Gordon Brown is the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education. The former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010 also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1997 to 2007, making him the longest-serving Chancellor in modern history.

As Prime Minister, his tenure coincided with the financial crisis, and he was one of the first to initiate calls for global financial action; his administration also simultaneously introduced a range of rescue measures within the country.

Brown has a PhD in History from the University of Edinburgh. A Member of Parliament between 1983 and 2015, he lives in Fife, Scotland, and is married to Sarah Brown, a charity campaigner, and the couple have two sons.

Michael Webb is a Los Angeles–based writer who has authored more than twenty books on architecture and design, most recently Modernist Paradise: Niemeyer House, Boyd Collection, and Venice, CA: Art + Architecture in a Maverick Community, while contributing essays to many more.

He is also a regular contributor to leading journals in the United States and Europe. Growing up in London, he wrote for The Times and Country Life before moving to the US to direct film programs for the American Film Institute and curate a Smithsonian exhibition, Hollywood: Legend and Reality, which traveled to major American cities and Tokyo.