David Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick graduated from Amherst College in 1975 with a degree in English, and also studied painting at the New York Studio School for Drawing, Painting and Sculpture for two years. He began his career with Time Inc. in 1978 as a copy clerk while working as a video artist. (A video artwork he co-produced was exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1978). In 1983, he started at Fortune magazine as a reporter, becoming a writer in 1989, and then began writing exclusively about technology in January 1991. From 2002-2008, he wrote a weekly tech column called "Fast Forward." Kirkpatrick also developed and hosted Fortune's Brainstorm conference, an annual gathering in Aspen, Colorado, which began in August 2001. Brainstorm attendees during the conference's 5 years included President Bill Clinton (who attended and spoke at the conference three times), Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, Senator John McCain, FBI Director Robert Mueller, ecologists Paul Ehrlich and Amory Lovins, Under-Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and venture capitalist John Doerr.

Kirkpatrick has written profiles of Jack Dorsey and Sean Parker in Vanity Fair, and writes articles about technology and society for Forbes magazine. He is regularly ranked one of the world's top technology journalists, and has been a member of the World Economic Forum's International Media Council, consisting of 100 global media leaders, since 2006, as well as a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.