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Portrait of Brooks
Arthur C. Brooks is Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and Arthur C. Patterson Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School. Before joining the Harvard faculty in July of 2019, he served for ten years as president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI), one of the world’s leading think tanks. 

Brooks is the author of 11 books, including the national bestsellers Love Your Enemies (2019), The Conservative Heart (2015), and The Road to Freedom (2012). He is also a columnist for The Atlantic, host of the popular podcast The Art of Happiness with Arthur Brooks, and subject of the 2019 documentary film The Pursuit, now available on Netflix. He gives more than 100 speeches per year around the U.S., Europe, and Asia. 

Brooks began his career as a classical French hornist, leaving college at 19, touring and recording with the Annapolis Brass Quintet and later the City Orchestra of Barcelona. In his late twenties, while still performing, he returned to school, earning a BA through distance learning at Thomas Edison State College, and then an MA in economics from Florida Atlantic University. At 31, he left music and earned an MPhil and PhD in public policy analysis from the Rand Graduate School. 

Brooks then spent 10 years as a university professor, becoming a full professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business and Government. 

In 2009, Brooks became the 11th president of AEI. Under his leadership, the Institute more than doubled its annual revenues, deepened its outreach to leaders across the ideological spectrum, and expanded its research portfolio to include work on poverty, happiness, and human potential. During this period, he was selected as one of Fortune Magazine’s “50 World’s Greatest Leaders” and was awarded six honorary doctorates. 

Originally from Seattle, Brooks currently lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife Ester Munt-Brooks, who is a native of Barcelona. They have three children, Joaquim, Carlos, and Marina.

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portrait of Jackson
Rev. Phillip A. Jackson ’85 was appointed to the Amherst College Board of Trustees in 2017. He is the priest-in-charge and vicar of Trinity Church Wall Street in Manhattan, where he leads the Mission and Ministry programs that touch upon every aspect of parish life, including service liturgies, a broad-based music program, faith formation programs, pastoral care services, Trinity’s preschool, membership development,  fund development and church properties.

Before coming to Trinity in February 2015, Jackson was the rector of Christ Church of the Ascension in Paradise Valley, Ariz., where he led reconciliation, congregational growth and community engagement in the Phoenix area.

Jackson has also served parishes in Houston and Detroit, and before being ordained as a priest, he practiced law as a litigator in Hawaii.

He earned his B.A. in history, cum laude; a J.D. from Yale Law School; and an M.Div. from The Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, Calif. He is married to Page Underwood, an attorney with the Mayo Clinic.