on three things holding together at once: corporate reporting that reflects real-world business operations, policy and regulation that companies can actually comply with, and independent research rigorous enough that markets and regulators can trust the numbers underneath it. Right now, those three legs are being built largely in parallel. Corporate coalitions are working to align business practice with policy design. Governments are advancing disclosure rules that vary widely across jurisdictions. Academic and technical researchers are developing the measurement methodologies meant to anchor both. When any one leg moves without the others, the result is standards companies cannot implement, regulations markets cannot trust, or science that never reaches the practitioners who need it. This session brings together leaders from industry, policy, and academic research to examine what real alignment between business, policy, and science actually requires, where current approaches to carbon accounting are succeeding or falling short, and what it will take to build a system durable enough to support the scale of investment now being staked on it.
2:05pm – 3:05pm
Advancing Urban Heart Health Through AI and Population Health Intelligence
Ann Aerts, Alice Park, Roxana Mehran, Jo Jewell
Social, environmental, and economic conditions are shaping up to 80 percent of health outcomes, yet they remain largely disconnected from the systems responsible for addressing them. At the same time, with funding under pressure, health systems can no longer afford to do everything, everywhere, all at once. The key challenge is how to become more precise, focusing resources where they can have the greatest impact. Drawing on advanced analytics and precision population health intelligence, AI and data can help cities and health systems to identify the highest-risk populations and direct resources and interventions more effectively. The discussion will focus on how this targeted approach can transform health systems from being reactive to more proactive, predictive, and preventive, ultimately advancing cost-effective urban heart health. Join public health leaders, technology innovators, and global health champions as we look at what this actually means in practice: where AI-driven approaches are already delivering real progress, what trust, transparency, and responsible use of data demand of every partner in the system, and how the public and health sectors can engage now to ensure that near-term advancements reach the people who need them most.
Novartis Foundation is a programming partner for the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit.
2:25pm – 2:45pm
Under Pressure: Ensuring the Indo-Pacific Remains Free and Open in a Contested Environment
Safiya Ghori-Ahmad, Nick Snyder, Linda Thomas – Greenfield
The future of the Indo-Pacific remains uncertain. Growing threats, namely from China and North Korea, are threatening the region’s security and America’s key allies. With significant US military power concentrated in the Middle East, the region’s major powers have been bolstering their security capabilities and enhancing cooperation.
This session will explore how the region’s leading democracies are adapting to that pressure, and what it will take to keep the Indo-Pacific free, open, and governed by rules rather than coercion.
From Japan’s landmark shift in defense posture to China’s increasing military activity around Taiwan, the stakes could not be higher.
3:15pm – 3:35pm
Holding the Line: Women’s Leadership in an Era of Global Uncertainty
Shefali Razdan Duggal
Women’s representation in senior leadership has grown substantially over the past decade, yet recent data shows that progress is often the first thing to give way under pressure. This session asks the more useful question: what actually makes leadership gains stick? Bringing together voices from business, government, and research, the conversation moves past representation statistics to the real drivers, sponsorship, structural choices, and institutional commitment, that let women’s leadership hold steady, and even grow, through volatility rather than receding from it.
3:20pm – 3:40pm
Yariv Cohen, Kate Cincotta, Peter Laugharn
More than 2.2 billion people globally lack clean drinking water. As climate shocks and geopolitical tensions intensify, water stress has emerged as one of the defining global challenges of this decade, particularly in underserved, last-mile rural communities. Historically, investment has prioritized building infrastructure over the long-term capacity, technical expertise, and accountability structures required to sustain quality services. This reliance on volunteer-based models and one-off grants has left a critical gap: a shortage of private entrepreneurs investing in professional, cost-effective rural water solutions.
What will it take to unlock entrepreneurial capital for last-mile drinking water services? Ahead of the UN Water Conference in Abu Dhabi in December 2026, this panel draws on proven, scalable financing models from telecommunications and energy to examine what is transferable to water — and what isn’t. Panelists will make the business case for viable, entrepreneurial water service models capable of delivering safe, reliable drinking water to the world’s most vulnerable populations.
The Hilton Foundation is a programming partner for the 2026 Concordia Annual Summit.
3:35pm – 3:55pm
AI for Good: AI’s Role in Solving Global Challenges
Andrew Gounardes, Hend Alhinnawi, Elizabeth Kelly
Artificial intelligence is poised to reshape nearly every sector of society, but its greatest promise may lie in its ability to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges. From expanding access to healthcare to improving disaster response and enhancing public services, AI is creating new opportunities to drive social and economic progress at scale. As governments, businesses, and nonprofits increasingly adopt these technologies, questions remain around responsible deployment, trust, inclusion, and ensuring that innovation benefits all communities. This conversation will bring together leaders from technology, healthcare, philanthropy, and the public sector to explore how AI can be leveraged as a force for good, and explore what partnerships are needed to translate technological breakthroughs into meaningful societal impact.
3:55pm – 4:15pm
Autonomy, Intelligence, and the Future of Defense
Dan Smoot, Josh Rogin, Wesley Clark
Artificial intelligence is reshaping modern defense strategy at every level, from battlefield awareness and logistics to cybersecurity and intelligence analysis. Advanced systems can detect anomalies, process massive volumes of data in real time, and support faster operational decision making. At the same time, increasingly autonomous technologies raise difficult questions around accountability, escalation risk, and ethical oversight. This session will bring together leaders across government, technology, and national security to discuss the opportunities and risks shaping the future of AI-powered defense.
3:55pm – 4:15pm
Securing the Grid: Energy Systems for a Volatile World
Landon Derentz, Tom Bitting, Patrick Muttart, Vanessa Miler-fels, Angela Wilkinson
As geopolitical tensions, climate shocks, and supply-chain disruptions increase market uncertainty, energy security has become a key factor in economic resilience and investment decision-making. This discussion will explore how governments and markets are balancing energy independence with global interdependence, examining the financial implications of critical minerals, grid modernization, infrastructure investment, and emerging energy technologies. The conversation will highlight the risks and opportunities shaping capital allocation, competitiveness, and long-term growth in an increasingly complex global energy landscape.
4:15pm – 4:30pm
Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting Forced Labor Worldwide
Theresa May of Maidenhead, Josh Rogin, Rob Law
Forced labor and human trafficking move quietly through the global economy, woven into supply chains, industries, and communities long before anyone stops to ask how they actually operate. Dismantling these systems takes coordinated action across governments, businesses, and enforcement agencies alike, especially as legal frameworks evolve and cross-border cooperation becomes ever more urgent. This conversation examines the real distance between passing a law and putting a stop to exploitation, and what it will finally take to close that gap for good.
4:15pm – 4:35pm
The AI Sovereignty Paradox: Independence in an Interdependent World
Khadija Mustafa, Michael Greenwald
As nations build AI capacity that will define their economic competitiveness for decades, the infrastructure choices made now carry lasting weight. Sovereignty requires control and choice across the AI stack — compute, data, networking, security, and talent. Does lasting independence require nations to build and own that capacity outright? Or can global cloud infrastructure, engineered with sovereignty controls built directly in, help nations get there faster and more securely than building alone? This session examines what independence actually requires, and whether true AI sovereignty can exist in isolation, or depends on the interoperability that makes critical data-sharing and global partnerships possible.
4:20pm – 4:40pm
The Backbone of AI: Will Power Limit Progress?
Khadija Mustafa, Jorge Moreira Da Silva, Michael Greenwald
As artificial intelligence reshapes industries and economies at an unprecedented pace, a critical question emerges: does the infrastructure exist to power it? Data centers, digital networks, and advanced computing systems demand vast and reliable energy, forcing a fundamental rethink of how grids are built, financed, and secured for the future. This session will bring together global leaders from energy, multilateral financial institutions, and policy to examine how governments and the private sector can work together to build the physical foundations the digital economy demands. From pipeline networks to renewable integration, the conversation will explore what it takes to ensure that the infrastructure of yesterday is capable of powering the opportunities of tomorrow.
4:30pm – 4:50pm
9/11 at 25: Lessons in Resilience, Security, and National Unity
Jane Harman
Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks, the world continues to grapple with the lasting implications of one of the most consequential events of the 21st century. Beyond reshaping national security, foreign policy, and emergency preparedness, 9/11 transformed how governments, businesses, and communities think about resilience in the face of crisis. As a new generation assumes leadership across public and private sectors, this conversation will reflect on the lessons learned over the past quarter century and examine how those lessons apply to today’s evolving threats. Bringing together voices directly connected to the events of 9/11, this session will explore what it means to build a safer, more resilient society while preserving the values that define open democracies.
4:35pm – 4:55pm
USA 250: Democracy, Leadership, and America’s Role in the Next Century
Henrietta Fore, Rye Barcott, Rhett Buttle
In 2026, the United States will reach a historic milestone: 250 years since its founding. Concordia marks the moment by reflecting on the evolution of American democracy and leadership at home and abroad. Through historical perspective and forward-looking dialogue, this conversation considers how founding ideals are being tested, reinterpreted, and renewed, and what America’s next chapter could mean for the world.
4:55pm – 5:15pm
The Classroom Hasn’t Changed. The World Has: Reimagining Learning for an AI Era
A child entering school today will learn, work and live in a world transformed by AI. That creates an extraordinary opportunity to rethink what learning can look like, and what young people will need most to thrive. As technology makes information and powerful tools more accessible, schools have an opportunity to expand what’s possible while investing even more deeply in the distinctly human capacities that technology cannot replace: curiosity, creativity, judgment, relationships and agency.
The Walton Family Foundation is a programming partner for the 2026 Annual Summit.
5:05pm – 5:30pm
One Sound, Many Voices | East & West Youth Orchestra
Conductor and Artistic Director Maestro Tom Cohen, founder of the Jerusalem Orchestra East & West, developed a groundbreaking musical language that seamlessly merges Western harmony and counterpoint with the maqams, microtones, and polyrhythms of Middle Eastern music. This method has created not only a uniquely rich sound, but also a powerful catalyst for social change. Maestro Cohen has established multi-cultural orchestras utilizing this approach worldwide: in Belgium, Canada, and Morocco, and has conducted international ensembles ranging from Algeria’s iconic “El Gusto” orchestra to Grammy winning Metropole Orkest.
Today, this visionary approach is being passed down to the next generation. Under the auspices of the Jerusalem Orchestra East & West, the “Galilee Youth Orchestra East & West” brings together young musicians from different municipalities across the Western Galilee. In this special 25-minute performance, a select ensemble of 8 outstanding young musicians – Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Druze, demonstrates how uniting distinct musical worlds fosters a shared language of collaboration, curiosity, mutual listening, and bridge-building.
5:15pm – 5:35pm
Who’s Accountable? Regulation, Trust, and Safety in the AI Era
Jess Leinwand, Hooman Shahidi
As AI capability scales, so does exposure to real-world harm, from deepfakes that risk election integrity to unsafe systems reaching the most vulnerable users, including children. This session examines where accountability sits, what enforcement looks like when harm cross state and platform lines, and how governments can protect the public without undercutting the investment and innovation driving American AI leadership. Where does the line fall between guardrails and growth?
Concordia
New York
09/22/2026 at 08:00AM