Robert J. Shapiro is the chairman and chief executive of Sonecon, a private firm that provides analysis and advice to officials and executives of U.S. and foreign businesses and governments. He is an internationally-known economist who has advised, among others, President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Jr., British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Timothy Geithner, and then-U.S. Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He also has advised senior executives of many Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies. Currently, he also is an advisor to the International Monetary Fund, director of the Globalization Initiative at NDN, a Senior Fellow of the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, and chairman of the U.S. Climate Task Force. Before establishing Sonecon, Dr. Shapiro was Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs from 1997 to 2001. Prior to that, he was co-founder and Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute and, before that, Legislative Director and Economic Counsel to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He also was the principal economic advisor to Bill Clinton in his 1991-1992 campaign and a senior economic advisor to the campaigns of Barack Obama, John Kerry and Al Gore. Dr. Shapiro has been a Fellow of Harvard University, the Brookings Institution, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Harvard University, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and an A.B. from the University of Chicago.