Press Release

Bush Center Brings Amazon Founder/CEO Jeff Bezos to SMU for Public Forum on Leadership

Bezos to be featured speaker at Closing Conversation of the Forum on Leadership on April 20, 2018

Jeff Bezos, Chairman and CEO of Amazon, will be the featured speaker at the April 20th Closing Conversation of the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s Forum on Leadership, in partnership with SMU.

The three-day Forum, hosted by President George W. Bush and Laura Bush, is an annual gathering to develop, recognize, and celebrate leadership. Scheduled for April 18-20, 2018 at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the Forum is by invitation only. However, the Closing Conversation, featuring Bezos at SMU’s Moody Coliseum will be open to the public.

“Jeff Bezos is a visionary entrepreneur who has changed the world,” said Ken Hersh, President and CEO of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. “He exemplifies the type of leader we’re celebrating at the Forum on Leadership, and we look forward sharing his insight and perspective with Dallas.”

“We are delighted to co-host this event at Moody Coliseum with the Bush Center and invite the Dallas community to join us,” said Gerald Turner, President of SMU.

Other Forum on Leadership speakers will include Bono, Ben Bernanke, John Boehner, Arthur Brooks, Governor John Hickenlooper, Hank Paulson, and Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, Governor Susana Martinez; General Peter Pace, USMC (Ret.), Joshua Bolten, and Edward Lazear.

SMU will celebrate the 5th anniversary of the establishment of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum on SMU’s campus. Forum on Leadership also coincides with SMU’s celebration of Founder’s Day Weekend.

In addition, the Forum on Leadership will also include a series of interactive conversations called Studio 43. These sessions will feature a conversation about 21st Century Medicine with Dr. Marc Penn, Director of Research and Cardiovascular Medicine, Summa Cardiovascular Institute; Dr. W.E. “Ed” Bosarge, Ph.D., Founder and CEO Capital Technologies; and, Dr. Jennifer Doudna, professor of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California, Berkeley, and co-inventor of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology. A second conversation about Artificial Intelligence will feature Scott Phoenix, Co-Founder of Vicarious.

Tickets to the Closing Conversation are available here.