Marcus Jecklin earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology with a minor in creative writing from WashU in 2012. He was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and the Student Entrepreneurial Program (StEP). Through StEP, Marcus co-owned Bear’s Bikes, an on-campus bicycle rental and retail business, which he successfully sold to a new group of student entrepreneurs before graduating. 

After college, Marcus began his career in commercial real estate in New York City, working first at Massey Knakal Realty Services (later acquired by Cushman & Wakefield) and then at Epic Commercial Realty, where he was named Rookie of the Year in 2015 for an unprecedented number of deals closed. 

In 2016, Marcus teamed up with WashU friend Michael Weiss to co-found World’s Fair USA, an ambitious venture aimed at reviving the spirit of the World’s Fair in the United States for the first time since 1984. The company produced World’s Fair Nano, a bi-coastal technology festival hosted in New York City and San Francisco, featuring up to 8,000 attendees at its peak. 

In 2018 Marcus and Michael co-founded Fora Group, an events and media company behind several successful business conferences, including Ai4 and RETCON. Ai4 focuses on the enterprise applications of artificial intelligence, while RETCON focuses on the technology and innovation within commercial real estate. 

Ai4, which began as a 400-person event in Brooklyn, has since grown into America’s largest AI conference.  

Ai4 has been recognized by Inc. Magazine for multiple consecutive years as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America, most recently ranking 10th among all U.S. media companies. 

In 2025, Marcus and Michael sold RETCON and Ai4 separately to major industry groups. Ai4 is now controlled by CloserStill Media, one of the world’s largest event organizers. Marcus currently serves as co-CEO and head of marketing at Ai4, a role he plans to hold through August 2027. 

Outside of work, Marcus is passionate about health and fitness, regularly competing in CrossFit and HYROX events. He and his wife, Olivia, are expecting their first child, a baby boy, this July.

Michael Weiss is an entrepreneur recognized for building professional communities around artificial intelligence and accelerating enterprise adoption of AI across industries. He is co-founder of Ai4, the world’s premier industry conference on artificial intelligence. Through his leadership in developing large-scale AI conferences and communities, Weiss has played a significant role in connecting business leaders, technologists, policymakers, and researchers working at the forefront of AI innovation.  

Weiss co-founded Ai4 in 2018 alongside Marcus Jecklin, AB ’12, with the goal of creating a platform where organizations could learn how to apply artificial intelligence to real-world business challenges. The first event began as a small, specialized conference focused on AI applications in finance, held in Brooklyn with only a few hundred attendees. Under Weiss and Jecklin, the conference expanded rapidly into a 12,000-attendee, cross-industry summit that attracts Fortune 500 executives, leading researchers, and high-profile speakers from dozens of countries each year. Michael has overseen team building, content strategy, and sponsorship sales, driving eight-figure annual revenues and positioning Ai4 as the go-to platform for enterprise AI thought leadership and commerce.

Prior to Ai4, Michael started history's first privatized effort to organize a World's Fair in the United States, inspired by the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis.  

Beyond Ai4, Weiss has been involved in building multiple technology-focused communities and events through Fora Group, an organization that develops conferences for emerging technology sectors. He has also contributed to initiatives such as RETCON, a conference focused on real estate technology and innovation. His broader work centers on creating platforms where entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, and corporate leaders can exchange ideas and collaborate on emerging technologies.

Outside of AI, his interests include reading about longevity biotech and the development of drugs to reverse the effects of aging, and he's an avid pickleball player. He and his wife, Ally Sprague, BSBA ‘14, live in Austin, Texas. 

For James Risch and Suzanne Mizera, WashU has played a defining role in their life together.  They met over 50 years ago as undergraduates and were married in Graham Chapel on June 3, 1977.  This event was the start of a shared adventure that led them first to New York, then London and finally to Geneva, Switzerland.

Native St. Louisans, James and Sue were the first generation in their families to attend university. Sue graduated in 1974 with majors in Classics, comparative literature, and philosophy. James also graduated in 1974 with a major in psychology.

Sue continued at WashU to earn her master’s degree in Classics before moving on to Princeton University for her doctorate degree. James earned his master of social work degree at WashU’s Brown School, then completed a master of business administration degree at Columbia University in 1979.

Despite Sue’s deep interest in the classical world and James’s motivation to work in the field of social policy, they both discovered that career paths can take surprisingly different directions. In New York, James was drawn to the world of Wall Street. This decision let to a long and successful career in international banking and finance, culminating in his role as managing director at J.P. Morgan in Switzerland.

Sue’s professional journey began on Madison Avenue with the renowned advertising agency Young & Rubicam.  Early on, she recognized that companies needed a more rigorous and strategic understanding of their brand and communications approach before they began creating advertising campaigns. Her work in this area became the foundation for Young & Rubicam’s development of a new division, Y&R Business Consultants, where Sue served as managing director. She later went on to establish with James an independent consulting firm, TorchFish Sàrl, advising start-ups and small to medium-sized enterprises on brand strategy. Sue continues to teach, lecture, and publish on branding and brand strategy. Her work has earned numerous professional awards, and a book of her essays on branding is slated for publication later this year.

For Sue and James, Washington University and the School of Arts & Sciences will always occupy an incomparable place in their lives, and they are committed to creating similarly transformative opportunities for future generations of students to travel, to pursue passions, and to let curiosity open doors to life-changing discoveries. With this spirit, they partnered with the The John and Penelope Biggs Department of Classics in 2024 to establish a fund that supports independent student research, travel, and related explorations.

Sue and James now live in Geneva, Switzerland, where they are naturalized Swiss citizens. Living in Europe has allowed them to reconnect with their shared love of the classical world—traveling widely in Greece, Italy, Turkey, and the Aegean in pursuit of history, archaeology, and the remnants of ancient civilizations. They also delight in having taken on an extreme challenge for each decade of their life together: in their 30s, scuba diving; in their 40s, skiing; in their 50s, equestrian sports, including the regular riding of their two horses; and in their 60s, a deepening passion for wine that led them to formal study and certification in oenology. Now, in their 70s, inspired by the ideal of a “mens sana in corpore sano,” they have transformed their interest in personal fitness into competition. Their recent results have earned them qualification for the HYROX World Championships to be held this June in Stockholm, Sweden.  

Dr. Mark S. Gold is a pioneer in addiction research due to his groundbreaking translational work that has shaped the understanding, treatment, and societal perception of addiction. His extensive career, spanning more than five decades, has produced seminal contributions that bridged neuroscience, psychiatry, public health, and policy—culminating in profound, lasting impacts on how substance use disorders are studied and managed.  

Gold’s work began at Yale in the 1970s, where he revolutionized the neurobiological understanding of opioid dependence. Throughout his career, Gold championed evidence-based medical treatment for addiction at a time when the condition was still stigmatized as a moral failing. With his Yale colleagues, Gold helped change addiction psychiatry to disease diagnosis and management using evidence-based care with medications and treatment of co-occurring disorders. During a Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony, President Obama’s drug czar called him the “father of medication assisted treatments in addiction.” He founded the first national drug hotline, in this case the cocaine hotline, which served both as a resource and a research tool to cocaine use and a prevention tool. Why would 1 million people call 800 Cocaine for help, he thought, if cocaine was safe and non-addicting? Gold also developed the influential dopamine hypothesis for cocaine addiction, demonstrating that cocaine disrupts the brain’s reward circuitry, changing the emphasis from withdrawal to attraction and compulsive use despite harm for addiction. Behavioral addictions were included after his work. After working on drug use, addiction withdrawal and body weight, Gold helped pioneer the field of food, sugar, and highly processed foods as addictions. He mentored many of the next generation leaders of addiction scientists, professors, chairs and deans.

Gold was a scientific adviser to the iconic “This is Your Brain on Drugs” campaign and has been recognized for his decades of help communicating addiction research to community coalitions, treatment providers and the public in accessible ways.

Over his 25-year career at the University of Florida, he was a professor of neuroscience in 1990 and became a professor of anesthesiology, psychiatry, community health & family medicine, as well as a physician-scientist at UF McKnight Brain Institute, UF Distinguished Professor, Eminent Scholar, and chairman of the department of psychiatry. He retired after a four-year term as UF’s  17th Distinguished Alumni Professor and Eminent Scholar Emeritus. Dr. Gold’s work remains a cornerstone of modern addiction medicine, and his legacy continues to inspire new generations of researchers, clinicians, and policymakers.  

Mary Bruce is the chief White House correspondent for ABC News based in Washington, D.C. Her work can be seen on “Good Morning America,” “World News Tonight with David Muir,” “Nightline” and “20/20.” She regularly fills in as an anchor on “GMA” and “World News Tonight” and appears on ABC News Live programs and ABC News Radio.

Most recently, Bruce has been at the forefront of the historic 2024 and 2026 political landscapes, leading ABC’s coverage of President Biden’s reelection bid and his subsequent exit from the race. During this pivotal cycle, she secured an exclusive interview with Vice President Kamala Harris following Harris’s ascent as the Democratic nominee and has continued to serve as the lead correspondent covering the second Trump administration.  Bruce garnered international headlines in late 2025 for her fearless questioning in the Oval Office, where she directly challenged Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on U.S. intelligence findings regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and pressed President Trump on his family’s business ties to the Kingdom. 

As the senior White House correspondent, Bruce covered the Biden administration and the 2022 midterms. During the 2020 presidential election, she served as ABC News’ lead campaign correspondent, covering the Biden campaign extensively, from the primaries through major events, including the presidential and vice presidential debates and the conventions. In November 2020, Bruce reported around the clock for five straight days until a winner was projected in the historic election. In her previous role as senior congressional correspondent, Bruce helped lead the network’s coverage of the first impeachment trial of President Trump, as well as his second impeachment in 2021. From the Hill, Bruce covered the day’s major political stories, including the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the Mueller Report, the fights for health care and tax reform, and the confirmations of Supreme Court justices. Throughout her four years in the halls of the Capitol, Bruce conducted news-making interviews with top lawmakers and broke down the day’s top stories. In 2018, her brilliant reporting on Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court was recognized by her peers on Capitol Hill, awarding her the Joan S. Barone Award. In 2020, Bruce was named the Tyndall Report’s second most-used reporter across all the networks.

During the 2016 presidential election, Bruce traveled around the country contributing to ABC News’ coverage of the presidential campaigns.

Previously, she served as a multiplatform reporter covering stories ranging from wildfires in California to Pope Francis’ historic visit to Washington. She has also reported abroad, covering the refugee crisis in Europe and numerous presidential trips overseas.

Bruce spent five years covering the White House as a producer and digital journalist, reporting on President Obama’s reelection campaign and his administration’s day-to-day agenda. Before becoming a correspondent, she was a segment producer for “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” helping to produce interviews with the 2008 presidential candidates and working on the ABC presidential debates. Bruce joined ABC News in 2006 as a desk assistant.

A native of Washington, D.C., she holds a bachelor’s degree in history and Spanish from WashU.

Dr. Walter E. Massey’s career has bridged cultures of the sciences and the arts, the private and public sectors, and academia and industry. He is currently chair of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization, chair of the City Colleges of Chicago Trustees, president emeritus of Morehouse College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and senior adviser to the president and emeritus trustee of the University of Chicago. Recent awards and honors include the Sigma Xi 2020 Gold Key Award and the National Science Foundation’s 2019 Vannevar Bush Award. His memoir, “In the Eye of the Storm: My Time as Chairman of Bank of America During the Country’s Worst Financial Crisis,” was published in 2020.

Throughout his career, Dr. Massey has been dedicated to science and technology, with a particular commitment to strengthening the field through active inclusion, access to quality education, and mentorship for women and underrepresented minorities, especially in STEM fields.

While director of the National Science Foundation in 1992, he helped convince Congress to invest in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) to detect cosmic gravitational waves predicted by Einstein. In his roles at Argonne National Laboratory, University of Chicago and University of California, he fostered cooperation and collaboration between academia, government and industry and helped restore funding and recognition of national labs as visionary, scientific research institutions.

Dr. Massey is the former vice president of the American Physical Society, chair of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, chairman of Bank of America, member of the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century, President’s Council of Advisors of Science and Technology and the National Science Board, board chair for the Salzburg Global Seminar, trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Marine Biological Laboratory, co-founder of the National Society of Black Physicists, and founding trustee of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, among others. He is the only person to have served as president and chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and chair of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.

He has served on the boards of dozens of corporations and civic organizations, including BP, McDonald’s, First National Bank of Chicago, the Mellon Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, among others.  

He has received both the Chicago Historical Society’s Enrico Fermi Award for Science and Technology and the Illinois Humanities’ Public Humanities Award, in addition to the Order of Lincoln, the State of Illinois’ highest honor. The Georgia State Senate passed resolution SR 113 to recognize and commend him as president of Morehouse College, the American Association of Physics Teachers awarded him their Distinguished Service Citation, and he has received 41 honorary degrees.

Massey earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics at Morehouse College. He holds master’s and doctorate degrees in physics from WashU. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Argonne, assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and held professorships in physics at Brown University and the University of Chicago.

His dedication to mentoring students is a reflection of the inspiration and “extraordinary care” he received from his own mentors, Sabinus H. Christensen at Morehouse and Eugene Feenberg at WashU. He is married to Shirley Anne Massey, a civic leader, who grew up in Woodlawn and Hyde Park. They have two sons and three grandchildren.