This Twitter-happy celebrity couple has been dedicated members of Team Obama and the Democratic Party from day one, and will be using their tech savvy at the conference: Kutcher will be a panelist and Moore a guest for “Democracy and Voice: Technology For Citizen Empowerment and Human Rights.” They produced tongue-in-cheek viral videos for VoteForChange.com in late 2008 touting the then-Illinois senator’s presidential bid and made several appearances at colleges across the country in an attempt to galvanize the youth vote for Obama. Their pièce de résistance was a celebrity-packed video, directed and edited by Moore, that featured over 50 of Hollywood’s biggest stars pledging to vote Obama for president. The couple have also co-founded The Demi and Ashton Foundation (DNA), whose mission is to help raise awareness about and eventually bring an end to human trafficking. “There's an assumption that this one man is going to take on his new job full-time and somehow wave a magic wand of change, and I don't believe that to be true,” Ashton told Reuters. “I think that we have to be the leaders, and that's not celebrities—I think that we as citizens have to be leaders of the movement that we want to create.”
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After the former Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Czech model lost her fiancé—and nearly her life—in the devastating tsunami that struck Thailand in 2004, she dedicated her life to philanthropy. In 2005, Nemcova created the The Happy Hearts Fund, a non-profit organization whose aim is to improve children’s lives through educational and sustainable programs in areas affected by natural disaster. Nemcova structured the organization so that 100 percent of all donations received would go directly to children in need. Last year, on the fifth anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Nemcova started the Bring Happiness Back! campaign which provided support to the children affected by the Haiti earthquake. Nemcova has written about her experiences with those affected by natural disasters for The Huffington Post, and has attended CGI as a guest (which she will be again this year) or speaker for the past several years to spread her message.
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The British star, who will be a guest at the conference this year, has always had a penchant for politically charged projects, appearing in films like HBO’s Iron Jawed Angels, about the American women’s suffrage movement; Che, about the Cuban revolutionary; and the recent HBO biopic Temple Grandin, which chronicles the life of the autism awareness advocate. Off screen, Ormond has been an activist against human trafficking since the '90s, is an advocate for Trans-Atlantic Partners Against AIDS, which raises AIDS awareness in Russia and Ukraine, and is founding co-chairman of FilmAid International, a humanitarian organization that “uses film and video to entertain and to educate refugees around the world.” In 2005, Ormond was appointed as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador focusing on preventing human trafficking. The actress is married to political activist Jon Rubin, who founded Rock the Vote, which seeks to make the younger generation more politically active. The couple’s daughter, Sophie, is one of Obama’s littlest fans, Ormond has said.
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The Oscar-winning actor and CGI guest is a staunch Democrat and a friend of former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Spacey actually met Clinton before he became president, and once described him as “one of the shining lights” of politics in an interview on Enough Rope with Andrew Denton. Spacey also made a cameo appearance in the short film President Clinton: Final Days—a tongue-in-cheek political satire produced by the Clinton administration for the 2000 White House Correspondents Dinner. The actor has no problem paying it forward, making several campaign contributions to Democrats over the years. In 2001, he co-hosted the Unite for the Future Gala, the U.K.'s fundraiser for the British Victims of 9/11 and Doctors Without Borders in London. Moreover, Spacey has starred in several politically themed films, including the made-for-television movie Recount, about the controversial 2000 U.S. presidential election, and is set to appear as disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff in the upcoming film Casino Jack.
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Barbra Streisand, the only female recording artist in the ten top selling of all time, has a long history of supporting progressive policies, such as environmental protection, nuclear disarmament, and civil liberties, through her Streisand Foundation and benefit concerts. She also has a long history of working with Bill Clinton, having raised $1.5 million for his campaign in a single concert in 1992, and having sung at his inauguration a year later. Streisand is married to actor, producer, and director James Brolin, her partner in the foundation, and fellow CGI guest, who, ironically, in The West Wing played Florida Governor Robert Richie, a Republican, in a spacey parody of George W. Bush (whom Brolin’s son, Josh, went on to play in W.
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Ben Stiller will emcee the Clinton Global Citizen Award ceremony, which he did last year as well.The comedian, actor, and director has backed Democratic candidates for several years, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Al Franken. As for what issues he’s passionate about, he was reportedly moved by the dolphin-hunting documentary The Cove, saying that it made him want “to go to Japan and become an activist,” and, of course, literacy—or, per his Zoolander satire of celebrity activism, “children who can’t read good.”
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Lance Armstrong attended last year’s conference and committed to work that will be explored in this year’s panel, which he’s on, “Addressing Cancer in the Developing World: Health Equity and an Overlooked Public Health Crisis.” Though he’s a professional athlete, his seven wins of the Tour de France, high public profile, and bevy of celebrity girlfriends catapult Armstrong firmly into the mega-star echelon. He has helped fund cancer research and raise awareness of cancer throughout the world through his foundations, the Lance Armstrong Foundation and LiveStrong, raising over $250 million for cancer treatment. Armstrong has gone to the mat for his causes, lobbying his home state of Texas to increase research by $3 billion, and testifying before the Senate on the importance of increasing treatment.
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Jim Carrey will serve on the panel for “Building Partnerships to Empower the World’s Smallholder Farmers.” Through his organization Better U Foundation, Carrey has promoted global health by funding autism research (the cause célèbre of his ex-girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy), investing in agriculture-training programs, and distributing cheap, portable water filters called “life straws.” The actor and comedian has also used his wattage to appeal to Burma on behalf of Nobel Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi.
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Academy Award winning actress Geena Davis, a conference guest, works for gender equality in the media, in sports, and elsewhere. Six years ago, after noticing the lack of female characters in children’s TV shows and movies, she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. The institute researches gender imbalances in media; its first study found that there were three male characters for every female one in G-rated entertainments. The institute’s “See Jane” division promotes greater balance in media. Davis recently addressed the U.N. on the topic gender equality, and works with the Women’s Sports Foundation to educate girls on their rights under Title IX.
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Maggie Gyllenhaal, a guest this year, has long had a political voice: the actress spoke out against the Iraq War at the 2002 Independent Spirit Awards, and works with the human rights organization WITNESS, which trains activists in the use of video technology, allowing them to document their activism and shed light on the problems they’re trying to solve. They’ve produced videos on the repression of ethnic minorities in Burma and the recruitment of child soldiers in Congo, and they’ve helped pass the first law protecting elders from abuse in the U.S.
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Actress Ashley Judd will serve as a panelist on “Securing the Health and Safety of Girls and Women” (with The Daily Beast’s editor, Tina Brown). Judd is an active proponent of animal rights and global health, and will be attending the Initiative under the aegis of Population Services International, or PSI, where Judd sits on the board and works as a Global Ambassador. PSI works to fight malaria and HIV and improve reproductive health around the world. On the animal rights front, Judd has been accused of being part of an “ extreme fringe group” by Sarah Palin after the actress released a video with Defenders of Wildlife condemning the then-Alaska governor’s decision to allow the shooting of wolves from helicopters.
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Pop-punk singer Avril Lavigne, a guest this year, has supported a variety of causes over the course of her career, including the Nancy Davis Foundation for Multiple Sclerosis, Youthaids, Make a Wish Foundation, and Amnesty International. Earlier this year she launched her own organization, The Avril Lavigne Foundation, to help open opportunities for children living with illness and disability.
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