2026 Keynote Speaker: Dr. Michael Greger
A founding member and fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Michael Greger, M.D., FACLM, is a physician, a New York Times bestselling author, and an internationally recognized speaker on the nexus of nutrition and disease. He has lectured at the Conference on World Affairs, testified before Congress, and was an expert witness in defense of Oprah Winfrey in the infamous “meat defamation” trial. In 2017, Dr. Greger was honored with the ACLM Lifestyle Medicine Trailblazer Award. He is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Agriculture and the Tufts University School of Medicine. His books How Not to Die, The How Not to Die Cookbook, How Not to Diet, and How Not to Age became instant New York Times bestsellers.
2026 Songwriter: Tift Merritt
Tift Merritt is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter and musician who wanted to be a writer until her father taught her guitar chords and Percy Sledge songs. In her 20-year career, she has released a critically acclaimed body of work and toured the world with her sonic short stories. The New Yorker calls her “the bearer of a proud tradition of distaff country soul that reaches back to artists like Dusty Springfield and Bobbie Gentry.” Emmylou Harris calls her “a diamond in a coal mine.” Merritt’s reputation as a musician’s musician is earned by the unique and varied creative projects she helms. While Merritt has worked to create her own brand of southern music, never settling for the status quo, her creativity and curiosity have similarly refused pigeonholing.
2026 Special Guest: Tara Westover
Tara Westover is an American author. Born in Idaho to a father opposed to public education, she never attended school. An older brother taught her to read, and after that her education was erratic and haphazard, with most of her days spent working in her father’s junkyard or stewing herbs for her mother. She was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. After that first encounter with education she pursued learning for a decade, graduating magna cum laude from Brigham Young University in 2008 and subsequently winning a Gates Cambridge Scholarship.
In 2018, she published her memoir, Educated, which explores her struggle to reconcile her desire for education and autonomy with her desire to be loyal to her family. Educated was an instant commercial and critical success, debuting at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remaining on the list for more than two years. It was also a finalist for several national awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times named Educated one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, and the American Booksellers Association voted it the Nonfiction Book of the Year. President Barack Obama included Educated on his annual reading list, calling it “remarkable,” and Bill Gates listed it as one of his favorite books of the year, saying, “It’s even better than you’ve heard.”
For her staggering impact, TIME Magazine named Westover one of the 100 most influential people of 2018. She was also awarded the 2021 National Humanities Medal by President Biden in a ceremony at the White House. Westover holds a PhD in intellectual history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 2019 she was the Rosenthal Writer in Residence at Harvard University.
2026 Conference Presenters
Click on a presenter's name for their bio.
