Brave New Futures
Buffett Symposium
In April 2026, Northwestern University's Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs hosted Brave New Futures, the two-day finale of the Roberta Buffett Institute's 2025–26 symposium series, Brave New Futures.
The first day of the event featured Syrian-American rapper and poet Omar Offendum. Offendum performed “Neo-Hakawati Nights” at the Josephine Louis Theater, joined by Palestinian multi-instrumentalist Zafer Tawil on the ney and oud.
Offendum joined the Arts of Social Change panel on the symposium's following day, which convened a visionary set of international thinkers to explore how human relationships, information ecosystems, labor, and the planet itself are being reshaped in this moment of uncertainty and possibility. From the power of art for action to the future of work and planetary survival, Brave New Futures envisioned bold new visions for building more just and sustainable global futures.
Watch the full-day symposium
00:00:00 | Opening Remarks
- Deborah Cohen, Richard W. Leopold Professor of History and Director of Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs
00:03:55 | Human Relationships
- Qing Wang, co-founder of The Weirdo Podcast
- Nataliya Kos’myna, research scientist at MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces group
- Moderator: Nour Kteily, Kellogg Chair in Enlightened Disagreement, Professor of Management & Organizations, and Founding Co-Director of the Litowitz Center for Enlightened Disagreement at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business
01:01:52 | New Media
- Allison Yang, founder and CEO of Reality Reload
- Shuwei Fang, Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politic, & Public Policy
- Moderator: Jeremy Gilbert, Knight Professor in Digital Media Strategy at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism
01:59:42 | Arts of Social Change
- Bing Liu, filmmaker and director of the Emmy- and Oscar-nominated feature documentary Minding the Gap and the newly released feature film Preparation for the Next Life
- Omar Offendum, spoken word poet, rapper, and storyteller
- Moderator: Ellen Harvey, conceptual artist whose recent work includes Utopia Machine
02:56:52 | Planetary Futures
- Vanessa Nakate, climate activist, founder of the Rise Up climate movement, and author of A Bigger Picture
- David Wallace-Wells, writer for New York Times Opinion, columnist for New York Times Magazine, and author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
- Moderator: Iza Ding, Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University's Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
03:53:56 | Future of Work
- Suhani Jalota, founder of Myna Mahila and founder and leader of the Future of Work for Women Initiative at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
- Olubayo Adekanmbi, CEO of Data Science Nigeria and co-founder of EqualyzAI
- Moderator: Dean Karlan, Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business, founder and former president of Innovations for Poverty Action, and former Chief Economist for USAID