U.S. News Media Group and Harvard's Center for Public Leadership Announce
America's Best Leaders for 2008

  PR Newswire

  WASHINGTON, Nov. 20

--As America prepares for change, U.S. News and CPL highlight the qualities of
extraordinary leaders--

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. News Media Group, one of the nation's
leading sources of news analysis and service journalism, in association with
the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School (CPL), today
released the 2008 edition of America's Best Leaders, available online at
www.usnews.com/leaders and on newsstands Monday, November 24.

Featuring some of the country's most visionary individuals, the Best Leaders
issue highlights professionals who continue to offer optimism and hope through
their work, even as public confidence in leadership continues to drop, as
reported in recent polling results released by CPL.

The 2008 National Leadership Index, which measures public confidence in
leadership across societal sectors, found that 80% of Americans believe that
the U.S. faces a leadership crisis today, a number that has increased each
year since the study began in 2005. However, Americans also placed significant
importance on the 2008 election with 77% believing it mattered a great deal
for the future of the country.

"Even though Americans have lost confidence in current leadership, over the
past year they have had unique opportunities to observe and debate the
qualities of strong leaders," said Brian Kelly, editor of U.S.News & World
Report. "With our Best Leaders issue, we widen the lens to examine people who
are showing leadership in unexpected ways across a wide variety of fields."

U.S. News Media Group's issue of America's Best Leaders features 24 of the
country's foremost professionals, including:

    --  Lance Armstrong, Champion Cyclist; Founder, Lance Armstrong Foundation
        (Austin, TX)
    --  David Baltimore, Ph.D., Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology and
        Former President, California Institute of Technology; Nobel Laureate
        (California)
    --  Regina M. Benjamin, M.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Bayou La
        Batre Rural Health Clinic, Alabama (Bayou La Batre, AL)
    --  Jeff Bezos, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Amazon.com (Seattle)
    --  Terence Blanchard and Herbie Hancock, Artistic Director and Chairman,
        Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance Arts (Washington, D.C.)
    --  Benjamin Carson, M.D., Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Johns Hopkins
        University (Baltimore)
    --  Manuel Diaz, Mayor, City of Miami (Miami)
    --  Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President, Children's Defense
        Fund (Washington, D.C.)
    --  Anthony Fauci, M.D.,  Director, National Institute of Allergy and
        Infectious Disease (Bethesda, MD)
    --  Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, Cofounders, Knowledge Is Power Program
        (San Francisco)
    --  Robert Gates, Ph.D., United States Secretary of Defense (Washington,
        D.C.)
    --  Fiona Harrison, Ph.D., and Maria Zuber, Ph.D., Physics and Astronomy
        Professor at Caltech and the Chief Investigator for NASA's Nuclear
        Spectroscopic Telescope Array Mission (Pasadena, CA);  Chair of the
        department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Professor of
        Geophysics at MIT and the Principal Investigator for NASA's Gravity
        Recovery and Interior Laboratory Mission Science (Cambridge, MA)
    --  Freeman Hrabowski III, Ph.D., President, University of Maryland,
        Baltimore County (Baltimore)
    --  Amory B. Lovins, Founder, Rocky Mountain Institute (Snowmass, CO)
    --  Anne Mulcahy, Chief Executive Officer, Xerox (Norwalk, CT)
    --  Indra Nooyi, Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo. (Purchase, NY)
    --  Linda Rottenberg, Chief Executive Officer and cofounder, Endeavor (New
        York)
    --  Jeffrey Sachs, Ph.D., Economist, Author, Director, UN Millennium
        Project, the Earth Institute, Columbia University (New York)
    --  Steven Spielberg, Director and Producer, Founder, Universal, DreamWorks,
        The Shoah Foundation (California)
    --  Michael Tilson Thomas, Conductor, San Francisco Symphony; Founder, New
        World Symphony Arts (San Francisco)
    --  U.S. Junior Officers, U.S. Armed Forces (United States)

"These leaders are creatively working to address the country's most pressing
needs," said Kelly. "Consider Marian Wright Edelman's advocacy for the
disadvantaged, Dr. Anthony Fauci's work in transforming the field of medicine
and public health, Lance Armstrong's fight to inspire and empower cancer
patients--these leaders demonstrate innovation and perseverance at an
important time in the nation's history."

In a collaborative effort between U.S. News and Harvard's CPL, the leaders
were selected by a nonpartisan and independent committee, convened and
organized by the Center, without the participation of U.S. News editors. The
selection criteria used by the committee in choosing the honorees included the
ability to set direction, achieve results, and cultivate a culture of growth.

About the Center for Public Leadership

Established in 2000 through a generous gift from the Wexner Foundation, the
Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School provides cutting-edge
teaching and research as well as hands-on training in the skills of leadership
for people in government, nonprofits, and business. For more information, go
to: www.hks.harvard.edu/leadership

About the U.S. News Media Group

The U.S. News Media Group is a multi-platform digital publisher of news and
analysis, which includes U.S. News & World Report magazine, www.usnews.com,
and www.rankingsandreviews.com. Focusing on Health, Money & Business,
Education, and Public Service/Opinion,the U.S. News Media Group has earned a
reputation as the leading provider of service news and information that
improves the quality of life of its readers. The U.S. News Media Group's
signature franchises include its News You Can Use(R) brand of journalism and
its "America's Best" series of consumer guides that include rankings of
colleges, graduate schools, hospitals, health plans, and more.

SOURCE U.S. News Media Group

Website: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/leadership
Website: http://www.rankingsandreviews.com
Website: http://www.usnews.com
Website: http://www.usnews.com/leaders
Contact: Liz Putze of U.S. News & World Report, pr@usnews.com; or Doree
Damoulakis of Kwittken & Company for U.S. News Media Group, usnews@kwitco.com