When announced as president of the 130-year-old Midland University in 2009, Ben Sasse was 37, making him one of the youngest chief executives in American higher education. At the time, Midland was on the verge of closing. Today, Ben's hometown college has been Nebraska's fastest-growing school four years in a row.

Sasse attended Harvard and Oxford, earning a Ph.D. at Yale, where his dissertation won both the Field Prize and the George Washington Egleston Award.

He began his business career with the Boston Consulting Group, and subsequently joined McKinsey and Company, advising leaders in times of crisis. He has helped turn around companies in industries ranging from airlines to manufacturers, and has challenged failed strategies in organizations from the FBI to the government of Iraq.

Sasse served in multiple posts for President George W. Bush. Most recently, he was Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal government's largest agency.

Ben Sasse's talk focuses on the gap in what we know about education and how we prepare students.

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