Short Bio
Peter Leyden is founder and CEO of Next Agenda, a startup that’s a cross between a policy think tank and a new media business leveraging new technologies to help solve America’s biggest challenges. Next Agenda gets top people outside of Washington DC involved in policy-making by using both new techniques for facilitating physical gatherings and new technologies for collaboration online. The process is captured on video and produced as a show to expose Americans to transformative solutions to the 21st Century challenges facing our country and the world.
Leyden recently finished a period as the Director of the New Politics Institute, a think tank helping people in politics understand and adapt to the huge changes in technology and new media. NPI built a network of private sector experts in tech and new media who helped Democrats re-strategize and take advantage of the new tools.
Leyden previously worked as the managing editor at the original Wired magazine, which helped drive the digital revolution and create the early online new media of the web. After that he worked as a director of Global Business Network’s think tank on the future that pioneered the use of diverse networks of talented individuals to help corporations and governments solve difficult problems. GBN used innovative facilitation and tools to productively leverage the talents of technologists, scientists, academics, entrepreneurs and artists.
Leyden has been a journalist, a special correspondent for Newsweek in Asia, and is coauthor of The Long Boom, which was translated into half a dozen languages, and What's Next, which was based on deep interviews with 50 remarkable people from diverse fields impacting the future. He is a frequent commentator in the media and speaks regularly about politics, new technologies and future trends. He lives in San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and 16-year-old daughter.
Long Bio
Peter Leyden is a technology and future trends expert who heads Next Agenda, a startup business focusing on how to use new technologies and new processes to move big ideas and more transformative agendas into policy-making and governing.
Leyden recently finished a period as Director of the New Politics Institute, a think tank and strategy center based in San Francisco that focuses on the transformation of politics in the early 21st century. NPI has developed a diverse network of experts from many different fields to help Democrats and progressives take advantage of today’s massive changes in technology, media and demographics.
Leyden deeply understands technology and new media, having served as managing editor of the original Wired magazine that introduced the digital revolution to the world and that pioneered the early online world of the web.
Leyden worked at Global Business Network, a futures think tank and strategy consulting firm that pioneered the use of diverse networks of high capacity individuals. He worked for years at the center of GBN’s network of more than 100 technologists, scientists, academics, entrepreneurs, business strategists, and artists.
Leyden is the coauthor of two books, The Long Boom, A Future History of the World: 1980-2020, which was translated into half a dozen languages; and What's Next?, Exploring the New Terrain for Business, which looked at what to expect in many fields in the decade following the September 11th attack.
Leyden is a frequent keynote speaker on technology and future trends, speaking to business and general audiences in the United States and Europe. In recent years he has focused more on political audiences, and twice addressed the Democratic Caucus of the US House of Representatives, as well as the Democratic Caucus of the US Senate.
Leyden was a special correspondent in Asia for Newsweek magazine in the late 1980s, where among other things, he did stories in China and Tibet just after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He also has traveled to more than 50 countries in all major regions of the world, including Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Leyden worked as a staff journalist at several newspapers, and has written for many publications, including The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He now is a frequent commentator in the media.
Peter has two master's degrees from Columbia University, including one in political science, and graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife Sharon, and 16-year-old daughter, Emma.
Super Short Bio (Twitter Version)
Peter Leyden is Founder of Next Agenda, a new media startup reinventing the think tank; former Director of the New Politics Institute and Managing Editor of Wired magazine; author & speaker on politics, technology and the future.
