Jake Sherman

Jake Sherman is a senior writer for POLITICO and co-author of POLITICO’s Playbook, the indispensable morning newsletter for the biggest influencers in politics.

Since 2009, Jake has chronicled all of the major legislative battles on Capitol Hill, and has also traveled the country to cover the battle for control of Congress.

Before landing at POLITICO, Jake worked in the Washington bureaus of The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Jake is a Connecticut native, and a graduate of The George Washington University — where he edited The GW Hatchet — and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Jake lives in Washington with his wife Irene, and listens to an unhealthy amount of Grateful Dead and Phish.

Gordon Chang

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World, released by Random House in January 2006.  Showdown focuses on nuclear proliferation in general and the North Korean crisis in particular.  His first book is The Coming Collapse of China (Random House, August 2001). He is a contributor at Forbes.com and blogs at World Affairs Journal.

He lived and worked in China and Hong Kong for almost two decades, most recently in Shanghai, as Counsel to the American law firm Paul Weiss and earlier in Hong Kong as Partner in the international law firm Baker & McKenzie.

His writings on China and North Korea have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the International Herald Tribune, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Barron's. 

He has spoken at Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale, and other universities and at The Brookings Institution, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, RAND, the American Enterprise Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and other institutions.  He has given briefings at the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the Pentagon.  He has also spoken before industry and investor groups including Bloomberg, Sanford Bernstein, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia.  Chang has appeared before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.  

He has appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, the BBC, and Bloomberg Television. He has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and is a frequent co-host and guest on The John Batchelor Show. 

Outside the United States he has spoken in Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, The Hague, London, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver.

He has served two terms as a trustee of Cornell University.

Colonel Jack Jacobs

Jack Jacobs was born in Brooklyn, New York. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Rutgers University and entered the U.S. Army in 1966 as a Second Lieutenant through the ROTC program. He served as a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division, executive officer of an infantry battalion in the 7th Infantry Division, and commanded the 4th Battalion 10th Infantry in Panama. A member of the faculty of the US Military Academy, Jacobs taught international relations and comparative politics, and he was a member of the faculty of the National War College in Washington, DC.

He was in Vietnam twice, both times as an advisor to Vietnamese infantry battalions, earning three Bronze Stars, two Silver Stars and the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest combat decoration. Jacobs retired as a Colonel in 1987.

He was a founder and Chief Operating Officer of AutoFinance Group Inc, one of the firms to pioneer the securitization of debt instruments; the firm was subsequently sold to Key Bank. He was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust, where he ran foreign exchange options worldwide and was a partner in the institutional hedge fund business, raising more than $2 Billion. Jacobs subsequently founded a similar business for Lehman Brothers and retired again in 1995 to pursue investments.

He is a principal of The Fitzroy Group, a firm that specializes in the development of residential real estate in London and invests both for its own account and in joint ventures with other institutions. He serves on a number of charitable boards of directors and is the Co-Chairman of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and Director Emeritus of the World War II Museum.

Jacobs holds the McDermott Chair of Humanities and Public Affairs at the US Military Academy and is an on-air analyst for NBC News, where he was a member of the team that produced the 2011 Murrow Award-winning  Nightly News segment “Iraq: The Long Way Out.”  Colonel Jacobs is also the co-author of the memoir, If Not Now, When?, published by Penguin and winner of the Colby Award. His second work of non-fiction is Basic, released by St. Martin’s Press in 2012.

Mark Blaxill

Mark Blaxill is co-founder and Executive Director of XLP Capital, a firm founded in 2015 and focused on technology strategy development, new technology business incubation and technology-based investments. Before starting XLP, Mr. Blaxill was a co-Founder and Managing Partner of 3LP Advisors, a firm focused on IP strategy development, patent transactions and IP-based investments. Previous to the launch of 3LP in 2008, he was a 25-year veteran of The Boston Consulting Group, where as senior vice president and partner, he headed the firm's Strategy Practice and recruited BCG’s core IP Strategy team. In this role, he launched the firm's Intellectual Property practice, developed proprietary tools for technology analysis, and co-authored BCG's first patent application.

He is the co-author of The Invisible Edge: Taking Your Strategy to the Next Level Using Intellectual Property (Portfolio, 2009), which was named Best Strategy Book in 2009 by a leading business journal. He has been named one of “The World’s Leading IP Strategists” by IAM Magazine. Mark credits that honor to XLP’s unique integration of the quantitative analyses of technology, patents, business and financial performance.

Mark is also the father of a daughter diagnosed with autism, Chairman and co-founder of the Canary Party and Health Choice, Editor-at-Large for Age of Autism, a former director of SafeMinds and a frequent speaker at autism conferences. He writes often on autism, science and public policy issues for Age of Autism and has published a number of articles, letters and commentaries on autism in journals such as Public Health Reports, the International Journal of Toxicology, the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Frontiers in Pediatrics, Neurotoxicology and Medical Hypotheses. He has also been invited to peer review articles in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the American Journal of Epidemiology, Pediatrics and the International Journal of Toxicology. As part of his advocacy work, he has testified before the Immunization Safety Review of the Institute of Medicine (2001), served on a Blue Ribbon Panel on Vaccine Safety (2004), initiated a symposium sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences entitled  “Environmental Factors in Neurodevelopmental Disorders” (2005) and a workshop sponsored by the Institute of Medicine entitled “Autism and the Environment: Challenges and Opportunities for Research” (2007). He was a panelist at a “Meeting on Evaluating Reasons for ASD Trends” co-sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Autism Speaks (2011) and at a hearing “1 in 88 Children: A Look Into the Federal Response to Rising Rates of Autism” called by the House of Representatives’ Oversight and Government Reform Committee (2012). He has co-authored two books with Dan Olmsted: The Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine and a Man-made Epidemic, (Thomas Dunne, September 2010) and Vaccines 2.0: The Careful Parent's Guide to Making Safe Vaccination Choices for Your Family (Skyhorse Publishing, February 2015). His third book with Dan, Denial: How Refusing to Face the Facts About Our Autism Epidemic Hurts Children, Families—and our Future (Skyhorse, 2017) was released in July 2017.

Mr. Blaxill earned an M.B.A. with distinction from Harvard Business School and an A.B. from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

DENIAL: How Refusing to Face the Facts about Our Autism Epidemic Hurts Children, Families, and Our Future
By Dan Olmsted and Mark Blaxill

"The Gunz Show"

Mike “Gunz” Gunzelman is one of the hottest up and coming media personalities in the nation. Not even 30 years old, “Gunz” is a featured part of the crew on the hit morning show “Imus in the Morning.” Imus personally tapped Gunz for his ability to present real news in a way that appeals to a younger audience. Gunz has covered the New York Yankees for WFUV in New York and pops up on ESPN New York for regular appearances.  He has also appeared on Fox Business Channel and “The Sean Hannity Show” on Fox News Channel, as well as MTV and FUSE Television.  Gunz has now taken his unique charm and energy and brought it to WABC as the 77WABC Sports & Entertainment reporter – covering all local sport teams, award shows and happenings.  If it matters – Gunz will be there.  And if you don’t think it does, Gunz will show you why it does!  Gunz graduated from Fordham University with a degree in Broadcast Journalism and Political Science.  For over 20 years, WABC has been New York’s News Talk leader! Now, Mike Gunzelman, aka Gunz, is going to get his chance to sink his teeth into the Big Apple.  Whether it’s sports, a concert, hot button issue, or a developing event, Gunz will offer his unique perspective.