Distinguished Guest Speakers

Presidential Guest Speaker
Peter J. Stern, MD

Peter J. Stern, MD graduated from Williams College and received his medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine. He completed his Orthopaedic residency at the Harvard Combined Orthopaedic Program followed by a hand surgery fellowship in Louisville with Harold Kleinert. He is the Hill Professor of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Cincinnati and he served as Chairman from 1992-2013.

Dr. Stern is a past President of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery and the American Orthopaedic Association.  He is a past Trustee of the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation, and a past Chairman of the Orthopaedic RRC.  He is a former Deputy Editor of both the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery and the Journal of Hand Surgery.  He now serves on JBJS Board of Trustees. He has served as a visiting professor at over 70 institutions, has given 47 endowed lectureships and has over 190 peer review publications.  He has educated 62 fellows and over 140 orthopaedic residents.  

Howard Steel Lecturer
Walter Cunningham

Mr. Cunningham has fifty years of diversified management experience accumulated during separate careers in the United States Marine Corps, with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and private industry, including twelve years as a venture capitalist.

Mr. Cunningham is perhaps best known as America's second civilian Astronaut. During eight years with NASA, he contributed to the design, development and testing of all the major operating systems of the Apollo spacecraft. In 1966, he was a member of the prime crew of Apollo 2 and backup crew for Apollo 1. When the Apollo 1 prime crew was killed in a fire on the pad, he served on the fire investigation board. In 1968, he orbited the earth 163 times as the pilot of Apollo 7 -- the first manned flight of the Apollo Program to land a man on the Moon. Apollo 7 is still the longest, most ambitious and most successful first flight of any manned vehicle. Following the Apollo 7 mission, he became Chief of the Skylab branch of the Astronaut Office.

He is a Marine Corps fighter pilot with the rank of Colonel, USMCR, Retired, with 4,500 hours of flying time, including 263 hours in space. He has a Master's Degree in Physics from UCLA and is a graduate of the AMP Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Business.

Since 1971, he has been in private business in Houston, Texas. His experience includes the presidency of two engineering companies, with extensive overseas operations, Vice President of Operations for one of the largest commercial property developers in the U. S. and the presidency of an interactive voice response company.

In 1979, he formed The Capital Group to provide investment banking and consulting services to foreign investors. From 1986 to 1998 he was the Managing General Partner of the Genesis Fund, a venture capital pool where he was involved in the start-up and early stage development of 23 companies and financial institutions.

This was followed by four years as host of "Lift-off to Logic," a radio call-in talk show.

Mr. Cunningham is an organizer, investor and Director of numerous public and private companies and a member of the Advisory Panel for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. He is author of The All American Boys, considered the best one or two books ever written on the space program and numerous articles, including a regular column for Launch Magazine. He lectures throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, is listed in all major Who's Whos and is a recipient of numerous national and international honors, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and election to the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

He has done professional speaking throughout the United States, Europe and Asia on space flight, the universe, education and the global warming debate.

Additional information can be found at his website: www.waltercunningham.com.