Acclaimed Biographer to Speak at Breakfast

Former CNN CEO, Time Magazine editor to be at 4th annual event

Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and former chairman and CEO of CNN and editor of Time magazine, will speak at Westmont’s fourth annual President’s Breakfast Friday, Feb. 6, at 7 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom of Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort. Tickets, which are $75 per person, go on sale Tuesday, Jan. 6, at 8 a.m and can be purchased by calling (805) 565-6895. Seating is limited, and tickets are sold on a first-come, first-served basis.

Isaacson, who has written three acclaimed biographies of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, will speak about “Perspectives on Our Greatest Challenges from Einstein, Franklin and Kissinger.” He graduated from both Harvard and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Gerd Jordano, chair of the President’s Breakfast steering committee, says last year’s speaker, Fareed Zakaria, highly recommended Isaacson. “Walter Isaacson is America’s greatest renaissance man, dazzlingly accomplished at running large organizations, tackling foreign policy, and writing bestselling works of history,” says Zakaria, who has since become host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” at CNN.

Governor Kathleen Blanco appointed Isaacson to be the vice-chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. In December 2007, President George W. Bush appointed him to be the chairman of the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership, a government and private sector effort to provide economic and educational opportunities for the Palestinian people. He is the leader of the U.S.

Delegation of the U.S.-Vietnam Dialogue Group on Agent Orange/Dioxin, and the chairman of the board of Teach for America. He is on the boards of United Airlines, Tulane University and Science Service. He is on advisory councils of the National Institutes of Health, the National Constitution Center and the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C.