TECH TALK: VISIONARIES, DELUSIONS OR BOTH?

BEN MCKENZIE has been a fixture on television for more than two decades, first capturing audiences in the pop culture phenomenon The O.C. Recently, he played the lead role on Fox’s hit series Gotham, for which he also directed and wrote episodes. In 2020, he starred on Broadway in Grand Horizons, which received a Tony Award nomination for best new play. McKenzie graduated magna cum laude from the University of Virginia with a degree in economics and foreign affairs.

FRANCISCO GONZALEZ is the founder and CEO of Fearless Journeys, a community that aims to help others build an entrepreneurial mindset through group coaching sessions with more than 50 featured innovators, a book club, and exciting group trips. He is also the author of The American Dream is a Terrible Thing to Waste: 100 Agents of Innovation Share Their Fearless Journeys in Today's Economy. As host of the Agents of Innovation podcast since 2015, he has had engaging conversations with more than 130 entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and artists. He is passionate about connecting people with role models, mentors, and sharing stories of entrepreneurial journeys. Born and raised in South Florida, Francisco has visited 28 countries and 48 U.S. states, and has learned that travel helps us get out of our comfort zone and allows us to see the world from a fresh perspective. A student of history with degrees from Florida Atlantic University and the University of Maryland, he has served in leadership roles for three nonprofit educational organizations: the National Review Institute, James Madison Institute, and Intercollegiate Studies Institute. He is a visiting professor at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala City, Mexico, where he teaches courses on entrepreneurship and innovation. When he is back in South Florida, he teaches economics courses to inmates at South Bay and Moore Haven correctional facilities. Since January 2023, he has served as executive director of the Economic Club of Miami.

JONATHAN TAPLIN is a public intellectual, writer, film producer, and scholar. He is the director emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California and was a professor at the USC Annenberg School from in the field of international communication management and digital media entertainment until 2017. Since his graduation from Princeton University in 1969, his extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: He was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band, producer of major films such as Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets, an executive at Merrill Lynch, creator of the internet’s first video-on-demand service, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium.