Philip I. Eliasoph Open VISIONS Forum: Walter Isaacson

“Creativity: Lessons from the Great Innovators”

Walter Isaacson is a Professor of History at Tulane University and an advisory partner at Perella Weinberg, a financial services firm based in New York City. He has been the CEO of the Aspen Institute, the CEO of CNN, and the editor of Time magazine.

Isaacson’s most recent biography, Elon Musk (2023), is an intimate chronicle based on spending two years by Musk’s side. He is also the author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (2021), Leonardo da Vinci (2017), The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution (2014), Steve Jobs (2011), Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (2003), and Kissinger: A Biography (1992), and coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (1986). His latest book, The Greatest Sentence Ever Written (2025), explores the phrase “We hold these truths to be self-evident” from the Declaration of Independence, how it was crafted, and why it remains relevant today.

Isaacson is a host of the show Amanpour and Company on PBS and CNN, a contributor to CNBC, and the host of the podcast Trailblazers from Dell Technologies.