Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers economics and culture. He is the founder and host of the technology podcast Crazy/Genius. A news analyst with NPR, Derek appears weekly on the national news show “Here and Now” and is also a contributor to CBS News. Derek is the recipient of several honors, including the 2016 award for Best Columns and Commentary from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. His first book, the national bestseller "Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction," has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was named the 2018 Book of the Year by the American Marketing Association. Derek lives in Washington, D.C. Read more about the author and speaker under Website Links.

The lecture celebrates the best in journalism, broadly understood. Stowe was a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1930 and one of the early American journalists to raise concerns about Hitler’s rise to power. During World War II, he was a war correspondent. He was a Professor of Journalism at the University of Michigan 1956–1969 and died in 1994.