Donald R. Keough (born 1927) is Chairman of the Board of Allen & Company Incorporated, a New York investment-banking firm. He was elected to that position in April 1993.

Keough retired as president, chief operating officer and a director of The Coca-Cola Company in April 1993, positions he held since early 1981. His tenure with the company dates back to 1950. In addition, from 1986 to 1993 he served as chairman of the Board of Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., the world’s largest bottling system. From 1985 to 1989 he also served as chairman of Columbia Pictures, Inc., before it was sold to Sony, Inc.

Keough currently serves on the Boards of IAC/InterActiveCorp, Yankee Global Enterprises LLC, Berkshire Hathaway and The Coca-Cola Company, to which he was elected in February 2004. In addition, he has served for many years as a member of the Boards of McDonald’s Corporation, The Washington Post Company, H. J. Heinz Company, Convera Corporation, and The Home Depot.

He is chairman emeritus of the Board of Trustees and a Life Trustee of the University of Notre Dame. He is a trustee of several other educational, charitable and civic organizations.

Warren Edward Buffett (/ˈbʌfɨt/; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th century. He is the primary shareholder, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world's wealthiest person in 2008 and is the third wealthiest person in the world as of 2011. In 2012, American magazine Time named Buffett one of the most influential people in the world.

Buffett is called the "Wizard of Omaha", "Oracle of Omaha", or the "Sage of Omaha" and is noted for his adherence to the value investing philosophy and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. Buffett is also a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Gates Foundation. On April 11, 2012, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Buffett was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska, the second of three children and only son of U.S. Representative Howard Buffett, a fierce critic of the interventionist New Deal domestic and foreign policy, and his wife Leila (née Stahl). Buffett began his education at Rose Hill Elementary School in Omaha. In 1942, his father was elected to the first of four terms in the United States Congress, and after moving with his family to Washington, D.C., Warren finished elementary school, attended Alice Deal Junior High School, and graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1947, where his senior yearbook picture reads: "likes math; a future stock broker."

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William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington) is an American business magnate, computer programmer and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive officer (CEO) and current chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company he co-founded with Paul Allen. He is consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009, excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the second wealthiest person. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored or co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by the courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Barry McCrea (born October 15, 1974) is an Irish writer and academic. He grew up in Dalkey, Co. Dublin, and was educated at the Jesuit Gonzaga College, and Trinity College, Dublin (1993–1997) where he studied French and Spanish literature. He received a Ph.D from Princeton University in 2004, and currently teaches Comparative Literature at Yale University.

His novel The First Verse was published by Carroll & Graf in 2005. It was awarded the 2006 Ferro-Grumley prize for fiction, and nominated for an American Library Association award. The plot explores the concept of the Sortes Virgilianae.

The First Verse was published in Spanish as "Literati" (DestinoLibro, 2006) and in German as "Die Poeten der Nacht" (Aufbau, 2008).