Speaker Bios

Porter Goss: “Brand USA in the World Today”
Porter Goss explores through the unique lens of his experience as an overseas agent handler, a legislator with primary oversight responsibility for Intelligence in the US House of Representatives and the President’s Daily Briefer as CIA Director what “Brand USA” signifies overseas in the context of current affairs.

Christoph Wolff: “Reviving Bach’s Passion”
Preeminent J.S. Bach scholar Christoph Wolff brings to light the story of how Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” was retrieved from obscurity. This interesting, even entertaining account sheds light on the little-known background of the first modern performance of this work in 1829 under the direction of the young Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

Jim Evans: “A Necessary Evil”
Former Major League Baseball umpire Jim Evans takes you behind the scenes of the all-American sport of baseball. He will share what it’s like to have the best seat in baseball when dealing with some of the game’s most notorious characters.

Randall B. Robertson: “Aesthetic Epiphanies”
Randall B. Robertson is Founder & Executive Director of GladdeningLight, a spiritual arts non-profit based in Winter Park. He will examine the earliest notion to render divine images on the walls of caves and suggest a link to the ornamental catacombs outside Rome with fourteenth century renaissance humanism.

Janice Aria: “Ringling Brothers and the Preservation of the Asian Elephant”
Janice Aria, director of Animal Stewardship for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus©, discusses the role that the Ringling Bros. Center for Elephant Conservation plays in the future of the endangered Asian Elephant. Stewards of the largest herd of Asian Elephants in the Western Hemisphere, Ringling Bros. devotes a portion of every ticket sold to the upkeep of the 200 acre facility, dedicated exclusively to the retirement, reproduction and research of the planet’s largest land mammal.