CU Boulder announces Conference on World Affairs speakers

The 72nd Conference on World Affairs will be headlined by speakers including Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph, Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts and more than 100 others, organizers announced Monday.

What’s the main difference between the animation in Frozen 1 and Frozen 2? Those attending panels with Marlon West, head of effects animation at Disney, could find out.

What does it take to build a fingerprint-reading smart gun? The device’s 21-year-old inventor, Kai Kloepfer, will be at the conference to discuss it.

The free, week-long conference at the University of Colorado Boulder in April will feature more interactive sessions than ever, said Faculty Director John Griffin, ranging from question and answer sessions with panelists to getting feedback on creative writing prompts from professional writers.

00:02 / 00:30TOP ARTICLES1/5READ MOREMostly sunny skies with a high of 41 today in Boulder

Speakers are chosen by a group of nearly 300 Boulder community and student volunteers who form committees based on topics and themes, said Community Program Chair Margaret Hollingsworth.

The themes of this year’s conference are health, race in the United States and “Millennials Shaping Our Future.”

In addition to interactive sessions, organizers are also working to put together debates on the arts, current events and more.

CU Boulder senior Sam Kornick, student chair for the politics and media committee, first got involved with the conference as a sophomore.

“The conference provides students an amazing opportunity to expand their learning outside of the classroom and from experts all around the world,” Kornick said. “The CWA exposes students to a wide variety of viewpoints and ideas which I hope pushes students to think critically about the issues of today and start a discussion among peers. I think the conversations held during the conference have the potential to inspire students and spark new ideas and innovation on campus that could end up changing the world.”

CWA speakers and panelists are not paid for attending the event and often pay for their own travel, which is unusual for professional speaking engagements, Hollingsworth said.

“I think they come because of the magic of CWA,” Hollingsworth said. “They also get to be on multiple panels and talk about things they are passionate about and they get to meet all of these different people in their fields and in other fields.”

Previous conferences saw nearly 70,000 attendees, according to the university, and it’s an enormous effort to organize, Griffin said.

“It’s an event where there’s a lot of people investing a lot to make it a success,” he said. “We’re proud of that characteristic of the conference and it makes it in many ways more challenging, but it can also be more rewarding.”

Other speakers confirmed by Hollingsworth include Steven Olikara, founder of the Millennial Action Project, former NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver and Dallas prosecutor-turned-civil rights attorney Justin Moore.

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