From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, the last few decades have witnessed a colossal explosion of wealth in the United States, creating a large and powerful upper class. Entrepreneurs with a hefty social conscience-including Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg- have accumulated vast amounts of money, the majority of which  they decided to give away through charitable acts like signing the Giving Pledge.  In order to facilitate this mass giving, thousands of foundations have been created to tackle a huge number of critical issues facing society- everything from ensuring affordable post-secondary education in the U.S., preventing climate change, to implementing global vaccination programs.

In his latest non-fiction book, The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, author, David Callahan, who has spent most of his life in the nonprofit sector, asks some provocative questions about the far-reaching power of living philanthropists and their ability to influence the many facets of America.

“Philanthropy is becoming a much stronger power center and, in some areas, is set to surpass government and its ability to shape society’s agenda,” he alerts the reader in the prologue. “Still, as more mega-donors emerge, with any number of grand ambitions, we need to ask much harder questions about the accountability of philanthropy, which operates outside of familiar checks and balances,” he writes. The Givers, which is based on numerous interviews with top philanthropists, is what Callahan describes as an  “intellectual smorgasbord” where he strives to know more about these “super-citizens”, how they think and operate, as well as their potential broader impact on America and public policy.

‘This is what I know…I’m a work in progress,” writes veteran ballet and jazz dancer, Marjorie Goodson, in the foreword of MG, an ambitious collection of over 150 riveting photographic essays, beautifully formatted in a sleek, oversized hardcover art book.

Provocative, gritty and sensual, Goodson is photographed striking elaborate theatrical poses in the midst of dance, on location in Southern California (the dunes at Pismo and Zuma Beach, The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts).  Whether she is captured dancing en pointe wearing only a black tutu and matching bralette, grasping at a cement wall with her muscular outstretched arms, wrapped in a scarlet red corset or photographed entirely in the nude, her elegant form, covered in multicolored brush strokes, like a canvas, Goodson’s sinewy body looks powerful, exposing both her sculpted calves and undeniable fierceness of spirit.

In front of the camera, Goodson presents as an accomplished professional dancer. She has been training for many years since she was a little girl living in New York City with her mother, Virginia McDavid- a former Miss Alabama 1953- and father, television producer Mark Goodson  who is responsible for Family Feud, The Price Is Right, Beat the Clock. Although Goodson did not end up landing a career in dance, she has always remained passionate and committed to the art form.

When Bioengineer, Jeff Karp, was a kid growing up in the countryside near Peterborough, Ontario, he knew very little about engineering. He lived with his family in a house designed by famed Canadian architect Frank Gehry surrounded by farms and forests.  The property included a creek where Karp would watch snapping turtles lay their eggs, not realizing these early encounters with nature would play a part in his success in the medical field.

Of course, Karp had no idea what his future held for him. “ I thought an engineer was the guy with the blue striped cap who drove the little train around the local zoo,” Karp laughs from his lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital(BWH) in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Karp lab is where it all happens. Karp and his multidisciplinary team are at the forefront of regenerative medicine, focusing on stem cell therapeutics, drug delivery systems, and tissue adhesives- many of these approaches are inspired by nature. Known as a bioinspirationalist, Karp sees nature as a tool to help solve medical problems. “I look at nature with a purpose,” he says. “A lot of technologies we’ve developed have been influenced by nature.”

If one of Michael Milken’s initiatives is “to foster lifelong leaders for a better world” by establishing the Milken Scholars Program and creating a web of support, then he surely achieved this with Joelle Simpson, Milken Scholar ‘95.

At 38, Dr. Joelle Simpson is the Medical Director for Emergency Preparedness and an assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine at Children’s National Health System in Washington DC, as well as an emergency medicine specialist. She credits her journey – becoming a prestigious Milken Scholar and Harvard Graduate, as well as earning an M.P.H. and an M.D. in pediatric emergency medicine-to the many people in her life- family, friends, teachers, and colleagues who helped motivate and inspire her to reach her potential.

“People had a much bigger vision for myself than I did and I’m glad that I was able to realize that.”