Andy Snider

For the last 20 years, Andy Snider has been a consultant, team facilitator, coach, and business leader working with leadership teams to help them achieve dramatic performance improvements. Andy’s specialty is helping people and organizations adapt and thrive in new or changing environments. 

Since 2000, Andy has been the CEO of Snider Associates, a consulting organization focused on helping organizations reach the next level by designing and implementing strategies and off-sites to build organizational and leadership capacity. Some of Snider Associates’ clients have included: Athenium Software, Authentic Leadership Institute, Binswanger Corporation, Cambridge Leadership Associates, Covestor, Davita Medical, Grand Circle Travel, Heartland Payment Systems, Intuit, Ketchum PR, Legal Sea Foods, Management Concepts, Ridge Training, Visiting Nurses of NY, and Yum Brands. 

Snider has facilitated leadership retreats for a wide variety of executive groups including: YPO Forums, HBS Alumni Forums, Wharton AMP program participants, and Harvard Business School AMP program participants.  

Andy has taught in Executive leadership programs at Harvard and Northeastern Universities. 

In addition to his work at Snider Associates, Andy oversaw the growth of The Authentic Leadership Institute as its COO. ALI provides advanced leadership programs to Fortune 100 companies. He has also served as EVP of Leadership for Grand Circle Travel, a global travel company.  

Prior to starting Snider Associates from 1991 until 2000, Andy was the co-founder and President of VIS Development. That technology company became an INC 500 fast-growth company and pioneered the development of interactive video training on CDs, and later on the web. Major clients included:  Bain Consulting, BellSouth, Dupont, Forum Corporation, Harvard Business Interactive, Honda, Pfizer, and Unilever.   

Prior to VIS, Andy was VP of Administration for ABC Television Broadcast Operations in New York. 

Andy lives in Boston with his wife, a TV producer. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and Lehigh University. He has served on the boards of Conservatory Lab Charter School, More than Words, Management Concepts Inc., Facing History and Ourselves, and has been an active member of the World President’s Organization (YPO-NE). He was a participant for over 18 years in New England YPO and WPO Forums.

Tomo Takaki

Tomo Takaki recently graduated from Yale Law School and clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. During law school, he was a member of the Veterans Legal Services Clinic and was a 2018 Law Fellow in the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE). Prior to law school, Tomo worked as an AmeriCorps Fellow and served in the U.S. Army, most recently at the Office of the Chief Prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions. He previously graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service with a M.A. in Security Studies in 2015 and from Tufts University with a B.A. in International Relations and a minor in Arabic in 2011.  At Tufts, Tomo was a member of the Institute for Global Leadership's ALLIES program and part of the 2009-2010 EPIIC Colloquium (South Asia: Conflict, Culture, Complexity and Change)

David Williams

David Williams has more than 40 years of experience in crafting innovative and successful political campaigns. They include winning a 2012 ballot measure in Idaho that overturned laws that would have undermined public education, dramatically increasing the turnout of low-propensity voters in a key state in the 2004 Presidential race, and orchestrating a public relations campaign for MA public employees in 1993 that resulted in the passage of a law that derailed efforts to privatize various state agencies.

He has been the Chief of Staff for three members of the US House of Representatives – John Tierney (D-MA), Steve Kagen (D-WI) and Mike Forbes (D-NY). Tierney and Kagen had never held public office before their initial victories and David helped guide them to re-election wins in 1998 and 2008. In 1999, David took over the helm in Forbes’ office after Forbes became the first member of Congress to change parties since the height of Watergate. 

David also served as the national political director for Planned Parenthood (2002-05) where he developed a unique program in 2004 to increase the turnout of women who had little or no history of voting. The program capitalized on Planned Parenthood’s reputation as a trusted health care provider and went door-to-door in suburban Portland, OR with apolitical, non-traditional messaging to build a personal rapport. Where multiple individual contacts were made, 80% of the targets voted and these largely single, unmarried women contributed significantly to John Kerry’s 4-point victory in a state which Al Gore had carried by less than one half a point in 2000.

The 2012 Idaho campaign – Vote No on Propositions 1,2,3 – for which David was the manager and chief strategist, was the first successful repeal of laws passed by the legislature since 1936 and was only the second time it had occurred in the state’s history. The laws masqueraded as education reform but their principal goal was to gut the collective bargaining rights of the state’s teachers and impose more restrictive working conditions. The nonpartisan campaign made extensive use of social media – 75% of the state’s voters were on Facebook – and launched Conservatives Voting No on Props 1,2,3 to capitalize on the populist resentment of the GOP establishment’s dictates. 

From 2014-20, David was the Director of Government Relations and Communications for the Ohio Education Association (OEA). He first came to OH in 2011 as a communications consultant at the behest of the national labor table – a coalition of prominent unions. He subsequently served as a deputy manager for the campaign that successfully overturned a law (SB-5) that would have severely weakened the rights of the state’s public employees.

In 2014, at David’s direction, OEA and partners created an interactive website – https://knowyourcharter.com/– that enabled parents, teachers and other interested parties to compare the performance of local public schools with that of charter schools.  Ohio had a reputation for a large number of poor-performing charters that were draining needed funds from public schools that were in a large majority of cases doing a better job of educating their students.  The Ohio Charter School Accountability Project brought attention to the sorry state of Ohio’s charters without casting aspersions on the many lawmakers who had voted to set up charters with little or no oversight. A number of these legislators had also received large campaign contributions from some of the worst charter school operators. The focus was on the students who were being underserved and on the taxpayers who were being fleeced. Using creative videos that were targeted digitally at key constituencies and capturing the personal stories of parents and educators who had had bad experiences with charter schools, the Ohio Charter School Accountability Project built public support for reform. Within a year of launching the website, legislators were persuaded to pass badly-needed changes in the laws governing charter schools. 

David began his career as a radio and television reporter in Boston at WBUR-FM and WGBH-TV.

Nithyaa Venkataramani

Nithyaa is a current graduate student at Columbia University’s School of Social Work focused in dialectical behavior therapy. She currently interns as a therapist at Brooklyn Heights Behavioral Associates and is training under the supervision of André Ivanoff, the Board Chair of the Linehan Institute. Outside of these roles, Nithyaa manages virtual career design programs for higher education institutions through Mission Collaborative and runs a wellness coaching program for front-line medical professionals at Stamford Health coping with the pandemic. Nithyaa is a certified hatha yoga teacher and holds additional certifications in trauma-sensitive yoga (TCTSY) through the Trauma Center of the Justice Resource Institute and expressive arts therapy through the East-West Center for Counselling and Training in Chennai, India. She teaches regular trauma-sensitive classes and workshops for educators, social workers, therapists and the general public. Prior to her work in the mental health field, Nithyaa served as the Chief of Staff at New Profit, Inc., a venture philanthropy firm dedicated to scaling innovating nonprofit organizations.

Nithyaa's deep interest in global mental health was piqued as a student of Sherman's at Tufts. She started a program during her time in college working in rural India supporting a local organization scale holistic community development efforts and participated in a year-long intensive program, EPIIC, focused on global health. During her time as an EPIIC scholar, she was able to attend a course in global mental health and crisis intervention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She also conducted research on global health related topics in nutrition, healthcare access and caste-based conflict in Guatemala, Rwanda and India respectively. Her long-term vision is to bring accessible and high-quality psychotherapy and advocacy platforms to women and children worldwide recovering from abuse and complex trauma. She integrates her skills in counseling, yoga and mindfulness into all of her work and believes that authentic human connection is at the core of healing and transforming our world

Lumay Wang Murphy

Lumay Wang Murphy is a corporate strategist at AB InBev, the largest CPG company by EBITDA, where she is responsible for the company’s long-term strategy and annual strategic planning. Lumay is a former management consultant with Monitor Deloitte (Strategy & Analytics) with deep expertise in retail and CPG industries and a focus on innovation, growth strategy, and sustainable supply chain. She was the climate change legislative correspondent for Senator John F. Kerry and then legislative assistant for Congressman Scott Peters where her portfolio included the environment, energy, and climate change. She received her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and graduated from Tufts University summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She currently serves on the board of The Ocean Foundation. Previously, she served as a board observer of the Chicago Literacy Alliance and in leadership roles on the Tufts Alumni Council and Sidwell Friends School Alumni Association.

Richard Sobol

Since graduating from Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University I have used the art of photography to visit 54 countries and produce visual narratives.

 My photographs from these distinctive worlds have been published in: National Geographic, Time, Rolling Stone, People, Audubon, The New York Times, Paris Match, Stern and Geo. I added text to these stories and published seventeen photographic monographs including Seal Journey, Governor: In the Company of Ann Richards, One More Elephant,  Senator: In the Company of Connie Mack, Mayor: In the Company of Norm Rice, Adelina’s Whales,  An Elephant in the Backyard, and  Growing  Peace.  With Candlewick Press I have published four books in The Traveling Photographer Series, The Story of Silk: From Worm Spit to Woven Scarves, The Mysteries of Angkor Wat, Exploring Cambodia’s Ancient Temple, The Life of Rice: From Seedling to Supper, and Breakfast in The Rainforest: The Story of Uganda’s Mountain Gorillas    (with an introduction by Leonardo DiCaprio).

As a result of my unique set of location shooting skills I was called upon by international wildlife protection agencies to document wild areas and I traveled to Sub-Saharan Africa eleven times. Often, this work focused on poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, but I also photographed poor villagers struggling to feed their families and survive staggering environmental pressures. On my journeys, I met other photographers working on stories about hunger, the onslaught of AIDS, or the frequent brutal civil wars that plague African nations.

During this time, it struck me that most of the photographic images coming out of Africa were overwhelmingly bleak and desperate, if not all together hopeless. I have tried to show another side of Africa and after four visits to Uganda, Abbeville Press published the book, Abayudaya: The Jews of Uganda, which was followed by a traveling exhibition and the release of a Music CD by Smithsonian Folkways that was nominated for a GRAMMY award. This project has evolved into the ongoing story, Delicious Peace, which follows a group of Muslim, Christian and Jewish Ugandan farmers who work together in a cooperative based on religious tolerance and interfaith harmony. The music, photos and video of these farmers have also just been released as a Music CD on Smithsonian Folkways.

Closer to home I worked with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the architect Frank Gehry, as I documented the design and construction of MIT’s Stata Center Building. Together with commentary by Gehry, this story is told in the book, Building Stata, published by the MIT Press and the children’s book, Construction Zone.

I am currently competing work on, The Last Rhino, The story of the last male northern white rhino on earth.

Patrick Schmidt

Alexander Vindman and Patrick Schmidt, 2021

Patrick Schmidt is a Democratic candidate running in the State of Kansas. While stationed at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, DC, Patrick witnessed the attack on the Capitol. Realizing that the biggest threat facing Kansas and country is authoritarian leaders gaining control of the federal government, Patrick moved back home and filed to run against a member who supported the Big Lie and the January 6th attack on the Capitol.

While on active duty he served as a Division Officer onboard the USS RONALD REAGAN, the Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, and Fleet Intelligence Watch Officer in support of Commander, Task Force 70. As Division Officer he led a multisource intelligence team providing air, surface, and subsurface threat warnings for the carrier strike group, frequently inside the First Island Chain. He subsequently spearheaded a counter-Iranian Threat Network intelligence and cryptologic team in support of CENTCOM and partner-nation operations and supported national mission forces at the Office of Naval Intelligence.

While at Tufts, Patrick was a member of the 2009-2010 EPIIC class, South Asia: Conflict, Culture, Complexity, and Change. In addition to studying the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan He cites an EPIIC colloquium lecture by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and the as a primary reason he studied Persian throughout college. Mentorship and support from Sherman Teichman and IGL alumni from Dewick Dining Hall to Dushanbe, and everywhere in between enabled him to earn two Critical Language Scholarships from the State Department and a Boren Award from the Department of Defense to study in Tajikistan. He also credits missile defense research during the 2010-2011 EPIIC Course, Our Nuclear Age: Peril and Promise, with significantly aiding his understanding of the threat environment while supporting operations in the Western Pacific.

Prior to commissioning, Patrick interned with the Economic and Commercial Section of Embassy Nicosia and worked as a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy with the Iran Security Initiative.

Michèle Flournoy, Patrick Schmidt, and Dennis Ross, 2021

Patrick was a freshman when I met him first. I had a really enjoyable experience teaching and interacting with him over the years and most recently serving on the Host Committee for his campaign. Alert, intellectually curious, a thoughtful nonpolemical thinker, he was always imbued with a sense of civic responsibility and was particularly interested in my Institute’s ALLIES (Alliance Linking Leaders In Education And the Services) civil-military program.

Patrick has recently written me this statement:

“One testament to the transformative power of the IGL and Tufts community is that 12 years ago I was the freshman who repeatedly fell asleep overnight inside the IGL house, and now I am the Democratic nominee for KS02. Your support and encouragement led me to study Persian (you wrote me letters of recommendation for the DoD's Boren Award, and the Department of State's Critical Language Scholarship, which I received twice), and it was Persian that led to my getting hired at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy). Thank you for investing in me and equipping me to pursue my passions.”

In the News:

• Kansas senator's resolution condemns Trump's pardon of violent Jan. 6 offenders

• Democratic senator takes rare path to criticize GOP colleague; effort denounced

• Freshman Kansas senator ‘trying to stop bad stuff’ while pressing for property tax relief

• Kansas must use all resources to combat worsening spread of bird flu

Seth Karamage

Seth Karamage is a development economist specializing in peacebuilding and good governance.  Seth has been working with the University of Massachusetts (UMass Boston) under the auspices of Center for Peace Democracy and development (CPDD), for11 years managing its peacebuilding and governance projects in Nigeria and Rwanda respectively. Before joining the development work, Seth served in Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) for 12 years where he draws the passion and expertise of incorporating Civil-Military relations and Early Warning and Early Response (EWER) activities in peacebuilding and good governance programs. With respect to civil-military relations strengthening, he championed the 2012 JRP where he first facilitated the introduction and connection between the Institution for Global Leadership (IGL) at Tufts University with Rwandan embassy in the US for promoting the ALLIES programs in Rwanda.

Currently, Seth is the UMass Boston’s Resident Country Director for the Strengthening of Rwandan Administrative Justice (SRAJ) project.

In Nigeria, he implemented a 5year project tagged as TOLERANCE (Training of Leaders on Religious and National Co-existence), which promoted peace and reconciliation among religious leaders and their constituencies in northern and southeastern Nigerian states.

Seth has also been working with Karuna Center for Peacebuilding in Rwanda and Nigeria teaching and establishing community based dialogues that intend to strengthen civilian security and reconciliation in divided communities.

In addition to the international peace and governance work, Seth founded and owns Rural Economic Development and Management (REDEM) Company which aims at improving rural farmers’ social and economic livelihoods through teaching them modern agriculture hence strengthening sustainable peace and development in Rwanda. 

Seth is a Rwanda and he is a graduate of Brandeis University in USA with a MA in Co-existence and conflict. Prior to Brandeis, he went to National University Rwanda where he attained a BSc in Economics.

Hussainatu Blake

Ms. Hussainatu Blake is a global Edtech professional with 12 years of experience in educational technology, as an owner & operator.  She is the Co-Founder of Twinfold Media— an EdTech company that curates and licenses educational content to companies, NGOs, nonprofits and institutions of higher education.  Twinfold Media produces the edtech webseries, “Twinfold with Hassa & Hussa Blake,” now in its fifth season.

In addition, Ms. Blake co-founded Focal Point Global (FPG), an Edtech non-profit that empowered underserved youth to tackle community issues through global education and innovative technology. FPG had 500 alumni and a reach of over 20,000 people from the US, Cameroon, The Gambia, Namibia, and South Africa.

Ms. Blake is not only an owner & operator; she is also an educator. Currently, she serves an Adjunct Professor of Business Law at Baltimore City Community College.

Ms. Blake has been recognized by the US White House Champions of Change Initiative under the Obama Administration; featured in Black Enterprise; TEDx Speaker; and has served as Keynote Speaker numerous education and tech conferences, and leading institutions of higher education.

Hussainatu has a Bachelor’s of Arts from Tufts University, a Masters Degree in International Policy from Middlebury College and a law degree from Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School.

Rafael Reisz

Sherman was my fencing coach at Boston University in the early 80s. He was a national caliber saber man while I, mediocre on my best day, gravitated to the Epee - the only real weapon in the fencing arsenal.

That was a pivotal period for me. Behind me were degrees in psychology and philosophy, work on loading docks and in factories in New Jersey, barn building in Pennsylvania, and a good deal of drifting around Europe, North and South America. Understanding the world meant understanding computers. I wrote my first program in high school in 1968 (in Fortran on an IBM 360) and was now determined to master technical development and operations management. I leveraged my experience, amplified by unwarranted self-confidence, to get a job with an analytical processing firm in Cambridge.  Boston University offered a wider arena for application development so I hacked code, designed increasingly complex systems, built teams, and made my clients happy – not always my supervisors.

I learned my management and consulting trade at Arthur D. Little Inc and spent most of the next 17 years re-engineering that firm’s information systems on an international scale.  When ADL went bankrupt in 2002, I was asked to use the systems I built to support litigation. That launched my consultancy practice. My business plan was simple: find interesting people who are doing interesting things and help them do it. I was busy. My clients came from the legal, healthcare, pharma, financial, and education sectors. Companies like Biogen, GE, Partners Health, and Boston University, as well as smaller firms gave me their trust, and I left them better off than when I found them. What my clients have in common is a desire, and very often strategic and existential need, to build quality products and high-performance operations. Knowing how to do that in a technical world that cares about its humanity turns out to be a fairly good career path.

I spend much of my personal time playing tennis, in scholarly and frivolous reading (not always distinguishable), some writing, and, by force of habit, drifting around world.  I teach entrepreneurship and product development courses at Hult International Business School in Cambridge and am helping create the school’s incubator. I am a certified SBA mentor and work with the national Score program to counsel entrepreneurs as they establish and grow their businesses. Score clients contribute $67 into the economy to each $1 investment in the program – not a bad ROI. We are now beginning to expanding our outreach to entrepreneurs, in Boston and abroad, who wish to grow through international trade.

I have had the pleasure to see the launch of quite a few innovative products, organizations and practices. Some are small life-style businesses, some change markets and industries on a global scale; all improve lives.  My clients teach me more than I teach them, not least about the power of imagination, fearlessness and the tenacity required to create a sustainable and valuable reality.

Actually, “unwarranted self-confidence,” turned Rafi into a fun, durable and dependable epeeist, and Boston University won its fair share of bouts and competitions (picture)  Worth noting, our women’s Varsity which I also coached outshone the men. 

Rafi has been a valued friend and advisor over the years. It was Rafi who introduced me to Jeff Aresty, and the surely led to some of the most innovative outcomes for the Institute.

Rafi and I bonded over politics and literature, with many conversations that happily continue, he perhaps more grizzled, skeptical, and wiser. Much of the talk centered on the Shoah, Jewish resistance to the Nazis, rescuers,  and Israeli history, politics and society. Rafi helped me research and translate Hebrew sources, especially when I centered my research over civil -military relations in Israel and the Israeli Lebanon invasions. People I met in Israel in the height of the fighting, who I subsequently befriended,  were the anti-war dissidents and activists of Yesh G’Vul, in particular Dov Yermiya, whose life and controversial opinions impacted me greatly.

His journal was eventually translated and speaks volumes to my own attitudes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dov_Yermiya

https://www.972mag.com/saying-goodbye-to-israels-oldest-dissident-zionist/

https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232311

When I was considering what to do in my Emeritus years, Rafi was one of the very first people I consulted. He was patient and thoughtful, (especially with my irritability, stuck in a cast with a catastrophic ankle injury  – think Gordon Hayword – one of his therapists was mine.)  I decided against a for profit entity, but I’m certain that if I had gone a different Rafi route, I would be wealthier. No regrets whatsoever.  And so happy Convisero allows us to interact and embolden our community.

Bhaskar Chakravorti

Bhaskar Chakravorti is the Dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University – America’s oldest exclusively graduate school of global affairs -- and the founding Executive Director of Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context. 

Bhaskar founded the Institute in 2011 with the mission of “connecting the world of business with the world,” exploring issues at the intersection of business and global context, including geopolitics, technology, security, development, the environment and the human condition. Bhaskar serves on the Fletcher faculty as Professor of the Practice of International Business and teaches global strategy and innovation for sustainable and inclusive businesses. He is founder and Chair of the IDEA Council: Imagining a Digital Economy for All, has served on the Global Future Council on Innovation for the World Economic Forum and is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Senior Advisor for Digital Inclusion at the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress and on the Advisory Board of the UNDP’s Center for Private Sector in Development. Bhaskar has also founded the Digital Planet initiative at The Fletcher School, that follows the evolution of 90 countries as they transition from traditional to digitally intensive economies.  Most recently, as part of this initiative, he has launched a multi-year initiative, Imagining a Digital Economy for All, IDEA 2030, which is investigating the role of data, digital technologies, artificial intelligence and applications as a force for inclusive growth, development and productivity. The first year of the research was entirely devoted to the study of the world operating by digital means during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also started the first all-digital degree program at Tufts and Fletcher, launched a year before the pandemic. The Institute he founded has received funding from numerous foundations, e.g. Gates, Rockefeller, Onassis, and corporations, e.g. Mastercard, Microsoft, Boeing, among others.

Prior to joining Fletcher, Bhaskar was a Partner of McKinsey & Company, a Distinguished Scholar at MIT's Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship and on the faculty of Harvard Business School and Harvard University Center for the Environment. He was a leader of McKinsey’s Innovation and Global Forces practices, served on its Knowledge Services Committee and taught innovation and entrepreneurship at Harvard. In a 30 year career, he has been an advisor to CEOs, senior management and Boards of over 30 companies in the Fortune 500 and policymakers at national and international organizations and worked across the Americas, EU, Asia and Africa, and multiple industries. He is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, “The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World” (Harvard Business Press) and is the creator of the widely-used Digital Evolution Index. His papers and articles appear in top-tier academic journals, multiple books and in widely-read media, e.g., Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Washington Post, CNN, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, Bloomberg, Businessweek, Barron’s, The Hill, Salon, among many others. He was a former columnist on innovation for the Washington Post and Forbes and currently has regular columns in Harvard Business Review, the Indian Express, Foreign Policy and The Conversation; he is regularly interviewed by the press, and has appeared in a wide variety of leading media, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, NPR, BBC, The Economist, New Yorker, CNBC, CBC, CCTV, Times of London, Al Jazeera, Economic Times, Times of India, etc.

Bhaskar's prior appointments were as a Partner and Thought Leader at the Monitor Group, a game theorist at Bellcore (formerly Bell Labs), assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and TAS (India’s Tata Group’s “talent pipeline for leaders”). His PhD in economics is from the University of Rochester, where he was a University Fellow. He is a graduate of the Delhi School of Economics and in economics with honors from Delhi University’s St. Stephen’s College.

Boaz Wachtel

An innovative entrepreneur, independent peace and environmental activist; Boaz is the Chief Executive Officer, Chairman & chief innovator at Roots Sustainable Agricultural Technologies Ltd. Roots is an incubator dedicated to increasing crop optimization. It develops and commercializes unique root zone heating and cooling, creating technology  for the cannabis and general agriculture sector. Utilizing unique irrigation by condensation processes they are able to sustain full life cycle of plants, grape vines and young trees, irrigating them just with water from the humidity in the air.

Boaz is also the Co founder and Executive Chairman of The Board of CresoPharma, with offices in Australia and Israel.  Creso-Pharma leverages science and research, to develop, register, and commercialize innovative therapeutic approaches that target the body’s endocannabinoid system.

A former IDF combat medic in the Prime Minister’s Special Forces, he was a former Assistant Army Attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. He is the founder of Israel’s 'Green Leaf Party'  advocating cannabis legalization, promoting environmental protection, human rights and stridently anti-occupation

Boaz was a researcher and consultant for the democracy think tank, Freedom House on issues regarding Middle-East water and regional cooperation. Together with a former director of Israel’s foreign ministry, he authored  a proposal,  The Peace Canal on the Golan Heights; Benefits and Risks to Regional Water Cooperation, as part of back channel Israeli/Syrian peace negotiations.

Boaz has an MBA  degree from the University of Maryland. 

A dear friend, I have known Boaz for over forty years. We rode motorcycles together while fasting on Yom Kippur, cleared cross-county ski trails in Maine, and started a fun, short lived, and surely non-lucrative, firewood business.

All the while we engaged in non-stop fun- filled discussions on politics and life  He provided wonderful insights into Israeli life.  I introduced Boaz to the dissident thinking  of Chomsky and Zinn, who class he enrolled in at Boston University.  I invited Boaz to speak at my EPIIC symposium on the "Future of the West Bank and Gaza.”  At that time, in 1987 it was illegal for Israelis to meet with PLO representatives in any forum. Regardless, he agreed, believing that dialogue is essential.

He is a truly thoughtful, passionate maverick, and is the inspiration for Trebuchet’s and LISD’s current initiative to explore the potential of frameworks of accountability for environmental crimes, including a People’s Tribunal.  

Izzeldin Abuelaish

Professor Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Palestinian Canadian physician and an internationally recognized human rights and inspirational peace activist devoted to advancing health and education opportunities for women and girls in the Middle East, through both his research and his charitable organization The Daughters for Life Foundation. He has dedicated his life to using health as a vehicle for peace, and, despite all odds, succeeded, aided by a great determination of spirit, strong faith, and a stalwart belief in hope and family. He is a man who walks the walk and who leads by example.

Professor Izzeldin Abuelaish was born and raised in Jabalia Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip. He is the first Palestinian doctor to receive an appointment at the Soroka hospital. Through his work, he has experienced firsthand the impacts of conflict in countries like Palestine, Egypt, Israel, Uganda, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. His experience working as both an insider and outsider to conflict has led him to believe that doctors are particularly well-poised to serve as peacemakers, based on the moral doctrine of their profession. His work as both a healthcare practitioner and a peace advocate build on this philosophy and mobilizes health as a tool for peace. Dr Abuelaish believes that medicine and health can be an engine for the human peace. Health and medicine are human equalizer, socializer, harmonizer, and stabilizer. He continues to advocate for justice, health, peace and human rights worldwide.

Professor Abuelaish has overcome many personal hardships, including poverty, violence, and the horrific tragedy of his three daughters’ and niece’s deaths in the 2009 Gaza War. He continues to live up to the description bestowed upon him by an Israeli colleague, as a “magical, secret bridge between                     Israelis and Palestinians”. He is now one of the most outspoken, prominent, and beloved researchers, educators and public speakers on peace and development in the Middle East.  

Professor Abuelaish has been nominated five times for Nobel peace Prize, and he is fondly known as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi and the “Martin Luther King of the Middle East”, having dedicated his life to using health as a vehicle for peace. Despite all odds, he has succeeded remarkably; aided by a great determination of spirit, strong faith, and a stalwart belief in hope and family. As a Palestinian physician and internationally recognized human rights and inspirational peace activist, Professor Abuelaish is devoted to advancing health and education opportunities for women and girls in the Middle East, through both his research and his charitable organization The Daughters for Life Foundation.  The Belgian Parliament named him the “Martin Luther King of the Middle East”. Again in 2016, Mr. Jean Marc Delizee from the Belgian Parliament nominated Dr. Abuelaish for the 2016 Noble Peace Prize and remarked that “Our world has more than ever need peace ambassadors such as him, of men and women capable of building bridges and links between people and between peoples.” 

Many influential figures within the diplomatic community have spoken exaltingly of Professor Abuelaish’ s work. In his nomination for the Sakharov Prize, Dr. David Naylor, then President of the University of Toronto, called Professor Abuelaish a remarkable ambassador for peace and an exemplar of forgiveness and reconciliation.  The President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering spoke of him in his speech in Strasbourg, Germany at the opening of the exhibition “From Hebron to Gaza”. President Barak Obama referred to him as an example of strength and reconciliation in his address on May 19th, 2011.  when he discussed the possibility of peace within the Middle East. And the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to cited Professor Abuelaish in his speech Walk for Solidarity: Kindness and forgiveness are not signs of weakness but strength. It needs more courage to be nice and make peace than to be angry and want revenge.  

Professor Abuelaish’ s impact on peace-seeking communities is exceptional. He is an internationally renowned speaker, having spoken at the Canadian House of Commons, the American Congress, the Chilean Senate and Parliament, the European Parliament at Place Du Luxembourg in Brussels, the State Department, Forum 2000 in Prague, and many more. Professor Abuelaish has also spoken at academic institutions and organizations in Canada, the United States, Europe, Africa, and Australia and Asia. 

In addition to speaking to live audiences, Professor Abuelaish has been interviewed extensively by leading journalists and prominent personalities, including Christiane Amanpour, Anderson Cooper, Sir David Frost and Zeinab Badawi, and has appeared on prominent media outlets such as BBC News Hard Talk, Fox News Channel (FOX), CNN, Al Arabiya News, London’s The Telegraph, ABC, TVO, The Globe and Mail, The Economist, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Boston Globe, People Magazine. 

Professor Abuelaish’ s book, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity, an autobiography of his loss and transformation, has achieved worldwide critical acclaim. Published in 2010, (currently in 23 different languages), and inspired by the loss of his three daughters – Bessan, Mayar, and Aya – and their cousin Noor to Israeli shelling on January 16th, 2009, the book has become an international bestseller. It has also become a testament to his commitment to forgiveness as the solution to conflict and the catalyst towards peace.  

Elis Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate said about the book I Shall Not Hate: This story is a necessary lesson against hatred and revenge.

President Jimmy Carter said: in his book, Dr Abuelaish has expressed a remarkable commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation that describes the foundation for a permanent peace in the Holy Land.

The daily telegraph: A great work of insight and compassion that tries to point the way towards peace and reconciliation… If there is to be peace in the Middle East, it will come through men and women of the giant stature and epic capacity for forgiveness.

Sunday times: A remarkable study of compassion, and of daily life in the Gaza Strip

Professor Abuelaish believes that hatred is a chronic, contagious, and destructive disease. He focuses his research to promote awareness about the impact of hatred on health and wellbeing, and how to prevent spread of this destructive disease through positive resilience, tolerance, compassion, and reconciliation. 

Professor  Abuelaish’ s extensive list of awards and honors include countless national and international awards including 16 honorary doctorate degrees, The order of Ontario, The Meritorious Service Cross, and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, The Governor General’s Medallion,  the World Citizenship in Action Award, presented by the Canadian Branch of the Registry; the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Award of Canada; the Foundation P&V Citizenship Award; the Calgary Peace Prize; the Lombardy Region Peace Prize, the Stavros Niarchos Prize for Survivorship; Dr. Abuelaish has been named one of the Top 25 Canadian Immigrants; one of the 500 Most Powerful Arabs; and one of the 500 Most Influential Muslims by the Royal Islamic Strategies Centre in Jordan for five consecutive years. He was one of three finalists for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. 

Professor Abuelaish has founded Daughters for Life a Canadian charity, in memory of his daughters and to honor his commitment to women’s empowerment.  Daughters for Life that provides young women in high school and university the opportunity to pursue higher education so that they can become strong agents of change and advocates of peace; functions of women’s vital role in improving the quality of life throughout the Middle East and the world at large. 

Currently, Dr. Abuelaish lives in Toronto where he is Full Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He remains deeply committed to his humanitarian activism in addition to his roles as a charity leader and inspirational educator.  

I met Izzeldin in 2011 when I was in Oslo, Norway for my first encounter with the Human Rights Foundation’s annual meeting. I became a strategic advisor to the HRF and founded the Oslo Scholars Program, which allowed my students to be introduced to HRF's notable human rights activists. For the last decade, many have obtained research internships, and Izzeldin offered the very first two to student swho helped create his foundation and its website, Daughters for Life. 

Shahidul Alam

Time magazine’s 2018 Person of the Year, photographer, writer, and human rights activist Shahidul Alam, obtained a PhD in chemistry from London University before taking up photography. Returning to his native Bangladesh in 1984, he campaigned to bring down autocratic general Hussain Muhammad Ershad. In his pursuit of social justice, he set up the award-winning Drik Picture Library, Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, and Chobi Mela international photography festival. His book My journey as a Witness has been described by John Morris, the legendary picture editor of Life magazine, as the “most important book ever written by a photographer.” A recognized public speaker, Alam has lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale universities. He has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, and Centre Georges Pompidou. His awards include a Lucie Award, as well as the Shilpakala Award, the highest cultural award given to Bangladeshi artists. Alam is the only person of color to have chaired the prestigious international jury of World Press Photo. He is a visiting professor of Sunderland University and an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. In 2018, he was jailed and tortured for speaking out against his government’s repressive practices.

Shahidul is a wonderful friend. We served together on the VII Foundation Board. I have had the pleasure of hosting him at my home and, most importantly, the privilege of working for his freedom on behalf of VII mobilizing Laureates, such as Amartya Sen, and many other distinguished folks to help to secure his freedom. He has lectured for me and has hosted my students at DRIK, in Bangladesh. We are currently conceptualizing, together with Gary Knight, an overture to SaiU for a program on narrative documentary practice.

Maria Ferraz

I am currently a Master of International Business candidate at The Fletcher School, where been diving into business digitalization, cybersecurity and international strategy. Prior to the program, I spent a few years split between the art auction market and private equity consulting. 

This is by no means my first encounter with Tufts. Originally from Brazil, I transferred to Tufts as a junior from University of Sao Paulo and joined Sherman’s last EPIIC class, 2015-2016 “The Future of Europe.” The class was completely out of my comfort zone and sparked my curiosity for international history, diplomacy and ethics in different societies. My best friends at Tufts were EPIIC students as well and, like the class, shaped my understanding of the world.

I continue to strive for positive impact in the world through business. I was recently awarded a FASPE Fellowship to study contemporary and professional business ethics in the context of the Holocaust, and hope to find new ways to collaborate with peers to foster financial wellbeing across the globe.

Kate Konschnik

Kate Konschnik is a former environmental litigator and energy policy expert focused on the challenge of climate change. Kate directs the Climate and Energy program at the Duke University Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and a Senior Lecturer at Duke Law, where she teaches Climate Change and the Law. A proud product of the American public school system, Kate earned her B.A. in political science from Tufts University, and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Her mother was born in Queens, New York, to second generation Americans from Ireland; her father was born in a small coal-mining community in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Long road trips to National Parks and dinner table discussions of justice shaped Kate’s passion for environmental protection and politics.

Her Tufts experience deepened these interests, through biology and political science coursework, two tours of duty with Sherman Teichman’s immersive Education for Personal Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) program, study in France, and bilingual research with a botanist at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Kate capped her senior year at Tufts with an invitation to the U.N. Development Program’s conference in Stockholm, where she presented her EPIIC paper on the ties between political marginalization and environmental degradation in the African Sahel.

Kate began her career as a community organizer at small environmental organizations in Washington, DC and San Francisco, California. Working alongside people of color and undocumented immigrants, Kate witnessed firsthand the inextricable linkages between poverty, racism, and pollution. In law school, Kate worked for three years under Karen Musalo, a groundbreaking asylum and refugee lawyer; spent a summer on Saipan helping the Attorney General of the Northern Mariana Islands make a case to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up World War II era PCB contamination; and studied climate, human rights, and immigration law at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Following law school, Kate was admitted into the prestigious Honors Program at the United States Department of Justice, to serve as a litigator in the Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). For seven years Kate brought cases against electric utilities, aluminum smelters, cement plants and landfills for Clean Air Act violations. Her work earned her an EPA Gold Medal for Exceptional Service on a case, as well as two EPA Bronze Medals.

Kate then moved to Capitol Hill where she served as Chief Environmental Counsel to U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and managed his Oversight Subcommittee on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. There, she worked extensively on climate change legislation and Deepwater Horizon oil spill response efforts, and represented the Senator at the 2009 U.N climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2012, Kate moved to Harvard Law School, where she founded and directed the Environmental Policy Initiative (now the Harvard Energy and Environmental Law Program). There, Kate’s work led to greater transparency of hydraulic fracturing chemicals in the U.S. oil and gas industry, informed the EPA as it designed the Clean Power Plan to control carbon pollution from the power sector, and offered constitutional guideposts to states pushing for more aggressive clean energy policies. Kate also taught Oil and Gas Law at Harvard Law School for four years.

Kate now focuses on climate policy as it relates to the electricity sector and the oil and gas sector. Kate was the lead author on a climate policy study for Governor Cooper of North Carolina, and represented eight former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioners on an amicus brief in D.C. Circuit Court litigation over the Trump administration’s rollback of the Clean Power Plant. Kate also runs an inter-disciplinary, multi-university research effort into decision-making in U.S. electricity markets and implications for decarbonization and innovation. Kate spent three months at the International Energy Agency in Paris to study methane abatement policies in 2019-2020, and coauthored the IEA’s regulatory roadmap on the topic. In addition to her course on Climate Change and the Law, Kate taught a course on the Future of the Grid with Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, former FERC Chair Norman Bay, and Dr. Brian Murray of Duke University. Kate regularly consults with congressional offices and state and federal agencies on climate and energy policy, and is invited to speak to governmental, industry, and environmental audiences on these topics.

Talia Weiss

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Talia Weiss is a researcher in particle physics and technology ethics, currently pursuing a Physics PhD at Yale University. Her physics research centers on measuring the mass of a fundamental particle. Talia received her B.S. in Physics from MIT and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago, where her masters thesis investigated how scientists who invented gene editing technologies viewed the ethics of their research and acted in response. She has also written and spoken on the moral failings of Nazi nuclear physicists, as well as the history of scientific self-regulation.

In 2018-19, Talia developed a new program for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists which fostered conversations among researchers in disparate fields with common areas of concern—especially climate, nuclear, and emerging technology policy. She moderated expert panels for the program, which were followed by small-group participant discussions on core practical questions. As an undergraduate, Talia worked for the MIT Washington Office, where she reported on federal R&D policy developments for university leadership. She also served as a Content Developer for the MIT Museum, where she wrote materials to illuminate quantum and astrophysics concepts.

Curt Rhodes

Curt Rhodes is the Founder/International Director of Questscope, a non- profit, non-governmental organization established in 1988 for youth mentorship, alternative education, juvenile justice, community-building, mental well-being, and humanitarian aid programs in partnership with marginalized and refugee communities in the Middle East. Curt holds an MPH degree (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and MS and PhD degrees (University of Wisconsin, Madison).

Curt was recognized in 2011 as Social Entrepreneur of the Year in the Middle East by the Schwab Foundation/World Economic Forum for visionary, pragmatic, and courageous contributions that significantly improve the state of the world. In 2014, he was awarded the Tufts University/Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award for his dedication to        solving the most pressing problems facing the world. He has lived continuously in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, or Egypt since 1981 and is a fluent  Arabic speaker.

Curt has emphasized inclusivity and participation as two foundational principles in the works he has fostered and the roles he has developed with  and for local leaders over the past 35 years. He also emphasizes the importance of knowing people as spiritual beings - who must be known in relationships of trust that go beyond their physical needs for food, shelter, clothing, education, etc.

Curt began his career in the Middle East as an associate professor and assistant dean in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon in February 1981. He redirected his career towards social development initiatives in 1984 after observing outcomes of the 1982 war in West Beirut and founded Questscope in 1988.

1980: He worked in the midst of war and conflict in the 1980s with communities in the south of Lebanon and in what was once West Beirut with associations of Lebanese who came from a wide variety of religious  traditions and heritages.

1990: In the late 1980s and 1990s he focused again on communities of varied traditions and backgrounds in Syria and Jordan, developing programs for at-risk and marginalized youth (mentally challenged youth/young adults, incarcerated youth, or those at risk of incarceration or post-incarceration, out-of-school youth) that served as focal points for  cooperation among people of good will from all communities.

2000: In 2000-2010, he built up leadership teams and organizational capacity in Jordan and Syria with experience in expanding participatory approaches to social issues. Work with youth in mentoring and alternative education spread to Sudan, Yemen, and northern Iraq during this time.

2011: From 2011 until now, his teams have modeled developmental  approaches within humanitarian/relief crisis situations (in refugee camps and in host communities) that have brought people of widely  divergent experiences and traditions together for the benefit of all concerned.

More than a decade ago, Curt met Sherman Teichman and the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) which has led to remarkable internships with Tufts students for ideation and creation of unique programs (including community mental trauma alleviation) to change the life trajectories of  marginalized youth in the Middle East. 
Curt is known as a resourceful peacemaker, practical innovator, and appreciative respecter of persons and traditions. He is relentlessly committed to putting the last first - the "motto" of Questscope - by engaging with individuals and their communities, institutions, and decision- makers at multiple levels.

Duncan Pickard

Duncan Pickard is a lawyer at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York and London. His practice focuses on international dispute resolution and public international law, with representations including proceedings before the International Court of Justice and advice to States and international organizations. He clerked at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in The Hague, and the Court of Justice of the European Union, in Luxembourg.

Before law school, Duncan was a student of the "Arab Spring." He worked as an adviser on constitution making and design for Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based NGO, supporting its work in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen. In 2013, Duncan ran DRI's Tripoli office, where he organized a delegation of Tunisian parliamentarians to Libya's legislature to share lessons regarding the two countries' political transitions. He published reports from North Africa as a Nonresident Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, including in the Washington Post, the Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Policy.

Duncan serves on the boards of DRI, the Council for European Studies at Columbia University, and MVYouth, which provides grants and scholarships in support of young people from Duncan's native Martha's Vineyard. He also received a Fellowship at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, which promotes ethical reasoning through its flagship two-week study tour to Germany and Poland. Duncan was proud to participate in a Convisero panel of FASPE alums on how the fellowship contributed to his professional development.

Duncan holds degrees from Stanford Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School, and Tufts University. At Tufts, Duncan served as student body president, a Jonathan M. Tisch Scholar of Citizenship and Public Service, and a Synaptic Scholar at the Institute for Global Leadership. Sherman avidly supported Duncan's education at Tufts, including through encouraging him to pursue an internship at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, a two-year undergraduate honor's thesis with fieldwork in Peru, and publishing opportunities through Discourse, a student-led journal that Sherman convinced Duncan to join while tossing a lacrosse ball.

Julia Samson

Julia is a youth advocate committed to empowering youth around the world, transforming the private sector, and much more. She currently works as a Sustainable Finance Capital Markets Analyst at French investment bank, BNP Paribas, helping clients finance impactful projects. She is extremely passionate about the private sector's role in financing climate solutions and social impact initiatives. 

She is graduate from Columbia University with a Bachelor’s degree in Sustainable Development, while also studying Mandarin, Korean, and French. During her time at Columbia, Julia was captain of the NCAA D1 Women's Swim Team, in addition to a 2018-2019 Executive Board member of Columbia's LIGA Filipina. She was a Zhi-Xing US-China Young Leaders Fellow in Summer 2018 where she participated in geopolitical and economic development programming. Julia has been part of Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society as a data analyst on the ACToday-Bangladesh project team working to improve climatic variability solutions for small-landholders in Bangladesh. 

Beyond her professional commitment, she has been involved in many youth engagement initiatives around the world. She served as a US Core lecturer in Harvard’s Summit for Young Leaders in China in 2020 and 2021 where she taught Climate Change-Development Economics and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In Spring 2021, she founded the Sustainable Ocean Alliance NYC Hub working to bring awareness and drive innovation for local marine ecosystems in the New York City region. She is a 2021 speaker at the Wall Street Green Summit.