Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows Program

Home > Projects and Services > Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows Program > Visiting Fellows - Profiles

Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows Program -
Visiting Fellows

MAHLON (SANDY) APGAR IV
Former Assistant Secretary of the Army and international authority on housing, infrastructure, and real estate

Sandy Apgar served as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment during the Clinton Administration, where he oversaw a budget of more than $12 billion dollars. He launched the Army’s Residential Communities Initiative that forged the Defense Department’s largest public-private partnership program. Additionally, he worked with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to launch a program that streamlined and managed the designation of properties as historically significant. Earlier, he founded his own strategic advisory firm where he patented a strategic real estate evaluation method and gained such major clients as American Express, Disney, IBM and AT&T. He now works for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and consults with over 150 companies, institutions, governments, and non-profit agencies on more than 500 real estate portfolios spanning more than 12 countries. Apgar has taught at Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, and Yale Universities, has edited two books, and authored more than 60 journal articles, including six in the Harvard Business Review.

Topics: forthcoming

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

KAREN W. ARENSON
Journalist, former New York Times writer and editor

Karen Arenson wrote about higher education, economics and finance, and non-profits for The New York Times for 30 years. She was one of the first reporters to chronicle the growing use of early decision admissions and the explosion in endowments at some colleges and universities. She also paid close attention to the financial and political battles of public universities and to issues of student preparation and remedial instruction. Karen, who says she fell in love with journalism when she worked on her school newspaper in 7th grade, majored in economics at M.I.T. and earned a master’s degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She joined the Times as a financial reporter in 1978 after five years at Business Week magazine. She also served as editor of the Times’ Sunday Business Section and as deputy editor and acting editor of the paper's Business/Financial section before returning to reporting and turning her attention to higher education. Prior to her education coverage, she gained an inside perspective on higher education as a member of the M.I.T. Corporation and its executive committee.

Topics: Higher education today; access and excellence in higher education; the growing divide between wealthy and less wealthy colleges; working as a journalist; balancing career and family.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JEFFREY BALL
Environmental journalist

Jeffrey Ball, The Wall Street Journal’s environment editor, writes the paper's Power Shift column, a biweekly chronicle of the changing energy and environmental landscape. He brings to the column a decade of experience reporting for the paper about energy and the environment. He has covered the auto industry from The Journal’s Detroit bureau and the oil industry from the Dallas bureau. His reporting, which takes him across the U.S. and around the world, focuses on the economic viability of efforts to address climate change by changing the way society consumes fossil fuels. He is a host of ECOnomics, The Journal’s annual conference on energy and the environment and he helped create Environmental Capital, The Journal’s daily blog on the subject. He has appeared on PBS, NPR, CNN and the BBC, among other networks. Before coming to The Journal in 1996, Ball worked as a reporter for the Charlotte Observer and the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. During college, from which he graduated in 1990, he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News. After graduation, he spent several months in France, during which he worked at the International Herald Tribune.

Topics:Squeezed and confused: America at an energy crossroads; green dream: can renewable energy power the planet?; waste not: why the world wastes energy—and how to stop it; out of gas: the clean-energy push confronts the recession; permission to pollute: inside the global market for 'carbon credits'

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JOUSCH ANDRIS BARBLAN
Retired Secretary General, Magna Charta Observatory

Andris Barblan is the recently retired Secretary General of the Magna Charta Observatory on the Universities' Fundamental Values and Rights in Bologna, Italy, and the former Secretary General of the Association of European Universities. A Swiss citizen, Mr. Barblan earned his PhD in Political Sciences at the University of Geneva and has authored various publications in the field of higher education and international academic relations. He has led teams assessing higher education institutions in Central and Eastern Europe and has served as an international consultant to a program on the development strategies of European “cities of knowledge.” He performs with a Swiss choral group that has traveled throughout the world.

Topics: The Bologna process; the ups and downs of the European university; the European university and European integration; the politics of European higher education; European identity and academic responsibility; cultural identity and personal commitment.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

CHARLES BARRY
President, Barry Consulting, Inc.

After a decorated field career as an infantry officer and aviation officer, Charles Barry was appointed head of the Strategy Planning Staff of the United States European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, where he led planning efforts on U.S. strategy for Europe after the Cold War. Later, he became Special Assistant to the Director for NATO policy. He has taught at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and lectured for eight years at the Joint Forces Staff College and the National War College of National Defense University on transatlantic affairs, NATO, and the E.U. In 1997, he founded Barry Consulting Inc., specializing in defense analysis and decision options for top-level and private sector clients. Mr. Barry has published articles in Military Review, Survival, Current History, and Joint Forces Quarterly and frequently presents classified papers and briefings to leaders in the Department of Defense. In 1998, he co-authored Accelerating on the Run: From the War Room to the Boardroom.

Topics: Military affairs; homeland security; transatlantic affairs; the future importance of NATO for the U.S.; Russia and the European Union; the war on terrorism; information technology and military operations; how networked units and equipment are changing the nature of military operations and how to command and control forces; the military as an institution in America; the dual challenges of physical and cyber-security.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DEDE BARTLETT
Domestic violence prevention advocate; former Fortune 100 company executive

Dede Bartlett is director of A Better Chance, immediate past chair of the advisory board of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, former officer of two Fortune 100 companies, Exxon Mobil and Altria, and a frequent speaker on domestic violence issues to community and civic groups. Ms. Bartlett was Vice President of Corporate Affairs Programs at Altria Group Inc. (formerly Philip Morris), where she developed the Company’s award-winning Domestic Violence Awareness Programs. She has lectured around the world on domestic violence issues and sponsored more than 40 conferences in the United States, Europe, Central America, and Australia. She was honored by Lifetime Television and the National Center for Victims of Crime. In 2005, Ms. Bartlett received the International Women’s Forum “Women Who Make a Difference Award.” A professional who has worked in many economic climates, Bartlett can offer timely advice to students looking to succeed in difficult times. For more information, visit www.dedebartlett.com.

Topics: women and corporate leadership; etiquette: a dollars and sense issue; balancing career, marriage, and children; dating violence: every student’s issue; what do you do when the devil wears Prada?: tips to navigate any workplace; getting over getting fired, downsized, merged,and outsourced; the power of networking: stop texting and start networking.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MARVIN BELL
Poet, lecturer and essayist

Marvin Bell’s poetry has been described as “ambitious without pretension.” The most recent of his 17 books are two poetry collections, Rampant and Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000. A long-time faculty member at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he leads an annual Urban Teachers Workshop for the inner-city program “America SCORES”; collaborates with composers, musicians, filmmakers, and dancers; and teaches for two low-residency MFA programs. From 2000 to 2004, Mr. Bell was Iowa’s first poet laureate. He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Poetry Review, and he has held Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, as well as Senior Fulbright Appointments to Yugoslavia and Australia. Mr. Bell has taught at Goddard College and the universities of Hawaii, Washington, and Wichita State. He lives in Iowa City and Port Townsend, Washington.

Topics: The creative writing process as a survival skill; contemporary poetry; the true content of poetry; the teaching of poetry—reading and writing it.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RICHARD BENEDETTO
Journalist, former White House Correspondent

Richard Benedetto is a retired White House Correspondent/columnist for USA TODAY and former political columnist for the Gannett News Service. He reported on government and politics on the local, state, and national levels for nearly 40 years. He continues his involvement in journalism as a consultant for C-Span, writing political commentary for various publications and teaching journalism in Washington, DC. Benedetto is a founding staff member of USA TODAY, joining the newspaper in 1982, prior to its debut. He wrote the national newspaper’s first Page One cover story. In addition to reporting on the White House and national politics, he wrote a weekly political column for the Gannett News Service, which serves Gannett Co. Inc.'s 89 daily newspapers and the USATODAY.com website. He covered the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He also covered every presidential campaign from 1984-2004 and every national political convention since 1976.  University Press of America published Benedetto’s memoir of his long reporting career, Politicians Are People, Too, in May 2006. Benedetto received numerous journalism awards and was honored in 1998 with the National Italian American Foundation Media Award for his projection of a positive image for Italian Americans.

Topics: How the Washington media are out of touch with the American public; the press and the presidency—covering the White House; how the internet and cable television have changed the role of journalists in political campaigns; political polling: too much or not enough? do they influence public opinion or mirror it?; media bias: myth or for real?

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JOAN E. BERTIN
Non-profit executive; civil liberties lawyer

Since 1997, Joan E. Bertin has been Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, a coalition of more than 50 national non-profit organizations dedicated to promoting freedom of speech and expression. She graduated from N.Y.U. Law School, where she was a fellow in the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program. Ms. Bertin spent more than a dozen years on the national legal staff of the ACLU where her areas of expertise include constitutional law, employment law, women’s civil rights, and science and law. Currently a faculty member at Columbia University, she also held the Joanne Woodward Chair in Public Policy at Sarah Lawrence College. She frequently speaks and writes on legal and policy issues and is the author of more than 30 chapters and articles in professional books and journals.

Topics: The history of the First Amendment and key Supreme Court decisions defining its scope; book and art censorship; restrictions on sexually explicit speech, including child pornography; academic freedom and student speech rights, including campus speech codes and the "Academic Bill of Rights"; political speech: government secrecy, access to information, and the right of dissent; FCC regulation of broadcast decency; legal issues on labeling of music, film and video games; hate speech; censorship of science and sex education.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

CARROLL BOGERT
Associate Director, Human Rights Watch; journalist; activist

Carroll Bogert joined Newsweek in 1988, serving as correspondent, then bureau chief in Moscow and then acting foreign editor in New York. Through her time at Newsweek she has covered such stories as the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of Gorbachev and rise of Yeltsin, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and other history making milestones. Carol joined Human Rights Watch in 1998 as Communications Director and is now the Associate Director of the organization. She frequently publishes on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and USA Today, and her commentaries have been aired on National Public Radio.

Topics: International reporting: are we getting the news we need?; does the U.S. lead the world on human rights?; has the war made us safer?: a human rights perspective.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

THOMAS D. BOYATT
Former U.S. Ambassador; President of the Foreign Affairs Council

Thomas Boyatt entered the Foreign Service in 1959, serving as Vice Consul in Antofagasta, Chile; Economic Officer at the American Embassy in Luxembourg; and Political Counselor at the Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus. In 1969, Ambassador Boyatt received the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award for risking his life to save passengers and negotiating their release in Syria during the 1969 hijacking of a plane—on which he was a passenger—by Palestinian guerrillas. He also received the William R. Rivkin Award for his leadership in promoting peace on Cyprus, and the Christian A. Herter Award for his contributions to diplomacy. After retiring from the Service, Ambassador Boyatt became Vice President of Sears World Trade, then President of U.S. Defense Systems. He has served as a Trustee of Princeton University and on advisory boards at Princeton, Kentucky, and Georgetown. He lectures frequently in the U.S. and abroad. In 2004, Secretary Colin Powell appointed him to the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Leadership and Management. He is now the CEO of the Foreign Affairs Council, a non-partisan group concerned with U.S. diplomacy, and chairs the Political Action Committee of the American Foreign Service Association.

Topics: U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century; foreign policy after the Cold War; the U.N. at a crossroads; the Middle East peace process; the war on terrorism; power and perception in the Gulf War and the Balkans; Chile; international trade and finance; Foreign Service careers; women in the Foreign Service; pre-Colombian and Aegean bronze age pottery; African masks.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

SHANNON BROWNLEE
Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation; journalist; author; expert on U.S. health care system

Shannon Brownlee was a staff writer for Discover magazine and Sports Illustrated magazine and a senior writer for U.S. News and World Reports. She is now the Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. The New America Foundation is a nonprofit public policy institute that was established through the collaborative work of a diverse group of public intellectuals, civic leaders, and business executives. The purpose of New America Foundation is to bring exceptionally promising new voices and new ideas to the fore of our nation’s public discourse. The Foundation invests in outstanding individuals, through venture capital based grants, that transcend the conventional political spectrum. In her role as senior fellow, Brownlee’s work focuses on the U.S. health care delivery system and the cultural, economic, and political forces that result in poor quality and high cost. She has written about the lack of scientific evidence for many medical practices and the problem of unnecessary care, which accounts for as much as a third of the nation’s health care bills. Her book, Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, which was published by Bloomsbury Press in September 2007, was named the best economics book of the year by the New York Times. Her stories and essays have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly, Business Week, Discover, The New Republic, New York Times Magazine, Salon, Time, and Washington Monthly. Brownlee has appeared on Good Morning America, Fox News, All Things Considered, and CNN among others.

Topics: The nature of medical evidence: how do doctors know what they know?; it’s the delivery system, stupid: why debate over health care reform is missing the point; conflict of interest in medicine; end of the line: where are all the new wonder drugs?; what’s in store for the pharmaceutical industry?; screening for cancer – when is it not a good idea?; the cost and consequences of unnecessary care.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

BRYAN CASSIDY
Lecturer on the historical and cultural influence of Europe; advisor to the European Commission in Brussels

Bryan Cassidy was a member of the European Parliament from 1984-1999, specializing in economic and monetary issues. He lectures in Brussels, London, and Paris where he holds regular seminars in French and English on the European Union. He also lectures on the ESSEC-MANNHEIM Executive MBA programme. During his time in the European Parliament, he was a member of the Delegation to the United States and continues to take a close interest in U.S./E.U. trade issues. He has taken part in election monitoring missions in Russia (Siberia twice), Belarus, the former East Germany, Palestine, and Macedonia and has carried out two missions on behalf of the British Government in Estonia and Mongolia. Mr. Cassidy contributes monthly to the business journal Industry Europe, and his publications include Red Tape: Scourge of the Nineties; The Stifling of Enterprise; The Red Tape Obsession; Councils in Business; Workers on the Board; EURIM Guide to Decision Making in the European Union; and the bestselling Hawksmere Lobbying Guide. He graduated from Cambridge with a master’s degree in law.

Topics: Europe’s historical and cultural influence; globalization or protectionism: the world’s dilemma?; understanding the European Union (EU), the US’s largest trading partner; the Dollar and the Euro: the world’s two leading currencies; regulatory burdens on business: a global problem; current international events; turkey’s political ambitions.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

SUSAN CLAMPITT
Nonprofit leader; public media, philanthropy, women’s leadership, and nonprofit management

A leader in the arts, education, politics, public broadcasting, and academia, Susan Clampitt has served as consultant on leadership issues and strategic planning for dozens of noted organizations. She was previously Executive Director and General Manager of WAMU-FM in Washington, DC, one of the country’s leading NPR stations. Ms. Clampitt also worked in the White House as Director of Women's Appointments and as Director of Arts and Humanities Appointments and served as Deputy Chairman at the National Endowment for the Arts and Associate Administrator at the U.S. General Services Administration. She serves on a number of national boards, including the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and Arena Stage. A Helen Hayes Awards Judge, she has been a recipient of FastCompany magazine’s Fast 50 award and the Mayor’s Arts Award; she has also been an Aspen Institute Fellow.

Topics: Women’s leadership; public media; business transformation.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ELEANOR CLIFT
Contributing Editor, Newsweek

Eleanor Clift reports on the White House, Washington politics, and a variety of national issues. She is currently assigned to the 2008 presidential race where she is part of a Newsweek team assembling a behind-the-scenes narrative of the historic contest that will be published in an issue 48 hours after the November election and then expanded into a book. Her column, “Capitol Letter,” appears weekly on Newsweek’s web site. Ms. Clift is a regular panelist on the nationally syndicated show, The McLaughlin Group, and has appeared as herself in several films, including Independence Day, Murder at 1600 Pennsylvania, and Dave, as well as the CBS series Murphy Brown. She was a key member of Newsweek’s 1992 election team and followed Bill Clinton’s campaign. In June 1992, she was named Deputy Washington Bureau Chief. Ms. Clift and her late husband, Tom Brazaitis, wrote two books: War Without Bloodshed: The Art of Politics and Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling, which tracks the rise of women in politics and features Hillary Clinton’s trailblazing run for the U.S. Senate while she was still living in the White House as First Lady. Clift is the author of Founding Sisters and the 19th Amendment, the story of suffrage, and Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death and Politics, which is a story of personal loss set against the backdrop of the public debate over the court-ordered removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, which led to the brain-damaged woman’s death.

Topics: How Washington works; the changing media; women and politics; President Clinton’s legacy; the current political landscape; how we make public policy, including war policy in Iraq; reporting on presidential elections.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBERT COGAN
Composer; faculty member, New England Conservatory
(Visits campuses with Pozzi Escot)

Robert Cogan has successfully followed a triple career as composer, music theorist, and teacher. For over thirty years, he has served as Chair of Graduate Theoretical Studies and Professor of Composition at the New England Conservatory. His book New Images of Musical Sound—one of four acclaimed volumes he has authored or co-authored—won the Society for Music Theory’s Distinguished Publication Award. More recently, he has published Music Seen, Music Heard, and The Sounds of Song and has written articles for various scholarly music journals. His compositions have been featured in performances by the Cleveland Orchestra, the North and West German Radios, and the RIAS Orchestra of Berlin, as well as at festivals including Avignon and Tanglewood.

Topics: Mathematics and music; the art and science of music; what a composer does; new scientific images of music, sound, design, and performance; psychology/art/language; the art-science music of a new millennium; science, neuroscience, and art; global culture and American music; music’s history: an alternative view.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JULIUS E. COLES
Retired foreign service minister; President, Africare

Julius E. Coles is the President of Africare. Before assuming this position, he was Director of Morehouse College's Andrew Young Center for International Affairs from 1997 to 2002. He served as the Director of the International Affairs Center at Howard University from 1994 until 1997. Most of Mr. Coles' career has been spent as a senior official with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). While with USAID, Mr. Coles was Mission Director in Swaziland and Senegal and served in Vietnam, Morocco, Liberia, Nepal and Washington, DC. He earned a B.A. from Morehouse College and a Master of Public Affairs from Princeton University. He has also studied at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, the U.S. Department of State Foreign Institute's Senior Seminar, the Federal Executive Institute, and Institut de Français. Mr. Coles retired from the U.S. Government's Foreign Service in 1994 with the rank of Career Minister. He has received numerous awards including the James Madison Medal from Princeton University (2007), Morehouse College National Alumnus of the Year (2006), Amistad Achievement Award (2003), Distinguished Career Service Award (1995), and Presidential Meritorious Service Award (1983-1986), and he was decorated by President Abdou Diouf of Senegal as Commander in the Order of Lion (1994).

Topics: The African food crisis; African prospects in the new millennium; prospects for reconstruction in Liberia; Africa and the diaspora: bridging the gap for sustainable development; Africa's development and the millennium challenge account; the American college student vs. globalization.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MONICA COLLINS
Syndicated lifestyle columnist, nonprofit consultant, media critic

Monica Collins, a professional journalist, critic, consultant and entrepreneur, created and writes “Ask Dog Lady,” the humor lifestyle advice column of various platforms, including the Web at www.askdoglady.com, radio streaming on the Internet, and syndicated in newspapers throughout the country, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Gatehouse New England and six magazines. Collins has a unique perspective on the media. She not only writes and sells her own column but she spent 25 years as media columnist/TV critic for USA Today, TV Guide, and The Boston Herald. She has written various profiles for USA Weekend magazine, including a 2008 cover piece on CNN's Anderson Cooper. Her columns also have run in Vogue, Boston Magazine, Town & Country, and Forbes/Life. Collins has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, The O'Reilly Factor, Inside Edition, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Collins also has a business consulting on media strategy. Current clients include anti-hunger organizations trying to help during the economic crisis.

Topics:Multi-media creativity; entrepreneurial dream chasing; realities of television; newspaper survival; cultural criticism; honing ideas and fine writing.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ANTHONY CORTESE
President, Second Nature

Anthony D. Cortese is the principal founder and President of Second Nature, a nonprofit organization with a mission to develop the national capacity to make healthy, just, and sustainable action a foundation of all learning and practice in higher education. He is the co-founder and co-coordinator of the Higher Education Associations' Sustainability Consortium, a co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, and a co-organizer of the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment. Prior to his work with Second Nature, Dr. Cortese was the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and the first dean of environmental programs at Tufts University. He spearheaded the award-winning Tufts Environmental Literacy Institute and the internationally acclaimed Talloires Declaration of University Leaders for a Sustainable Future. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Cortese has B.S. and M.S. degrees in civil and environmental engineering from Tufts University and a Doctor of Science in environmental health from the Harvard school of Public Health.

Topics: The role of colleges in creating a healthy, just, and sustainable society; higher education leadership in reversing global climate disruption; making sustainability a foundation of learning and practice in higher education; creating a socially and environmentally sustainable economy.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

CALLIE CROSSLEY
Television and Radio Commentator; Documentary and TV News Producer

Callie Crossley is a media commentator and public speaker. She frequently appears on National Public Radio, CNN, and C-SPAN. She appears weekly on WGBH-TV’s “Beat the Press,” a media criticism program which examines local and national media coverage. Ms. Crossley was a producer for Eyes On the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, the critically acclaimed documentary series, which earned her an Oscar nomination and major film and journalism awards, including the Gold Baton of the DuPont-Columbia Award, considered the Pulitzer Prize of broadcast journalism. As a network television producer, Crossley also earned top awards for her health/medical stories produced for ABC News’ 20/20. Crossley balances her commentary and speaking schedule with her work as Program Manager for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, designing and directing the foundation’s seminar series. Through her company, CrossChannels, she consults to both journalism projects and documentary filmmakers and leads media coaching workshops. Ms. Crossley has been both a Nieman Fellow and an Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard University. She is a graduate of Wellesley College, and holds an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Pine Manor College.

Topics: Women and leadership; current events; civil rights history; career building; race and media; ethics and diversity in journalism and documentary filmmaking.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RAMON E. DAUBON
Vice President for Programs, the Inter-American Foundation

Ramon E. Daubon is the Vice President for External Affairs at the Inter American Foundation and an Associate at the Charles Kettering Foundation. He serves on boards and in advisory roles to the International Institute for Sustained Dialogue, the Esquel Group Foundation, SAPIENTIS in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA). He has been Executive Director of the Caribbean Environment and Development Institute in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Deputy Assistant Administrator of USAID for its Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, Representative of the Ford Foundation for the Andean and Southern Cone Countries of South America, and Vice President of the National Puerto Rican Coalition. He has been a consultant for the National Hispanic Housing Council, Partners of the Americas, and Casals & Associates. A native of Puerto Rico, he has published extensively on topics about Latin America and the Caribbean and the connection of economic and social development with democracy and the culture of civic engagement.

Topics: Caribbean and Latin America; civil society and democratic citizenship; civic engagement and development; social capital; economic and social development; public-private partnerships; business citizenship; sustainable development; public policy processes; population, human resources, and labor migrations; Puerto Rico; U.S. urban development; the connection between civic capacity and economic capacity.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

STUART DIAMOND
President, Empowered Media, Internet entrepreneur, writer, journalist, composer/musician

Stuart Diamond's career has covered a broad range of professions, including business leader, entrepreneur, producer, writer, journalist, composer, and musician. Diamond is co-founder of Empowered Media, an Internet company creating original media, distribution strategies, and proprietary software. Empowered specializes in creating new knowledge, networking, and business models for online environments. Through Empowered Diamond has worked with major defense contractors, international human rights organizations, the United Nations, and major health organizations. He has consulted with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on counter-terrorism strategies. In addition, he has produced national television and online news programming, including The National Physician of the Year Awards. Diamond is also recognized as a composer and musician, having composed over 100 works in all media including symphonic and chamber music, theater, dance, film, and video. His ensemble, Electric Diamond, has been performing continuously since 1979. It is perhaps the only ensemble dedicated to presenting live classical electronic music concerts, with a repertoire covering a wide spectrum of music, from the Medieval to Baroque, and Romantic to Native American music, as well as original works. Through the years Diamond has developed a parallel career as a writer, authoring screenplays, novels, essays, poetry and documentaries for television (see www.stuartdiamond.com).

Topics: The Internet; creating new knowledge and business models in online environments; the impact of modern media on society; finding integrity in art and business; entrepreneurship—thriving in a corporate world; writing as a means to understanding the world and making a living; the survival of the classical arts in a digital age; electronic music; integrating art and technology.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MICHAEL DOYLE
Reporter, Washington Bureau, McClatchy Newspapers

Michael Doyle covers regional, national and legal affairs issues for McClatchy, a chain of 31 newspapers. His beat includes the Supreme Court, the federal judiciary, agriculture, immigration and Western state politics. Mr. Doyle is the author of The Forestport Breaks: A 19th Century Conspiracy Along the Black River Canal, published by Syracuse University Press. He earned a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School, where he was a Knight Journalism Fellow. He also earned a Master in Government from The Johns Hopkins University, with a thesis on the Freedom of Information Act. He has contributed freelance articles to Slate, Washington Monthly, Yale Law Report and other periodicals, and has appeared on C-SPAN, CNN, Fox News Channel and other electronic outlets. He is an adjunct lecturer at The George Washington University, where he teaches news writing in the School of Media and Public Affairs. He is a volunteer firefighter/EMT in Arlington County, Virginia.

Topics: Law and politics; the Supreme Court and legal affairs; the Freedom of Information Act; environmental politics; journalism ethics and techniques; the press and public policy; immigration and ethnic politics.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DAVID J. DUNFORD
Former U.S. Ambassador, Middle East expert

Dave Dunford’s 29 years in the U.S. Foreign Service included three years as U.S. Ambassador to Oman and four years as Deputy Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the 1990-91 Gulf War. He worked for General Garner and Ambassador Bremer in Iraq in 2003 as the senior official in charge of reorganizing Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His other assignments included Economic Minister-Counselor in Cairo, Director of Egyptian Affairs in Washington, Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative in the Executive Office of the President, and Coordinator of the multinational team tasked with setting up MENABANK, a proposed regional multilateral development bank in Cairo. Ambassador Dunford teaches courses on the Arab-Israeli Conflict and the Middle East Business Environment at the University of Arizona and consults for government and the private sector on Middle East issues. He is former Chairman and active board member of AIPT, a non-profit organization specializing in international exchanges.

Topics: Issues related to the Middle East, including oil, Islam, and terrorism; Middle East politics and culture; the Arab-Israeli conflict; international political economy; international trade and finance; globalization; how to think about the Middle East; Foreign Service careers.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MARGARET EDSON
Playwright; teacher

Between earning degrees in history and literature, Edson worked in the cancer and AIDS inpatient unit of a research hospital.  Wit, her only play, was written in 1991.  It was widely rejected, produced in 1995, rejected some more, produced anew, and received the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1999.  The HBO production won the Emmy Award for best film in 2001.  Wit has received hundreds of productions in dozens of languages.  It is widely used as a teaching tool in settings ranging from high school English to bioethics seminars. Edson has been an elementary school teacher for seventeen years, in Washington, DC, and Atlanta.   For ten years she has taught at John Hope Elementary, a Title I school in Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward.  After an extended tour of duty teaching kindergarten, she is moving in the fall of 2009 to fifth-grade social studies. Edson was the commencement speaker at Smith College in May 2008.  A video of her address is readily available on-line.

Topics: The insubstantial pageant: orality, literacy, and writing for performance; the map of speech (orality and literacy); not Wit; simplicity and complications (a theological reading of Wit); the hothouse of irony (live theater); she teach me very hard:  the classroom episteme in a whacked-out world; us and them: teaching and learning fifth-grade history.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JAN EGELAND
Director, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Special Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General, expert in conflict prevention and resolution

Egeland was Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator in the United Nations (2003–2006). He was Secretary General of the Norwegian Red Cross (2001-2003) and Special Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General for Colombia (1999-2001). Egeland was State Secretary in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1990-1997). He was Chairman of Amnesty International in Norway and Vice-Chairman of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International (1980-1986). Mr. Egeland has been prominent in several peace processes that include the Oslo Agreement between Israel and the PLO (1993) and the Ceasefire Agreement for Guatemala signed in Oslo City Hall 1996. During his three and a half years with OCHA, Egeland led the joint efforts of the humanitarian community in providing desperately needed relief in the wake of a number of disasters—including the devastating earthquake in Bam, the Indian Ocean earthquakes and tsunami, the South Asia earthquake, the drought in West Africa, the drought and flooding in the Horn of Africa, and the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. He has also coordinated efforts in neglected and forgotten crises, from northern Uganda to Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He traveled to the frontline of conflicts to bring the world's attention to the suffering in places like Darfur, Sudan, Colombia, Lebanon, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. He has published A Billion Lives – An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity, 2008.

Topics: Forthcoming.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

POZZI ESCOT
Composer; faculty member, New England Conservatory
(Visits campuses with Robert Cogan)

Pozzi Escot is Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the New England Conservatory and holds a professorship at Wheaton College. She is Editor in Chief of the internationally acclaimed journal Sonus, President of the International Society of Hildegard von Bingen Studies, and Director of Tufts University’s Tallories International Composers’ Conference in France. She is widely regarded as a pioneer in the study of the relationship between music and mathematics and has published articles exploring this area of inquiry. In 1975, Ms. Escot was chosen as one of the five most remarkable women composers of the 20th century, and during the same year, the New York Philharmonic premiered her Fifth Symphony to critical acclaim. With Mr. Cogan, Ms. Escot co-wrote Sonic Design: The Nature of Sound and Music and Sonic Design: Practice and Problems. She has recently completed two books, The Poetics of Simple Mathematics in Music and Oh How Wondrous—Hildegard von Bingen, Ten Essays.

Topics: Mathematics and music; the art and science of music; what a composer does; new scientific images of music, sound, design, and performance; psychology/art/language; the art-science music of a new millennium; science, neuroscience, and art; global culture and American music; music’s history: an alternative view.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

LEE FEIGON
Writer, director, East Asian expert

Lee Feigon is the writer, director, and producer of the madcap revisionist documentary, The Passion of the Mao. Lee also serves as a research associate at the Center for East Asian Studies of the University of Chicago, and has been an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He once was a Professor of History and Chair of East Asian Studies at Colby College. He has written for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Nation, the Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, and the Boston Globe. He has been interviewed on television shows such as MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, CNN, CNBC’s Hardball, and the NBC Nightly News. He is the author of Mao: A Reinterpretation, the work on which the documentary is based, as well as of the acclaimed Demystifying Tibet: Unlocking the Secrets of the Land of the Snows, and China Rising: The Meaning of Tiananmen, a highly praised book that combines a historical perspective of the Tiananmen Movement with a first-hand view of the events leading up to this crisis. Among his earlier publications is: Chen Duxiu: Founder of the Chinese Communist Party (Princeton University Press, 1983). Among his other jobs is serving as the C.E.O. of Censea, one of the largest seafood companies in the United States. In the mid 1980s, he designed and built the Northern-most completely solar heated house in the Western hemisphere. He is presently in the midst of establishing a 1500-acre organic goat farm in Northern Maine.

Topics: How to make a movie with little technical knowledge and no money; Mao and the image of China past and present; the internationalization of the Tibetan cause; globalization and slow eating: a personal and business perspective; documentary filmmaking in the age of the internet; how to succeed in business without going to the office.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JEFFREY FELDMAN
Constitutional lawyer

Jeff Feldman’s trial practice focuses on constitutional litigation. He has litigated cases involving reproductive freedom, first amendment rights, criminal procedure, personal conduct and family rights, and government regulation of the environment. He has received such honors as the Alaska Bar Association’s Professionalism Award (1998), the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska Public Service Award (1987, 1995), and the ACLU Public Service Award (1993) for his work on cases involving personal freedom. Mr. Feldman has been Chairman of the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct and President of the Alaska Academy of Trial Lawyers and the Alaska Bar Association. His numerous articles on legal topics include “Justice Rabinowitz and Personal Freedom: Evolving a Constitutional Framework,” “The Fifth Amendment, Self-incrimination and Foreign Prosecution: The Saga of the Ryuyo Maru,” and “Pre-trial Diversion of the Mentally Retarded Offender.”

Topics: The role of law in society; current constitutional issues; the role of courts in shaping personal and ethical choices; constitutional issues raised by the war on terrorism; 1975-2005: 30 years of change in American law and society; the role of lawyers in America: a template for the 21st century; the Alaska experience: constitutional law on the last frontier.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

A. LEE FRITSCHLER
Higher education policymaker

The former Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education in the Clinton administration, Dr. A. Lee Fritschler set direction for higher education policy and administering the department's higher education programs, including financial aid, FIPSE, GEAR UP, TRIO, international education, the Fulbright program, Developing Institutions, and the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Subsequently, he served as Vice President and Director of the Center for Public Policy Education at the Brookings Institution, which administers education programs in the United States and around the world for government and corporate executives. He is the first North American to serve on the Steering Committee of the European University Association, and he was the Chairman of the U.S. Postal Rate Commission. While President of Dickinson College, Dr. Fritschler co-founded the Annapolis Group, a contingent of 110 presidents of the nation's leading liberal arts colleges, build support for liberal arts programs in colleges. He is currently Professor and Director of Executive Education in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He is the author of many articles and four books, including Smoking and Politics: Bureaucracy Centered Policy Making. His newest book, a work he co-wrote with Bruce Smith and Jeremy Mayer, is Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities. The book concludes that the problem with U.S. higher education is not that institutions are too political but that they are not political enough and questions the notion that ideological bias harms student education.

Topics: The federal role in higher education: benign past, stormy present, and tempestuous future; how policy is made in government; bureaucracy-centered policymaking; higher education in modern Europe: the great transformation; the demise of accountability in U.S. government: contracting out and its cousins; the politics of smoking and health.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

WILLIAM GLAUBER
Journalist, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Bill Glauber has covered four wars and eight Olympics and reported stories in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He spent the first half of his career as a sports reporter before switching to news. Concentrating on Northern Ireland’s peace process, British politics, and the crisis of the Balkans, he was the London correspondent for The Baltimore Sun from 1995 to 2002. Mr. Glauber reported on the initial U.S. air strikes against Afghanistan as an embedded reporter with the U.S. military and reported widely on European cultural and social issues. Joining The Chicago Tribune in 2002, he covered local, national, and international news—including the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq—and wrote editorials. In 2006, he joined the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he covers aging and demographics.

Topics: The future of print journalism in a YouTube world; war reporting 101: how to cover war and live to tell about it; Iraq and the Middle East; British and European politics; the Olympics; opinion writing; news and sports reporting; aging and demographics in America.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RICHARD J. GOLDSTONE
International human rights lawyer

Richard J. Goldstone is the co-chairperson of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association and a member of the U.N.-appointed committee investigating the Iraq Oil for Food Program. He has served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, as the chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and as a member of the International Group of Advisers of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In May 2009, Goldstone will be honored by the MacArthur Foundation with the MacArthur Award for International Justice. Justice Goldstone has taught at the New York University School of Law, Harvard Law School, Fordham University School of Law, and Georgetown University Law Center. A Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he also serves on the boards of the Human Rights Institute of South Africa, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and the Center for Economic and Social Rights. His book, For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator (2000), chronicles his vast experiences including investigations on South African apartheid-era crimes and the U.N. war crimes tribunals.

Topics: Prosecuting war crimes; reconciliation and fault after severe human rights violations.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RUTH Y. GOLDWAY
Commissioner, U.S. Postal Rate Commission; former Mayor, Santa Monica, CA

Ruth Goldway knows how to work in and make changes at all levels of government. She was appointed U.S. Postal Rate Commissioner by President Clinton in 1998 and reappointed by President Bush in 2002 for a term ending in 2008. As Postal Commissioner, Ms. Goldway oversees the finances of the U.S. Postal Service and considers issues of the changing nature of communications and technology in the national economy. Earlier in her career, she created a network of farmers' markets in California, founded the Santa Monica Pier Corporation (an independent nonprofit development agency), and was the first public member to be appointed to California’s agricultural marketing boards. Ms. Goldway led public outreach efforts at California State University at Los Angeles and at the Getty Trust before living in Finland for four years, serving as the “Ambassadress” while her former husband served as U.S. Ambassador. While there, she published 15 magazine articles and her memoirs.

Topics: Communications and the role of the Postal Service in U.S. democracy; how to make government work for the average citizen; urban revitalization; European integration; postal privatization.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JULIET J. GOODFRIEND
President, The Bryn Mawr Film Institute and The Good Friend Group

Juliet Goodfriend is the retired founder and CEO of Strategic Marketing Corporation, the largest custom marketing research firm servicing the global pharmaceutical industry. She now heads the Bryn Mawr Film Institute as well as The Good Friend Group and Foundation, providing consulting resources to entrepreneurial ventures and community programs. In her work for the Institute, she has spearheaded saving an historic cinema, restoring it, and creating a film school and first-class film venue. Her for-profit corporate experience has been put to work in this nonprofit, $8 million project. She has also created the Nonprofit Executive Leadership Institute (NELI) for the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research of Bryn Mawr College. She is recognized as an advocate for linking the humanities with the business world and has taught a seminar, “Business: A Liberal Art,” to undergraduates, graduate students, and public audiences. She currently serves on the boards of the Inglis Foundation, the Kardon Institute for Arts, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and Laboratory Skin Care.

Topics: Leadership; using for-profit skills in the nonprofit world; business ethics; using narrative in business plans; the meaning of success; humanities and business; marketing research as a career; global entrepreneurship; volunteerism; problems with the pharmaceutical industry; wheelchair dancing.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

EMILY JANE GOODMAN
Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York

Before becoming a State Supreme Court Justice, Emily Goodman served in civil, criminal, and family courts. She has taught at the New York University Law School and the Center for Urban Legal Education at City College. Holding an M.J.A. from Columbia University in addition to her law degree, she writes on such subjects as mediation, custody, divorce, housing discrimination, and battered women. She has authored and co-authored several books, including Women, Money, and Power; A Woman’s Guide to Marriage and Divorce in New York; and The Tenant Survival Book. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, New York Law Journal, Ms. Magazine, The Village Voice, and The National Law Journal.

Topics: Mediation; legal and ethical issues pertaining to health care, women, and teenagers; housing discrimination; criminal law; current affairs; writing.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

BARBARA GOTTSCHALK
Executive Vice President, Seeds of Peace

Seeds of Peace is an organization that brings together young people from Israel, Palestine, and other troubled areas for experience in living together peacefully. The organization has a summer camp in the United States and a Center for Coexistence in Jerusalem. More than 2,000 participants have graduated from the camp in Maine and then returned to their regions for regular meetings and coexistence programs. Barbara Gottschalk also has directed social service agencies responsible for treatment of people with mental and physical disabilities.

Topics: Community-building on a worldwide scale; learning to care about just about everyone on earth; social work methods put to work creatively; Seeds of Peace—how it works; media literacy; using interpersonal relationships internationally; stages of development for non-governmental organizations.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MARCIA GRANT
Founding Dean, President, and Academic Vice Dean, Effat College, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

During the summer of 1999, Marcia Grant was asked to design and start a college for women in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Today Effat College has 36 teachers and 200 students. Ms. Grant continues to serve as Education Counselor for Princess Lolowah-al-Faisal and is writing about the experience from her home in southwest France. A liberal arts education and early experiences in Latin America have had a profound impact on Ms. Grant’s values and career direction. She began her academic career teaching African and international politics at Oberlin College, and later, as a single parent, entered the Foreign Service of USIA. She served as Director of the Fulbright Program in Mexico and as a cultural attaché in Paris. For four years she led the Edward S. Mason program for Third World government officials at Harvard’s Kennedy School and then worked with the Institute of International Education in New York. Before going to Jeddah, she was Executive Director of the Institute of North American Studies in Barcelona.

Topics: Women and Islam; creating liberal arts programs for women in Saudi Arabia and expanding their opportunities; the importance and possibilities of international academic exchanges; American foreign policy towards Latin America; why the U.S. and Europe differ in international politics; international careers.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DAVID N. GREENLEE
Retired U.S. Ambassador

David Greenlee served as chief of mission in Bolivia (2003-2006) and Paraguay (2000-2003) and, also with ambassador rank, as chair and U.S. delegate to the Israel-Lebanon Monitoring Group (1996-1997), a successful five-nation effort to mitigate civilian casualties in cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. His other positions include deputy chief of mission in Bolivia, Chile, and Spain, and special Haiti coordinator and political advisor to the U.S. Army chief of staff. Ambassador Greenlee is a graduate of Yale University and the National War College. He has also been a Peace Corps volunteer (Bolivia) and an Army officer with service in Vietnam. Since retiring from the foreign service in 2006, he has been working as an independent consultant and with the State Department on institutional issues related to the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the reorganization of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).

Topics: The politics of poverty in Latin America: Bolivia as paradigm; striving for peace: monitoring stability in the Arab-Israeli conflict; rethinking national security in the post-9/11 world: the role of diplomats in military structures; the education of a career diplomat in an evolving foreign service.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JUDITH BERRY GRIFFIN
Founder, The Ophelia J. Berry Fund and creator, Pathways to College

Judith Berry Griffin’s combined experience as an education administrator and leader, consultant, author, and lecturer led her to establish The Ophelia J. Berry Fund in 2003.  She is founding president of the Fund’s first program, Pathways to College, which is a national after-school initiative.  The program helps high-potential students of color develop the critical thinking skills and habits of mind that make achieving a college education an attainable goal, thereby encouraging school-wide improvement and reform.  Since its founding in 1992, the program has served more than 2,100 students. Many of its graduates go on to selective four-year colleges such as Brown University, Smith College, Stanford University, Hampshire College and the University of Chicago. Prior to her current role, Griffin served as national president of A Better Chance from 1983 to 2003. In addition, she served in the U.S. Department of Education. Griffin is the author of several books for children, the most recent of which, Phoebe and the General, was a nominee for the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award. She is a recipient of The 2008 Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education. Griffin earned BA and MA degrees from the University of Chicago, which in 2001 awarded her its Professional Achievement Citation. She holds an additional graduate degree from Columbia University.

Topics: Education in America.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

FUMIKO MORI HALLORAN
Writer and journalist
(Visits campuses with Richard Halloran)

Many of Fumiko Halloran’s books are in Japanese, including From the City of Washington, for which she was awarded the Oya Soichi Award for Best Non-Fiction in 1980; Starlight Over America, New Elite in the United States; Letters from Honolulu: The World as Seen from Hawaii; The Wellsprings of the American Spirit: This Nation Under God; and her novel, The Black Wall. Ms. Halloran has also contributed to many Japanese journals. She has served as Senior Political Analyst at the Japan Economic Institute of America in Washington, DC, and as a Program Officer at the Japan Center for International Exchange in Tokyo.

Topics: Japanese literature, religion, and culture; non-fiction and creative writing; classical literature; contemporary social issues in Japan; Asian history.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RICHARD HALLORAN
Columnist, The Rising East
(Visits campuses with Fumiko Mori Halloran)

While working for The New York Times, Richard Halloran served as a military and defense correspondent and as Bureau Chief for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the central Pacific region. At The Washington Post, he served as Economic Correspondent in Washington and as Northeast Asia Bureau Chief. Mr. Halloran’s books include Japan: Images and Realities; Serving America: Prospects for the Volunteer Force; and Sparky: A Political Portrait of Senator Spark M. Matsunaga of Hawaii. His articles have appeared in major newspapers including The Boston Globe and The Chicago Tribune and his awards include the Gerald Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense, the U.S. Army Medal for Outstanding Civilian Service, and the Pacific and Asian Affairs Council’s Media Award for Lifetime Achievement. Mr. Halloran is a Senior Fellow at the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media. He has taught at the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies, the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

Topics: American and Japanese military issues; security issues in Asia; U.S. nuclear policy; the reunification of Korea; China-Taiwan relations; U.S. relations with China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India, and Pakistan; Asia as the dominant force in the 21st century; democracy in Asia and how it differs from democracy in the West; journalism and writing nonfiction.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JUDI HAMPTON
Principal, Judi Hampton Public Relations, Inc.

Judi Hampton Public Relations is a consulting firm that specializes in executive coaching and professional development workshops. The content of the workshops is drawn from Ms. Hampton’s experience as a managing CEO. Ms. Hampton served as Mobil’s first full-time media spokesperson and acted as Director of Consumer Affairs. She created a successful communications and public relations program in Mobil’s Washington, D.C. office, acted as a Mobil liaison with foreign journalists, and staffed and managed public affairs field positions in the Exploration and Producing Division. Since 1998 she has served as President of Blackside, producers of Eyes on the Prize, the Emmy-winning documentary series on the Civil Rights Movement, and other acclaimed films. Under Judi’s leadership, Eyes on the Prize was rebroadcast on PBS stations nationwide in the fall of 2006 and a new DVD set of Eyes for the educational community was produced.

Topics: Developing communication and business writing skills; how to become an exceptional speaker; managing diversity in the workplace; marketing techniques that yield results; managing group dynamics and conflict; leadership at all levels; documentary filmmaking on black issues.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

GRETCHEN HANDWERGER
Formerly of The World Bank

During her 25 years at the World Bank, Gretchen Handwerger acted as the Bank’s United Nations Liaison and coordinated aid and lending projects in seven South Asian countries. Most recently she served as the Bank’s special representative to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Prior to working for the World Bank, she served as deputy and acting director of the U.S. Peace Corps, providing broad supervision of 6,500 volunteers and 800 staff members in 65 developing nations.

Topics: The Peace Corps; working with developing nations.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

PETER HART
Political pollster

Peter Hart has directed Peter D. Hart Research Associates since 1971. The company has conducted more than 5,000 public opinion surveys that have included interviews among more than 2.5 million individuals. Hart Research also has undertaken more than 2,000 focus group sessions. In 1986, Mr. Hart turned over most of this work to others in the firm in order to focus on public policy, cultural and social issues, and strategic consulting work for corporations. His corporate clients have included Time Warner, American Airlines, DaimlerChrysler, Kodak, Microsoft, and AT&T. Internationally, he has conducted studies in South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Mr. Hart appears frequently on major television programs that discuss public policy issues, including Meet the Press, The Today Show, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The National Journal named Mr. Hart to its select list of 150 national leaders who shape federal government policy, asserting that he “plays a key role in identifying and shaping national trends and political messages.”

Topics: Political polling; the Clinton administration.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

CHARLES HAUSS
International peace activist
(Visits campuses with Gretchen Sandles, pictured at left)

After discovering conflict resolution in the early 1980s through the Beyond War movement, now the Foundation for Global Community, Charles “Chip” Hauss has built a career combining academic political science with a life-long commitment to lasting non-violent political change. In 2000, he joined the staff of Search for Common Ground, the world’s largest conflict resolution NGO, when it began a project on U.S. domestic politics. A member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, he also coordinates its work with United States government agencies ranging from USAID to the Defense Department. He has led several hundred workshops at international conferences with discussions ranging from the end of the Cold War to NGO and military cooperation. A professor of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, Dr. Hauss also taught for 17 years at Colby College in Maine. He has published eleven books about comparative politics, conflict resolution, and international relations.

Topics: The challenges facing the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, from strategic to environmental policy; what the NGO community can and cannot accomplish politically.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JIM HOAGLAND
Associate Editor and Chief Foreign Correspondent, The Washington Post

Jim Hoagland is associate editor and chief foreign correspondent for The Washington Post where he has worked since 1964. He writes a column on international affairs that appears twice weekly in the Post and is internationally syndicated. He has received two Pulitzer prizes, in 1970 for international reporting, and in 1991 for commentary in recognition of his columns on the events leading up to the Gulf War and political events within the Soviet Union. He also won the Cernobbio-Europa Prize for journalism. He is the author of South Africa: Civilizations in Conflict, which was published in 1972. Before joining the Post, Hoagland served in the U.S. Air Force and worked for the The New York Times International Edition in Paris.

Topics: forthcoming

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DEBORAH HORAN
Journalist, formerly with The Chicago Tribune

Deborah Horan’s areas of interest are Iran, Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and U.S. foreign and economic policy. Recently reporting for The Chicago Tribune, Ms. Horan covered the Middle Eastern community in Chicago. Since March 2003, she has focused on the Arab world’s reaction to the Iraq war and has spent time in Cairo, Beirut, and Baghdad. Previously, she was the Jerusalem-based correspondent for The Houston Chronicle, The San Francisco Chronicle, and theInter Press Service. She was a Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan and has written for magazines including Newsweek, The Washington Monthly, Progressive Woman, and Psychology Today. In 1999, she was chosen as a finalist for the Livingston Award for outstanding young journalists. Her work has been chosen for submission to the Pulitzer board.

Topics: U.S. foreign and economic policy in the Middle East; Middle East politics; Arab media.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RICHARD HORNIK
Director of Southeast Asia Programs, Independent Journalism Foundation

Richard Hornik has been an editorial consultant specializing in corporate governance and social responsibility issues since he retired from Time Inc. in 2002. He has written a cover story on Hong Kong’s future for Fortune, edited McKinsey and Co.’s publications for the World Economic Forum, and authored a monograph on corporate responsibility for the International Youth Foundation. In 2003 he began assisting the Independent Journalism Foundation in training young journalists in Vietnam. Mr. Hornik’s last job at Time Inc. was Executive Editor of its regional news magazine, AsiaWeek. Over the previous 23 years, he was Bureau Chief at Time's Warsaw, Boston, Beijing, and Hong Kong offices. In the 1990s he became Business Editor for Time Europe, where he created a weekly business section for Time's European edition and coordinated award-winning coverage of the European Union. In 1989, he co-authored Massacre in Beijing. In 1993, he was Journalist in Residence at the East-West Center in Honolulu, where he wrote an article on the Chinese economy for Foreign Affairs. In 2003 he was awarded a Knight International Press Fellowship, which he used to spend four months training journalists in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Topics: Why Americans distrust the news media; how the Democrats can save globalization; the real danger of China’s economic expansion; why Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono (and Jeffrey Sachs) will not save the world and may actually make global health worse; the next stage of corporate social responsibility.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JAMEEL JAFFER
Civil rights lawyer

Director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, Jameel Jaffer leads a team litigating major constitutional cases on the ACLU’s national security docket, including cases concerning surveillance, secrecy, detention, and the freedoms of speech and association, and he serves as one of the ACLU’s key spokespeople on national security issues. He is also a director of Equitas: The International Center for Human Rights Education. A human rights monitor for the military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, he co-authored the 2007 book, Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond (Columbia University Press), with Amrit Singh. Mr. Jaffer is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Cambridge University, and Williams College.

Topics: Civil liberties and national security; torture, rendition, and the “war on terror”; government surveillance; dissent; government secrecy; national security in the courts.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DIANE JORKASKY
Expert in drug development and international medicine

Diane Jorkasky is a nationally recognized leader in the science of drug development. Over her 22 years in pharmaceutical medicine, she has contributed to the development of a number of new medicines and has created some of the most innovative and transformative approaches to explore new medicines for their potential use in disease. In her roles in industry, most recently at Pfizer Research and Development, she has been involved with a number of disciplines in translational medicine and led the development of three global clinical research units that garnered recognition by the Association for Accreditation for Human Rights Protection Policies, the Connecticut Council on Technology, and the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame for leadership in science and the mentoring of young women.  She has been elected to the Connecticut Academy of Science and Technology. Certified in internal medicine, nephrology, and clinical pharmacology, Jorkasky received her training at the University of Pennsylvania and served as chief of the Renal Division of the Presbyterian Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. She was recognized as one of the “Top Docs” in Philadelphia. She has published over 100 articles, books, and reviews in medicine and has been a multimedia speaker on topics of science and issues affecting the development of new medicines. She is an adjunct professor of pharmacology at Yale University, adjunct professor of medicine at Penn and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, and lecturer at Harvard University. She has been outspoken advocate for the leadership of women in industry and the sciences.

Topics: The science and serendipity of discovering new medicines; history of medical discoveries; industry-academic relationships and conflict of interest; the nature of leadership and women’s leadership challenges;  perspectives on being a doctor; ethics in medical research;  transitions in life and career.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MARIA KARAGIANIS
Award-winning writer, journalist and social entrepreneur

After her first 13-year career as an award-winning journalist at the Boston Globe, where she was part of a team covering school desegregation for which the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize gold medal, Maria Karagianis reported for the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa during apartheid. She then attended the Harvard Divinity School, where she studied ecology and theology and earned a master’s degree in world religions. A recipient of the Pfeiffer Fellowship at Harvard, she also was awarded the First Decade award by the HDS Alumni Association “for exemplifying the values of dialogue, creativity, justice and service” in her second career as a crusading social entrepreneur and founding executive director of Discovering Justice.  A non-profit civic education organization, recognized nationally for its mission of educating for democracy by teaching about justice, Discovering Justice is headquartered in Boston. A writer who is working on a book about values and how to create a meaningful life, Maria also frequently writes magazine articles and op-ed pieces about spirituality and ecology and mind/body healing. She is currently director of US Operations for Anatolia, a school started by Boston educators and missionaries in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century and now among the finest private educational institutions in Greece. 

Topics: Make meaning–how to create a meaningful life; when god is green–ecology and theology; founding Discovering Justice and becoming a social entrepreneur; healing the body and healing the mind; reflections on social justice–lessons for school desegregation in Boston and from apartheid South Africa.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RICHARD B. KATSKEE
Litigator, Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Richard Katskee is the Assistant Legal Director at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He litigates constitutional challenges to proselytization and religious instruction in public schools, religious displays on public property, government funding of faith-based organizations, and school-voucher programs, among others. He was one of the principal attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Pennsylvania case successfully challenging a school district’s inclusion of intelligent-design creationism in its ninth-grade biology curriculum. He also coordinates Americans United’s non-litigation-advocacy program, which educates legislators, school-board members, and other public officials about Establishment Clause requirements and seeks to resolve constitutional violations amicably. Before joining Americans United, Katskee spent several years as a lawyer in Washington, DC. He earned his A.B. with highest distinction and high honors from the University of Michigan; his A.M. in political science from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow; and his J.D. from the Yale Law School, where he was an Articles Editor on the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He also served as a Eugene P. Beard Graduate Fellow in Ethics at the Harvard University Program in Ethics and the Professions, and he taught professional and political ethics at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Topics: Intelligent design on trial: religiously based attacks on teaching the scientific theory of evolution; law, politics, and history of the First Amendment’s religion clauses; contemporary controversies over religion in the public schools; the Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence and the future of church-state separation; the federal faith-based initiative and government funding of religious discrimination in the provision of social services; religious discrimination in the military; the role of religion in electoral politics.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

LOUIS KIMMELMAN
Attorney, Partner in Allen and Overy’s International Arbitration Practice Group

Louis Kimmelman focuses on the arbitration and litigation of a broad range of complex commercial and construction disputes and has extensive experience representing U.S. and foreign parties in international disputes before arbitral tribunals and state and federal courts. He has been actively engaged in the arbitration of disputes before the International Chamber of Commerce and the American Arbitration Association. Mr. Kimmelman is a member of the panel of mediators of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and a member of the panel of neutrals of the Commercial Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York and New York County. A graduate of Yale Law School, he co-authored the chapter “Arbitration of International Commercial Disputes” in Successful Partnerings Between Inside and Outside Counsel and co-authored the chapter “Litigating International Disputes in Federal Courts” for Business and Commercial Litigation in Federal Courts. He is also an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School.

Topics: Resolution of international commercial disputes; cultural perspectives on international dispute resolution; arbitration and litigation of international commercial disputes; jurisdiction of U.S. courts in international disputes; mediation; legal advocacy.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JEANIE HENRY KNIGIN
First Vice President, Investments, Salomon Smith Barney

As a First Vice President with over 30 years of investment expertise, Jeanie Knigin provides professional investment management to high net-worth individuals, endowments, and foundations. Her experience includes advising clients on domestic and international equities, taxable and tax-free fixed income, and cash management. Specifically, Knigin focuses on providing advice on asset allocation strategies and evaluation, selection, and monitoring of investment management firms. She is currently a member of the Financial Women’s Association of New York, the Women’s Economic Roundtable, and the International Association of Financial Planners. She has appeared on The Today Show, CNBC, and NBC Nightly News, discussing events in the financial markets.

Topics: State of the economy; behavioral aspects of investing; the global implications of investments; ethical and political issues with regard to the economy.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JERE L. KRAKOW
Former Superintendent, National Historic Trails, National Park Service

Krakow recently completed a public service career with the National Park Service and previously was a college professor in American history. Krakow served as superintendent of nine National Historic Trails, including the Oregon, Santa Fe, Pony Express, and Trail of Tears National Historic Trails. As a research historian, he conducted studies of and mapped the Wilderness Road, Santa Fe, and Trail of Tears routes. He has a long-standing goal of connecting the historic sites of the nation with students and citizens alike. In collaboration with numerous private landowners and government agencies at all levels, he successfully provided leadership to assist American and foreign citizens with opportunities to visit and understand place and setting associated with national expansion. He is a fellowship recipient from the National Endowment for the Humanities and holder of awards from several historic trail friend groups.  He is a member of the Western History Association and a consultant on the administration of historic trails, commemorative events, and the activities associated with them.

Topics: Westward expansion and national parks; historic transportation corridors and tourism; national historic trails as public history; historic preservation on public and private lands.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JAY B. LABOV
Senior Advisor, National Academy of Sciences and National Research Council

Jay Labov serves as a Senior Advisor for Education and Communications for the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Research Council (NRC). He also served for three years as Deputy Director for the NRC's Center for Education and was the study director and responsible staff officer for more than a dozen NRC reports, including “State Science and Technology Policy Advice: Issues, Opportunities, and Challenges: Summary of a National Convocation” (2008) and “Enhancing Professional Development for Teachers: Potential Uses of Information Technology” (2007). He also directed a committee of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine that authored Science, Evolution, and Creationism (2008). Dr. Labov was the Co-Principal Investigator for a multiyear grant from the National Science Foundation to the Center for Education to offer workshops to grantees of the NSF's Math/Science Partnership Initiative. Prior to assuming his position at the NRC in August 1997, Dr. Labov was a member of the faculty in the Department of Biology at Colby College (ME). He received a B.S. in Biology from the University of Miami and an M.S. in Zoology and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Rhode Island. He was elected a Fellow in Education of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005.

Topics: Confronting challenges to the teaching of evolution in public school science courses: the critical role of higher education; the roles of introductory science courses in the 21st century; educating scientists for the 21st century.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBIN LEEDS
Principal, Winning Strategies; senior political strategist, organizer and advocate

Robin Leeds has developed and implemented programs for the White House, federal and state agencies and legislatures, labor unions, corporations, organizations, and government bodies. She has 25 years of experience in public policy development, public-private partnerships, constituency outreach, grassroots advocacy, development, media, and government relations. Ms. Leeds worked to prevent the repeal of Massachusetts Prevailing Wage Law, pass the National Voter Registration Act, expand voter participation, raise the national childhood immunization rate, pass the Violence Against Women Act and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, and establish the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Ms. Leeds held several appointed positions in the administration of President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000, including Issues Director for the White House Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach. She was National Co-Chair of Women for Kerry in the 2004 presidential election and is currently Principal of Winning Strategies, a public affairs consulting firm that represents nonprofit, business, and political organizations, labor unions, and federal and state government agencies.

Topics: U.S. domestic and international policy regarding to improving the lives of women and families; local, state, and federal government; unionization; civil rights; grassroots lobbying.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBERT LEVEY
Columnist, The Washington Post

From 1981 to 2004, “Bob Levey’s Washington,” a column about Washington life, appeared five days a week in The Washington Post. During his 36-year career at the Post, Mr. Levey has covered presidential politics, Congress, local news, features, and sports. His column won major awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Journalism Review. He was named one of the top columnists in Washington by Washingtonian Magazine six times, and in 1999 the magazine named him “Washingtonian of the Year.” Mr. Levey has also had an extensive career in electronic media and has worked for seven radio stations, four TV stations, and one Internet site. Levey Live, an hour-long chat that appeared twice each week on the Post’s website, won consistently high ratings. He has been called “The Larry King of the Internet,” although he does not wear suspenders. He has received the top rating as a speaker by the International Platform Association, the country’s leading speakers’ bureau, and he has served as an adjunct professor or lecturer in journalism at the University of Maryland and Duke University.

Topics: Current American politics; the future of the media; ethics in journalism; Washington, DC, and home rule; advocating the liberal arts.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DIMON LIU
Human rights activist, architect, urban planner

Dimon Liu was born in China and emigrated to the United States in 1965. She became a human rights activist after witnessing conditions in China during a three-month trip there in 1972. Trained in architecture in New York and political economy in London, she taught architecture and urban design for 15 years in Hong Kong and New York. Her human rights activities have included urging human rights organizations to embrace Chinese concerns, systematically briefing journalists on conditions in China, teaching Chinese citizens how to get involved in politics, and organizing human rights initiatives within Chinese pro-democracy groups. At the U.N. Sub-Commission on Human Rights in 1989, she initiated and organized an intervention which resulted in an unprecedented U.N. reprimand against China on human rights abuse. In 1993 she left academia to focus on U.S.-Sino relations. She has testified before Congress on human rights conditions in China and regularly briefs Capitol Hill on issues concerning China. Ms. Liu’s writings on human rights, rule of law, democracy, and military strategy have appeared in many journals and newspapers including the Asian Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Newsday, and The Washington Times.

Topics: Human rights in China and in general; rule of law; democracy; military strategy.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

FRANK LLOYD
Lawyer and communications expert

Frank Lloyd is a Washington DC-area lawyer who has argued communications cases before the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and the federal courts and testified before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on communications legislation. He is Chairman of the Practicing Law Institute's annual programs in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco on Cable Television Law, co-author of the four-volume treatise, Telecommunications Regulation: Cable, Broadcasting, Satellite and the Internet, and an editor of the monthly newsletter, Cable T.V. and New Media Law & Finance. Mr. Lloyd also authors a monthly column on cable litigation as well as several law review articles on cable, copyright, and other aspects of communications law. He is currently serving as co-chair of the Federal Communications Bar Association's Cable Practice Committee. He worked in the Office of Telecommunications Policy in the Executive Office of the President, and from 1977 to 1981 he worked under FCC Chairman Charles D. Ferris.

Topics: Telecommunications regulation; new media law and finance; competition in video, internet and telephone; the role of the Federal Communication Commission.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

L. HUNTER LOVINS
President and Founder, Natural Capitalism Solutions (NCS)

L. Hunter Lovins is the founder and President of Natural Capitalism, Inc. and Natural Capitalism Solutions, a 501(c)3 non-profit. A renowned author and champion of sustainable development for over 30 years, Lovins has managed international non-profit organizations and corporations. She co-founded the widely respected Rocky Mountain Institute and led it for thirty years. As a public defender of the environment, she has addressed the World Economic Forum, the U.S. Congress, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and hundreds of other major conferences. Named millennium “Hero for the Planet” by Time Magazine, she has received the Right Livelihood Award, the Leadership in Business Award, and dozens of other honors. Hunter believes that citizens, communities, and companies, working together within the market context, are the most dynamic problem-solving force on the planet. She has devoted herself to building teams that can create and implement practical and affordable solutions to the problems facing us in creating a sustainable future.

Topics: Natural capitalism: creating the next industrial revolution; international reconstruction and development: building a green Afghanistan; energy policy: hope for the future; sustainable business practice: a natural capitalism field guide; water policy: profitable solutions to the next resource crises.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JOHN MAGUIRE
Senior Fellow, Institute for Democratic Renewal; Senior Consultant, Project Change
(Visits campuses with Lillian Maguire, pictured at left)

John Maguire spent 28 years as a university president, first at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury and later at Claremont University Consortium and Claremont Graduate University in California. Since his retirement in 1998, Dr. Maguire has been a senior fellow in the Institute for Democratic Renewal in CGU’s School of Politics and Economics and a senior consultant to Project Change, where he engages in a range of racial and social justice activities and democratic community building projects. He serves on the boards of Union Theological Seminary, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, and the Eureka Communities. He is senior consultant in poetry at California’s Idyllwild School of the Arts and senior advisor to the Claremont Museum of Art. Inspired by his friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Maguire has spent much of his career working against racism, both in schools and across all levels of society. He has written and spoken widely on the relation of moral philosophy and religious thought to contemporary society, human rights, social justice, and education.

Topics: Community service as an element in liberal arts education; values and social policy; the role of the arts and their relation to politics; a history of the civil rights movement; the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.; dismantling institutional racism and building democratic communities; the “well-run” college.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

LILLIAN MAGUIRE
Advocate for children; community activist
(Visits campuses with John Maguire, pictured at left)

Lillian (Billie) Maguire is an advocate for children’s issues who brings her experience as a teacher and curriculum coordinator to nonprofit organizations benefiting children. She co-chaired the 25th National Conference of the Children’s Defense Fund in Los Angeles, founded the Pomona Valley Kid’s Care Fair, currently chairs the Claremont Youth Partnership, and serves as vice president of the Children’s Advocacy Center. She has written articles on adolescent pregnancy in California and administers an endowment fund in her name, created by the Board of Trustees of Claremont Graduate University to raise awareness among graduate students and the University of the needs of children. Her awards include the 2002 YWCA Silver Service Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Children’s Defense Fund, the American Red Cross’s Distinguished Service Award, and a Rotary International “Service Above Self” award.

Topics: American children in today’s political climate; women’s issues; religion and women; community organizing; the difference between supportive and non-supportive communities.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DAVID MARCUS
Journalist, Newsday

Dave Marcus started his career in 1982 as The Miami Herald’s education reporter. Later, as South American Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News, he covered conflicts in Haiti, El Salvador, and Angola before becoming Diplomatic Correspondent for The Boston Globe. He shared the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for a series about violence against women. In 1996 he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, then went to cover education for U.S. News & World Report. He left to write a book, What It Takes to Pull Me Through: Why Teenagers Get in Trouble—And How Four of Them Got Out (Houghton Mifflin). In 2004, he taught English at Deerfield Academy, and then joined Newsday. His forthcoming book, Acceptance: A Legendary Guidance Counselor Helps Seven Kids Find the Right College -- and Find Themselves, recounts his experience shadowing a seasoned high school guidance counselor who helps students gain admission into the right colleges by focusing on self-discovery rather than test scores, grades, and the other traditional tools of the trade. His articles have appeared in Vanity Fair and The New York Times, and he has appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition and The Today Show. See www.davemarcus.com.

Topics: Trends and controversies in schools; the media and education reform; technology and terrorism; troubled youth and pressures on families.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MARJORIE MARGOLIES-MEZVINSKY
Chair of Women’s Campaign International

Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky chairs Women’s Campaign International, a group that provides grassroots political training to women around the world. She spent 20 years as a journalist with NBC’s stations in New York and Washington, D.C., and was a correspondent to The Today Show, Sunday Today, A Closer Look, CNBC, and Real Life with Jane Pauley. She has won five Emmy awards and numerous other awards. In 1992, Ms. Mezvinsky became the first woman ever elected to Congress from Pennsylvania. In 1995, she led the United States delegation to the United Nations’ Fourth International Women’s Conference in Beijing, China. She has since represented U.S. delegations to India, Spain, Austria, Turkey, and Kazakhstan. Ms. Mezvinsky served as President of the Women’s Campaign Fund and the Women’s Campaign Research Fund from 1996 to 1998. In 1998, she was the Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania. She is currently a fellow at the Fels Center of Government at the University of Pennsylvania and is the author of four books, including the 1976 best seller, They Came to Stay.

Topics: Women in politics; the “Year of the Woman” following the Beijing Conference; adoption and blended families.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MICHAEL MARKOVITS
Vice President, Business and Technical Leadership, IBM

Michael Markovits is globally responsible for identifying and developing the leadership pipeline and placement of business and technical leaders at all levels to drive IBM's growth, transformation, and performance.  Markovits joined IBM in May 2004 as Vice President of Global Executive and Organization Capability, overseeing executive staffing, succession planning, executive development and coaching, and leadership and organizational effectiveness consulting for IBM internationally. He has written and spoken on topics related to leadership, the role of technology and distance learning in global corporate training, and other organizational development issues. Before coming to IBM, Markovits was at General Electric for 19 years. He held a successive series of posts in human resources, organizational change, and leadership development at GE. Markovits holds a B.A. from Oberlin College and master’s degrees from Harvard and MIT in education and management, respectively. In addition to his corporate roles, Markovits has been actively involved in non-profit and social change work focused primarily on issues of peace, reconciliation and ending racism.

Topics:Being an effective leader; leading during tough economic times; leading successful change efforts—what does it take?; hope and personal power as weapons for a change agent; role of the corporation in society; adult learning theory in practice; leading diverse teams; organizational transformation; how does a political theory major become a corporate executive and why?

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DALE MCCORMICK
Former state senator; founder, Women Unlimited; carpenter; LGBTQ activist

Dale McCormick has spent over two decades fighting for jobs, economic justice, health care for all, human rights, and equality for women. A carpenter and contractor for 30 years, Ms. McCormick was the first woman in the country to complete a carpentry apprenticeship with the carpenters’ union, and she is a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Union. In 1988, she founded Women Unlimited, a program that successfully trains women on welfare to compete for high-paying jobs in trade and technical occupations. She served in the State of Maine Senate, chairing the Banking & Insurance Committee and writing health care reform legislation. She co-founded and became the first president of the Maine Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance (now Equality Maine). She was the first woman to be elected State Treasurer in 1996 and today is the Director of the Maine State Housing Authority. Her two books, Against the Grain: A Carpentry Manual for Woman, and Housemending: Home Repair For The Rest of Us, join her many published articles on energy efficiency, health care, and civil rights.

Topics: Global warming: is your building the solution or the problem?; three US industries killed by lack of government leadership; our sex-segregated economy, the women’s movement, and non-traditional occupations; how to make political change and survive it; good corporate governance: why it’s important to you, your portfolio, and our country.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

STEVENSON McILVAINE
Former Foreign Service Officer (various African countries)

Stevenson McIlvaine has more than 20 years of experience in U.S.-Africa policy and relations. Having worked in and around Africa for most of his life, starting with the Congo crisis in 1961, he is familiar with all four regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. McIlvaine has lived in Guinea-Bissau, Congo, Somalia, Tanzania, and Zambia and has served as a Political Officer and Deputy Chief of Mission for Charge D’Affaires. In 1981, he served as an Observer in the Multinational Force in the Sinai Desert of Egypt during the transfer of the Sinai from Israel to Egypt. Mr. McIlvaine has also worked in South Vietnam. During a hiatus from the State Department, he was elected to the Fauquier County (Virginia) Board of Supervisors and worked on several congressional campaigns and at the Department of Transportation before returning to the Foreign Service in 1981. He was awarded the Secretary’s Career Achievement Award by Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2003, and he holds two Meritorious Honor Awards for his work in Africa.

Topics: Humanitarian intervention from Bosnia to Somalia to Darfur; Blackhawk Down: the rest of the story; African history, current events, and policy issues; U.S.-Africa relations; U.S. government; careers in foreign service; volunteerism abroad; journalism; language translation (African languages, Vietnamese); policy dilemma surrounding humanitarian intervention.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

TANYA MELICH
Political analyst, writer, election reform advocate

Tanya Melich, a nationally recognized authority on women in politics, co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus and led the fledgling National Women's Education Fund, the first organization to educate women systematically on how to gain political power. Formerly a Republican who served on the political staffs of Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Charles Goodell and John Lindsay, she has managed state and local political races, including a U.S. senatorial campaign and a House race, and is now a Jeffords independent. For twenty years, Ms. Melich ran her own consulting business, Political Issues Management. She has been an occasional television commentator and a contributor to major national newspapers and magazines. Her 1996 book The Republican War Against Women: An Insider’s Report from Behind the Lines garnered her the Gustavus Myers Center Award; recent publications include a 2005 article for The Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy on negative campaigning toward women congressional candidates. She has received numerous awards for her contributions to the betterment of women.

Topics: The effect of U.S. electoral politics on world issues, i.e. global warming, peace; treatment of women in the world; what the Internet is doing to the management of campaigns and political change; the 2008 presidential campaign; the role of internationalism in maintaining security at home; protecting civil liberties in an era of terror; politics in the daily lives of Americans; the importance and limits of government; women in politics; intolerance in America; the non-military aspects of the war on terrorism; cleaning up the electoral system; free speech in a time of war; citizenship in an era of terrorism; the balance between security and liberty; electoral reform.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DON JUSTIN MESERVE
Sculptor

Don Justin Meserve explores narrative and abstract themes in a variety of media. His work reflects a love of the sculptural process, a “hands-on” approach and technical skills informed by an American industrial design education combined with European craft training. After four decades of working as an artist, he has developed a formidable mastery of materials that are associated with traditional sculpture: wood, metal and stone. Although Meserve’s recent sculpture emphasizes abstract and natural forms, he also produces figurative and narrative work cast in bronze and pewter. Meserve graduated from the University of Bridgeport, where he received a degree in industrial design, and completed graduate studies at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen. While in Denmark, Meserve worked at Bernadotte and Bjorn, one of the largest architecture firms in that nation, and designed architecture, glassware, and jewelry for Prince Bernadotte, among other projects. A professor for many years at the Rhode Island School of Design where he helped create a furniture design program, Meserve has also taught at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, and the College of Creative Studies in Detroit. To see a sample of Meserve’s work, please visit www.donjmeservesculptor.com.

Topics:Where do ideas comes from; artistic developments and the craft of sculpture; art game aka art professional practice; the studio process.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RUTH MESSINGER
President/Executive Director, American Jewish World Service

AJWS is a nonprofit organization that provides financial support, technical assistance, emergency relief, and skilled volunteers to grassroots NGOs in the developing world. These groups are involved in community building, sustainable agriculture, education, health, economic development, women’s empowerment, and civil society work in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Russia, and Ukraine. Under Ruth Messinger’s leadership, AJWS is expanding its scope and visibility and creating new service, education, and outreach programs. Ms. Messinger previously spent 20 years in public service in New York City and was the first woman to secure the Democratic Party nomination for Mayor. Ms. Messinger is a social worker by professional training and an active member of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. In November 2001, she was named one of the Forward newspaper’s “50 Most Influential Jews of the Year.”

Topics: Direct technical assistance and American volunteerism in grassroots groups working on sustainable development and institution building in the developing world, Russia, and Ukraine; international aid and development issues surrounding the AIDS crisis in Africa.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

SUE MILLER
Novelist, short story writer, journalist, memoirist

Both critically acclaimed and loved by readers, Sue Miller is recognized internationally for her elegant and sharply realistic accounts of the contemporary family. Her books have been published in 20 countries around the world. The Good Mother (1986), the first of her seven novels, was an immediate best seller (more than six months at the top of the New York Times charts). Subsequent novels include two Book-of-the-Month main selections: Family Pictures (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award) and While I Was Gone (an Oprah’s Book Club selection). The Story of My Father was heralded by BookPage as a “beautiful, spare memoir about her relationship with her father during his illness and death from Alzheimer’s disease.” Her numerous honors include a Guggenheim and a Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe College. She is a committed advocate for the writer’s engagement with society at large, having held leadership positions in PEN; as Chair of PEN New England, she fostered literacy programs for homeless shelters and established writing programs for urban high schools and prisons. She has taught fiction at, among others, Amherst, Radcliffe, Bennington, and MIT.

Topics: The novel of the family at the turn of the century; the literary arts and society at large; 20th-century novels; writing and reading the short story; master class in fiction; memoir and fiction: the distinctions.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

HENRY MOLLICONE
Opera composer; conductor

A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Henry Mollicone has served on various panels for The National Endowment for the Arts. He is Associate Director of the Ernest Bloch Music Festival in Newport, Oregon, and Director of its composers' symposium. Mr. Mollicone’s one-act operas—Emperor Norton, Starbird, and The Mask of Evil—have been performed extensively. His The Face on the Barroom Floor, a recipient of the American Composers' Recording Award, is one of America 's most-performed contemporary operas and has also been produced in several European countries. His full-length operas include Coyote Tales and Hotel Eden. Mr. Mollicone has also written works for orchestra, voice, chorus, ballet, film, television, and theater. His pieces have been performed by distinguished artists including JoAnn Falletta, Frederica Von Stade, Erie Mills, and Maria Spacagna. In 1976, Mr. Mollicone was a musical assistant to Leonard Bernstein for the show 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and from 1971 to 1976 he was an assistant conductor at the New York City Opera. He is currently Music Director of the Winchester Orchestra of San Jose and the South Valley Symphony. See also www.henrymollicone.com.

Topics: Social justice and music; music in wartime: protest versus support; integration and development of American popular music; music and science; mysticism and music; American popular music and racism; music for the theater; opera and music workshops leading to public performances.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBERT MUEHLENKAMP
Social justice activist and trade union organizer

Robert Muehlenkamp has been active in the social justice and trade union movements for over 35 years. He served as Executive Vice President and National Organizing Director at SEIU-1199, the hospital workers union, and as the Teamster Organizing Director. Over the last several years he has coordinated campaigns with dozens of unions at corporations including General Electric and Delta and American Airlines. He was one of three coordinators for the 1982 Peace Rally in Central Park and is a co-founder of U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) in Iraq. He was Senior Advisor with Governor Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. He is currently applying internet and email organizing techniques to various union and social justice campaigns, including the campaign to change Wal-Mart. He teaches a course on “American Social Justice Movements” at the University of Maryland.

Topics: “Finally! A Real Debate about the U.S. Economy in the 2008 General Election”; real political economy; successes and failures of the anti-Iraq War movement; the role of unions in American democracy and what America would look like without unions; U.S. social justice movements; organizing for social change.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

LAVONNE MUELLER
Playwright and poet

Lavonne Mueller’s plays have been produced off-Broadway in New York City and across the country and internationally in India, Japan, London, Scotland, and the Czech Republic. Her play, Letters to a Daughter from Prison, about Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, was produced at the First International Festival of the Arts in New York City and went on tour in India. Her play Hotel Splendid received an award in 2001 from Peace Writing for outstanding drama opposing war and injustice. Her other plays include The Confession of Many Strangers, published in Best Short American Plays 1997-98; American Dreamers, published in Best Short American Plays 1995-96; Violent Peace, chosen as a Critic’s Choice in Time Out London; and The Mothers, which won the John F. Kennedy Center New American Plays Award. Her published books include Creative Writing and Duo: Scenes for The 90’s, and her poems have been published in literary magazines. Ms. Mueller has won fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, NEA, NEH, and Asian Cultural Council. She was recently a Fulbright Fellow to Jordan. See also www.lavonnemueller.com.

Topics: Gender and writing; modern drama and playwrights; how dramatists use history, psychology, and the other arts; anti-war plays; human rights as a major dramatic theme; drama as a business; dramatic approaches to journalism; writing for theater, TV, and film; careers in writing; do women write differently than men?; human rights: the important theme of our future.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBERT K. MUSIL
Spokesperson on global warming, environmental health, and national security; former CEO of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility

Robert K. Musil, PhD, MPH, is Chairman of the Board of 2020 Vision: Environment, Energy and Security Solutions and Scholar in Residence at the American University School of International Service, where he teaches in the Program on Global Environmental Politics and the Nuclear Studies Institute. Musil is also a Visiting Scholar at the Churches’ Center for Theology and Public Policy at the Wesley Theological Seminary, where he teaches about religious responses to global warming. Until 2006, he served as the long-time CEO of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. A leader in the national peace, nuclear disarmament, and environmental movements, Musil is the author of Hope for a Heated Planet: How Americans Are Fighting Global Warming and Building a Better Future (2009). He is also
the former executive producer and host of the nationally syndicated radio program Consider the Alternatives and two-time winner of the Armstrong Award. He has organized educational and lobbying campaigns and led NGO delegations and coalitions on climate, toxic chemicals, and nuclear weapons to the White House, the Congress, the U.N., and at various international summits and negotiations. He has taught at Northwestern, Temple, La Salle, and St. Joseph’s universities. He currently serves on the boards of the Council for a Livable World, the Herbert R. Scoville Peace Fellowships, the Westmoreland Volunteer Corps, and Population Connection.

Topics:Global warming: how Americans can find hope; why students are ready now to lead us; the new environmentalism: beyond polar bears and penguins; how Washington really works and how to effect change; opposition to the Iraq war: how the media missed the story; ending America's dangerous dependence on oil; campus sustainability and how to get there; green business, green investing; can science and faith find the same wavelength.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

TASLIMA NASRIN
Author, human rights activist

Taslima Nasrin was born in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and grew up in a tightly regimented Muslim conservative environment. As a young child she pushed the gender boundaries of society, attending medical school and becoming the writer and editor of literary magazines that questioned women’s oppression and tradition.  After receiving numerous writing awards and publicity for her controversial work, Islamic fundamentalists launched campaigns against her writings. When a fatwa was issued against her, she was confined to her house and forced to leave her job. Nasrin eventually had to escape from her country. Not allowed to enter the country even to visit her ailing parents, Nasrin lives in exile. The numerous awards she has received in Western countries have resulted in increased international attention to the struggle for women’s rights and freedom in the Middle East.  Nasrin has received a UNESCO prize for the promotion of tolerance and nonviolence, the Simone de Beauvoir prize and Citizen of Honor award, both from France and the Prins Global Fellowship Award from New York University, among other awards. She has published Shame Again, Bondini, Narir kono desh nei, and Dwikhandito. For more information about her story please visit www.taslimanasrin.com.

Topics: human rights; women’s rights; the importance of secularism in society; freedom of expression.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

A. RICHARD NORTON
Council on Foreign Relations member; government consultant on Middle Eastern topics; Professor of International Relations and Anthropology, Boston University

Richard Norton’s current research and writing focuses on how political reform in the Middle East has been implemented or thwarted, and how we might learn from the failures of the Bush administration’s project for promoting democracy in the Middle East. He has held academic appointments at New York University and the United States Military Academy. His latest book is Hezbollah: A Short History; earlier books include Amal and the Shi'a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon; Political Tides in the Arab World (co-author); and the two-volume collection Civil Society in the Middle East. His articles have appeared in a range of leading journals and newspapers. He consults with U.S. government agencies on Middle Eastern topics, and in 2007 was an advisor to the Iraq Study Group. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; has won multiple research and writing grants from the Rockefeller, Ford, and MacArthur Foundations; and has held Senior Fulbright Research Grants for Bangladesh, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Norway. In 2006-07 he lived in Egypt and the Persian Gulf.

Topics: Will the Arab-Israeli conflict ever end?; Does democracy have a future in the Middle East?; How does U.S. policy figure in Muslims’ politics and opinions?

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JAY NEUGEBOREN
Author

Neugeboren is the author of 17 books, including two prize winning novels (The Stolen Jew and Before My Life Began), two prize-winning non-fiction books (Imagining Robert and Transforming Madness), and three collections of award-winning stories. His stories and essays have appeared widely (in The Atlantic, Tikkun, GQ, Sport, The American Scholar, Newsweek, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, et al.) and have been reprinted in more than 50 anthologies, including Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. His screenplay for The Hollow Boy, which premiered on American Playhouse, has won many honors, including top prize at the Houston International Film Festival.  He is the recipient of numerous other awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, and he is the only author to have won six consecutive Syndicated Fiction Prizes. Open Heart: A Patient’s Story of Life-Saving Medicine and Life-Giving Friendship is an award winning documentary film based on Imagining Robert that has been appearing nationally on PBS stations since 2004.  A new novel, 1940, was published in April 2008. Neugeboren was professor and writer-in-residence for many years at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has taught at other universities, including Columbia, Stanford, and Freiburg (Germany).  He now lives and writes in New York City.

Topics: Forthcoming

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RORY O'CONNOR
Managing Director, Hewlett-Packard Galway Ltd

Rory is a veteran of the information and communications technology industry in Ireland with almost forty years’ experience. After an exciting fifteen years in IT in the newspaper industry at Ireland’s flagship quality daily–The Irish Times–Rory moved into the multi-national sector with Digital Equipment Corporation and subsequently Compaq and Hewlett-Packard. He has been the managing director of Hewlett-Packard Galway Ltd since 2001(aka HP European Software Centre). He is the chairman of the governing body of The Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology and a member of the oversight boards of a number of Ireland-backed centers for science and engineering technology. O’Connor has a strong track record in business management, innovation, technology development, change management and university-industry collaboration.

Topics: Business Innovation: the challenges from within a multi-national subsidiary; industry and college collaboration: opportunities and challenges; education and business–what matters and who cares?; I.T. revolution–Quo Vadis?; health and life sciences: begging for better informatics; Ireland’s economic “success”: what happens when you get there?; the notion of a “fair society”; leadership and why we expect so much from the U.S.; “The Atlantic Way”: community driven regional development.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

KATHLEEN O’NEIL
President and CEO, Liberty Street Advisors; Corporate Director

Liberty Street Advisors offers public and private companies around the world executive insight on corporate governance, risk management and strategy development and execution. Prior to establishing Liberty Street, Kate O'Neil headed IBM’s global financial markets infrastructure group. For several years before that, she served in key leadership positions at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, including advising the president on policy, strategy, and management issues; leading the financial services group and the corporate group; and serving as Chief Financial Examiner. Ms. O’Neil is active in a number of professional organizations, including the Council on Foreign Relations where she co-chairs a roundtable on “Technology, Innovation, and American Primacy;” the Economic Club of New York; and the National Association of Corporate Directors. She is Vice Chairman of the Board of John Carroll University and a member of the boards of BMC Software, MetLife Bank, and Guidance Software. She is independent lead director at Guidance Software.

Topics: “How can you compete with someone with an equivalent degree in China or India?”; business ethics; entrepreneurship; international business and global markets; the Federal Reserve System; corporate governance after Sarbanes-Oxley; risk management; financial system dysfunction; leadership challenges; “Doing it all.”

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

LAWRENCE O’ROURKE
Political analyst and lawyer

After a triple career in law, journalism, and educational consulting, Lawrence O’Rourke retired from daily journalism in 2005 to embark on new careers in political analysis and legal representation of abused, neglected and abandoned children. He began his career in 1964 at The Philadelphia Bulletin, where, as Chief of Bureau and as White House Correspondent, he covered Nixon’s trip to China and the Watergate scandal. He then spent time at the United States Department of Education, where he advised the Secretary of Education on policy, speeches, and publications. Mr. O’Rourke has worked for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and has written policy papers and books on education for Feistritzer Publications. He created the White House Weekly newsletter and has edited other publications on politics, education, and health while maintaining a private law practice throughout his career. He has won the National Press Foundation’s Benjamin Franklin Award for his series on the U.S. Constitution and the presidency, and the Raymond Clapper Prize for national reporting on infectious diseases. He is the author of Geno: The Life and Mission of Geno Baroni.

Topics: The 2008 presidential campaign; child protection in the United States; health policy; role and future of the press; politics; economics; Congress; White House; journalistic ethics; public service; Irish literature; revolution in American journalism; Social Security and Medicare; modern history of Ireland as a metaphor.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBERT S. PECK
President, Center for Constitutional Litigation; Adjunct Professor, American University and George Washington University Schools of Law

Robert Peck has argued constitutional law cases before the United States Supreme Court and the highest courts of a number of states. He has challenged laws that have limited access to the courts, implemented so-called tort reform, and adopted unfair election procedures. In 2005, the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) recognized him with its annual Distinguished Service Award. Previously, Mr. Peck has served as First Amendment Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. He is a past president of the U.S. Supreme Court Judicial Fellows Alumni Association, a member of the Board of Overseers of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice, and a member of the Board of Directors of the NCSC. His books include Libraries, Cyberspace and the First Amendment, and The Bill of Rights and the Politics of Interpretation. Mr. Peck has appeared on television and radio programs including ABC, NBC, and CBS news programs, and Nightline, Crossfire, and Larry King Live. For his work on the PBS documentary film We the People, he won the Associated Press’s Best Documentary prize and several other awards.

Topics: The Supreme Court; the First Amendment; the role of courts; rule of law; the jury system; censorship; the quest for justice; the U.S. Constitution; television violence; political reform; religious expression; flag-burning and the Constitution; Constitutional history.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ANITA PEREZ FERGUSON
Former President, National Women’s Political Caucus

Anita Perez Ferguson was appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the Chair of the Inter-American Foundation. She has served as President of the National Women’s Political Caucus and earlier as the White House Liaison to the U.S. Department of Transportation. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, where she co-chairs the organization’s Public Policy Initiative and is a member of the finance and investment committees. In conjunction with several international organizations, Ms. Perez Ferguson has trained women in leadership and political skills in the United States, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. From 1996 to 1999, she was a weekly contributor to WAMC National Public Radio in New York. Her books include Women Seen and Heard and A Passion for Politics. Hispanic Business Magazine named her to its list, “The 100 Most Influential Hispanics in the United States.”

Topics: The changing face of American politics; the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street; building leadership skills; intergenerational solutions for the aging society; grassroots development and organizing; crisis management and media relations; Hispanic/Latino and women voters in the 2008 election.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

HAROLD PIPER
International journalist

Harold Piper is an international journalist and editor who served as a foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, living in Moscow, Bonn, and London and traveling throughout Europe. The winner of two citations from the Overseas Press Club of New York for his reporting on the Soviet Union and on strategic arms control, he covered such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon before returning to Baltimore to become the Sun’s op-ed editor. In 2001 he became editor of a new English-language paper in Seoul, South Korea, distributed with the International Herald-Tribune; it was quickly established as the must-read paper for the Western political and business community in South Korea. Though a journalist, he has a law degree that prepared him to report on politics and international relations. He has taught at Loyola College in Maryland and in the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in South Korea.

Topics: After the fall: Russia and Eastern Europe after communism; the "Asian 21st century" and its discontents; the bomb and North Korea: Kim Il-sung's canny game; Korea: a shrimp among whales and perhaps the key to Northeast Asia; who chooses the news? New media and the future of journalism; how news, especially foreign news, keeps Americans ignorant; an American editor in Korea: bicultural journalism and its discontents; confessions of a foreign correspondent from the golden age.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DWIGHT T. PITCAITHLEY
Former Chief Historian, National Park Service; expert on public history

Dwight Pitcaithley has devoted his career to public history and the preservation of national parks. Until mid-2005 he was Chief Historian with the National Park Service, responsible for the management and preservation of the country’s national resources. He was an advocate for high quality interpretive programs based on current historical scholarship. He served as President of the National Council for Public History in 1998, previously served on the editorial board of The Public Historian, and presently serves on the editorial board of The Journal of American History. Since 1993, Dr. Pitcaithley has taught history at the university level, first at George Mason University and more recently at New Mexico State University. He has published several papers pertaining to public memory and the role of historic sites in public education, including “Historic Sites: What Can Be Learned From Them,” for which he won the James Madison Prize of the Society for History in the Federal Government. Dr. Pitcaithley was named a Distinguished American Scholar by the Fulbright New Zealand Board of Directors in 2000, and he received the Organization of American Historians' Distinguished Service Award in 2005 and the National Council on Public History’s Robert Kelley Memorial Award in 2006.

Topics: The National Park Service as an educational institution; the commemoration of public space; interpreting controversial subjects in public spaces; history versus heritage; the second century of the National Park Service.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

KEVIN POWERS
Lawyer, Drug Enforcement Administration

Kevin Powers is the Division Counsel for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Chicago, serving as the DEA’s in-house regional legal advisor. Immediately after law school, he was commissioned as an officer in the United States Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he served both as a prosecutor and a defense attorney in hundreds of cases. An Assistant Corporation Counsel in the City of Chicago Law Department, he represented Chicago police officers before spending six years as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Illinois, He concentrated primarily on international narcotics prosecutions and was part of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. His educational background includes a B.A. in government and history from Colby College and a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law.

Topics: the role of a government attorney; military law; the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps (Navy JAG Corps); federal narcotics laws and the operation of the Drug Enforcement Administration; the operations of the U.S. Department of Justice.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

GLENN T. PRICKETT
Senior Fellow at the U.N. Foundation; conservation expert

Glenn T. Prickett is senior vice president with Conservation International, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the Earth’s biological diversity. Through CI’s new partnership with the United Nations, Prickett is serving as Senior Fellow with the United Nations Foundation. CI works in over 40 countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa to protect biodiversity and to demonstrate that human societies and nature can live harmoniously. Prickett founded and continues to serve as Executive Director of CI’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, a division of CI that engages leading global corporations in creating environmental solutions.   Under Glenn’s leadership, CI has pioneered innovative partnerships with businesses such as Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Alcoa, BP across a wide range of industries.  These partnerships are changing business practices of key industries and generating significant investments in conservation around the globe. He also leads CI’s efforts to combat climate change and to ensure that endangered species and vulnerable communities can adapt to its effects.  Under his leadership, CI has become a powerful voice in international policy debates and an effective partner for businesses, governments, and communities that are taking concrete action to tackle climate change. He has appeared regularly in the media, including Business Week, CNN, Fortune, NBC’s Today and Nightly News, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and others.  He is coauthor of Footprints in the Jungle:  Natural Resources Industries, Infrastucture, and Biodiversity Conservation published by Oxford University Press. Prior to joining CI, Prickett served as Chief Environmental Advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) during the Clinton Administration and as Senior Associate with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington, DC.  He graduated from Yale University in 1988 with a BA in economics and political science.

Topics:forthcoming

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBERT QUINN
Executive director of Scholars at Risk

Robert Quinn is the founding director of Scholars at Risk Network, a collaboration of more than 150 universities and colleges around the world dedicated to promoting respect for academic freedom and defending the human rights of scholars worldwide. Scholars at Risk was founded at the University of Chicago’s Human Rights Program in June 2000. Since its founding, Scholars at Risk has received more than 1500 requests for assistance from scholars in more than 100 countries and more than 50 disciplines. Mr. Quinn is the former founding Executive Director of the Scholar Rescue Fund, an initiative founded in the spring of 2002 by the Institute of International Education (IIE). Mr. Quinn is also an adjunct professor of law at Fordham Law School teaching courses in international human rights and US legal systems. He serves on the Steering Committee of the Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR) and the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Fordham Law School.

Topics: Universities & human rights: threats to scholars, students and academic freedom; attacks on scholars, writers, artists, and what can be done; measuring human rights: SAR’s Global Academic Freedom Survey project; the rights-based university: academic freedom and responsibility in the 21st century; international human rights law; NGO and nonprofit development.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

KEVIN F.F. QUIGLEY
President/CEO, National Peace Corps Association, international advocate of civil society, expert on Asia and democratization

Kevin Quigley has more than 20 years of non-profit leadership experience advancing international understanding and civil society. A former Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, he today serves as President/CEO of the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA). Representing more than 185,000 Peace Corps alumni, NPCA seeks to foster peace through service, education, and advocacy. As Vice President of the high-profile Asia Society, he directed educational programming on a wide range of political, economic, and social topics, including the Asian financial crisis of the mid-1990s. As an executive at one of the nation’s largest private foundations, he oversaw a $9 million annual grantmaking program that focused on developing civil society in societies transitioning from authoritarianism to more open societies, with a special focus on the former Soviet bloc. He is the author of a major book on philanthropy and democratization, as well as dozens of articles on international development and NGO-related issues. His opinion pieces have appeared in many newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Japan Times, and Bangkok Post.

Topics: Peace Corps (altruism, self-interest, and a life-changing overseas service experience); democratization (easy to say, hard to do); Asia (political economy from the ground up); international philanthropy (if you had $50 million to give away, what would you do with it?); the liberal arts and public service (great ways to start a career).

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JANISSE RAY
Author, environmentalist

Writer Janisse Ray has published widely on the subject of the environment, community, and sustainable economics. She is author of three books of literary nonfiction and is an essayist, a poet, and a fiction writer. Ms. Ray also is a naturalist, a political activist, a community organizer, and a lecturer. Her first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, is a memoir about growing up in a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast. A plea to protect and restore the critically endangered pine flatwoods of the South, the book also looks at family, mental illness, poverty, and fundamentalist religion. Ecology was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as the “Book All Georgians Should Read.” Ray’s second book, Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home, is about rural community. Her third, Pinhook: Finding Wholeness in a Fragmented Land, is the story of a 750,000-acre wildland corridor between south Georgia and north Florida.

Topics: Restoring the wild world; ecology in a time of war; radical sustainability; lessons from the lost glaciers; what I mean by “sustainable”; nature writing.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

GOLDIE RIVKIN
Urban and regional planner
(Visits campuses with Malcolm Rivkin)

Goldie Rivkin is a planner and analyst skilled in forecasting population, land use change, and open space and recreation needs both in the U.S. and in developing countries. She was Vice Chair of Montgomery County, Maryland’s Commission on the Future and is currently Vice President of the county’s Commission on Aging, advising on preparation for a new generation of senior citizens. Ms. Rivkin was Principal Analyst in Rivkin Associates’ plan for the resettlement of the Bikini Islanders who were displaced by U.S. atomic testing and then scattered among other Pacific islands. She has held major planning and research assignments in Swaziland, Kenya, Jamaica, Peru, and Brazil. Ms Rivkin has taught planning in Turkey, at American University in Washington, and at the University of Maryland.

Topics: “Smart growth” in rapidly urbanizing areas; megacities of the developing world; “What happened to the Bikini Islanders who were displaced for atom bomb testing?”; how to negotiate environmental and land-use controversies; public participation in governmental decision-making; impact of transportation on American communities; the crisis in affordable housing—and some options.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MALCOLM RIVKIN
Urban and regional planner
(Visits campuses with Goldie Rivkin)

Malcolm Rivkin is a planner, social scientist, and pioneer in negotiating environmental and land use controversies. His cases have ranged from developing regulations for the New Jersey coast, to corridor planning for the route to Annapolis, Maryland, to major downtown development in Wilmington, Delaware. From 2000 to 2003 he was a Senior Fellow at the University of Maryland, where he helped inaugurate special growth management seminars for federal, state, and local officials. He is a former Commissioner of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission and has been Co-Director of urban management programs at both the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Rivkin was a Visiting Lecturer at Princeton and a Visiting Critic at Cornell. Currently, he is a principal in the American Planning Association’s training program for Chinese municipal officials and planners studying in the U.S.

Topics: “Smart growth” in rapidly urbanizing areas; megacities of the developing world; “What happened to the Bikini Islanders who were displaced for atom bomb testing?”; how to negotiate environmental and land-use controversies; public participation in governmental decision-making; impact of transportation on American communities; the crisis in affordable housing—and some options.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JOSEPH ROMM
Environmental expert, author

Dr. Joseph Romm is editor of Climate Progress and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. He was Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during the Clinton Administration and directed $1 billion in research, development, demonstration, and deployment of clean energy and carbon-mitigating technology. He holds a PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2008, Romm was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “distinguished service toward a sustainable energy future and for persuasive discourse on why citizens, corporations, and governments should adopt sustainable technologies.” In 2008, TIME magazine named Climate Progress one of the “Top 15 Green Websites,” writing that “Romm occupies the intersection of climate science, economics and policy…. On his blog and in his most recent book, Hell and High Water, you can find some of the most cogent, memorable, and deployable arguments for immediate and overwhelming action to confront global warming.”

Topics:The latest climate science:  how global warming threatens everyone's future; clean energy solutions: energy efficiency and renewable energy; oil and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; climate politics.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

WILLIAM ROSS
Environmentalist

Bill Ross has nearly 20 years of experience in public policy, including 10 years as a public official for the state of Alaska. Prior to founding Ross & Associates, he finished his public sector career as Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. As President of Ross & Associates since 1987, he has led the firm in establishing a national reputation for helping public sector agencies address critical factual policy and management-oriented environmental and natural resource issues. His work is well known locally, regionally, and nationally. He is an adjunct faculty member at the Graduate School of Public Affairs of the University of Washington.

Topics: Risk and risk communication; pollution prevention vs. pollution control; exploring a campus’s environmental impact and resources through tours and workshops.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

HARRIET RUBIN
Author, journalist; Senior Writer and Co-Founder, Fast Company Magazine

Harriet Rubin is a writer, consultant, and lecturer on leadership trends. She is the author of the international best seller, The Princessa: Machiavelli for Women; Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambition, and On Dante’s Track. In 1989, Ms. Rubin founded Currency Books, a division of Doubleday, which under her direction became a leading publisher of business books as she encouraged poets, theologians, and scientists to write for business leaders. A founding editor of Fast Company Magazine, she has filed stories from India, Kosovo, Davos, and the centers of power in the U.S. She is a member of USA Today’s editorial board and writes regularly for the newspaper’s op-ed page. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and a number of other publications. She has made appearances on The Today Show, Politically Incorrect, and National Public Radio's Marketplace, and she has been interviewed by newspapers in the United States and abroad. Ms. Rubin has lectured in the United States, Europe, South Africa, and South America.

Topics: Strategy and leadership; women and power; ideas and trends in business; the new media.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

GRETCHEN SANDLES
Government intelligence analyst
(Visits campuses with Charles Hauss, pictured at left)

Gretchen Sandles spent 27 years as an analyst for the Open Source Center (formerly Foreign Broadcast Information Service) and the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, working largely with open source material. She also served as an editor for the President’s Daily Brief, Deputy Chief in the European office of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, and government analyst for the Directorate of Intelligence, for the Balkans Task Force and for Russian foreign policy. She has taught comparative politics at several universities. Since retiring from full-time government service in 2005, she continues to mentor young analysts through the Open Source Center.

Topics: The challenges facing the United States in the aftermath of 9/11, from strategic to environmental policy; politics in Russia, Iran, or the Balkans; challenges and criticisms of the intelligence community.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

SERGE SCHMEMANN
Editor, International Herald Tribune and expert, foreign affairs

Serge Schmemann is the editorial page editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris, a post to which he was assigned in May 2003, shortly after The New York Times assumed full possession of the Tribune. Schmemann joined The Times in December 1980 after eight years with the Associated Press and worked for many years as a Times correspondent and bureau chief in Moscow, Bonn, Jerusalem, and the United Nations. He was the deputy foreign editor in New York from 1999 to 2001. Schmemann received the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for coverage of the reunification of Germany and an Emmy in 2003 for his work on a television documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is a graduate of Harvard College and holds an MA from Columbia University as well as an honorary doctorate from Middlebury College.

Topics: Journalism, and specifically the craft of foreign correspondence; Russia; Europe and the German reunification; the Middle East: Oslo peace agreements and continuing development in the region; the state of world affairs.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ERIC B. SCHNURER
Public policymaker, social entrepreneur, President of Public Works LLC

Eric Schnurer is founder and president of Public Works LLC, founded in 1995, which has served as an out-sourced, on-going policy office for a half-dozen governors and numerous state and local agencies. He has advised dozens of officials including two presidential canddidtaes, in almost every state and at the federal level, including two presidential candidates, in almost every area of public policy. Schnurer has translated his inside knowledge of government, law, politics, and business into policy pieces for the Center for National Policy, the Progressive Policy Institute, the Aspen Institute, publications such as The Washington Monthly, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, and the op/ed pages of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Baltimore Sun.

Schnurer wrote speeches for President Jimmy Carter while in college, obtained a Master’s degree in public policy from Harvard while writing speeches for presidential contenders John Glenn, Gary Hart, and Mike Dukakis, and attended Columbia Law School, where he made the law review with the highest first-year honors. Schnurer then clerked for a federal appeals judge, was hired to write Supreme Court briefs for the American Civil Liberties Union, and became deputy counsel to Pennsylvania’s Governor. After two years in the Governor’s Office, Schnurer launched his own law practice, litigating a range of free speech, clean government, and cutting-edge constitutional issues. Schnurer led a fight to clean up the corrupt regional port authority and was subsequently appointed by Governor Tom Ridge to the state’s anti-crime commission.

Topics: The future of government and the public sector:  the evolution of government from cop to co-op; the rise of competition among government, the private sector, and others that now “do government,”; “next generation” regulation, the coming profitability of social services, and new thinking on poverty; the rise of the virtual state.; domestic policy issues at the state or federal levels; current politics; and entrepreneurship.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

HARRY SCHWARTZ
Urban planner and environmental consultant; teacher of urban planning

As an urban planner and teacher, Harry Schwartz has worked at public and private agencies on relieving urban poverty and providing affordable housing and public services; founded a consultancy engaged in a wide range of urban projects concerned with neighborhood planning, economic development, environmental preservation and disaster relief and served as the president of an economic development agency involved in training and educating workers, assisting entrepreneurs and protecting industrial space. Recently he has been an independent consultant on economic development, community planning and social and health services for the elderly. He has taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Columbia University, Rutgers University and been a traveling faculty for the International Honors Program in Brazil, South Africa and France. He now teaches in the graduate program in urban planning at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Topics: Migration and migration policy; global urbanization; disaster planning and relief; globalization; sustainable development; aging in America; US economy; the rebirth of American cities.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

LYNNE SHARON SCHWARTZ
Novelist and poet

Lynne Sharon Schwartz is the author of 20 books, including novels, short story collections, non-fiction, poetry, and translations. Her most recent publication is the anthology she edited, The Emergence of Memory: Conversations with W. G. Sebald, containing interviews and essays with the celebrated German writer. Her most well-known novels are The Writing on the Wall, set in New York City after September 11, 2001; In the Family Way: An Urban Comedy; Disturbances in the Field; and Leaving Brooklyn, which was nominated for a Penn/Faulkner Award in fiction. Her latest story collection is Referred Pain, published in 2004. She is also the author of the widely-known memoir, Ruined by Reading; the essay collection, Face to Face; and the poetry collection, In Solitary. She has translated several books from Italian and has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Foundation for the Arts. Her stories and essays have been reprinted in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Best American Essays, and her criticism and reviews have appeared in leading magazines and newspapers. Ms. Schwartz has taught writing and literature at colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad, most recently at Columbia University and Bryn Mawr College. For more information, please visit www.lynnesharonschwartz.com.

Topics: Writing fiction, non-fiction, and poetry; translation.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JOANNA CATHERINE SCOTT
Novelist

Joanna Catherine Scott is the author of the novels Child of the South, The Road from Chapel Hill, The Lucky Gourd Shop, Charlie, and Cassandra, Lost; the nonfiction Indochina's Refugees: Oral Histories from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam; and the prizewinning poetry collections Breakfast at the Shangri-la, Fainting at the Uffizi, and Night Huntress. A graduate of the University of Adelaide and Duke University, she was born in England, raised in Australia, and now lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her website is www.joannacatherinescott.com.

Topics:How literature saved one man’s life; why God said, “I am the word”; adventures in the literature trade; writing what I don’t know; the making of a poet or novelist.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

RICHARD SELLARS
Conservationist and author

Richard Sellars is the author of Preserving Nature in the National Parks: A History (Yale University Press, 1997), a critical study of the conflicts between traditional scenery-and-tourism management and emerging ecological concepts in the national parks, 1872 to the 1990s. He is writing a history of evolving policies and practices in the management of historic and prehistoric sites in the national park system, a chapter of which has been published as Pilgrim Places: Civil War Battlefields, Historic Preservation, and America’s First National Military Parks, 1863-1900 (Eastern National, 2005). Dr. Sellars’ articles on cultural and natural resource preservation have appeared in Wilderness, Journal of Forestry, Landscape, and The Washington Post. He has lectured on preservation philosophy, policy, and practice at many universities and conferences and has conducted numerous courses in historic preservation for the National Park Service. Dr. Sellars served as president of the George Wright Society and on the boards of the Forest History Society, the National Park Service Wilderness Steering Committee, and the City of Santa Fe’s Historic Design Review program.

Topics: The National Park Service–its history and organizational behavior; natural and cultural resource preservation in a bureaucratic context; commemoration of historic places and events.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DEREK SHEARER
Director and Founder, International and Public Affairs Center, Occidental College
(Visits campuses with Sue Toigo)

Derek Shearer has served in government at the national, state, and local levels. In the 1980s, he served as City Planning Commissioner in Santa Monica, California, and led an urban revitalization of the city that won national and international notice. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Ambassador Shearer was a Senior Policy Advisor to Governor Bill Clinton. In 1994, President Clinton named him U.S. Ambassador to Finland, where he served until the end of 1997. In 1998 he became a Senior Fellow at the Economic Strategy Institute, and in 1999 he was a Public Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. In 2001, Ambassador Shearer became Director of Global Affairs and Professor of International Relations at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Swedish Bicentennial grant, and a German Marshall Fund grant; has authored books and articles on economic and international policy; and has lectured at universities and research centers in Europe and Asia.

Topics: U.S. leadership in the post-Cold War era; challenges of the global economy; ambassadorship; European and Asian politics; the role of media in U.S. politics; the Clinton administration; politics after 9/11; bioterrorism and the U.S. Postal Service; U.S. foreign policy after Bush; globalization: is it Americanization?; the Bush administration’s record.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBERT SHETTERLY
Painter, illustrator, activist

Robert Shetterly taught himself drawing, printmaking, and painting after attending Harvard University. For twelve years he illustrated the editorial page drawings for the Maine Times, the National Audubon's children's newspaper Audubon Adventures, and more than 30 books. Now, his paintings and prints are in collections all over the U.S. and Europe. A collection of his drawings and etchings, Speaking Fire at Stones, was published in 1993 with poems written in response to them by William Carpenter. He is well known for his series of 70 painted etchings in response to William Blake's Proverbs of Hell and for another series of 50 painted etchings reflecting on the metaphor of the Annunciation. His painting has tended toward the narrative and the surreal, and he has not been, until 2002, a portrait painter. For over six years he has been painting the series of portraits, numbering now over 120, called Americans Who Tell the Truth. The show has been traveling around the country for over five years and is scheduled for the next two. Venues, across more than 20 states, have included everything from university museums and grade school libraries to sandwich shops and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. A book of portraits by the same name was published in 2005 and in 2006 won the top award of the International Reading Association for Intermediate Non-fiction. The portraits have given him an opportunity to speak with children and adults all over this country about the necessity of dissent in a democracy, the obligations of citizenship, sustainability, U.S. history, and how democracy cannot function if politicians do not tell the truth and the media do not report it. He has also engaged in a wide variety of political and humanitarian work with many of the people whose portraits he has painted. In the spring of 2007, he traveled to Rwanda to work in a village of survivors of the 1994 genocide. Much of his current work focuses on honoring and working with the activists trying to bring an end to the terrible practice of Mountaintop Removal by coal companies in Appalachia. Since 1990, he has been President of the Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA) and producer of the UMVA’s Maine Masters Project, an on-going series of video documentaries about Maine artists. The Americans Who Tell the Truth portraits can be seen at www.americanswhotellthetruth.org. His essays about his work are also available there.

Topics: The necessity of dissent in the maintenance of democracy; the obligations of citizenship; what are the contradictions between idealism and politics, truth telling, and compromise?; do we have a free press?; workshop in self-portraiture.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DAVID K. SHIPLER
Author; former Foreign Correspondent, The New York Times

As a correspondent for The New York Times, David Shipler covered South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Thailand between 1973 and 1975. He spent four years in Russia as Moscow Bureau Chief and documented his experience in the best-selling book, Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams, which won the Overseas Press Club Award. From 1979 to 1984, he served as Bureau Chief of The New York Times in Jerusalem and shared the 1983 George Polk Award for coverage of the Lebanon War. Mr. Shipler spent a year as a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. Mr. Shipler served as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent in the Washington Bureau of The New York Times until 1988. As a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1988-90, he wrote on transitions to democracy in Russia and Eastern Europe for The New Yorker and other publications. In 1997, he published A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America. He has taught at Princeton University, American University, and Dartmouth College. His most recent book is The Working Poor: Invisible in America.

Topics: Black-white relations in the U.S.; U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East; Israeli-Palestinian conflict, race relations, and poverty; Russia; Vietnam; civil liberties; journalism.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ANIL SINGH-MOLARES
Global entrepreneur, former Microsoft executive, philanthropist

Born in Holland and raised in Europe and the United States, Anil Singh-Molares is a global citizen and businessperson. Fluent in Spanish, French, and English, he is a citizen of Spain and permanent resident of the United States. Drawing on his liberal arts education, cross-cultural upbringing, and managerial skills, Singh-Molares advanced during 1991-2003 from managing a Microsoft foreign language team (40 translators and terminologists) to overseeing all internationalization vendor relations for the company (more than $200 million in annual expenditures). Winner of the Microsoft Achievement Award, he negotiated all contracts related to internationalization vendors, giving him a deep understanding of the pros and cons of outsourcing. Since leaving the software giant, he founded and serves as CEO of EchoMundi LLC, a rapidly growing international services firm that helps corporations do business abroad. Responding to the experience of many around him who have dealt with a life-threatening, pregnancy-related disease, he is co-founder and board member of the Preeclampsia Foundation.

Topics: Citizenship and cosmopolitanism; globalization (ideals and realities); pros and cons of outsourcing; immigration and identity; the entrepreneur and the corporate executive; philanthropy; the liberal arts and a career in business.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

STANLEY R. SLOAN
Independent writer and lecturer

Stanley Sloan is Founding Director of the Atlantic Community Initiative, a research institute aimed at strengthening the relationship between the United States and Europe. He is currently a faculty member and Visiting Scholar at the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs at Middlebury College. He lectures regularly at the NATO College in Rome, Italy. He began his 30-year career in public service with the CIA and then worked as a Senior Specialist for the Congressional Research Service, where during the 1990s he reported to Congress on NATO’s role in the post-Cold War global environment. During 1998-1999, Mr. Sloan served as principal author for Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy project on Congress and foreign policy and in 2003-2004 for the Institute’s study on “The Use of U.S. Power.” Mr. Sloan has authored articles and studies on foreign and defense policy issues, including the recent “How Does Religion Affect Relations Between America and Europe?” published in EuroFuture. The second edition of his book, NATO, the European Union and the Atlantic Community: Transatlantic Bargain Reconsidered was published in 2005.

Topics: Religion’s impact on U.S.-European relations; transatlantic political/security relations after the war with Iraq; the use of U.S. power and U.S. interests; Congress and foreign policy; international organizations; NATO’s future; careers in foreign policy.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

GARY SMITH
Independent music producer

Record producer and recording artist Gary Smith of Fort Apache Studios has followed a path of consecutive and overlapping projects in the field of arts and music creation, production, management, and promotion for two decades. He recorded dozens of albums and singles for groundbreaking bands and solo artists including the Pixies and Ten Thousand Maniacs, and produced Live at Forte Apache, a weekly broadcast of live performances by internationally-known talent including David Bowie, Beck and Radiohead. He is the founder of Kidder Farm, a renovated horse breeding facility turned into a recording studio and workspace for artists, writers, and musicians. He has pursued community-building in the Connecticut River Valley, Vermont, by creating a start-up community radio station, the Great Falls Community Broadcasting Company. Mr. Smith spurred local economic development and provide a venue for public performances by founding a multipurpose performance space in an abandoned hotel building. The facility has hosted 200 productions in two years.

Topics: The music business; the recording industry; the effect of media consolidation on musical diversity; the effect of the internet on a fragmented audience; community radio in the age of the internet; intellectual property and the modern musician.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

TOBY SMITH
Sports journalist and author

Toby Smith is a journalist whose work has concentrated primarily on sports, particularly its attendant controversies. Smith has been a sports editor and freelance contributor to major publications, including Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has covered events such as the World Series, the World Cup, the Olympics and the Super Bowl. He has written nine books of nonfiction, some of which have focused on sports. He is working on a book about the iconic prizefighter Jack Johnson. Smith was twice named a Fulbright scholar to Romania where he created the first course in sports-writing. He has worked in Seoul, London, Armenia, Albuquerque, and Connecticut. He has taught at Ohio State, University of New Mexico, Wesleyan University and other national and international institutions.

Topics: Sports in American culture; UFOs, Roswell, and the whole enchilada: why this spaceship stuff just will not go away; writing on what you know best; race in America.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

FRANKLIN SPINNEY
Former U.S. Air Force Defense Analyst

Franklin Spinney began his career with the United States Air Force, where he developed and managed an information center that processed combat data from Vietnam and the Middle East. In 1997 he joined the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Program Analysis and Evaluation, where he prepared major evaluations of the Defense Department's program plans and analyzed tactical weapons. During the 1980s, he produced three major studies that showed how budgeting optimistic assumptions undermined the execution of DoD's five-year plans. These studies correctly predicted the budgetary problems of the late 1980s and became the subject of eight congressional hearings, a Defense Science Board summer study, and testimony to the Packard Commission. Since his retirement in 2003, he has run a Web site called Defense and the National Interest, which fosters debate on the role of U.S. armed forces in the post-Cold War era and on the resources devoted to them. The site has been described as a leader in the publication and dissemination of analysis on defense matters. Mr. Spinney’s books include Defense Facts of Life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch and Defense Power Games.

Topics: Defense and foreign policy—accountability in budgeting, the role of technology and how it distorts military doctrine; the role of water in Arab/Israeli dispute; strategy in American foreign policy; military reform.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ERIC STANGE
Documentary filmmaker; Executive Producer and Director of Spy Pond Productions

Eric Stange is a documentary filmmaker who specializes in historical subjects. His films have appeared on PBS, The Discovery Channel, the National Geographic channel, and the BBC. Most recently, he wrote and directed two hours of the dramatized PBS mini-series The War That Made America, about the French and Indian War. His films include Murder At Harvard, which explores the process of historical inquiry through a murder story; Children of the Left and Love In The Cold War; and part of the six-part series, Making Sense of the 60s. In 2002 and 2003, Stange was a fellow at Harvard University's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, where he developed a mini-series, Picturing the Past, that explores and analyzes forms of historical representation, particularly of visual forms. Before becoming a filmmaker, Mr. Stange wrote about art and culture for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic Monthly, The Independent (London), and other publications. See also www.spypondproductions.com.

Topics: The filmmaking process and the television profession; media literacy and genre-blurring in our TV-dominated culture; historical literacy; analysis of non-fiction television; careers in media; documentary production; art in film and documentaries.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ALICE STEINBACH
Journalist, author, columnist, educator

Alice Steinbach is one of nine journalists featured in “Women on Deadline: A Collection of America’s Best,” along with Anna Quindlen and the late Molly Ivins. Her numerous honors include a Pulitzer Prize, two Penney-Missouri Awards, including one for her groundbreaking “Postmark Paris” series, reported from France, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and several honors for her column writing. Since leaving daily journalism, Steinbach has written three non-fictions books—two of them have been international best-sellers: “Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman,” and “Educating Alice: The Adventures of a Curious Woman.” She has taught and lectured extensively at universities, including Washington & Lee, Loyola, and Princeton Universities, where she held the position of McGraw Professor of Writing. Over the last several years she has studied the writing of Jane Austen at the University of Exeter, England and Brasenose College, Oxford and was a guest speaker before the Jane Austen Society of North America. Currently, she is at work on a memoir titled, “Paris, Again.” Two years ago Steinbach began doing monthly book reviews for the Baltimore affiliate of NPR. For the last year or so, Steinbach has been writing a syllabus that purports to teach journalists how to turn their reporting into a fact-based “story” that can offer the appeal and reading ease of fiction with non-fiction’s goal of informing and educating.

Topics: The art and shape of column writing and why we read them; the importance of the liberal arts in a high-tech world; meeting the challenge of journalism in a society where print media is no longer king; important lessons we can still learn from Jane Austen’s life and novels; what is a memoir and do you have one to write?

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MARVIN SUOMI
President and CEO, KUD International LLC (UK); Chairman, KUD Limited (UK)

Marvin Suomi is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Princeton University. He has worked in government service as well as business. He joined Kajima International in 1979 and was elected an officer in 1982, to the Board of Directors in 1984, and to the Executive Committee in 1991. Presently he is an officer or director of numerous subsidiaries of Kajima, one of the largest construction-related service companies in the world, with a core business of architecture, construction, and real estate development that spans 40 countries. Mr. Suomi serves on the governing/advisory boards of Allegheny College, California Lutheran University, Concordia University (MN), Finlandia University, the University of Hawaii, the University of Michigan, the Aquarium of the Pacific, the California Science Center, and LA’s Best. He is a Trustee of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. Formerly he was Chair of the Princeton-in-Asia Foundation; a member of an advisory council at Princeton University; and a member of the Board of Governors of the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni.

Topics: Conflict resolution: Japan and the U.S.; working in a Japanese company: a changing environment; why read Japanese literature?; a cultural view of ethics; comparing cultural policy; Japanese patterns of behavior; the changing role of women in Japan; educating a Japanese child.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

KAREN SWENSON
Poet, travel writer

Karen Swenson has lectured at Columbia University’s School of Journalism and has taught creative writing at the City College of the City of New York, Fordham College Lincoln Center, and Scripps College. She is presently teaching at Barnard College. She has been a Poet-in-the-Schools throughout the Midwest and Poet-in-Residence at the University of Denver, the University of Idaho, Skidmore College, Clark University, Central College in Iowa, and Weber State in Utah. Ms. Swenson’s most recent works include A Daughter's Latitude; A Sense of Direction; East-West; and An Attic of Ideals. Her poems have been published in The Yale Review, Commonwealth, and Poetry London. She has published travel articles on Asia in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other publications. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times, and her book, The Landlady in Bangkok, won the National Poetry Series Award. She was recently selected to be a Fulbright Senior Specialist. She has been to Tibet seven times.

Topics: Writing poetry and prose; journalism; travel; Tibet and China, the individual and the globe.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

MARY TABOR
Author; former public affairs director, American Petroleum Institute

Mary Tabor published her first book of fiction at age 60 after a 16-year career in corporate America, a senior executive, director of public affairs writing for the oil industry. She was a high school English teacher who joined the business world, then made a transition from the business world to the creative world, leaving her corporate job when she was 50 to earn an MFA degree in Creative Writing. Her book, The Woman Who Never Cooked, won Mid-List Press’s First Series Award. Ms. Tabor’s experience spans the worlds of journalism, business, education and fiction writing. She teaches fiction writing at George Washington University and the Smithsonian’s Campus-on-the-Mall, and she works with the Washington, DC, library to reach less-privileged populations on how to begin writing.

Topics: The craft and invention of fiction writing; bridging the gap from business and politics to the creative world; establishing a foundation for attaining life-long career goals based on a liberal arts education.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

NANCY E. TATE
Executive Director, League of Women Voters

Since 2000, Nancy Tate has been the Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of the United States, a nonpartisan political organization encouraging informed and active citizen participation in government. From 1994 until accepting the top staff position at the League, Ms. Tate was the Chief Operating Officer of the National Academy of Public Administration, an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization examining the emerging issues of governance to improve the effectiveness of government at all levels. Previously a senior administrator in a management consulting firm, she has also worked in the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, and the Office of Economic Opportunity. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Public Administration. Ms. Tate has a BA in political science from Stanford University and a Master’s degree in public administration from The George Washington University.

Topics: The U.S. election process—and possible reforms; voting and other types of civic participation by young people; women in politics (and as voters); civic participation; life in non-profit organizations.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

SUE TOIGO
Chairman, Fitzgibbon Toigo Associates; Executive Director, The Children’s Alliance
(Visits campuses with Derek Shearer)

Sue Toigo is Chairman of Fitzgibbon Toigo Associates, a financial broker/dealer which raises investment capital from global institutional investors for international private equity, real estate and hedge funds. She co-founded the Institute for Fiduciary Education (IFE) in 1985 to provide educational and informational services to institutional investors worldwide. In 1989, she established the Financial Services Fellowship with the belief that diversifying the financial industry would, in turn, bring capital into under-served communities and foster economic enrichment. The Fellowship increases opportunities for minorities in the financial services industry by providing mentors, summer internships, job placement services, financial assistance, and ethics and leadership training to talented minority students enrolled in M.B.A. programs. The fellowship program was renamed the Robert A. Toigo Foundation in 1993 and supports 130 students each year at the country’s seventeen top business schools. Ms. Toigo previously served 16 years as a lobbyist and founding board member of the California Children’s Lobby. As Executive Director of The Children’s Alliance, she has helped establish childcare centers throughout California. She has been inducted into Berkeley’s Women’s Hall of Fame, serves on the Columbia Business School Board of Overseers and on the Advisory Board of AltruShare Securities, the first traditional brokerage company in the U.S. with a non-profit ownership structure. AltruShare donates 60% of profits to non-profit community development organizations. Ms. Toigo has spoken in Australia, New Zealand and Chile for the U.S. State Department.

Topics: Changing the world through the classroom; putting academic theory and enthusiasm to work in the community; diversifying Wall Street to change the face of finance; enriching communities through mentoring; developing effective non-profit organizations.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND
Former Lt. Governor of Maryland, Former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has a long history of accomplishment in the public arena, and for the last six years has been making her mark in the private sector. After two years at Lehman Brothers, she is now a Senior Advisor at a hedge fund run by the former treasurer of the World Bank. In the public sector, she held a variety of roles but also worked on important issues like public safety, improving access to higher education, and the importance of public service. As the Lt. Governor of Maryland, the first woman in this role, Townsend had direct command over a variety of major cabinet departments. In her previous role as U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, she worked diligently on the Police Corps, a program granting higher education scholarships to those who pledged to work as police officers. Townsend is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the Inter-American Dialogue and serves on the boards of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Robert Kennedy Memorial and the Brady Campaign. She is the author of Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Mixed God with Politics and Lost Their Way (2007) and has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Maryland, Harvard University, and St. Mary’s College (MD). She has appeared on Meet the Press, the Colbert Report, Larry King, and Greta VanSusteran. She is the eldest child of U.S. Senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy.

Topics: Women: taking power seriously; the persuit of happiness: volunteerism and service; the human factor: poverty and global climate change; progress and possibility in Africa; failing America’s faithful: religion’s role in politics, public policy conundrums in an off economy.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JOSEPH TREASTER
Retired New York Times journalist, author

Joseph B. Treaster is a retired reporter for The New York Times. Beginning as a correspondent in Vietnam, Mr. Treaster has covered wars, politics, diplomacy, disasters, business, and everyday life throughout the world. Previously, Mr. Treaster’s primary assignment was writing about drug trafficking and illicit drug use in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. He also served as the Caribbean correspondent, responsible for parts of Latin America as well as the island region. He reported from Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait in the years leading to the Persian Gulf War and returned to Kuwait in the fall of 1994 when Saddam Hussein threatened another invasion. Since the summer of 1996, Mr. Treaster has been a financial news reporter for The Times, concentrating on the insurance industry. Mr. Treaster is the author of Paul Volcker: The Making of A Financial Legend and a co-author of a book chronicling the experiences of the Americans taken hostage in Iran, Inside Report on the Hostage Crisis: No Hiding Place. A third book, Hurricane Force: In The Path of America’s Deadliest Storms, was published in June 2007. He was recently appointed to the Knight Chair at the University of Miami, where he will teach and continue to write.

Topics: forthcoming.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

STEPHEN VETTER
President, international voluntary service organization and advisor to national foundations, national and international development agencies

Stephen Vetter’s work has long been focused on helping poor communities and their leaders overcome poverty. He has held executive leadership positions in U.S. government agencies, foundations and the non-profit sector.  He is currently the president and CEO of Partners of the Americas, the largest inter-American voluntary organization committed to improving the life conditions of children and families living in poverty.  Prior to this position, Vetter served as president of Eureka Communities, a non-profit organization dedicated to strengthening the leadership skills of nonprofit organizations combating poverty. He worked for the Inter-American Foundation for 21 years in the capacities of president (interim), program vice president, director of outreach, and foundation representative to the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico, and Brazil.Vetter has advised a number of major foundations, including the Ford, Mott, and Annie E. Casey Foundations, the White House, the U.S. Congress, and the Inter-American Development Bank on developing a framework for supporting civil society in the hemisphere. He has worked with such national organizations as the Council on Foundations, the Independent Sector, and the Public Education Network.

Topics: The importance of service learning for students; the power of volunteers in a global society; the loss of social trust and what it means for the new citizen; global environmental change and local responses—what you can do; youth leadership issues; the importance of a liberal education in a conservative world.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DAVID WAGONER
Poet, novelist, and playwright

A poet, novelist, playwright and screenwriter, David Wagoner served as editor of Poetry Northwest from 1966 to 2002. Literary adviser to the Seattle Repertory Theater and editor of the Princeton University Press Poetry Series and the University of Missouri Press Breakthrough Poetry Series, he has published nineteen books of poetry and ten novels and compiled Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke: 1943-1963. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Mr. Wagoner has received the Ruth Lilly Prize and The Literary Review Prize in poetry, among numerous other distinctions. He was Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets for more than two decades and has taught at DePauw University, Penn State, and University of Washington. He is now a professor emeritus at University of Washington.

Topics: Poetry and the landscapes of the psyche; what's happening in American poetry; writing a poem; poetry performance.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DAN WAKEFIELD
Novelist, journalist, screenwriter

The works of Dan Wakefield (nearly 20 books, dozens of magazine articles, and an online column) provide a profoundly engaging and multi-dimensional entrée into post-World War II America—from cultural and political history to spiritual life. His memoir New York in the Fifties, which captures the literary and artistic icons of Greenwich Village, was made into a Sundance Channel documentary featuring—among many others—Wakefield’s friend Robert Redford. Kurt Vonnegut described Wakefield’s 1950s coming-of-age novel Going All the Way as “the truest and funniest sex novel any American will ever write.” Wakefield adapted the screenplay for the movie version, which starred Ben Affleck and Jill Clayburgh. People magazine called his best-selling memoir Returning “a deeply personal account of spiritual rebirth and growth in a roller-coaster career that plummeted from literary heights to alcoholic depths, only to rise again.” His honors include a Neiman Fellowship, Rockefeller Grant for Creative Writing, and an NEA fellowship. Presently writer-in-residence at Florida International University, Mr. Wakefield has taught at Boston University, Emerson College, the Iowa Writers Workshop, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. See also www.danwakefield.com.

Topics: Writers, artists, and musicians of the 1950s; beatniks and squares; the novelist in Hollywood; contemporary Christianity and spirituality; creative writing and nonfiction workshops.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JANET WALLACH
Journalist and author; Senior Vice President, Seeds of Peace

Janet Wallach has written extensively about the Middle East. Her book Desert Queen is a biography of Gertrude Bell, the British official most responsible for the creation of Iraq after World War I. In addition, Ms. Wallach has written Seraglio, a historical novel about Topkapi Palace and the Ottoman Empire, and several non-fiction books, including Still Small Voices, which recounts the stories of Arabs and Israelis during the first intifada, Arafat: In The Eyes of the Beholder, and The New Palestinians. Ms. Wallach has interviewed heads of state and leading Middle East personalities for The Washington Post Magazine and other periodicals. She is President Emerita and a co-founder of Seeds of Peace, a preeminent conflict resolution program that brings together teenagers from areas of conflict and violence—particularly the Middle East—and also works with youths from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Balkans, and divided Cyprus. The organization has a year-round program that includes a summer camp in Maine as well as workshops, seminars, and conferences in the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, and the U.S.

Topics: The Middle East; Iraq’s past, present and future; changing relationships in the Middle East; looking at history—what we should have known about Iraq; the Israeli/Palestinian conflict—the heart of the matter; conflict resolution (teaching enemies to talk and listen).

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

JOHN WALTERS
Former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy; foreign and domestic policy expert

John P. Walters joined Hudson Institute, a non-partisan research organization, in January 2009 as executive vice president.  He has extensive experience in foreign and domestic policy and in philanthropy.  From December 2001 to January 2009, he was director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and a cabinet member during the Bush Administration.  As the nation's "drug czar," Walters guided all aspects of federal drug policy and programs—supporting efforts that decreased teen drug use 25 percent, increased substance abuse treatment and screening in the healthcare system, and dramatically dropped the availability of cocaine and methamphetamine in the U.S.  He also helped build critical programs to counter “narco-terrorism” in Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan. From 1996 until 2001 Walters served as president of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a national association of charitable foundations and individual donors.  He was assistant to the secretary and chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan Administration and also served in the Division of Education Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1982-1985. Walters has taught political science at Michigan State University's James Madison College and at Boston College.  He holds a BA from Michigan State University and an MA from the University of Toronto.

Topics: Drug control policy: prevention, treatment, and reducing supply; narcoterrorism and U.S. policy in Colombia, Afghanistan, and Mexico; philanthropic giving.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

GOVERNOR CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN
Former Governor of New Jersey; former cabinet member; co-chair of the Republican Leadership Council

Christine Todd Whitman is President of The Whitman Strategy Group (WSG), a consulting firm that specializes in energy and environmental issues. She is also co-chair of the Republican Leadership Council (RLC), whose mission is to support fiscally conservative, socially tolerant candidates and to reclaim the word “Republican.” Governor Whitman served in the cabinet of President George W. Bush as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from January of 2001 until June of 2003. She was the 50th Governor of the State of New Jersey, serving as its first woman governor from 1994 until 2001. Whitman serves on the Board of Directors of S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., and United Technologies Corporation. She co-chairs Clean and Safe Energy (CASE) with Dr. Patrick Moore and serves as an advisor to the Aspen Rodel Fellowship program. Governor Whitman serves on the Board of Trustees of the Eisenhower Fellowships, the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Governing Board of the Park City Center for Public Policy, and the Board of the New America Foundation. She is the author of a 2005 New York Times best seller that examined the future of the GOP, It’s My Party Too.

Topics: Environment; women in leadership; current politics; the state of the Republican Party.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

HELEN WHITNEY
Producer, director, writer of documentary films

Helen Whitney has worked as a producer, director, and writer of documentaries and feature films since 1971. Her work has appeared on ABC’s Closeup and PBS’s American Masters, as well as on FRONTLINE. Her documentaries have ranged over a variety of subjects, including youth gangs, presidential candidates, the mentally ill, Pope John Paul II, the class structure of Great Britain, homosexuality, and the photographer Richard Avedon. Ms. Whitney maintains a passionate personal interest in the religious journey. Her 90-minute ABC News Closeup documentary, “The Monastery,” about the Cistercians in Spencer, Massachusetts, left her searching for other spiritual projects. This passion was also evident in FRONTLINE’s “John Paul II: The Millennial Pope,” a film for which she and her team conducted more than 800 interviews in six countries. Ms. Whitney’s documentaries and features have received honors including an Emmy Award, a Peabody, an Oscar nomination, the Humanitas Award, and the duPont-Columbia Journalism Award. See also www.helenwhitney.com.

Topics: Spiritual journeys; documentary film production; faith and doubt.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

ROBERT WIENER
Executive Director, California Coalition for Rural Housing Project

Robert Wiener is the founder and Director of the California Coalition for Rural Housing Project (CCRH), which has been the leading voice in California for the production and preservation of affordable rural housing since 1981. Under his leadership, CCRH has successfully lobbied for millions of dollars in state housing assistance, benefiting farm workers, first-time homebuyers, the elderly and disabled, and large families living in rural and urbanizing communities. Before forming CCRH, Dr. Wiener worked with community development groups in Alaska, Oregon, and California. He is a member of the American Collegiate Schools of Planning and the National Rural Housing Coalition, and he sits on the board of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. He is the author and co-editor of Housing in Rural America: Building Affordable and Inclusive Communities and has published articles on housing issues in trade magazines and books.

Topics: History of the federal housing program; housing and social policy; housing and poverty in rural America; residential segregation and discrimination; community development; how to start, sustain, and administer nonprofit organizations.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

DON WINKELMANN
Former Chairman, Technical Advisory Committee, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

After teaching economics at Iowa State University, Don Winkelmann worked in developing countries for 30 years, forging ties among agriculture’s academic, private, and public sectors. From 1972 to 1985 he headed the Economics Program of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, which focuses on developing improved technologies for maize and wheat farmers in developing countries. He then headed the Center until 1995, when he became Chairman of the Technical Advisory Committee of the CGIAR, which aims to alleviate poverty and protect the environment in developing countries through improved agricultural technologies. He holds honorary doctorates from Punjab Agricultural University (India) and El Colegio de Postgraduados (Mexico). In 1994 he received the Condecoración del Aguila Azteca, Mexico’s award to foreigners. He is active in Santa Fe’s civil society, in particular its Council on International Relations and its International Folk Art Market.

Topics: Mediating poverty in developing countries through sustainable agriculture; agriculture’s effects on the environment—managing better from Kansas to Kenya; genetically modified organisms—poverty, ethics, and recognizing potentials and trade-offs; globalization and the rural poor—upsides and downsides; immigration—winners and losers.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

KENNETH YALOWITZ
Former U.S. Ambassador to Belarus and Georgia

During his career with the Foreign Service, Kenneth Yalowitz worked in The Hague, Moscow (twice), and the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels. His domestic titles have included Country Director for Australia-New Zealand Affairs, Deputy Director for Economics of the Office of Soviet Union Affairs, and Congressional Foreign Affairs Fellow. He won the State Department’s Superior Honor Award for his coordination of the interagency U.S. response to the 1983 Soviet shooting down of flight KAL 007. He twice served as Ambassador, first to Belarus from 1994-1997, and then to Georgia from 1998-2001. As Ambassador to Georgia, he received the State Department’s Frasure Award in recognition of his efforts to prevent the spread of the Chechen war into Georgia. After his State Department service, Ambassador Yalowitz taught political science at Georgetown University and was diplomat in residence at American University. He also served on the Institutional Review Board of the National Cancer Institute. Mr. Yalowitz is currently Director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.

Topics: Transition to democracy; global health; U.S. foreign policy; public service; developments in countries of the former Soviet Union; European integration; global health challenges; why the U.S.S.R. collapsed; the roles of U.S. ambassadors.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

AL YOUNG
Poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter

Al Young was awarded a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship in 1966 at Stanford University, where he later began his teaching career as a lecturer in creative writing and literature. He has taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz and has traveled around the world lecturing on a variety of topics, including American popular culture, the arts, music, myth, creativity, and human survival. His books include Color: A Sampling of African American Writers; Heaven: Poems 1958-1988; Mingus/Mingus: Two Memoirs; Seduction by Light; and Ask Me Now. Mr.Young’s poems, non-fiction works, and stories have appeared in magazines, including Essence, New Directions, and The Paris Review. As a screenwriter, he has produced scripts for Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Richard Pryor. As an editor, he co-founded the literary magazine Yardbird Reader and a similar project, Quilt, which sought out and published works by new talent.

Topics: Screenwriting; writing novels and poetry; “musical memoirs” integrating autobiography, criticism, mysticism, and poetry; creating believable characters.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

SAMIN ZIA-ZARIFI
Asia director, Amnesty International, London

Saman Zia-Zarifi has recently assumed the title of Asia director at Amnesty International’s London office. Formerly the Human Rights Watch Asia research director and Washington, DC-based advocate, Mr. Zarifi made several emergency missions to investigate conflicts in Afghanistan, Nepal, and Iraq. Prior to joining HRW, he was a senior research fellow at the Department of International Law at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he conducted a special project on multinational corporations. He has written widely on the impact of multinational corporations and economic globalization on human rights, including Liability of Multinational Corporations for Violating International Law (co-edited with Menno Kamminga, 2000). He holds a BA and JD from Cornell University and an L.L.M. in International Law from New York University School of Law. He practiced for several years as a corporate litigator in Los Angeles.

Topics: forthcoming.

back to alpha listing / back to categories / back to top of profiles

Copyright ©1997-2009 Council of Independent Colleges. All rights reserved.