Joshua Rubenstein

Joshua Rubenstein was on the staff of Amnesty International USA from 1975 to 2012 as the Northeast Regional Director. His responsibilities were wide-ranging. He was involved in organizing chapters of volunteer activists in New England, as well as through the Midwest and South. He represented Amnesty to the press, organized public forums, and sustained ties with numerous other human rights organizations throughout New England, New York, and New Jersey. He testified against the death penalty before state legislatures and conducted seminars on various human rights topics with college and community audiences. Based on his experience as an organizer and his foreign language skills, he was also recruited by Amnesty’s International Secretariat to help organize Amnesty’s grassroots membership in Israel and in the Russian Federation, as well as serving as a delegate to international gatherings in Canada, Mexico, Austria, and Uzbekistan.

Mr. Rubenstein became Associate Director for Major Gifts at the Harvard Law School in March 2015.

Working as an independent scholar, Mr. Rubenstein has been an Associate of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University since 1984, and is the author or editor of a number of path-breaking books on Soviet and Soviet-Jewish history. Soviet Dissidents, Their Struggle for Human Rights, was the first comprehensive history of the Soviet human rights movement. Tangled Loyalties, The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg, a biography of the controversial Soviet-Jewish writer and journalist, was the result of thirteen years of research and writing. He is the co-editor of Stalin's Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Mr. Rubenstein received a National Jewish Book Award in the category of East European Studies for Stalin's Secret Pogrom. He is also the co-editor of The KGB File of Andrei Sakharov. He also helped to edit and translate The Unknown Black Book, the Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories.

Mr. Rubenstein contributed a concise, interpretive biography of Leon Trotsky to the Jewish Lives series of Yale University Press. The Jewish Lives series received a National Jewish Book Award as the 2014 Jewish Book of the Year, the first time that a series has been recognized in this way.

Mr. Rubenstein wrote and edited Shot by Shot: the Holocaust in German-Occupied Territory. It has been published as an ebook by Facing History and Ourselves, where Mr. Rubenstein served as Scholar-in- Residence in 2012 and 2013.

His most recent book, The Last Days of Stalin, was published by Yale University Press in the spring of 2016. It has already appeared in Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish, Portuguese, and Ukrainian, while additional foreign-language editions are awaited in Azeri, Czech, and French.

Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen taught high school history for fifteen years and has been teaching at Tufts University since 1995.  He is a Senior Lecturer in Education and also teaches courses in the Peace and Justice and the American Studies programs as well as being Affiliated Faculty in the History Department.  He has worked on educational projects beyond the classroom, editing and writing anthologies to accompany the public television documentaries, Vietnam  A Television History  and Eyes On The Prize.  He has also been working with WGBH on the public television website:  pbslearningmedia.org.  Steve was a Program Associate with Facing History and Ourselves for two decades and has written articles about teaching controversial issues like the Vietnam War, the dropping of the Atomic Bomb, and the Holocaust.  He was the recipient of the Lerman-Neubauer Prize for Outstanding Teaching and Advising in 2003 at Tufts University.  He was voted Professor of the Year by the Tufts Student Senate in the spring of 2007.  He was voted Professor of the Year by the Tufts Democrats in the spring of 2010.  He has, quite obviously, been in a slump for over a decade.

Eliza Ennis

Dedicated to affecting global and local change by championing equity, redefining cross-sector collaboration, and building systemic solutions, Eliza is currently a Consultant at Dalberg Global Development Advisors focused on health, climate, and justice. At Dalberg, she has supported foundations and non-profits on topics including global health, private-public partnerships, and education and justice initiatives. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she focused on the safe reopening of K-12 schools in the US, including facilitating knowledge sharing around PPE, testing, and vaccination. Early in the pandemic, she also supported a working group of Ministers of Health and Finance from across the African Union focused on rethinking health financing. She has conducted quantitative analysis on country health spending, developed models on the economic and health impacts of product introduction, mapped health investors, interviewed dozens of stakeholders across fields, and built case studies to highlight impactful work. Eliza has also developed multiple strategies focused on advancing impact, including a scaling strategy for a large U.S. non-profit impact initiative, focusing on trauma-informed care resources for direct service providers and governments across the country. This project included an analysis of the gaps in early childhood care and key future advocacy areas, as well as internal programmatic strategy recommendations.

Prior to joining Dalberg, Eliza was President of the Harvard International Relations Council, a student-run 501(c)(3) NGO focused on international relations education both abroad and locally. In this role, she supervised educational programs for over 9,000 students on three continents, including on-campus engagement programs, tutoring initiatives, and international diplomatic debates. Her work included expanding our training and educational integration programs, drafting curricula, launching an internship program and formal sexual assault policy, refocusing our mission on service and global impact, and restructuring our financial approach

Eliza spent several years leading the Women’s Media Center’s research team, focusing on gender equity for women in the media, as well as coverage of U.S. elections and federal legislation. She also worked at Project ECHO, providing research and policy advice for rural healthcare initiatives in New Mexico. Eliza holds a B.A. from Harvard University, in Social Studies with a minor in Health Policy and a citation in Arabic. During her studies, the focus of her independent research was on immigration policy, including work on the Mediterranean refugee crisis and the effects of climate change on migration and mental health in the Pacific.

Hafsat Abiola

HAFSAT ABIOLA

PRESIDENT - WOMEN IN AFRICA

Recognized by Europe-based A Different View as one of fifteen champions for World Democracy, Hafsat Abiola is President of Women in Africa (WIA) Initiative. WIA is an organisation which provides a platform for leading and high potential African women to connect and raise the level of individual success and collective impact.

Her experience covers the local to global. From an eight-year stint as a member of cabinet in Nigeria’s industrial state where she was responsible for expanding access to public services for the poor; to her work as a councillor of the World Future Council, a global entity that identifies, analyses and spreads the world’s best policies; Hafsat works to promote the sustainable development agenda at all levels. She is one of three leads of Connecting Women Leaders and the Special Envoy to Africa of the Women Political Leaders.

Inspired by women’s often unrecognised contributions to developing their families and communities, Hafsat believes women are the greatest untapped resource available to meet the challenges facing the continent of Africa. Through her non-profit, the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND), which works in Nigeria; and WIA, which operates across Africa, she is working to build a critical mass of women with the capacity to take on these challenges and to bring about the breakthroughs Africans need.

Hafsat’s commitment to fostering democracy and development in Africa is a tribute to her parents, celebrated philanthropists who lost their lives in the course of their efforts to restore democracy during a time of military rule in Nigeria.

She graduated from Harvard University with a A.B. in Development Economics (Hons.) and received a Master’s in International Development from Tsinghua University. She is the recipient of several awards including the recognition as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2006, the Goi Peace Foundation award in 2016, the Freedom Award from the U.S. National Civil Rights Museum in 2019, and the Excellence Award from the Forum de Bamako in Mali in 2021.

I first met Hafsat when she was an undergraduate student at Harvard. Her dignity was apparent, and her intelligence was overt. She shared with my students the history of her remarkable parents, and we’ve had the privilege of her mentoring our students in Nigeria (especially our Synaptic Scholars, whose work on Nigeria can be seen in this Discourse issue. Her ability to help shepherd and introduce the institute to people, especially for the inaugural trip for Synaptics to Nigeria, whose capital Lagos had just been described as ‘dystopia’ was critical. ) and elsewhere. She participated and was acknowledged in Global Crime, Corruption, and Accountability. For our students what was distinctive was the courage and determination to confront the forces that were willing to be so destructive with fearlessness and not be intimidated. She has carried this into her work, inspiring African youth across the continent, particularly in her own country Nigeria, whose recent elections have demonstrated ever-increasing progress to having their voices heard.

Ted Kurland

Ted Kurland is the founder of The Kurland Agency, which opened its doors in 1975 in Boston. At the time, he was a recent graduate of Brandeis University, where he majored in economics. After Kurland graduated, he first worked for a small Boston talent agency, an invaluable experience that launched his career into the talent booking business. With two partners, he later started All American Talent, an agency that booked primarily blues artists such as Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, George Thorogood, Hound Dog Taylor, and Ko Ko Taylor. All American Talent turned into Ted Kurland Associates, now The Kurland Agency, and the agency’s emphasis shifted to booking jazz artists.

Eminent jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton was the first artist to become a client of the new company. Soon after, other major performers such as Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Bill Evans, Roy Haynes, Milt Jackson, Charles Mingus, Isaac Hayes, Dexter Gordon, Nina Simone, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Jaco Pastorius, Ravi Shankar, Astor Piazzolla, Stephane Grappelli, Tony Williams, Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard, Wynton Marsalis, Bela Fleck and many other celebrated jazz musicians joined the growing TKA family of artists.

Kurland’s client services with some musicians grew to include management and negotiating recording, music publishing, movie soundtrack and video licensing agreements.

By the early 1980’s, the agency expanded their bookings internationally and became well established in every major market in the world, arranging tours throughout Europe, Asia, and South America and even the former U.S.S.R..

 Although TKA remains well-known for representation of major jazz artists, they now focus on prominent performers from all genres of music such as blues, roots, world, and contemporary singer/songwriters.

Davis Tyler-Dudley

Davis Tyler-Dudley is a recent Harvard College graduate passionate about exploring the future of U.S. foreign policy and the world order it impacts. Davis currently works in the Washington, D.C. office of the global management consulting firm McKinsey and Company. In the future, he intends to pursue a joint JD-MBA degree to gain the skills necessary to succeed as a leader in both business and government.

Davis is a strong believer in the power of empathetic leadership, cross-cultural communication, and interdisciplinary approaches to global issues. His experiences at Harvard, both academic and extracurricular, have helped shape this perspective. Davis studied an interdisciplinary major similar to other universities’ Philosophy, Politics, Economics programs, focusing much of his coursework on international affairs and US foreign policy. He minored in Mind, Brain, Behavior, another interdisciplinary field that seeks to apply scientific findings from psychology and neuroscience to societal issues. In his coursework and research, Davis has worked to use the multifaceted lessons of these interconnected fields to better understand issues of leadership, decision-making, strategy, conflict, and cooperation in international affairs.

As a culmination of some of these academic themes, Davis researched and wrote a 135-page magna cum laude awarded thesis project – Crouching Eagle, Hidden Dragon: How the History of US Hegemony Shapes the Contours of a New Rivalry in Latin America. The project examines how historical factors shape the thinking of politicians and strategists throughout the Western Hemisphere as they navigate the intensifying geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. It includes content drawn from interviews with dozens of experts and Latin American political leaders conducted in Spanish and Portuguese.

During the summer sessions in between academic semesters, Davis has taken advantage of opportunities offered by Harvard to learn valuable pre-professional skills, practice his language abilities, and gain experience working with people from a variety of different perspectives and backgrounds. In 2018, Davis worked with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Chile on strategies for using artificial intelligence and data-mining technology to overhaul the government’s digital infrastructure. He was lead author on this Spanish-language proposal, which was adopted as official policy after a meeting with the President of Chile and a presentation to the Vice Minister of Finance. In 2019, Davis studied abroad in Paris with SciencesPo and led a bilingual English-French team in the creation of a social impact-oriented startup project, BonVoyage. The project aimed to apply research from psychology, neuroscience, and computer science to combat sexual assault and sexual harassment in Paris’ public transit systems. The project received an award from UNESCO and, after a presentation to the Mayor of Paris, was adopted for future implementation by the RATP Group, the city’s public transit operator. In 2020, Davis was selected for an internship with the U.S. Department of State, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, transitioned to working on Covid-19 response projects with the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Since his freshman year, Davis has been deeply involved in extracurricular activities with the Harvard International Relations Council (HIRC). As part of his work with this organization, Davis led Harvard’s traveling, competitive Model United Nations team and helped host international relations-focused conferences in the US, India, China, the UAE, and Latin America with thousands of attendees. These conferences included the largest Model UN conference in the world in Boston as well as a number of impact-oriented charitable efforts, such as a $40,000 initiative to improve clean drinking water access outside of Hyderabad, India. Davis and Sherman met in April 2020 when Davis was elected President and CEO of the HIRC, which Sherman has advised for multiple years. As President, Davis managed the organization’s transition to virtual programming and spearheaded new initiatives to bring better global affairs-focused educational access to students in multiple Asian countries, working with international partner corporations such as Worldview Education in India, Alpha Partners Education in China, and The Global Citizen Inc. in Southeast Asia. He also oversaw the implementation of a new venture, the IRC Academy, which aims to provide free online access to educational content for students seeking to improve their skills in topics such as public speaking, organizational leadership, debate, and diplomacy.

When not working, traveling, or conducting research, Davis enjoys singing, playing piano, practicing foreign languages, photography, and golf.

Pervez Hoodbhoy

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, born in Karachi (1950), resides in Islamabad where he taught physics for 47 years (1973-2021) at Quaid-e-Azam University. From 2013-2020 he was Distinguished Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Forman Christian College-University, Lahore.  Earlier, for short periods he was visiting professor at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Maryland, and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Washington.

Hoodbhoy graduated from MIT with undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics (1973), a master's in solid state physics (1973), and a PhD degree in nuclear physics (1978). He is a sponsor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a member of the Permanent Monitoring Panel of the World Federation of Scientists, and founder-director of the Eqbal Ahmad Centre for Public Education. Since 1988 he has headed Mashal Books in Lahore and leads a major translation effort to produce books in Urdu that promote modern thought, human rights, and emancipation of women.

In 1968 he won the Baker Award for Electronics, and in 1984 the Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics. In 2003 he was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the popularization of science. In 2010 he received the Joseph A. Burton Award from the American Physical Society and the Jean Meyer Award from Tufts University. In 2011, he was included in the list of 100 most influential global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. During 2013-2017 he was a member of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Affairs. In 2019 he received the honorary doctor of law degree from the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Hoodbhoy’s best known book (1990) is titled Islam and Science – Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, translated into 8 languages. His current book, Pakistan: Origins, Identity & Future is with the publishers. He is also a well-known commentator on Pakistani TV channels on political and social issues. As an activist against nuclear weapons in South Asia, he has written and spoken extensively for their abolition. His documentary films include, “Pakistan and India under the Nuclear Shadow” and “Crossing the Lines – Kashmir, Pakistan, India”.

Lecture I: How Islam is changing across the Muslim world

In UAE unmarried men and women may live together, alcohol restrictions are gone, and honor killings will be judged a crime just as any other. A once deeply conservative Saudi Arabia has loosened up but in Afghanistan the hand-chopping, openly misogynist Taliban are back in power. And which way is Pakistan – my country – going? In this lecture I will connect different current trends – political, social, and philosophical – with those which emerged in the early centuries of Islam.

Lecture II: China, Pakistan and expansion of the Belt Road Initiative

A non-ideological Beijing Consensus that purports to be neo-liberalism with Chinese characteristics is reshaping South Asia. Pakistan has long been fully invested in the idea with over $60 billion of Chinese investment so far. After the Taliban victory it is seeking to draw Afghanistan into the arrangement as well. Will it work and how far can it go? I will assess the impact of the Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) from available data.  

Ajaita Shah

Ajaita Shah is an entrepreneur, a mentor, a speaker, and board member. Ajaita has committed to empowering rural women across the developing world through market based business models, clean energy, technology, and inspiring women to push themselves beyond their societal boundaries.

Ms. Ajaita Shah drives vision, strategy, investments, and partnerships at Frontier Markets. Frontier Markets is a social tech commerce enterprise that focuses on rural India. It is an end-to-end commerce platform that provides last-mile products and services, delivered at the doorsteps of consumers in villages through an assisted commerce model run by rural women entrepreneurs called Saral Jeevan Sahelis. Operating in 2,000 villages in India, with 20 micro distribution hubs managing 10,000 Sahelis to facilitate access to products and services in agri, digital inclusion, home appliances, clean energy solutions, since covid, healthcare and essential services, and finance to over 500,000 households. Most recent awards include Fintech Innovation Challenge Winner UNCDF, SDG Finance Summit’s Highest Impact Award, Ms. Shah has been working with social enterprises and in rural India in microfinance, rural distribution, marketing, and access for 15+ years, and has committed to empowering rural women across the developing world through business models, financial inclusion, technology, data, clean energy, and inspiring women to push themselves beyond their societal boundaries.

She is the recipient of prestigious awards including: Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Women Transforms India Award, Digital Women of the Year, CNBC’s Women Entrepreneur of the Year, Loreal Women of Worth and more. She is a Women’s Changemaker Fellow at Womanity Foundation, Dasra Leadership Fellow, Echoing Green Fellow, and Cordes Fellow. She has spoken in many forums including COP 23, UN High Level Political Forums, UN SDG Summit, and more on social enterprise perspective from the field, to digital inclusion, to climate change to gender-smart investing.

Ajaita serves on the board of Frontier Innovations Foundation, a non-profit focused on last-mile distribution support social enterprises driving solutions to rural customers globally. As well as a Steering Committee Board Member for SHINE Investor and SAWIE. She is also an advisor to various social enterprises in India focusing on product development for the poor. Ajaita Shah holds her B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University.

Mantra: “Investing in Women is smart business and key to poverty alleviation at scale.”

Ajaita and her team at Frontier Markets won the National Startup Award for Best Women-Led Startup in 2021. Frontier was recognized for making the startup ecosystem more gender inclusive.

Kelly Ward

Kelly Ward has over a decade of experience in strategy, business development, and project management roles, working in seven countries: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Jordan, Peru, South Africa, Ethiopia, and the United States. She was formerly the Director of Projects at IUNU, where she helps bring advanced agriculture technology to indoor farms across the world. She is currently the President and Co-Owner with her brother, Kiffin, of Ward Manufacturing, a niche metallurgy high-end laser production company. At the core of Kelly's projects were IUNU’s AI-driven LUNA platform which allows growers to develop a feedback loop between capturing data and managing processes to create precise, predictable production, and IUNU’s Cultivation Management Platform, which helps growers manage people, plants, process, and compliance all in one place to de-risk their operation.

Kelly has an MPA from Columbia University’s, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), focused on agricultural supply chains. Her family farm inspires her interest in helping agriculture companies scale by developing partnerships and managing strategic projects to improve production, supply chain efficiency, quality, and sustainability.

Kelly previously worked as a business development consultant for an aeroponic vertical farm and several food tech startups across the United States. Working with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Kelly co-led the launch of Columbia University's "Columbia World Projects - Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow” program in Addis, Ethiopia. There she conducted and presented supply chain analyses to the World Bank, the UN, and the federal government of Ethiopia to improve technology and leverage climate data to maximize food production, reduce crop loss, increase sustainability, and meet their national climate targets. In Cape Town, South Africa, Kelly consulted for local social enterprises and designed a pilot for an aquaponics program and a community nutrition program. She worked for Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus at Grameen Bank's Yunus Centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh, focused on microfinace for farmers and small business owners. There she co-authored a report on Grameen Bank's Village Banking Model to inform microfinance replicators. She also earned a certificate in Grameen Bank’s credit delivery-recovery mechanism, focusing on loan management and utilization assessments.

Outside of agriculture, Kelly was the Development and Planning Officer on the Strategies and Partnerships team at ICAP, Mailman School of Public Health in New York City. In Ubud, Indonesia, Kelly developed and implemented finance management and career readiness curricula for teenagers in state custody. She was also a primatologist studying captive Western Lowland Gorillas as well as researching the ecology and biology of three species of wild primates in the Peruvian Amazon. The family of Emperor Tamarin's she studied starred in BBC One's "Monkey Planet" documentary.

Full disclosure, Kelly is my son's wife, hence my daughter-in-law, who I adore and admire. I always knew my son would attract a “military brat,” rodeo barrel racing farm girl who uses power tools, plays the Celtic fiddle, was a member of her University's ballroom dancing team, who loves all animals, and who would send me an attachment telling me that she was fulfilling one of her childhood dreams while in Addis, Ethiopia, and it turned out to be a picture of her surrounded by the famed hyenas of Harare, who learned Arabic so she could help Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Jordan, and shares my son's passion for the Patriots.

Patrick Kabanda

Patrick Kabanda, a native of Uganda, has been passionate about music since his childhood, when he first heard the pipe organ at Namirembe Cathedral in Kampala. He was raised by his mother, a kindergarten teacher, in humble circumstances made more disruptive by the political violence that was wracking the country. After becoming a chorister at the cathedral, he found music a refuge, but also began to understand how the arts could help reconcile the conflicts that lay behind the hostilities, generate income, and improve people's livelihoods. He learned the piano and the organ from cathedral organists in Uganda who saw his fascination, and continued to teach himself copying music scores by hand, playing by ear, composing, and practicing the art of improvisation. Later, in performances around the world, he saw how music connects with the human spirit: a Bach fugue or an African American spiritual can both move people of many different cultures.

With that background, Kabanda has pursued a career linking the arts and international affairs. In his 2013 capstone project for a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy degree at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, entitled "Where Culture Leads, Trade Follows," Kabanda outlined policy measures that could advance the value of African music in the international trade in services. At Fletcher, he was a 2012-2013 Charles Francis Adams Scholar and was awarded the 2013 Presidential Award for Citizenship and Public Service from Tufts University.

Kabanda's first book The Creative Wealth of Nations, published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press, features a foreword from Amartya Sen, a Nobel Laureate and Professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University. Kabanda has consulted for the Office of the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist at the World Bank. In his work with the Development Economics Impact Evaluation unit, he discussed policies that can advance entertainment education; he also wrote on the links between music, the internet and development for the "World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends." At the United Nations Development Programme, he prepared three papers on creative work for the 2015 Human Development Report, and he has prepared a background paper on examining inequality in the arts for the 2019 report on tackling inequality in the 21st century. Prior, he consulted for the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, New Jersey where he designed strategies to deliver arts education via digital technologies.

Kabanda earned his Bachelor's and Master's of Music degrees on scholarship at The Juilliard School in New York City. At Juilliard, he was awarded the 2003 William Schuman Prize for outstanding achievement and leadership in music and the 2001 Daniel and Nina Carasso Prize. He made his European debut in 2003 at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. At the invitation of London's South African High Commission, he returned there in 2004 to perform with other artists in celebration of the tenth anniversary of South Africa's Independence. As a Juilliard delegate at the 2003 Sasakawa Young Leaders forum at the American University in Cairo, he led a discussion on music as a form of communication and also performed at Egypt's All Saints Cathedral.

In 2005, he toured Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland conducting research on music as social action. He worked with a youth choir in Kigali, Rwanda and a youth band in Gulu, Northern Uganda in 2008, and two years later visited Yei, South Sudan, where he discussed Arts in Education, Agriculture and the Environment with students in secondary schools, talks hosted by the Africa Education and Leadership Initiative. In 2009, he made his Scandinavian debut at the Åland Organ Festival on Åland Islands. In Chiang Rai, Thailand, he worked in 2012 with a team at the Doi Tung regional development project to prepare a new communication strategy for its work in helping ethnic minorities there to improve their lives, and helped make a short documentary, choosing music and contributing to filming, for its sponsor, the Mae Fah Luang Foundation — a video promoting the Foundation's sustainable development practices in Thailand, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Indonesia.

From 2004 to 2011, he was School Organist and Instructor in Music at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and has served as organist at other places, including as assisting organist at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York. In Asia, he has performed at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, and in the United States, at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center and at the Washington National Cathedral.

In 2010, Kabanda served as Dean of the Merrimack Valley Chapter of the American Guild of Organists in Massachusetts. While he is now focusing on advancing the creative wealth of nations in development policy, he continues to play and teach piano and organ. His hobbies include soccer, landscaping, and photography. Check out his photo essay, "A Ugandan in Southeast Asia." 

Gregg Nakano

A Naval Academy graduate and officer of Marines, Gregg Nakano served as an infantry platoon commander during the first Gulf War and intelligence officer during the 1991 Los Angeles riots. Embracing the Art of War dictum to “know yourself and know the enemy,” he spent three years studying Mandarin at Fudan University and one year studying Farsi at the University of Tehran before enrolling in Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. 

Hoping to embody Abraham Lincoln’s approach of destroying one’s enemies by making them friends, he joined USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance after 9/11. As part of USAID/OFDA’s military liaison team, he facilitated the provision of humanitarian assistance by civilian and military stakeholders to disaster survivors in Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Guatemala, and Philippines. 

 In 2004, he created the Joint Humanitarian Operations Course (JHOC), a primer on US Government coordination during overseas disaster responses. The JHOC became USAID’s most frequently requested external courses and by 2020 had been delivered over 1,000 times to military units around the world. In the wake of Hurricane Stan, Gregg took the initiative to coordinate with US Army Corps of Engineers and provide Joint Task Force Bravo with the ability to conduct near-real time geo-referenced post-disaster assessments. For this and other services rendered, he was awarded the Joint Civilian Service Commendation medal.  

In 2007, I was invited by students from Tufts University’s Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) to be part of a panel on civil-military collaboration in humanitarian responses. They were leaders in the Institute’s ALLIES initiative (Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services) an immersive experiential service-learning program of liberal arts students, cadets and midshipmen.

The students’ knowledge, self-confidence, and ability to think critically about complex issues impressed me greatly. After meeting the founder and Director of the IGL, Sherman Teichman or “Sherm” as he was known to everyone, I knew why. Sherm is a charismatic force of nature who sees and lives life not as it is, but as the better version of what it might be. And his goal in academia is to tear down the ivory tower and help teachers remember what it was like to plow the fields. 

In a way I’d never witnessed before, Sherm can make things magically appear by a process he referred to as “serendipity.” As brainstorming sessions generate flashes of brilliance, the resulting dreams are thrown out into the universe and somehow, somewhere, someone answers the call to provide what was needed for the next step. It was as if he is manifesting the Goethe attributed quote: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” And perhaps most importantly, Sherm infuses his students with the belief that they too have magic and can create the impossible.

Since then, I’ve rethought my life purpose and way of operating. After barely surviving self-induced judgement errors for half a century, I’ve decided to focus on empowering the next generation to overcome the anthropogenic climate change conflicts our generation will leave unsolved.

Macro interests include midwifing global governance systems that evolved from Westphalian sovereignty, spiritualization of One Health ecosystems, and transforming the military industrial complex into the human security network. Micro scale proofs of concept include developing Pacific ALLIES, (Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services) designed to help students, cadets and midshipmen understand the climate change impacts on national security by transforming Kwajalein Atol into a living sustainability laboratory.

I’m currently in the process of establishing Pacific ALLIES as a 501(c) 3 and doing the same on the Marshallese side working on creating a consultancy based on climate change adaptation and human security…and getting ready for Pacific ALLIES 2022. 

 I often think of Machiavelli –

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the innovator has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this luke-warmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.”

Gregg is one of the most influential educators I have ever encountered.  Soft-spoken, humble, insightful, thoughtful, bold, and courageous, he is the very antithesis of hubris. Gregg took a nascent initiative, ALLIES we created at the Institute  – Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services, a civil -military educational framework and matured and galvanized it into a profoundly critical program with global reach. 

I had the extraordinary fortune to secure his services as an INSPIRE Fellow (Institute Scholar/ Practitioner in Residence), and within a year he inspired our students to re-conceptualize the concept of security, with an emphasis on human security, and led its first  sensitive joint research program of cadets, midshipmen and arts and sciences liberal arts students to Jordan to study the impact of Iraqi refugees on the nation. He thankfully has made ALLIES a core element of his professional life, now negotiating to bring Singaporean military officers and cadets into his Pacific ALLIES Pacific endeavors.   Given his deep concern for the environment he is a superb LEAP Fellow with LISD.

He treats every individual with dignity and compassion, and unfailingly has earned the respect of every person he has met. He defines, in his thinking and actions, the very essence of moral and ethical leadership. Of the many people I introduced from my professional life to my family, he made one of the the greatest human impressions. 

Gregg recently earned his doctorate in Education at the University of Hawaii. His future students will be extraordinarily fortunate. I’m tremendously honored to be his friend.

Jack Goldstone

Jack A. Goldstone (PhD Harvard) is the Virginia E. and John T. Hazel, Jr., Chair Professor of Public Policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, in Arlington Virginia.  He is also a Senior Fellow of the Mercatus Center and a Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.  Goldstone previously taught at Northwestern University and the University of California, and has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, the California Institute of Technology, Konstanz University (Germany), Chuo University (Japan) and the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 

       Professor Goldstone has spent his career studying revolutions, social protest, and democracy.  In the process, he became a champion for integrating the study of population change into comparative politics and international relations.  Goldstone is the author of Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (awarded the 1993 Distinguished Scholarly Research Award of the American Sociological Association) and fifteen other books and almost two hundred research articles on topics in politics, economics, and long-term social change.  He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study at Stanford University, the Research School of Social Sciences at Australian National University, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.  He has been the Richard Holbrooke Distinguished Lecturer at the American Academy in Berlin, and has won Fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and the American Council of Learned Societies.  He has also received the Arnoldo Momigliano Prize of the Historical Society, the Myron Weiner Award for Lifetime Achievement from the International Studies Association, and was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for 2010-2011.

        Goldstone led a National Academy of Sciences study of USAID democracy assistance, and worked with USAID, DIFD, and the US State and Defense Departments on developing their operations in fragile states.  His latest books are Why Europe? The Rise of the West 1500-1850 (McGraw-Hill, 2008), Political Demography: How Population Changes are Reshaping International Security and National Politics (Oxford, 2012), and Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 2014).   Two edited works – The International Handbook of Population Policies and The Handbook of Revolutions of the 21st Century – will be published in 2022 by Springer.

        Professor Goldstone is active with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute, and has written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Hill, Politico; he has also appeared on CNN, Al-Jazeera and other foreign media.  He has recently been a guest on numerous podcasts to talk about the risks of political violence in America – a topic on which he hoped he would not have to apply his expertise on fragile states.

Jessica Wilson-Jones

Jessica Wilson-Jones is a Foreign Affairs Officer for the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. She coordinates and leads interagency efforts in support of the Department’s foreign assistance programs and policies to strengthen inclusive governance, support electoral and political reform, and civil society development in Syria. Previously, she served in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs managing the Fulbright Programs in Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. During the Obama Administration, Jessica was appointed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Policy, leading the advancement of national security and cybersecurity in the Middle East and North Africa.

Prior to her service in government, Jessica worked for the International Rescue Committee where she focused on immigration, refugee resettlement and community outreach and advocacy in Southern California. Jessica is the 2021 director for the New Leaders Council Maryland chapter, shaping the progressive movement and network across the state. Since her undergraduate years, Jessica has contributed her skills to numerous nonprofit organizations and mentored a diverse set of youth in pursuit of opportunities in international relations, development, and foreign policy. At Tufts University, Jessica was a member of the EPIIC class of 2013, and an active contributor and supporter of the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL), aiming to increase diversity in the fields of international affairs and collaborating with programs such as Emerging Black Leaders. As part of the IGL, Jessica worked alongside a community-based organization and the Egyptian Ministry of Planning and Economic Development as part of the IGL Global Fellows Program, conducting original policy research and collaboration in the MENA region. 

Mrs. Wilson-Jones holds a B.A. in International Relations and Arabic Language from Tufts University and M.A. in International Business from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Jessica identifies as Black and Arab-American, and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband. 

You can connect with Jessica Wilson-Jones on LinkedIn.

Shai Schubert

Shai Schubert is a scientist and inventor in the fields of regenerative medicine and medical devices. He completed his Ph.D. at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology studying the role of food antioxidants in vascular health and their impact on intravascular shear stress induced pathologies. He then pursued a postdoctoral position at the Harvard MIT division on Health Sciences and Technology where he studied the role of mononuclear blood cells in vascular health.

After working as a scientist on the development of cellular therapies for vascular and bone conditions, Shai changed directions to become an entrepreneur, starting three companies in the fields of cellular therapy and medical devices and touching the lives of thousands of patients. He has published 14 peer reviewed research papers and 16 patents.

Mentoring was always a major part of Shai’s work. From mentoring PhD students and postdoctoral fellows through their research and career development and supporting young entrepreneurs making their first steps in the business world. Shai enjoys helping people find their strength and motivation when facing a new phase in life.

To me, Shai is first and foremost a wonderful friend, unsparing with his time and advice. Together we helped galvanize a Boston-based progressive Israeli diaspora to support democratic norms in Israel, a humane future for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and to confront authoritarianism and discrimination, in all its forms, in the U.S. A passionate jazz guitarist, he believes that jazz is king!

Julian Agyeman

Julian Agyeman Ph.D. FRSA FRGS, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, has extensive experience in local government, environmental and sustainability consulting and in the voluntary sector in the UK. He holds a a Ph.D in Urban Studies from the University of London, an M.A. in Conservation Policy from Middlesex University, UK, and a B.Sc (joint honours) in Geography and Botany from Durham University, UK.

He is the originator of the increasingly influential concept of just sustainabilities, which explores the intersecting goals of social justice and environmental sustainability defined as: the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems. He centers his research on critical explorations of the complex and embodied relations between humans and the urban environment, whether mediated by governments or social movement organizations, and their effects on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity. For example, are we, as urban planners, as good at fostering belonging (recognition, reconciliation, difference, diversity, inclusion) as we are at developing prescriptions for what our cities can become (smart cities, sharing cities, sustainable cities, resilient cities)? His conviction is that just sustainabilities, which foregrounds belonging and becoming, can help us think through both, together.

He is the author or editor of 12 books, including Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press, 2003), Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice (NYU Press, 2005), The New Countryside?: Ethnicity, Nation and Exclusion in Contemporary Rural Britain (Policy Press, 2006), Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union (MIT Press, 2009), Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada (UBC Press, 2010), Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class and Sustainability (MIT Press, 2011), Environmental Inequalities Beyond Borders: Local Perspectives on Global Injustices (MIT Press, 2011), Introducing Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice (Zed Books, 2013), Incomplete Streets: Processes, Practices, and Possibilities (Routledge, 2014) and Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities (MIT Press, 2015), one of Nature's Top 20 Books of 2015 and Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice: From Loncheras to Lobsta Love (MIT Press, 2017). His latest book is The Immigrant-Food Nexus: Borders, Labor, and Identity in North America (MIT Press 2020).

He was co-founder in 1996, and is now Editor-in-Chief of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability. He is Series Editor of Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice published by Zed Books and Co-Editor of the Routledge Equity, Justice and the Sustainable City Series. Julian is a Founding Senior Advisor/Thought Leader at PlacemakingX and sits on the Academic Board of The Centre for the Future of Places (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden), the Board of Directors of EcoDistricts (Portland, OR, USA) and on the Advisory Boards of Shareable (San Francisco, USA), Participatory City (London, UK), Urban Sharing (Lund, Sweden), Sharecity (Dublin, Ireland), and the McConnell Foundation's Cities for People and Future Cities Canada programs (Montréal, Canada) and the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy - US (New York City).

In 1996, he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA) in the UK, a network of people dedicated to enriching society and shaping the future through ideas and action, and in 2016 he became a Fellow of the UK Royal Geographical Society (FRGS), the learned society and professional body advancing geography and supporting geographers.

He has held Visiting Professorships at the University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia (2008-13); Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK (2010-14); the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (April-May 2011); The Walker Ames Visiting Professorship, University of Washington, Seattle (Feb-March 2017), Visiting Professor in Urban Planning, McGill University, Montréal, Canada (2017-18) and the TD Walter Bean Visiting Professorship at the University of Waterloo, Canada (2020-21). He held a Visiting Fellowship at The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, hosted by the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (April-May 2011). He was Senior Scholar at The Center for Humans and Nature, Chicago (2013-16) and was a Fellow of the McConnell Foundation Cities for People program in Montréal, Canada (2017-18).

In 2018, he was awarded the Athena City Accolade by KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, for his "outstanding contribution to the field of social justice and ecological sustainability, environmental policy and planning."

Education:

Ph.D., University of London

M.A., Middlesex University, UK

B.S., Durham University, UK

Expertise:

Sustainability policy and planning; environmental and food justice; intercultural cities

Julian is a wonderful friend and was an ally to the Institute, and it's EPIIC program in particular. He was a member of my faculty advisory board. He participated in a range of IGL forums, particularly Global Cities, where we talked about environmental racism in urban areas and its "black fields." Julian has a unique ability to combine rigor and flexibility in his thinking. He is one of the most impassioned people and presenters I know, but never didactic. He also can disarm you with his quick wit and humor. He is a fun guy to be around! 

Milton Cole

Milton Cole has had the unique experience of being a roommate of Sherman Teichman when we were students at TWO universities: Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago. Those who know Sherman can appreciate what a stimulating and enjoyable “education” he may thereby have provided me with! Lots of stories to tell….if you’re interested.

At Hopkins I earned a B.A. degree in physics (a degree that is pretty unusual, but it reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the JHU program). At Chicago, my Ph.D. degree characterizes the typical scientific endeavor one might expect. However, living on the city’s South Side provided a much broader and richer experience than the graduate program per se was designed to provide. In particular, the neighborhood of the university is surrounded by African American ghetto areas, which provided a close-up view of urban poverty and the disaster of the Daleyrun Democratic machine. This was a radicalizing experience. Occurring at the same time was the Vietnam War. I was a very active protester of that War, which led me, among other things, to canvas in the adjacent Woodlawn ghetto; I remember going door-to-door, where I learned that while everyone thought the War to be stupid, the typical refrain was “why isn’t the government addressing our community’s problems of racism and poverty”? Nothing new!

After getting my Ph.D. degree, I decided to leave the US. I applied to just three places and was offered positions in each—Toronto, Berlin and Ljubljana (in then Yugoslavia). For family reasons, I chose Toronto. In October, 1970, one month after my arrival, the country awoke to the so-called “FLQ crisis”, involving the Front de Liberation du Quebec. Radicals within this Quebec independence movement had kidnapped both the Deputy Minister of Quebec and a representative of the English government; the former was soon found dead. Martial law was declared throughout the country, which was in a state of panic and anger. My personal, very surprising experience with that period was this: among my Toronto physics colleagues I encountered outspoken racism (anti-Quebecois). I’d never personally witnessed anything similar in the US concerning Blacks. The experience helped to cure me of my naive view that the US was worse than other nations.

I returned to the US in 1972; over the 49 years since then I held physics positions in Seattle, Pasadena, Providence, Brooklyn, Padua, Paris, Marseille, Rome and Oxford….but mostly in the town of State College, PA, where I currently reside, having retired from Penn State University in 2017.

I have written books about surface physics, medical physics and climate change; I also translated a play, The Bomb and the Swastika, written by Amand Lucas. That reminds me of a “Sherman story”. Ca. 1965 he once used the word holocaust; he was really surprised that I had never heard the term.

My current focus is working to slow climate change, in collaboration with organizations like Citizens’ Climate Lobby (nonpartisan) and Extinction Rebellion (highly partisan), especially through programs involving public talks concerning climate change and ways to understand and fight ignorance about that subject.

My wife, Pamela, is a faculty member within Penn State’s Department of Classics and Mediterranean Studies, where she teaches Latin language, literature and culture. My children live happily with their partners in Brooklyn and Chelsea, Manhattan.

Ken Shulman

            Ken Shulman is a veteran print and broadcast journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The New Yorker, CBS/60 Minutes, National Public Radio, the BBC, and PBS. He has covered election campaigns in Liberia, produced radio features in the favellas of Rio de Janiero, and spent time with Italian restorers working on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.

            Ken is a two-time RTDNA Edward R Murrow winner for excellence in broadcasting and was named a Champion of Justice by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Fluent in seven languages, Ken is the author of non-fiction books on art conservation and astronomy. He writes frequently on science, health, and technology for publications including MIT's Technology Review, Spectrum Magazine, and Scientific American.

            Ken currently hosts Away Games, a television travel show and learning platform about sport, politics, and human rights. Away Games uses sport as a lingua franca to help viewers connect with lives, conflicts, and cultures around the world. The series has produced films and learning units on cricket between India and Pakistan, African soccer migrants in Italy, and skateboarding on Arizona’s White Mountain Apache reservation.

When not working Ken enjoys playing piano and guitar, soccer, skiing, film, and cycling. He is a reading and writing tutor at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School and runs a film school at the Boys and Girls Clubs in Dorchester and Mattapan. Ken is a graduate of Middlebury College and holds a Master's degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Freedman-Martin Media Fellow in 2003-2004.

The Greatest Rivalry on Earth. 

Season I pilot. Two countries with Nukes. Four Wars. And a common culture that begins with cricket. Ken travels to New Delhi to join over a billion people who watch as India meets arch rival Pakistan on the cricket pitch.

 AfroNapoli: 2019.     

Season II pilot: Ken and new cohost Alice Nascimento travel to Naples Italy to spend time with a soccer team that uses sport to fight for immigrant rights.

James Turner

A Washington, D.C. native, Dr. James Turner retired from the Federal Senior Executive Service in 2013.  He is currently Director of the D.A. Payne CDC’s Percy Julian Institute whose mission is to encourage minority students to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers.  He is also a member of the Board of Trustees at the Maryland Science Center where we seek to inspire, empower, and engage.  On a personal level, he follows developments in International Affairs, personalized medicine, and climate change. 

Prior to retiring, he was Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Office of International Affairs and Senior Adviser to the NOAA Administrator.  The Office addresses international scientific issues associated with climate, food security, global oceans, atmosphere, and space.  He advised the NOAA Administrator on international policy matters and represented NOAA in federal interagency and international meetings.

Dr. Turner came to NOAA from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where he was Deputy Director and Acting Director.   NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology. 

Dr. Turner was Assistant Deputy Administrator for Nuclear Risk Reduction in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).  He was responsible for major projects in Russia to permanently shut down their remaining nuclear weapons-grade plutonium-production reactors.  He worked with foreign governments and international agencies to reduce the risks and consequences of nuclear accidents by strengthening safety protocols and their capability to respond to nuclear emergencies including serving as Chair of the UN/IAEA’s Nuclear Safety in Asia Program.  Dr. Turner held senior management posts at DOE concerned with nuclear weapons safety and security both in the U.S. and abroad such as leading DOE assistance to the Former Soviet Union for the safe, secure dismantlement of their nuclear weapons after the Cold War ended.  Dr. Turner was in charge of the DOE Operations Office in California for six years.  He led DOE teams in special assignments to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Former Soviet Republic of Georgia.  He has a range of speaking and writing skills in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Russian, German, and American Sign Language.   

He holds Physics degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Ph.D.) and Johns Hopkins University (B.A.).  Dr. Turner served five years as Associate Professor of Physics and Engineering at Morehouse College where he did federally funded research.  As a NASA Faculty Fellow, he did research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Goddard Space Flight Center. 

He received the U.S. Government Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service, the DOE Exceptional Service Award (three times), the Secretary of Energy Gold Award, the NNSA Administrator’s Gold Medal, and the Edward Bouchet Legacy Award.  Dr. Turner is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Council on Foreign Relations, Union of Concerned Scientists, ASALH,  NAACP, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., several professional scientific societies, and a  Friend of the Capital City Cherokee Community. 

Dr. Turner is married (Paulette) with 5 children (Lauren, James IV, Rachelle, Malcolm, and Nathaniel) and 3 grandchildren (Martin, Alexandra, and Christian).  He has a sister (Kathleen) and two nieces (Elizabeth & Patricia).  He joined Metropolitan AME Church more than 40 years ago serving on the Usher Board and Payne-Tanner Scholarship Endowment Board, as well as conducting the Percy Julian Institute’s Robotics, Girls Who Code, and National Society of Black Engineers, Jr. programs at the Church.

Living with Jim and Milt Cole marked a wonderful senior year at Johns Hopkins University on North Calvert Street in Baltimore. I have to admit I was blissfully ignorant of what he and Milt were cogitating over, as both were physics majors, and I was a political science major and art history minor. 

Jim had an uproarious laugh, and there were often peals of laughter and the taking of a particular physics professor’s name in fulmination and objurgation, for the difficultly of his assignments – his obfuscation? 

I was particularly proud of Psi Chapter of AEPi that we rushed Jim, and another student  as the first African-Americans ever to enter and integrate Hopkins fraternity brotherhoods. Milt,as Chapter Master and I Lt. Master and rush chairman, led the charge. (And who knew that across the street was Kappa Alpha, inspired by Robert E. Lee, with his picture prominently displayed.) In Jim’s senior year he was the Chapter Master.  Always an extraordinary leader. Always respected.

Anne Gibbon

Anne Gibbon likes to cause trouble in the name of asking a better question. Through a career spanning service in the Navy, working for Maori iwi (tribes) in New Zealand, amateur boxing, and leading skeptical professionals through improv and design thinking exercises, she’s pushed herself and those around her to become better leaders of teams attacking wicked problems. 

Preaching a patience she doesn’t always possess, Anne has led projects leaning into the paradox that effective action in a complex world usually stems from a practice of curiosity, beginner’s mind, and spiraling layers of questions. 

She’s been a co-founder several times over. During assignment to the Naval Academy’s Stockdale Center, she led a project testing a branding campaign style video series to motivate ethical decision making of young officers. She brought military students to teach boxing classes to formerly displaced children in northern Uganda. Her last tour in the Navy saw her co-found the Commander’s Action Group at a Naval Special Warfare unit, and help them write counter-terrorism campaign plans applying social network analysis. 

Following her military service, Anne applied lessons from a fellowship at Stanford’s Design School to projects applying new tech to national security challenges, and for community and land wellbeing projects in New Zealand’s indigenous communities.

Most recently, she’s co-founded a data visualization startup, Matri,  that still confuses her parents, they’re close to getting it. Her team is developing methods in Perceptual Engineering, upending conventional wisdom of the application of neuroscience principles to designing better interfaces exchanging information between the conscious human mind and the machines we use.

Anne graduated from the Naval Academy in 2003 with a Bachelor’s of Science in English. She escaped the library for the gym and boathouse, becoming a Second-Team All-American rower and setting the women’s 2000m ergometer record. Her senior year Anne became the first woman to box for the Academy, ending her first fight in a Baltimore union hall within a minute and 20 seconds when she TKO’ed her opponent.

From 2009 to 2011, Anne served as the officer in charge of the Naval Academy’s student cohort of the IGL ALLIES program.  

“Sherman inspires organizations to form around him with his otherworldly ability to pose a question, find resources to work on it, attract amazing talent, and then get out of the way. He sets the example for the rest of us on how to put your arm around another person, look at a hard problem in the world, then look back at you and say, ‘Well, it’s clear. Something must be done about this. What can be done? How can I help you do it? Who can I introduce you to?’

It was in this spirit that ALLIES was created. What greater peace and stability could born if we taught students just launching into their careers, to not just look up a particular professional ladder, but to look across to their peers on the other ladders.

The group of students who have joined ALLIES over the years have been some of the bright, ambitious, and hopeful people that I’ve ever met. Many became people I hired and especially important, lifelong friends. ALLIES students - exploring civil military interaction - head off to careers in war zones and refugee camps. They find themselves in some of the most unstable, challenging situations we humans get ourselves into. It’s been an honor to join them in asking what relief from suffering might be had if we better understood the many voices in the civil - military community?”

Anne is simply what people really mean when they talk about a “force of nature.” Love her talk! She galvanizes people and ideas in unique ways. She mentored some of my most inquisitive students, inspiring them to reach beyond themselves 

She was the decisive force in creating one of the more extraordinary moments of my Institute, magnificently hosting ALLIES at Annapolis, bringing together her midshipmen, my Tufts students and Chilean military and military police  cadets who had been part of our ALLIES efforts in Chile at the Catholic University of Santiago. They were sharing their unique opportunity of studying with Juan Guzman, the courageous judge who prosecuted Pinochet, and together creating a framework for the first human rights curriculum of the Chilean military academy.

She enabled me to fulfill one of my wishes, to honor the memory of remarkable Ben Sklaver, by taking our ALLIES summer research trip to Uganda.  She is the real “million dollar baby,” gentle and compassionate, yet tough minded and determined. She thrives on complexity and challenge.  I have rarely met anyone as demanding, of herself.

Rachel Brandenburg

Rachel Brandenburg is currently an Associate Vice President at The Cohen Group (TCG), where she focuses on defense and Middle East work. She joined TCG after over a decade of national security and foreign policy work at the State Department, the Department of Defense, in the US House of Representatives, and in the think tank community.

Prior to joining The Cohen Group, Rachel served as Senior Policy Advisor to Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and was responsible for legislative and policy work related to the House Armed Services Committee, national security and defense, foreign policy, election security, and other topics. Before serving on Capitol Hill, Rachel worked at the Atlantic Council as the Director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Middle East Security Initiative. From 2014 to 2018, she served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Middle East policy, where she initially focused on Iraq and the counter-ISIS campaign as director of the Iraq team, and then on bilateral defense relationships with Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan as director of the Levant team. Rachel had previously worked at the US Institute of Peace, where she managed programs related to Syria, Libya, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and at the State Department, where she served in the Middle East Partnership Inititiative office and the Office of Middle East Transitions, and was responsible for coordinating US government assistance to Tunisia in 2011.

Rachel was the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship in Israel and a Critical Language Scholarship in Jordan. She holds a Master’s degree from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, and a Bachelor’s degree from Tufts University. While at Tufts, Rachel was active with the IGL as an EPIIC student (2002-2003) and a founding member of NIMEP (the New Initiative for Middle East Peace).