THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN is a best-selling author and New York Times foreign affairs columnist, renowned for his direct reporting and accessible analysis of complex issues shaping the world. With clear and compelling language, Friedman discusses the opportunities and challenges that profound “accelerations,” including technology and connectivity, pose for society as well as for individuals, businesses, and governments. He also explores solutions — on a local and global level — to ensure the future of work, skills, income, and prosperity. In his latest best-seller, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, Friedman offers a blueprint for overcoming the stresses and challenges of a world being transformed by technology, globalization, and climate change. His previous New York Times best-seller, co-written with Michael Mandelbaum, was That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. Friedman’s The World is Flat has sold four-and-a-half million copies and won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America, was a number one New York Times best-seller. His other best-sellers include Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism, and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Ranked number two on The Wall Street Journal’s list of “influential business thinkers” and named to the 2011 Thinkers50 and the 2013 list of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers, Friedman is considered one of “America’s Best Leaders” by US News & World Report. In awarding Friedman his third Pulitzer Prize, the Pulitzer Board cited his “clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat.” @tomfriedman