Founded in 1992, World Pension Forum (formerly Pensions 2000) provides topical, timely and stimulating educational opportunities to experienced fiduciaries of public, corporate, Taft-Hartley pension trusts and endowment funds. Our goal is to supply the highest quality, graduate level fiduciary education geared specifically toward the key senior members of these funds including chief executive officers, chief investment officers and the chair of the board of trustees and/or investment committee.

World Pension Forum fulfills this educational mission by gathering experienced institutional managers, respected business leaders, senior government officials, leading academics and other delegates from throughout the world in conference forums with these plan sponsor leaders to review and discuss issues germane to this important industry. The topics, locations and speakers for these educational conferences are recommended to World Pension Forum by an Advisory Board consisting of respected industry leaders and are designed to deal with the myriad of complex topics facing today's institutional fiduciaries.

World Pension Forum has earned a reputation for organizing stimulating conferences with prominent figures from business, government and finance. We also host eminent scholars from the realm of academia, including the Pulitzer Prize winner David Kennedy of Stanford, Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Kenneth Jowitt of the Hoover Institution and Stephen Kotkin of Princeton.

We have had the pleasure of hearing from and meeting with the following six Nobel Peace Prize winners who have regaled us in their country with inspiring speeches: Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the late Yitzhak Rabin, Kim Dae Jung and Lech Walesa.

Viewing a World Pension Forum conference merely as a collection of speeches misses the greater purpose of our work. Our conferences allow for personal contact with the leaders who are shaping the future. These educational conferences are forums for dynamic debate on issues -- for an energetic dialogue on policy and practice -- and for lively, informative interchange among trustees, fund managers, asset managers and other decision makers. From a dinner at the Chateau de Versailles and on the Great Wall of China, to a reception at Dublin Castle, our agendas reflect the premise that valuable information is often found after the formalities end.