Mark W. Moffett
Mark Moffett, tropical explorer and biologist, is traveling the globe with the support of the John Templeton Foundation to investigate the life and death of societies across the animal world and in humans right up to the present day.
2025 Creativity Conference Speakers
Creativity Conference Curators
Melissa Wells
Melissa Wells is an expert at managing healthcare systems in the US and abroad. When on expeditions with fellow explorer Moffett, she also captures the work and inspiration of scientific researchers through photography and film.
Creativity Conference Speakers
Additional speakers and conference schedule will be announced soon.
These speakers are currently scheduled. Subject to change.
Vint Cerf
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Vint Cerf has the Turing Award (the “Nobel Prize for computing”) for co-inventing the internet—indeed, he coined the word “internet”—and his current job title is Chief Internet Evangelist at Google.
Rita Colwell
Work by Rita Colwell, the first woman to head the National Science Foundation, bridges many academic fields from oceanography to genetics, and her revolutionary discoveries have prevented countless of people from suffering with cholera.
Rebecca Goldstein
Philosopher, novelist, MacArthur Fellow and National Medal of the Humanities winner Rebecca Goldstein, author of “Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away,” pursues human drives to find out what it is in life that matters.
Mark Moffett
Mark Moffett, tropical explorer and biologist, has been investigating the life and death of societies across the animal world and in humans right up to the present day, traveling with globe with the support of the John Templeton Foundation.
Steven Pinker
Recipient of the Golden Plate award from the American Academy of Achievement, cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has changed how we think about humankind with such bestselling books as The Language Instinct and Enlightenment Now.
Apollo Robbins and Ava Do
Returning Creativity Conference favorite Apollo Robbins, expert on pickpockets, confidence crimes, and deception, “widely considered the best in the world at what he does” (New Yorker), will be joined by the magician and mentalist Ava Do.
Polly Wiessner
Anthropologist Polly Wiessner has lived among Africa’s San Bushmen and New Guinea tribes in her quest to understand how people lived prior to nations, with her studies of storytelling, inequality, exchange giving, and many other subjects.
Patricia Wright
A second returning Creativity Conference favorite, the MacArthur-winner Patricia Wright, updates us on her continuing efforts of conserve the lemurs of Madagascar, and will report on several extraordinary new discoveries from that island nation.