Michael Lewis - January 20, 2025

Wall Street and Financial - All Q&A's

A sharp observer of politics, finance, and the evolution of American culture, Michael Lewis combines keen insight with his signature wit, making him one of today’s leading social commentators. Lewis’ program takes a fresh, hard look at the ever-changing value systems that drive our economic markets, political landscapes, and cultural norms, and how organizations can adapt their thought strategies to facilitate growth among all three.

Lewis’ presentations are customized moderated Q&A conversations covering everything from the Moneyball methodology and big-data analytics to the rise and fall (and rise, again) of Wall Street.

Financial journalist and New York Times best-selling author Michael Lewis has published many books on subjects ranging from politics to Wall Street. Lewis' newest #1 New York Times bestselling book Going Infinite tells the story of FTX’s collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center, Sam Bankman-Fried.

Lewis‘s previous book, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story follows three central characters — a biochemist, a public health worker and a federal government employee who worked in the White House — as they confront the pandemic and find that the response from the United States government is woefully inadequate. All of them put “their careers on the line” as they tried to avert catastrophe, according to Lewis.

In October 2018, Lewis released The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy, which examined a government in crisis. The Trump Administration notoriously failed to fill vacancies in some of the most important positions in crucial government agencies like the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Commerce. With so much at stake, Lewis sought out the (former) linchpins of the system — those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity kept the machinery running for so many years—and asks them what keeps them up at night.

In December 2016, Lewis released The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds. In keeping with his unparalleled ability to tell stories about “quirky individuals who zig when everyone else zags” (as The New York Times puts it), the book dives deep into the friendship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and their study of decision making and human errors in judgment. His previous book, the NYT #1 best-seller Flash Boys, has taken the financial market and business world by storm upon its release in March 2014. The story reveals how the legal—but highly questionable—practice of high-frequency trading (HFT) allowed certain Wall Street players to work the stock market to their advantage.

In The Blind Side, published in 2006, Lewis tells the story of NFL Offensive Tackle Michael Oher, and how his life is transformed from being a teen living on the streets of Memphis after he is adopted by white Evangelical Christians. Before that, Lewis wrote Moneyball, a book ostensibly about baseball but also about the way markets value people. Both of his books about sports became Oscar-nominated films.

Two of his most popular releases, The Big Short and Boomerang, are narratives set in the global financial crisis. His other works include The New New Thing, about Silicon Valley during the Internet boom; Coach, about the transformative powers of his own high school baseball coach; Losers, about the 1996 Presidential campaign; and Liar’s Poker, a Wall Street story based in part on his own experience working as a bond salesman for Salomon Brothers.

Mr. Lewis is a columnist for Bloomberg News and a contributing writer to Vanity Fair. His articles have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Gourmet, Slate, Sports Illustrated, Foreign Affairs, and Poetry Magazine. He has served as editor and columnist for the British weekly The Spectator and as Senior Editor and campaign correspondent for The New Republic. He has filmed and narrated short pieces for ABC-TV’s Nightline; created and presented a four-part documentary on the social consequences of the internet for the BBC; and recorded stories for the American public radio show, This American Life.

Mr. Lewis grew up in New Orleans and remains deeply interested and involved in the city. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Princeton and a Master’s degree in Economics from the London School of Economics. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their children.