Peter Leyden

Founder and CEO

Peter Leyden is the founder and CEO of Next Agenda, responsible for integrating all the pieces of this new organization, new process and new media model. His background gives him the experience needed to pull all these diverse pieces together. Leyden previously was Director of the New Politics Institute, a think tank helping people in politics understand and adapt to the huge changes in technology and new media. NPI built a network of private sector experts in tech and new media who helped invent the new approach to politics characterized by the Obama campaign. Leyden previously worked as the managing editor at the original Wired magazine, which helped drive the digital revolution and create the early online new media of the web. After that he worked as a director of Global Business Network’s think tank on the future that pioneered the use of diverse networks of talented individuals to help companies and governments solve difficult problems. GBN used innovative facilitation and tools to productively leverage the talents of technologists, scientists, academics, entrepreneurs and artists. Leyden has been a journalist, a special correspondent for Newsweek in Asia, and is coauthor of The Long Boom, which was translated into half a dozen languages, and What's Next, which was based on deep interviews with 50 remarkable people from diverse fields impacting the future. He is a frequent commentator in the media and speaks regularly about politics, new technologies and future trends. He lives in San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and 16-year-old daughter.