I am [more than] lucky to come from an extraordinary family of insanely smart, unbelievably hard-working and extremely civic-minded people. Going through the whole family tree would be too trying for everyone's patience (my parents have 95 first cousins between the two of them!) but here are some highlights to give you a flavor:

One of my great uncles (on my mother's side) came to America at the age of 12 before the turn of the last century, speaking no English. Within four years he had led a successful strike at the suspenders sweatshop in which he was working; within fifteen years, he was the internationally respected leader of a 60,000 member fraternal organization and founder of the Jewish Education Association.

Another of my great uncles (on my father's side) was born in Palestine, came to America as a child, left school after the sixth grade, and worked as a peddler, laundry truck driver, clothing buyer and construction foreman. But he was fascinated by science, was an entrepreneurial businessman, and during an extremely successful business career became close friends with everyone from the inventor of television to half a dozen Nobel laureates. He was one of the first 'professional' angel investors in the US (and the angel behind the portable kidney dialysis machine, vascular stapling, hyperbaric operating chambers, and more), and today the main street of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the science labs at Bard College bear his name.

Skipping lightly through my grandparents generation (a grandmother who went to law school in the 1910s, a grandfather who never finished high school but taught himself Greek to read Plato in the original, while co-founding a business empire and having exhibitions of his original oil paintings, etc.) we come to my very, very special parents.

My father (Yale/Sorbonne) is a businessman and philanthropist. I was a finalist for the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year award in New York during the dot com boom; my father won it four years ago, in his late 70's! I go around doing a lot of teaching and giving speeches to many audiences. So does he...except that this year he won not one, but four Cicero Awards (the Oscars of the speechwriting business) from Vital Speeches magazine (which just this month named his latest talk the Speech of the Week.) He founded the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, which for 20 years has given elementary and high school students in Harlem the support they need to excel academically, resulting in a 100% college acceptance rate, and a 95% college graduation rate within six years. And, oh yeah, he is warm and funny and brilliant and a superb father and my primary role model. But if you think that it would be awe-inspiring growing up with that kind of person ahead of you, you ain't heard nothing yet.

My mother (Bryn Mawr/Oxford) is generally regarded by everyone who knows about these things to be the single smartest person in New York. With an IQ of something over 170 (who can count that high?), she can write backwards and forwards with both hands simultaneously, compose extemporaneously in iambic pentameter, and tell you the name of every person in her kindergarten class, where they sat, and who they married. She was a radio quiz kid in the days before television, played chess with Humphrey Bogart on set during her time as assistant to film director Joseph Mankiewicz, and was Chairman of Partisan Review magazine for over 30 years. She recently stepped down as one of the top secret nominators for the MacArthur Award 'genius grants', and for her 80th birthday last year she put on a free exhibition of 651 red and white patchwork quilts from her collection, at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, that had over 25,000 visitors—breaking the venue's historical record—and has already won half a dozen awards.

But what are these two incredible people like now, in their 80's, when most of their age cohort are either dead or hors de combat? Are they still among the leading wine connoisseurs in the US? Experts in scrimshaw, pre-Columbian art, oriental rugs and books? Yes, and yes, yes, yes. But the best answer I can give you is that just this month in Boston, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (the most important honorary society in the US, founded in 1780 by John Adams and John Hancock) inducted its Class of 2012. And alongside Hilary Clinton, Jeff Bezos, Melinda Gates, George Stephanopoulos and Paul McCartney, for the first time in history a married couple was inducted together. Guess who?

But while my parents may be without peer, at least they're in good company. My parents' siblings included the chief trial counsel for one of the country's leading insurance companies, the world's leading expert on military mutinies who teaches at West Point, Annapolis and NYU, and the guiding light behind everything from Jazz at Lincoln Center to the Space Center at the American Museum of Natural History.

"OK", I hear you sniff, "that's all well and good, those were the Days of the Giants. But how about your generation where you're the eldest of four siblings? Huh? You must be at least first among equals, right?" Nope.

One brother (Yale/Harvard) was the longest serving Chairman in the history of the New York City Planning Commission, redrawing the landscape of New York for generations to come (including the redevelopment and de-pornification of Times Square), during the administration of Rudy Giuliani. The other brother (also Yale/Harvard), after serving on the White House National Security Council under Bill Clinton and publishing several books, is now the Editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and a regular television pundit. And our sister? Well, after receiving her BA from Yale, BA from Oxford, MBA from Columbia, and PhD from Princeton, she was Lou Dobbs' original producer at CNN (where she worked in ten CNN bureaus around the globe), Chairman of the Yale Center for Parliamentary History, ran the Technology Transfer Office at Hunter College, and has taught history at Hopkins, Villanova and Baruch.

Heck, even my first and second cousins put me to shame. One is regarded as the world's leading expert on affordable housing, another is a multi-threat best-selling author/screenwriter/movie star/singer/producer, another heads a New York area hospital. One is a top IP litigator, one is head teacher at the country's top private school, two others head one of New York's largest real estate firms, and one is Bruce Springsteen's drummer and led Conan O'Brien's house band!

As if all that wasn't enough to give anyone an inferiority complex, I can tell you that all of our spouses are least as impressive (two of them are or were Chairs of departments at different Ivy League universities, one was Director of Legal Services for the New York City Council and Director of Housing in the South Bronx in New York), as are the kids in the next generation. One of ours is in graduate school in Technology, Policy & Ethics, another is in medical school. And as for the one who has already graduated with multiple MAs from yet another Ivy League institution...well, if pushed to the wall I'd have to admit that she's probably smarter, more energetic and more entrepreneurial than I am, and she has already founded more companies than I have.

So, umm, you see what I mean about being "the underachiever in my family"?