Negative Sense Fantasy World: Next Big Lisp

Assume for the moment that Common Lisp is dying. Whether or not this is true in real life is totally up for debate, but in this hypothetical scenario, CL is breathing its final death rattle and it's way more trouble than it's worth to write any kind of program in it. In fact, let's go so far as to say that every CL implementation is unmaintained, and in a state of total disrepair.

Also, assume that Clojure is the only real alternative as Lisps go, and that you are completely dissatisfied with it as a replacement for Common Lisp, for extremely valid technical reasons that cannot be ignored or worked around. (This also might be true in real life depending on what kind of program you want to write, but let's all get on the same page.)

Now, let's say you could hire a genius programmer full time to design a replacement for Common Lisp. In this scenario you are a charismatic marketing god like Steve Jobs, so your programmer can be a world-class anuslord from the back alleys of Wichita, but your new language would still be a success because the programmer is only concerned with technical matters.

Who do you hire?

>>10
So, I'd imagine I'd have a committee of people working on it
This is why we can't have nice things.

>>1
Does it have to be someone else? Why can't it be me?

I'm not saying I'm anywhere near the level of anyone else suggested in this thread. I'm just saying that there's a 99.9% chance it will fail even if I hire the best developer in the world. If I have the money to pay someone's salary I'd rather pay myself to do it just for the learning experience.