Rove, Gore Headline CIAB's 95th Leadership Forum

President Bush’s key behind-the-scenes strategist, a former vice president turned environmental activist and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian are the featured speakers at the 95^th annual Insurance Leadership Forum, sponsored by The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers.

The conference, which will be held Oct. 4-8 at Lake Las Vegas, Nev., brings together the leading commercial property/casualty insurance brokers and underwriters to explore industry trends, cement existing relationships and establish new business contacts.

Former Vice President Al Gore, who is as well known for his environmental activities as for his political endeavors, will lead off the conference, delivering the keynote address to the opening general business session on Monday, Oct. 6. Karl Rove, the architect of Bush’s victories in 2000 and 2004, will be the keynote speaker at the second general business session on Tuesday, Oct. 7.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, a renowned historian, author and political commentator, will speak to a luncheon crowd on Monday, Oct. 6.

Gore, the author of “An Inconvenient Truth,” an Oscar-winning documentary on global warming and threats to the world environment, also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his environmental activism. He was President Bill Clinton’s vice president and was the unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee in 2000. Prior to that, he was both a congressman and a senator representing his native Tennessee. Gore is currently chairman of Generation Investment Management, chairman of Current TV, chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, a member of the board of Apple Inc., and an adviser to Google Inc.

Rove was one of the most prominent presidential advisers in history. After Bush won the presidency, Rove followed him from Texas to Washington and served as senior adviser and deputy chief of staff overseeing strategic planning, political affairs, public liaison and intergovernmental affairs. Before the 2000 campaign, he was president of Karl Rove & Company, an Austin public affairs firm that represented Republican candidates and non-profit and non-partisan groups. Rove left his White House post in September 2007 and now is a contributor to Fox News Channel and a columnist for both The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek.

Kearns Goodwin, a commentator for NBC and a consultant on PBS documentaries, holds a doctorate in government from Harvard and was an adviser to President Lyndon Johnson in his last year in the White House. Subjects of her political biographies include Johnson, the Kennedy family and Abraham Lincoln, who is the focus of her latest book. Kearns Goodwin received a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for her book, “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The American Home Front During World War II.”