2014 Institute Faculty and Speakers
Martha Goldberg Aronson '89, Executive Vice President & President of Global Healthcare, Ecolab, Inc.
Martha Goldberg Aronson is Executive Vice President and President of Global Healthcare for Ecolab Inc., the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services that provide and protect clean water, safe food, abundant energy and healthy environments in more than 160 countries. Prior to joining Ecolab in 2012, she was Senior Vice President and President, North America, at Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc., a leading worldwide manufacturer and provider of medical technologies and related services for the healthcare industry. Before Hill-Rom, Goldberg Aronson worked at Medtronic in numerous general management positions in the U.S. and Europe, and led several functions.
Prior to joining Medtronic, Goldberg Aronson was an associate consultant at Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm, based in Boston. She graduated phi beta kappa and magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1989. At Wellesley she was named All-American in Division III tennis, as well as Academic All-American. She earned her Master’s in Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1995.
Goldberg Aronson currently serves on the Board of Directors of Hutchinson Technology and the Guthrie Theater. She also serves on the Board of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, where she is Secretary / Treasurer. She previously served on the Board of the MN Opera, the Minneapolis Club, Friends of Wellesley College Athletics, and is currently a member of the Minnesota Women’s Economic Roundtable and the Wellesley College Business Leadership Council. Martha was named to the Edina High School Hall of Fame and the Edina High School Athletic Hall of Fame. She also received the Women In Business and Industry Leader Award in 2009 from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.
Goldberg Aronson lives in Minneapolis with her husband, Dan, and their three sons, Sam (13), Robbie (10) and Max (7).
Amy Banzaert, Visiting Lecturer in Engineering, Wellesley College
Amy Banzaert is Wellesley's first engineering professor. She received her S.B., S.M., and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Robert S. Berg, Professor of Physics, Wellesley College
Professor Robbie Berg is the Chair of the Wellesley College Department of Physics. He received his A.B. from Princeton University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Berg’s research centers on developing new computational tools for use in science education. He collaborates closely with the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, working on the creation of a new generation of "programmable bricks" called Crickets. The LEGO Mindstorms product, which was released in the Fall of 1998 by the LEGO company, was inspired by their group's work. Since 2003 he has worked to develop a commercial version of the Crickets that is now being distributed through The Playful Invention Company. (See www.picocricket.com) With Mitchel Resnick (MIT) and Mike Eisenberg (Colorado), Professor Berg helped develop an NSF-funded project called Beyond Black Boxes, in which children use Crickets to design their own instruments for scientific investigations.
He serves as an advisor for the Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) Network, in which the Media Lab and museums around the world are finding ways to encourage more creative uses of digital media by blending art, science and technology. With Franklyn Turbak of the Wellesley's computer science department, Professor Berg created a course called Robotic Design Studio, where students use programmable bricks to design, build, and exhibit their robotic creations. In collaboration with faculty from Olin College, he has also developed a new course, Introduction to Engineering, that provides Wellesley students with an opportunity to explore first-hand the way engineers approach problems in the world and serves as bridge to more advanced engineering opportunities at Olin and MIT.
Professor Berg also has a long-standing interest in the optical properties of semiconductors. More recently, he has been working with other Wellesley faculty and students on a project that uses narrow band-width diode lasers to trap and cool rubidium atoms. He has worked with Martina Koniger, and Gary Harris of Wellesley’s Department of Biological Sciences, and a number of Wellesley students to develop an optical technique for monitoring light-induced chloroplast movements in leaves.
Dan Brabander, Associate Professor and Chair of the Geosciences Department, Wellesley College
Dan Brabander holds B.S. and M.A. degrees from Binghamton University and a Ph.D. from Brown University. He was a postdoctoral research associate at the Parsons Lab at MIT where he applied geochemistry tools to large-scale environmental engineering challenges around arsenic poisoning in Bangladesh and metal biogeochemical cycling in urban watersheds.
He currently holds an appointment as a visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health where research questions focus on the intersection of environmental health and medical geosciences. At Wellesley, his courses help students develop a toolbox of skills to frame and analyze complex environmental systems. He teaches a core course Environmental, Health, and Sustainability Sciences and upper level courses in Isotope Geology and Environmental Geochemistry. In Fall 2012 Professor Brabander and Olin College of Engineering colleague Professor Rob Martello developed and co-taught a transdisciplinary course Paradigms, Predictions, and Joules: A Historical and Scientific Approach to Energy and the Environment that focused on the "grand challenges" at the interface between energy and the environment through the disciplinary lenses of the history of technology and environmental science. Key components of all these courses is the creation of a research-rich setting where qualitative and quantitative modeling skills are honed through project based learning. In 2010, he was awarded the College’s Pinanski Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Professor Brabander has published over 20 peer-reviewed scholarly articles with recent work featured in numerous media outlets including NPR, ABC news, the Boston Globe, and Time Magazine. His current research focus is environmental geochemistry, health, and the quantification of lead exposure pathways in the built environment. Applications include fate and transport studies of contaminants in watersheds and urban settings and sustainable urban agriculture.
Nicholas Burns, Professor, Harvard Kennedy School
Nicholas Burns is Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is Faculty Chair of the school’s Middle East Initiative, India & South Asia Program, and is director of the Future of Diplomacy Project. He writes a bi-weekly foreign affairs column for the Boston Globe and is a senior foreign affairs columnist for GlobalPost. He is also Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and a Senior Counselor at the Cohen Group. He served in the US Foreign Service for twenty-seven years, during which time he was appointed Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Ambassador to NATO, Ambassador to Greece, and State Department Spokesman. He worked on the National Security Council staff as Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H.W. Bush.
Cathryn Clüver, Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project
Cathryn Clüver is the Executive Director of the Future of Diplomacy Project, which examines the challenges to negotiation and statecraft in the 21st century. In 2013 she assumed an additional role as the interim Executive Director of the India and South Asia Program at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
She looks back on a ten-year career in international journalism and communications, during which she covered global affairs, most notably EU politics and business and the aftermath of September 11th, working as a producer and writer for CNN-International based in Atlanta and London.
She served on the management team of the European Policy Centre in Brussels, where she was the Deputy Editor of its public policy journal, Challenge Europe and the think tank’s Communications Director, before joining Roland Berger Strategy Consultants as Senior Journalist and consultant in 2005. There, she worked on public policy issues (demographic change, urban competitiveness, green energy) and advised both the consultancy’s Chinese and French offices on branding and communication strategies working in Shanghai, Beijing and Paris.
Her past research work and writing has focused on comparative immigration systems and border control in the European Union and the US. She has lectured on EU communications policy and European competitiveness and cohesion at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the University of Nancy, France and her alma mater, Brown University. In her current role, she examines negotiation practice and the impact of technology and communication on diplomatic actors. She serves as a commentator on diplomatic issues, transatlantic relations and immigration policy for Quartz Magazine/Atlantic Monthly, Al Jazeera America, ABC radio, Wall Street Journal Radio and on German television and radio, including on ARD and PHOENIX.
Cathryn holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration (MPA) from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she was a Hauser Fellow in Nonprofit Management and recipient of the Donald K. Price award for academic excellence and community service. She is a graduate of the London School of Economics, where she received a Masters Degree in European Studies and of Brown University, where she completed her undergraduate degree in International Relations and French Civilization. Cathryn is an elected member of the HKS Alumni Board of Directors, serves on the Advisory Council of the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University and was named a Truman National Security Fellow in 2011.
Ophelia Dahl DS '94, Executive Director, Partners In Health
For over twenty years, Ophelia Dahl has worked as an advocate for the health and rights of the poor. Ms. Dahl first traveled to impoverished central Haiti in 1983 at age eighteen to volunteer her services at Eye Care Haiti, a small clinic. It was in Haiti where she met Paul Farmer, and since then they have worked to bring health care to the destitute sick, beginning with a few small villages in Haiti’s Central Plateau. The principle that motivated Ms. Dahl and her colleagues was simple: everyone, whether poor or affluent, deserves to benefit from the same high standard of medical care.
Partners In Health (PIH), a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts and dedicated to addressing health inequities and social injustice, was formally founded in 1987. Ms. Dahl, a co-founder and trustee of PIH, currently serves as its Executive Director. She has also served as chair of PIH’s board since 1993. Expanding on the work started in Haiti’s Central Plateau, Ms. Dahl has traveled to and supported the establishment of major PIH projects in Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Russia, the urban United States, Rwanda, Lesotho, and Malawi. Today, PIH operates over 60 hospitals and health centers in these countries with a staff of 128 in Boston and more than 12,000 colleagues worldwide.
Under Ms. Dahl’s leadership, PIH has forged groundbreaking successes in treating the diseases of the poor and promoting health and human rights in areas of the world that have been ravaged by political conflict, poverty, and international neglect. Providing antiretroviral medications to AIDS-afflicted patients in places like Haiti used to be viewed as utopian and unrealistic by international health experts; today, the effectiveness of PIH’s community-based model has been lauded around the world, prompting an explosion in requests to the organization to share its expertise and to play a greater role in global health advocacy.
A graduate of Wellesley College and a writer herself, Ms. Dahl also serves on the board of her family’s foundation to honor the work of her father, the late writer Roald Dahl, and is engaged in philanthropic works in the United States and her native England.
Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Director of the Global Women’s Leadership Initiative, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Rangita de Silva de Alwis directs the Women in Public Service Project launched by Secretary Clinton and now institutionalized at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The WPSP at the Wilson Center has now grown to affiliate with over 75 government entities and academic institutes around the world. Prior to her position at the Wilson Center, Rangita was the Director of International Human Rights Policy at the Wellesley Centers for Women and Faculty at the Madeleine Albright Institute for Global Affairs at Wellesley College. She was also the inaugural Susan McGee Bailey Scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She was a Fulbright Specialist at the Asian University for Women in the summer of 2012.
Rangita has worked globally with a vast network of over 70 academic institutions and government entities to develop innovative human rights initiatives around the world. She leads the Women’s Leadership Network in Muslim Communities at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She helped convene the Asia Cause Lawyer Network in India and the Women’s Watch- China. She has worked in partnership with China’s leading women’s rights advocates on new developments in gender and law reform in China for over 10 years. She has testified twice before the Congressional Executive Commission on China on the status of women’s rights in China. She also advised UNICEF, UNFPA, and UNDP on state accountability under the relevant treaties and the intersections of the different treaties. Most recently, she developed a Gender Supplement to the U.N. Secretary General’s Guidelines on Disability and report to the World Bank on Women’s Voice and Agency. She is a Gender Advisor to Vietnam’s Ministry of Justice and National Assembly. She has published with the United Nations (Child Marriage and the Law; Girl Child Labour; The Status of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and Legislative Compliance in Eastern Europe and Central Asia; and the Intersections of the CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the child) and in law journals including in the: Yale Journal of Law and Feminism; Texas Journal of Gender and the Law; University of Pennsylvania East Asia Law Journal; Duke Journal of Gender and the Law; UCLA Pacific Rim Journal; UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Relations University of Washington’s Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal; and Michigan State Journal of International law. Rangita has created several Gender and Law curricular for China’s academic institutes and a curriculum and materials for the Asian University for Women’s course on Women Leading Change in Asia. Rangita has a Doctorate in Law (S.J.D.) from Harvard Law School and was a Teaching Fellow with the European Law Research Institute at Harvard Law School and a Research Fellow with the Women and Public Policy program at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She served on the Advisory Group brought together by UNIFEM and UNDP to develop United Nations Evaluation Guidelines and on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Democracy Network, IRI. She is an honorary professor of China Women’s University. She received an Outstanding American by Choice Award from Secretary Janet Reno for her global work on women and children.
Elizabeth R. DeSombre (Beth), Wellesley College
Elizabeth R. DeSombre (Beth) works on international environmental politics and law, with a focus on issues of the global commons. Recent projects have involved the regulation of international fisheries, the impact of flag-of-convenience shipping, protection of the ozone layer, and global environmental institutions generally. She has published six books.
Her current book project (while on sabbatical) has the working title of Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things (with the implicit subtitle: “and what to do about it”), looking at the sources of environmental behavior. She is also an award winning singer-songwriter with two CDs, about to begin recording a third.
Carol Rollie Flynn '77, Managing Principal, Singa Consulting
Carol Rollie Flynn is the Managing Principal of Singa Consulting, a professional services firm that provides intelligence, security, and leadership consulting, training, and coaching to governments and the private sector. A 30-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Ms. Flynn held senior executive positions at the CIA including Director of the CIA’s Leadership Academy, Director of the Office of Foreign Intelligence Relationships, Executive Director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, and Chief of Station in major posts in Southeast Asia and Latin America. Ms. Flynn is also an adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute where she teaches a graduate seminar on Intelligence and Public Policy. She serves as Adjunct Staff at Rand Corporation and is a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). A member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Coach Federation, Ms. Flynn has a bachelor of arts degree from Wellesley College and has completed executive leadership programs at Duke University and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She is an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coach Federation.
Alden Griffith, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, Wellesley College
Alden Griffith is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Wellesley. His research interests in plant ecology include invasive species, plant-plant facilitation, and the effects of climate change. How are nonnative plants interacting with natives, and what does this mean for population growth/decline? To what degree does climate regulate plant populations and determine invasion success? Much of his research combines field-based experimentation and observation with quantitative population modeling in order compile a thorough systems-level understanding at scales relevant to management.
Beyond his ecological research, Alden has examined matters of communication and misconceptions in climate change science. More broadly, he is interested in the difficult question of how to promote critical thinking and scientific literacy in an age with unparalleled access to both information and misinformation. We live in a fascinating time, where scientists find themselves in an awkward place: highly respected by the public according to polls, yet often marginalized in the decision-making process in today's polarizing political atmosphere. Some of Alden's efforts to clarify climate science are available to the public at www.fool-me-once.com.
Alden received his B.A. in Biology from Wesleyan University and his Ph.D. in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Prior to his current position, he was a postdoctoral fellow with the Wellesley College Botanic Gardens, teaching courses in Environmental Studies and Biological Sciences.
Joseph P. Joyce, Professor of Economics, Wellesley College
Joseph P. Joyce is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, and the Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs. He joined the faculty in 1981, and served as Chair of the Economics Department from 1994-1998. From 1999-2006, he was the Director of Wellesley College’s Social Sciences Summer Research Program, which received funding from the National Science Foundation. Professor Joyce’s research deals with issues in financial globalization.
Professor Joyce's book, The IMF and Global Financial Crises: Phoenix Rising?, has been published by Cambridge University Press. His articles have appeared in many journals, including the Journal of International Money and Finance, Review of International Economics, Journal of Development Economics, Economics & Politics, Journal of Macroeconomics, Review of World Economics, and World Development. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Review of International Organizations and the Journal of International Commerce, Economics and Policy. At Wellesley he teaches courses in international macroeconomics, the economics of globalization and macroeconomic theory.
Professor Joyce received a B.S.F.S. degree cum laude in international affairs from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Boston University. He held internships at the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Board, and visiting positions at Harvard's Center for International Affairs, the Brookings Institution, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and the International Monetary Fund.
Nannerl O. Keohane, Senior Scholar, Princeton University
Nannerl O. Keohane is a Senior Scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. From 1981 until 2004, Nan Keohane served as president of Wellesley College and then Duke University. Her publications include Thinking about Leadership (Princeton University Press, fall 2010); Higher Ground: Ethics and Leadership in the Modern University (Duke University Press 2006); Philosophy and the State in France: the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 1980) and Feminist Theory: a Critique of Ideology (co-edited with Barbara Gelpi, University of Chicago Press 1982).
Professor Keohane has taught at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, as well as Wellesley, Duke and Princeton. She is a member of the Harvard Corporation and the board of trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. She received her BA at Wellesley College, MA from St. Anne’s College, Oxford (as a Marshall Scholar, Class of 1961), and Ph.D. on a Sterling Fellowship from Yale University. Nan Keohane is married to Robert O. Keohane, Professor of Political Science in the Woodrow Wilson School; they have four children and nine grandchildren.
Rear Admiral Margaret Grun Kibben, Chaplain of the United States Marine Corps
Rear Admiral Margaret Grun Kibben, CHC, USN, is the 18th Chaplain of the United States Marine Corps and is the Deputy Chief of Navy Chaplains. A native of Warrington, PA, Rear Admiral Margaret Grun Kibben graduated from Goucher College, Towson, MD in 1982. In 1986 she received her Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ and entered active duty. From 1986-1989 she served with Headquarters and Service Battalion, Security Battalion, the Brig, the Marine Corps Air Facility and the President’s Helicopter Squadron, HMX-1 in Quantico, VA. Her next assignment was the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, from 1989-1991. Following the academy, she reported to USS SAN DIEGO (AFS-6) in Norfolk, VA where she was the Command Chaplain from 1991-1993. Chaplain Kibben served as the Chaplain Corps Historian at the Chaplain Resource Board between 1993-1995, before being sent for a year of study at the Naval War College, Newport, RI and the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk, VA. In 1996, after receiving her Masters Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College, she began her four-year assignment with Second Force Service Support Group, Camp Lejeune, NC and made deployments to Turkey and Norway. From 2000-2002, she was the Doctrine Writer for Religious Ministry at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, VA.
RDML Kibben spent the next year at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) as a Senior Fellow, and in 2002 she received her Doctorate of Ministry from Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ. From 2003-2006, she was assigned to U.S. Third Fleet serving as the Fleet Chaplain responsible for the training and certification of all Carrier Strike Group and Expeditionary Strike Group Religious Ministry Teams. In 2006, she deployed as an individual augmentee serving as the Command Chaplain, Combined Forces Command Afghanistan. Upon her return, Chaplain Kibben reported to the Office of the Chief of Navy Chaplains, first serving as the Director for Force Structure and Community Management and subsequently as the Executive Assistant to the Chief of Navy Chaplains.
Chaplain Kibben’s personal decorations include the Legion of Merit with one gold star, the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal with three gold stars, and the Navy Commendation Medal with three gold stars.
Robert Martello, Professor of the History of Science and Technology, Olin College
Dr. Robert Martello began researching America's transition from crafts to industry while a PhD student in MIT's Program in the History and Social Study of Science and Technology. He received his PhD in 2001 and in the same year started working at Olin College in Needham Massachusetts, where he is now a Professor of the History of Science and Technology. Dr. Martello chaired Olin's Arts, Humanities, and Social Science committee for many years and helped to shape Olin's curriculum, taking particular pride in its interdisciplinary and self-study components. He has written several papers and offered numerous presentations on his NSF-sponsored educational research, which explores connections between interdisciplinary education, student motivation, and self-directed project-based learning.
Dr. Martello has also written several articles on the subject of industrialization, and his book, Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn: Paul Revere and the Growth of American Enterprise, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2010. This book combines a biographical narrative of Paul Revere's long manufacturing career with a comparison of America's managerial, labor, technological, and environmental practices before and after the revolution. Dr. Martello has more recently started researching Benjamin Franklin's printing career, investigating Franklin's many impacts upon early American printing as well as the ways his artisan experiences set him apart from America's other founding fathers. Dr. Martello has enthusiastically presented these new interpretations of Revere and Franklin for over 30 historical societies, libraries, and other public audiences.
Dr. Martello attempts to connect theory to practice in both his education research and his studies of early American industry. He has recently offered workshops for American, Chilean, and Guatemalan universities and K-12 schools, suggesting techniques for fostering intrinsic motivation through interdisciplinary project-based learning experiences. He is also the university scholar for two Mass Humanities grants aimed at developing new history of technology exhibits at the Paul Revere House and USS Constitution Museum.
Helen Mountford, Deputy Director, Environment Directorate of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Helen Mountford has been Deputy Director of the Environment Directorate of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since late 2010. She joined the OECD as an environmental economist and policy analyst in 1997, and was Head of the Division on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Development from 2006-2010.
Her work at OECD has included a leading role in the preparation of the 2001 and 2008 OECD Environmental Outlook reports, as well as analysis of policies in the areas of water pricing, biodiversity incentive measures, market-based instruments, and reform of environmentally harmful subsidies. She developed analysis on the economic crisis and green growth that underpinned a 2009 OECD Declaration on Green Growth, which was adopted by Ministers of Finance and Economy, and is leading the OECD work of fossil fuel subsidies that has been an input to discussions by G20 Leaders.
Prior to joining the OECD, Helen managed a local recycling company in the UK and worked for an environmental NGO in Australia. She is a national of the UK and the US, and has Masters degrees in Environmental Economics from University College London and in Environmental Management from University of Melbourne.
S. Joanne Murray '81, Director, Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs; Executive Director, Wellesley College Center for Work and Service
Joanne Murray is the Executive Director of the Center for Work and Service at Wellesley College and the Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, Wintersession and Internship Programs. The focus of Joanne’s work is on preparing students for citizenship and leadership in an increasingly complex and interdependent global environment.
The Albright Institute, named to honor Madeleine K. Albright, the United States’ first female Secretary of State and Wellesley College alumna, class of 1959, supports the College’s mission of educating students who will make a difference in the world. Launched in 2010, the Institute combines the intellectual resources of faculty from Wellesley College, researchers from the Wellesley Centers for Women, and leading alumnae practitioners and other experts in the fields of international relations and public policy to engage selected student participants—Albright Fellows—in an intensive, three-week, Wintersession course followed by a summer internship in global affairs.
Prior to the founding of the Albright Institute, Joanne had been instrumental in building the College’s internships and service learning programs, which annually fund over 300 Wellesley students to participate in internships in over 35 countries and throughout the United States. Through a partnership with the Dean of the College, Joanne co-founded the Tanner Conference, which is premised on the belief that greater understanding of the learning that takes place off-campus, combined with critical inquiry into the purpose, value and effect of such learning—has the potential to move liberal education in new directions.
Among Joanne’s other accomplishments at Wellesley College are her roles in the creation of the Cultural Advising Network, the development of the multi-faith chaplaincy, and a review of the College’s Honor Code and General Judiciary.
Joanne is a frequent speaker on women’s leadership in a new global context and the author of numerous articles that address emerging organizational and management issues. She earned a B.A. from Wellesley College and an Ed.M. from Harvard University.
Andrea Purse, Vice President for Communications, American Progress.
Andrea Purse is the Vice President for Communications at American Progress. Andrea comes to American Progress after managing the TV and Radio outreach for the John Edwards for President Campaign. Prior to the campaign, Andrea spent time on Capitol Hill as the press secretary for Congressman George Miller (D-CA) and press advisor for broadcast media for House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.This is Andrea’s third position here at the Center, as she previously served as the Director of Media Strategy and, before that, as the radio coordinator, managing the radio studio and booking American Progress staff and fellows on radio shows. She has also worked in communications and government relations for the Campaign for America’s Future, Rhode Island Kids Count, and the Children’s Defense Fund, and was chosen for the 2012 Atlantik Brucke Young Leaders Program.
Lawrence Rosenwald, Anne Pierce Rogers Professor of American Literature, Professor of English, Wellesley College
Lawrence Rosenwald is the Anne Pierce Rogers Professor of American Literature at Wellesley College. He received his B.A. (1970), M.A. (1971), and Ph. D. (1979) from Columbia University. He has taught at Wellesley College since 1980, has taught in the Wellesley Peace and Justice Studies Program since 2000, and has co-directed that program since 2001.
Inela Selimović, Visiting Lecturer in Spanish, Wellesley College
Inela Selimović holds B.A. degree from the University of the South-Sewanee and Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Kentucky.
Selimović's research focuses on the literary and cinematic constructions of urban spaces, citizenship performances and human rights in works of mostly contemporary Latin American writers and filmmakers. Her studies of Latin American fiction—and particularly Argentine fiction—have broadened out into several avenues of research on New Argentine Cinema, centering specifically on the intersections of gender, trauma and urban youth subjectivities’ displacements. Her recent publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Revista Hispánica Moderna, Confluencia, Human Rights Quarterly and in edited book volumes. Apart from language and cultural studies-focused courses she teaches at Wellesley College, Selimović’s teaching draws from her research on Latin American contemporary film and media, urban writing, and human rights. In addition to her academic pursuits, Selimović has remained involved with sociopolitical and cultural movements in her homeland (Bosnia and Herzegovina). She has led several human rights-related projects at the United Nations Security Council, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Netherlands, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Patricia Sulser '79, Chief Counsel, International Finance Corporation
Patricia Sulser is a Chief Counsel at International Finance Corporation, the private sector investment arm of the World Bank, where she has worked since 1992. She is based in Washington. She is the Global Lead Lawyer for IFC InfraVentures, a $150 million internally managed fund established by IFC in 2008 to fund and proactively develop private and public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects in the poorest World Bank countries. IFC InfraVentures addresses one of the most significant constraints to private investment in infrastructure projects in these countries, including the limited availability of funds and experienced professionals dedicated to private infrastructure project development. Infrastructure projects on IFC InfraVentures’ agenda include hard infrastructure such as power (especially renewable power), wastewater treatment and water supply, ports, airports, roads, and airports, as well as so-called “soft” infrastructure such as healthcare facilities and hospitals and schools—all critical to countries’ economic development and the World Bank Group’s agenda of bringing people out of poverty.
Ms. Sulser has been involved in the financing of complex infrastructure projects for her entire career at IFC and before in private practice in the New York, London and Hong Kong offices of Shearman & Sterling. She leads the IFC Legal Department Public Private Partnership practice group and coordinates with colleagues from around the World Bank Group and other development financial institutions on the G20 and World Bank Group PPP agenda.
Ms. Sulser is also a certified mediator and has provided legal support for IFC’s establishment of mediation centers around the world. In addition, she actively promotes the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution in PPP and infrastructure projects around the world. She is a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, the Dispute Board Federation and various other institutions specializing in alternative dispute resolution, and is the ADR thought leader for the IFC Legal Department, which supports the use of ADR not only in commercial dispute avoidance and management but also as a tool to engage meaningfully with communities affected by World Bank Group projects.
Franklyn Turbak, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Wellesley College
Franklyn (Lyn) Turbak is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Wellesley College, where he has been since 1995. He received his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in Computer Science from MIT.
Lyn's passion is the study of programs and programming languages, which is at the heart of both his teaching and research. His interests include the design, analysis, and implementation of expressive programming languages, graphical representations of programs, and the visualization of computational processes. He is co-author of the textbook Design Concepts in Programming Languages.
Lyn currently leads two research projects: TinkerBlocks, whose goal is to create more expressive block programming languages; and Rapid Prototyping For Everyone, whose goal is to increase accessibility to the laser cutter, vinyl cutter, and 3D printer in Wellesley's Engineering Studio.
