Stephen J. Farnsworth is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington. He is the author or co-author of nine  books on the presidency, the mass media, public opinion and journalism. He also has received the Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

His nine books include: Late-Night in Washington: Political Humor and the American Presidency; Producing News in a Time of Disinformation: Information Evaluation Strategies for Journalists and News Consumers; Late Night With Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency; Presidential Communication and Character: White House News Management from Clinton and Cable to Twitter and Trump; The Global President: International Media and the U.S. Government; The Nightly News Nightmare: Media Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988-2008; Spinner in Chief: How Presidents Sell Their Policies and Themselves; The Mediated Presidency: Television News and Presidential Governance; and Political Support in a Frustrated America. He is also author or coauthor of dozens of scholarly articles on the presidency, the mass media, U.S. public opinion and Virginia politics. His political commentary has appeared in a wide range of media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, PBS NewsHour, and BBC World.

During Spring 2024, Dr. Farnsworth served as the Poland-U.S. Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Humanities and Social Sciences at American Studies Center of the University of Warsaw. Dr. Farnsworth is a former Canada-U.S. Fulbright Research Chair in Public Policy at McGill University in Montreal, a former Malaysia-U.S. Fulbright Specialist at Methodist College in Kuala Lumpur, and a former chair of the political communication section of the American Political Science Association. He received a Ph.D. and an M.A. in government from Georgetown University, a B.A. in history from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and a B.A. in government from Dartmouth College.

Dr. Farnsworth, who worked for 10 years as a newspaper journalist before becoming a professor, has lectured widely on the news media, the presidency and elections before US and international audiences. In addition, he has led reporter training seminars in India, the Philippines, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Latvia, Armenia and Estonia through programs funded by the U.S. government.

In addition to the statewide teaching award, Dr. Farnsworth has won three campus-wide teaching awards at Mary Washington: the Alumni Association Outstanding Young Faculty Member Award, the Mary W. Pinschmidt Teaching Award and the Richard Palmieri Outstanding Professor Award. Dr. Farnsworth, who is also Affiliate Faculty in Communication, Digital Studies and American Studies at UMW, has taught courses in political science, journalism and political communication at Georgetown University, the University of Warsaw, McGill University, George Mason University and Methodist College Kuala Lumpur.

Rob Hartwell is a native of Alexandria, Virginia and now shares time between homes in Palmetto, FL and Lake Ridge, VA.   A former Chief of Staff to Reps. Dick Schulze (R-PA) and Nick Smith (R-MI), Hartwell also worked for Reps. Mike Oxley (R-OH) and Mac Sweeney (R-TX).  As Chief of Staff for Schulze, he was an Associate Staff Member of the Committee on Ways and Means where he orchestrated billions of dollars in tax legislation.   His first legislative effort working for Rep. Oxley involved working to help improve the Superfund program in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  

Since 2001, Rob has served as President of Hartwell Capitol Consulting, a full service lobbying, business development and technology development firm, and has conducted business here and abroad in the Middle East, Europe and Asia.   He has been widely published, appeared on dozens of talk radio programs and television news programs, and is an expert on health care, energy, environmental policy, tax policy, defense and the U.S. Congress.   He also has been instrumental in establishing Veterans Coalition efforts for Presidential candidates, including George W. Bush, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump, and was Chief of Staff to the Mitt Romney for President Veteran’s coalition.  

Rob is also a former lobbyist for the American Health Care Association (long term care) and the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (chain pharmacies).  He currently has 56 consultants working for him covering almost 90 nations, mainly involving energy, security, infrastructure and health care.   

During his career, he has orchestrated more than $23 billion in appropriation, direct funding and tax provisions and has raised over $4 million for charities and campaigns.   He has obtained billions in the Congress to fund cellulosic ethanol research; to decommission nuclear power plants and to protect Nuclear plant Qualified Progress Investment Expenditures; and worked on nuclear power issues globally, from China to Nigeria, Vietnam, Canada and Yucca Mountain. In business, he has represented top nuclear consulting companies and looked to help build plants in Canada, Nigeria, and Bulgaria and to fund SMR research here in the United States.  

Rob has also represented the Israeli Export Institute and the European Council of American Chambers of commerce and for each organized and led outstanding technology and business conferences.  

Rob was recently a Virginia Commissioner on the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB), and also served on Virginia's juvenile gang task force and its project exile board.   Rob served as a Fairfax County, Virginia Planning Commissioner at Large (appointed by Hon. Tom Davis (R-VA)) where he chaired the environment subcommittee and he is past President of the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority Foundation.   He is known for his innovative work on monetizing pollution and waste to both clean up the environment and save energy companies and governments millions of dollars.      

Rob in front of a National Refuge named for his Mom

Rob is also a cohost on the international TV show Emerald Planet that reaches over 2 billion homes.  

http://tvprograms.emerald-planet.org/2014/01/12

Rob currently represents leading energy technologies, including advanced gasification waste to energy, Thermovoltaic waste heat recovery, and flare gas to energy direct conversion.  

Hartwell Capitol Consulting and Our Nuclear Power Interactions

HCC has a nuclear energy legacy.    HCC Founder Rob Hartwell’s father was Chief of Staff to the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s.   In the 1960s, Rob’s next door neighbor was Hyman Rickover’s nuclear engineer, Noman Cole, and Rob met Rickover through Mr. Cole. 

Rob’s involvement with Nuclear Power professionally did not take place until 1986 when he was legislative director for Congressman Dick Schulze (R-PA), a member of the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means.   Philadelphia Electric and General Public Utilities both Pennsylvania companies operating nuclear power plants, Three Mile Island, Peach Bottom and Limerick 1 and 2, were concerned their qualified progress investment tax credits needed protection during the 1986 tax reform act.   This was a $2 billion item for the industry.    Rob worked with the industry and convinced Schulze to sponsor an amendment, saving the industry $2 billion. Rob also took a tour inside the reactor for Limerick 2 before it was commissioned.     

In 1988, after Ranking Democratic Congressman Sam Gibbons (D-FL) had failed to move legislation to strengthen nuclear decommissioning trust funds, the industry turned to Schulze (and Rob) to pass the bill.    Where Gibbons had failed to move the bill after four years in the majority, Schulze managed to have it passed and signed into law in two years while in the minority.  Reaching out to key Southern Democrats and Democrats with large nuclear employment was a key to the strategy, as well as Rob gaining the endorsement of the Sierra Club… which had never before endorsed an Edison Electric Institute backed bill. This measure was worth about $200 million to the industry and helped beef up decommissioning funds.  

After leaving the Congress and lobbying as Vice President for several health care associations, Rob founded Hartwell Capitol Consulting LLC in 2001.   One of his first anchor clients was Excel Services LLC of Rockville, MD, a private nuclear engineering and consulting firm led by CEO Donald Hoffman.   As a consultant for Excel, HCC led Excel’s political and Capitol Hill program, obtaining language supporting nuclear power, SMR funding in the Congress, and the establishment of the Virginia Nuclear Technology Authority, which Hoffman eventually chaired (Hoffman was elected Chairman of ANS).  HCC also monitored and lobbied on nuclear waste disposal issues and Yucca Mountain.  HCC led efforts for nuclear business in Bulgaria for Excel and for financing a nuclear program in Nigeria by a Canadian company, Starcore Nuclear. 

As part of his consulting work for Excel, Rob attended trade shows and took a group to Los Alamos National Laboratory to explore locating one of the first to license SMRs in New Mexico, in part to help the Laboratories own power needs.    Meeting with top management there, including now HCC consultant and Lab Principal Deputy, Dr. William S. Rees Jr., a plan was developed to site an SMR on nearby Native American lands.   However, the benefactor passed away and Dr. Rees left Los Alamos along with their top scientist upon reorganization away from Nuclear by the Obama Administration.   

Rob also coordinated a group to purchase NuScale and lined up Berkshire Hathaway as a possible investor, although one Member of the Group from Washington State had a background not suitable to continue to process.    NuScale obtained investment from Fluor instead.   

HCC’s nuclear team today includes Hartwell, Dr. Rees, Dr. Leo Eskin, Dr. Chris Lapp, who has a nuclear operator’s license, and former Assistant Secretary of DoD RADM Thomas F. Hall.

Marty Nohe is a lifelong resident of Prince William County and the President of Appliance Connection, Inc. in Woodbridge VA. He is the chairman of the Prince William Chamber of Commerce and serves on the Executive Committee for the NoVa Council of the GO Virginia Initiative for Growth and Opportunity.  He previously served on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors for 16 year and was Chairman of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority for 11 years. Since leaving the life of a politician, he now identifies as "stridently non-partisan" and now focuses on his family, supporting the economic growth of businesses in the region, and volunteering to support families in need in Prince William County. 

I examine regional economies from a complexity perspective. I am particularly interested in inter-regional domestic migration, regional economic structures, and systems of cities as a whole. I am drawn to both network analysis and agent-based modeling of regional economic geography. While I am passionate about modeling, I get as much satisfaction from applied work as theoretical work.

I am the assistant director of the Stephen S. Fuller Institute and Center for Regional Analysis  at George Mason University in the Schar School of Policy and Government.

I am also the Vice President of the Northeast Regional Science Association (NERSA), and a visiting scholar at the Arizona State University Complexity Economics Lab.

Bill Golden is a federal and national security talent recruiting strategist, providing RPO services. RPO is 'Recruitment Process Outsourcing'. An RPO takes over some or all of the recruiting from corporate HR departments. Bill's RPO has access to the full corporate portfolios of five companies, recruiting from time of contract award through decision to hire. 300+ hires made in 2024 just in the category of 'no security clearance required'. 

Bill is also Director of Recruiting with a Virginia federal contractor, as well as founding IntelligenceCareers.com in 1997 and BillGoldenJobs.com in 2020. Both are run as professional FYI jobs websites, separate from his RPO work. Graduate of U of Maryland and Oklahoma. Served a full career with the US Army and within the Intelligence Community. 

Bill's commentary at the upcoming C100 presentation represents his views as a local PWC resident and talent market strategist of some 25+ years.