PRovoke Global 2024

Mike Allen

Co-Founder, Axios

Nikki Haley

Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor, Vice Chair of Edelman Global Advisory

In 2010, at age 38, Nikki R. Haley was elected the 116th governor of South Carolina. She was the youngest governor in the country and first minority female governor in America. She is the only female governor in South Carolina history.

During Governor Haley’s tenure, South Carolina was a national leader in economic development. Known as the “Beast of the Southeast,” the state’s unemployment rate hit a 15-year low, it saw over $20 billion in new capital investment, and her administration announced new jobs in every county in the state. 

In 2013, her husband Michael, a combat veteran, deployed to Afghanistan making her the first governor in U.S. history to have their spouse deployed. 
 
The people of South Carolina decisively reelected Haley in 2014. Two years later, Time magazine named her 100 most influential people in the world. 
 
In 2016, at age 45, President Donald Trump nominated Haley as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.  In that role, she served as a member of the President’s Cabinet and on the National Security Council.
 
As ambassador, she ensured the American people saw value for their investment, defended U.S. interests, kept our country safe, and championed human rights. For her work at the UN, Forbes named her one of the world’s 100 most powerful women.  
 
After serving in the Trump administration, she founded Stand For America and Stand For America PAC.

At age 51, Haley ran as a Republican candidate for president while her husband was deployed to Africa. In 2024, she outlasted thirteen other candidates and became the first Republican woman to win a presidential primary. She continues to fight for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and a strong foreign policy that keeps America safe, has the backs of our allies, and holds our enemies to account. 

Nikki is married to Major Michael Haley and has two children. 

She is a two time NYTimes best selling author for With All Due Respect and If You Want Something Done.

Emily Metz

President & CEO, American Egg Board

Emily Metz is president & CEO of the American Egg Board, the national marketing organization for the U.S. egg industry. In this role, she directs strategy and oversees national programs spanning consumer marketing and PR; CPG manufacturing and foodservice engagement and R&D; health and nutrition research and communications; and exports to drive demand for U.S. eggs and egg products domestically and abroad. Metz is a professional communicator, marketer and strategist who has built her career around a passion for agriculture in roles supporting U.S. dairy, beef, pork and poultry farmers. An attorney specializing in food and drug law, she has held communications, marketing and advocacy positions at the USDA, the Animal Agriculture Alliance, National Milk Producers Federation and, most recently, at the world’s largest animal genetics company, Genus Plc. She is delighted and honored to serve America’s egg farmers and support the nation’s love affair with the incredible egg.

Michael Steele

Former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, Former RNC Chairman

When he was elected Lt. Governor of Maryland in 2003, Michael Steele made history as the first African American elected to statewide office; and again, with his subsequent chairmanship of the Republican National Committee in 2009.

As chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele was charged with revitalizing the Republican Party. A self- described "Lincoln Republican," under Steele’s leadership the RNC broke fundraising records (over $198 million raised during the 2010 Congressional cycle) and Republicans won 63 House seats, the biggest pickup since 1938. His commitment to grassroots organization and party building at the state and local levels produced 12 governorships and the greatest share of state legislative seats since 1928 (over 760 seats).

As Lt. Governor of Maryland, Mr. Steele’s priorities included reforming the state's Minority Business Enterprise program, improving the quality of Maryland's public education system (he championed the State’s historic Charter School law), expanding economic development in the state and fostering cooperation between government and faith-based organizations to help those in need.

Mr. Steele’s ability as a communicator and commentator has been showcased through his current role as a political analyst for MSNBC. He has appeared on Meet the Press, Face the Nation, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, and Comedy Central's The Daily Show. In addition to his work in television, Mr. Steele co- hosted the daily radio program, Steele & Ungar on the POTUS Channel on SiriusXM and is the host of the podcast The Michael Steele Podcast.

Mr. Steele���s writings on law, business and politics have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Hill.com, The Grio.com, Politico.com, The Root.com, BET.com, Townhall.com, The Journal of International Security Affairs and Catholic University Law Review, among others.

He is the author of Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda, which is a call to arms for grassroots America and co-author of The Recovering Politician’s Twelve Step Program to Survive Crisis.

Kara Swisher

New York Times best-selling author, host of On with Kara Swisher & Pivot podcasts, editor-at-large, New York Magazine

 Why Kara Swisher is Captivating Audiences.

Kara Swisher is good at what she does. And she knows it. Kara Swisher is the host of On with Kara Swisher and co-host of the Pivot podcast. She’s editor-at-large at New York Magazine and a CNN contributor. Swisher is the co-founder of the technology website, Recode, and tech conference, Code, which is the country’s premier conference on tech and media. Swisher was recently honored with a Lifetime Achievement Webby Award.

Considered the top reporter in the tech game, Swisher has been reporting on the industry since the early 1990s. She was there when Amazon was looking for its first headquarters in Seattle, when Google was in its garage and when Netflix was just a small startup. Once called “Silicon Valley's most feared but revered journalist” by New York Magazine , Swisher has established herself as the oracle of the tech world with unrivaled access to the industry's most significant leaders.

Swisher's new book Burn Book: A Tech Love Story is part memoir, part history, and ultimately a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead. Burn Book includes soaring tales of innovation and brilliant entrepreneurs, as well as Silicon Valley’s much more complex history of striving, success, and failure. The book details how the commercial internet came into being and how, for all it has given the world, it now sits at the  center of global power, creating a clear and present danger to humanity. Yet despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone. She is also the author of aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web, published by Times Business Books in July 1998. The sequel, There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future, was published in the fall of 2003 by Crown Business Books.

Swisher was named to The Hollywood Reporter’s list of “Podcast Power Players” in 2022 and 2023, and to the 2023 Out 100. She also received the “Pioneer Icon” award at the 2023 iHeart Podcast Awards. Additionally, Pivot was named one of the “Best Podcasts of 2022” by the New York Times and “Best Thought Leadership Podcast” at the 2022 Adweek Audio Awards.

She was previously a contributing New York Times opinion writer and former host of the podcasts, Sway and Recode Decode. She co-founded the technology website, Recode, and, before that, co-produced and co-hosted The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference series (now called the Code Conference) with Walt Mossberg starting in 2003. It was, and still is, the country’s premier conference on tech and media, with interviewees such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla Technoking Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, and many other leading players. Swisher worked in the Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau and as a reporter at the Washington Post.

She was also a contributor to NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC. Swisher played herself on HBO’s Silicon Valley and Fox’s The Simpsons, and is a regular guest on national broadcast programs. She also hosted HBO’s Succession podcast, which was named Adweek’s 2023 “Podcast of the Year.” For many years, she wrote the column BoomTown, which appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section and online at WSJ.com. Previously, Swisher covered breaking news about the web’s major players and internet policy issues, and she also wrote feature articles on technology for the paper. Earlier in her career, Swisher worked as a reporter at The Washington Post and as an editor at the City Paper of Washington, D.C. She received her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and her graduate degree at Columbia University’s School of Journalism.