Founders

David M. Abshire is president of the
Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and president of the Richard Lounsbery Foundation of New York. He is the vice chairman of the board of CSIS and was its cofounder in 1962. He cofounded with Kazuo Inamori the CSIS Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy. Dr. Abshire is a graduate of West Point and was decorated during the Korean War as a company commander. He received a Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University, where for many years he served as an adjunct professor. The most recent of his seven books is A Call to Greatness: Challenging our Next President (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2008).

Full bio available here

Born in 1932 in Kagoshima, Japan, Kazuo Inamori founded Kyoto Ceramic Co., Ltd. (now Kyocera Corporation) with an investment of 3 million Japanese yen. Kyocera has grown significantly in the 47 years since it was founded, and has become a world-class enterprise with annual sales of approximately U.S.$11 billion. Dr. Inamori also established DDI Corporation (now KDDI Corporation with annual revenue of approximately U.S.$30 billion), for the purpose of lowering telephone costs for Japanese citizens. In the same year, he invested his personal funds to establish the Inamori Foundation and created the Kyoto Prize, a prestigious international award given to those who have made outstanding contributions to the progress of human society in the categories of advanced technology, basic sciences, and arts and philosophy. He is the author of A Passion for Success (McGraw-Hill Education, 2007).

Full bio available here