[ Info Drop #022]: Unmasking the WEF graduates embedded throughout US institutions and corporations
There are at least 348 that we know of...
Following on from our first post unmasking WEF graduates in the UK, here are some of the most notable and influential in the US:
Meet Usman Ahmed, the Head of Global Public Policy at PayPal Inc, his work covers a variety of global issues including “financial services regulation, innovation, international trade, and entrepreneurship”. In 2020, the payment provider's annual payment volume came to $936 billion. In 2019, the company came under fire from religious groups after its CEO revealed the company works with the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center to help identify accounts to ban from their payment platform. Earlier this year, the company also shut down its services in Russia citing Ukraine aggression.
Meet Colin Allred, a member of the Democratic Party, and the US representative from Texas’s 32nd congressional district. Allred served as one of the many Democrats who flipped Republican seats during the 2018 midterm elections. A Silicon Valley venture capital firm called Kleiner Perkins was one of the biggest donors to his campaign (its CEO has recently been picked by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) chief Alejandro Mayorkas for his “advisory council”). In 2019, Allred voted to impeach President Trump for his call with President Zelensky citing “bribes”. Allred also had this to say regarding Jan 6th: “We were ready to try and defend our colleagues from whatever was going to come through those doors… Had those officers not held that line, I would not have met my son Cameron”.
Meet Samar Ali, who leads the Millions of Conversations Campaign - a campaign designed to transcend divides and bring Americans together through shared common values. They plan on achieving this goal by “combatting disinformation, harmful stereotypes and bigotry on and offline”. In 2018, the company partnered with M&C Saatchi World Services to conduct research about the most effective ways to reverse these polarising trends with a particular focus on “why a majority of Americans hold anti-Muslim bias”. Samar has also worked for the White House and the State Government of Tennessee.
Meet Nick Ayers, a consultant who served as Chief of Staff to Vice President Mike Pence between July 2017 and January 2019. He “helped shape the administration’s most important and high-profile initiatives, from space policy to tax policy to foreign policy, including the U.S. posture toward China and the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem”. Nick now works at Ayers Neugebauer & Co and is a member of the board of directors at Veeam, a privately held information technology company. In 2019, the World Economic Summit nominated Nick to join the forum as a Young Global Leader.
Meet Pete Buttigieg, who is currently serving as the United States secretary of transportation. He is a member of the Democratic Party, and also previously served as the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020. Throughout the pandemic, Pete supported the use of face masks as well as the implementation of lockdowns. He also recently (and comically) suggested his fellow Americans simply buy electric vehicles (they’re quite expensive) to combat rising fuel prices. In 2019, CNBC revealed that Facebook CEO and fellow WEF graduate Mark Zuckerberg privately made hiring recommendations to Pete when he was seeking the Democrat Party nomination.
Meet Adriana Cargill, she is a billionaire heiress to a part of the Cargill fortune (according to Forbes the Cargill family is the fourth-wealthiest in America) and a journalist who has worked for KCRW, NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Latino USA, Southern California Public Radio (KPCC), Marketplace, LAist, Crooked Media, Wondery, KUSC Radio, VICE News and The Chicago Redeye. She currently works for Crooked Media - a progressive American political media company. The outlet has more than 679,500 followers across its social media profiles.
Meet Souad Mekhennet, a German journalist who has worked for several left-wing media outlets in the US including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Daily Beast. The New York Times has a circulation of 5.5 million, The Washington Post recorded 61 million unique visitors in April 2022 and The Daily Beast has a circulation of over 1 million. All of these outlets have come under fire for their biased reporting, particularly The Daily Beast. Souad’s most recent pieces have focused on national security, one of her latest is entitled, “Russia’s war in Ukraine galvanises extremists globally”. She has also appeared on left-wing partisan news shows like Morning Joe.
Meet Justin Finnegian, a Senior Advisor for Special Projects to the CEO of Bloomberg Media and also the Managing Director of APAC for Bloomberg New Economy, where he “oversees the media platform’s operations in China and across the region”. Bloomberg TV is distributed to over 310 million homes worldwide. In 2013, Justin was the Senior Deputy Assistant to the Administrator of the Bureau for Food Security at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He is also the former Managing Director and co-founder of the Mountain Hazelnuts Group (MHG) and previously managed the Asia office of the world’s second-largest home textile company in China.
Meet Miguel Forbes, the President of New Business Development at Forbes Inc, he is the son of Robert Forbes and the grandson of publisher Malcolm Forbes. One of his responsibilities is the “management of the Forbes International Licensing Division, which currently publishes Forbes Russia, Forbes China, Forbes Korea, Forbes Arabia, Forbes Israel and Forbes Japan”. Forbes has historically come under fire for its biased reporting, recently they’ve published a “hit list” of US top athletes who have refused to publicly reveal their vaccination status. They were also caught removing a senior contributor’s article calling for Biden to take a cognitive test. Forbes claims to reach more than 150 million people across all platforms.
Meet Kate Gallego, the 61st and current Mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, since 2019 who is also a member of the Democratic Party. Kate was among one of the most avid face mask promoters during the pandemic, encouraging everyone above 6 years old to wear a mask in public spaces, adding that it is one of the “easiest ways to slow the spread of covid”. She was also accused by the Arizona GOP of “spreading lies and misinformation,” by claiming that a lack of resources was forcing medical personnel to decide who lives and dies during the pandemic. She also came under fire for her support for Satanists to offer a “prayer” at a city council meeting.
Meet Garlin Gilchrist II, the 64th Lieutenant Governor of Michigan since 2019, he is also a member of the Democratic Party. Garlin previously worked as director of innovation and emerging technology where he created the Improve Detroit smartphone app. Alongside Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Garlin helped bring about some of the most radical lockdown policies implemented in the US during the covid pandemic. These included outdoor capacity limits, barring citizens from visiting their personal property, preventing businesses from operating, declaring curfews and imposing mask mandates under emergency powers for children over the age of 2.
Mark Zuckerberg needs no introduction. According to Statista, Facebook recorded 2.93 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2022, it is the most used online social network worldwide. He was recently exposed in a documentary to have spent nearly $400 million on the 2020 presidential election in an effort to bolster Joe Biden. Facebook has continually come under fire for their biased censorship policies that have led to millions of posts being censored, some recent examples include banning criticism of black lives matter spending, suspending a nurse for being “transphobic” and allowing calls to violence against Russian soldiers. He is currently investing billions into “the metaverse”, a virtual world where people can “socialise, work, and play”.
Our last post in this series will focus on Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
You can see the other WEF graduates sprawled across the US on the Young Global Leaders website here.