2011 Speakers

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Andrea Bartoli:

Andrea Bartoli is S-CAR’s Drucie French Cumbie Chair and the Dean of The School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. He has been at The School since 2007. He works primarily on Peacemaking and Genocide Prevention. The Founding Director of Columbia University’s Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR), a Senior Research Scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), a Teaching Fellow at Georgetown University, and at the University of Siena, Dr. Bartoli has taught in the US since 1994. He chaired the Columbia University Seminar on Conflict Resolution. He is a member of the Dynamical Systems and Conflict Team and a Board member of Search for Common Ground.

He has been involved in many conflict resolution activities as a member of the Community of Sant’Egidio, and has published books and articles on violence, migrations and, conflict resolution. He was co-editor of Somalia, Rwanda and Beyond: The Role of International Media in Wars and International Crisis. Dr. Bartoli served as Associate Director, Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University from 1992-99. He was a lecturer at the University of Rome-Tor Vergata, 1987-92, and director of the Center for the Study of Social Programs, 1986-92. He was president of Unita Sanitaria Locale 7, 1983-87 and a consultant to Consiglio Nazionale dell’Economia e del Lavoro, 1980-84. An anthropologist from Rome, Dr. Bartoli completed his Italian dottorato di ricerca (Ph.D. equivalent) at the University of Milan and his laurea (BA-MA equivalent) at the University of Rome.

Shabana Basij-Rasikh ’11 

Shabana was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan. She attended secret school during the Taliban regime, and after the fall of the Taliban she completed her secondary education at Maryam High School. In 2005, Shabana attended high school in the USA through the year-long Youth Exchange and Study (YES) program sponsored by the US State Department. Following her secondary school career, she worked as an Executive Assistant to the Country Director of American Councils for International Education in Kabul as a one year appointment. Shabana is the Executive Director of Afghan Youth Initiative. Shabana is a graduate of Middlebury College, receiving degrees in International Studies and Women and Gender Studies. Shabana is co-sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Chellis House – Women’s Resource Center and the President’s Office at Middlebury College.

Jeffrey Blount

Jeffrey Blount is a native of Smithfield, Virginia. A 1977 graduate of Smithfield High school, he continued his education at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. He graduated from VCU in 1981 with a degree in Mass Communication/Broadcast Journalism.

Today, Jeffrey is the Emmy Award Winning, Senior Director at NBC News Washington. Presently, his duties include the direction of all Washington material for NBC Nightly News as well as being a Director of Meet The Press and The Chris Matthews Show. He has also been the Director of The Sunday Today show and has Directed The Today Show. His duties also include the direction of special events such as State of the Union Addresses, Presidential Press Conferences, Oval Office addresses as well as other government events.

In recent years, he has put his writing talent to use working with long-time friend and VCU alum, Joe Cortina of Cortina Productions. He has written scripts for films produced by Joe that are now on display in the Muhammad Ali Museum, The Newseum, The New England Patriots Museum, America I Am: The African American Imprint, The Museum at Bethel Woods/Woodstock and others. With these projects came the honor of multiple Cine Golden Eagle Awards, Muse Awards and a 2009 Thea Award. Jeffrey is married to Jeanne Meserve, Middlebury alum and they have two children – daughter Julia and son Jake.

Dan Choi

In March 2009, Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Iraq war veteran fluent in Arabic, came out on national television. Because of three words – “I am gay” – Lt. Choi’s life changed forever.

In June, 2009 he stood military trial for telling the truth. The military board decided to discharge him for violation of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” He was one of only eight soldiers from his graduating class who majored in Arabic.

While the case was appealed, Lt. Choi served openly in his infantry unit for over a year while publicly pushing for the repeal of the immoral policy. In October 2009 he helped lead a 250,000 person march on Washington, and laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

In March 2010 Lt. Choi handcuffed himself to the White House fence with fellow gay veteran Captain James Pietrangelo II. The two were arrested and spent the night in prison. They repeated the action in April 2010 with four other veterans. In July 2010 he received notification of his honorable discharge under “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” He wrote a letter to the Senate Majority Leader, relinquishing his West Point class ring.

After a third White House arrest in November 2010, Choi attended the bill signing that would repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” Following the signing, the Senate Majority Leader returned Lt. Choi’s class ring. Choi replied: “The next time I get a ring from a man, it better be for full, equal, American marriage.”

Brad Corrigan ’96

Brad Corrigan is a visionary, living an inspired and traveled life. As member of the indie band, Dispatch, he has played to sold out audiences across the United States. A dynamic speaker and performer, and through film, television or photography, Brad’s innate kindness touches those around him and inspires hope. He is committed to capturing stories with art that shines light in darkness. Brad believes in social justice and is an advocate for many causes, including education reform. He is the founder and president of Love, Light and Melody, a non-profit organization dedicated to battling the physical, emotional and spiritual effects of extreme poverty. Brad, an alum and former lacrosse player at Middlebury, believes everyone with their own unique gifts and talents can make a difference. In his own words, “It’s never what you do in life, but the heart with which you do it.”

Adam Greenberger ’93

Adam Charles Greenberger is a successful investor, manager and entrepreneur. Earlier this year Adam co-founding Ghana’s first dedicated private equity firm, Afina Capital Partners. Prior to this, Adam founded domestic lower middle market private equity investment firm, Albright Capital Partners in 2003. The firm did corporate finance advisory work and progressed to buyouts for its own account in 2006. Adam currently is a director of Centerstone Linen Services, an Atlanta based provider of linen services to the healthcare industry as well as on the board of 18 Rabbits, a leading organic foods company in San Francisco. Prior to Albright, Adam worked at Deutsche Bank Securities in corporate finance as a member of the Industrials Group, working on a number of LBO’s and cross border assignments.

Before working at Deutsche Bank, Adam spent 7 years working for legendary investor Jack Dreyfus at his Dreyfus Health Foundation. While there, Adam hired, built, evaluated, and worked with local coordinating teams as well as with senior government officials and UN agencies to create multi-sectored development projects in 16 countries in Africa and 4 in Asia. He also led a team in creating a sustainable health information network in partnership with IBM covering 9 of Africa’s poorest countries.

Adam got his BA from Middlebury College in 1993 and his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1999.

Adam splits his time between New York City, where he is also the owner of the con temporary gallery, Charles Bank Gallery, and Accra, Ghana.

Amy Kaslow

Amy Kaslow is a senior fellow at the Council on Competitiveness, where she helps cultivate an American workforce with skills urgently needed to compete in an economy characterized by dramatic change. Her focus: the biggest pressures on joblessness and job generation — would-be new entrants and mature, 55 year+ workers intent on remaining in or returning to the labor market. She brings a mix of policy, practical experience and contemporary coverage. Her mission: galvanizing business, education, labor and government leaders to prepare new graduates for the pipeline of talent; tapping the expertise and experience of older workers; and sharing those innovative, scalable, and replicable practices, nationwide.

She advises on workforce challenges for public and private employers, unions, educators, and non-profits. She consults, writes, and testifies for Congressionally mandated commissions and federal agencies, including the 21st Century Workforce Commission focused on the knowledge economy; the Glenn Commission Report, a blueprint for improving K-12 teaching; and the National Academy of Sciences/National Science Foundation Study Panel examining national workforce data for the United States Census. “Winning the Skills Race” is her earlier research and fieldwork on income and skills gaps among American workers, which framed the White House Summit on 21st Century Skills for 21st Century Jobs.

A longtime daily journalist and now frequent contributor to media, Kaslow has covered international economics from Western, Central and Eastern Europe; the former Soviet Bloc; Asia; the Levant; the Persian Gulf; North, Sub-Saharan and Southern Africa, and the Caribbean. Specializing in post-war economic reconstruction, she has written for many American and international newspapers, magazines and quarterlies, was lead economic correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, The International Economy, and dozens of other publications. Her broadcast work includes NPR, the BBC, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, CNBC, and C-SPAN, among other international outlets. She writes a blog for The Economist on human potential. A White House appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the governing board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, she chairs the Governance Committee, is the former chair of the Education Committee and serves on the Executive Committee. Kaslow chaired the Board of Trustees at the Holton-Arms School, a leading girls school known for global education, STEM, and the arts and served as vice chair of the innovative Norwood School. Kaslow was the longtime president of Sinai House Assisted Housing Foundation, a Washington, D.C. transitional housing program for homeless families providing wrap around services: parenting and financial literacy classes, mentoring, job training and job placement. She is a member of the Belizean Grove.

Phil Kaye

Phil Kaye is a touring poet, published author, and co-director of Project V.O.I.C.E. Raised in a California beach town to a Japanese mother and Jewish-American father, Phil first fell in love with spoken word poetry at age 17. Since then he has had the privilege of touring across the country as a celebrated performer, writer, and teacher. He has appeared on NPR, performed at Lincoln Center, and most recently coached and performed on the 2011 Providence National Poetry Team, ranked third in the nation. His first book, A Light Bulb Symphony, was published in 2011, and his work can be found regularly in CHAOS Magazine.

As the full-time co-director of Project VOICE along with Sarah Kay, Phil travels to colleges and high schools to perform his work and teach poetry workshops, empowering students to find their own voice. He is a graduate of Brown University, where he was head coordinator of Space in Prisons for the Arts and Creative Expression (SPACE) and taught weekly poetry workshops in maximum-security prisons. Phil is the two-time recipient of the National College Poetry Slam award for “Pushing the Art Forward”, given for outstanding innovation in the art of performance poetry. Received once as a performer and once as a coachPhil is the only person to receive the award twice. When not on the road, Phil lives in New York City and spends his time writing new work, using 90s slang, and quietly wondering to himself what the dealio is.

Evan Lyon

Evan Lyon

Evan Lyon’s work as a physician and activist focuses on the right to health – providing comprehensive care in poor communities, assisting community-based HIV and TB care, and managing chronic illness using community health workers. He has worked in Haiti since 1996.

Beyond working to provide care in poor communities, Dr. Lyon’s research, advocacy work, and teaching have focused on economic, social, and political inequality, the health consequences of war and political violence – with particular emphasis on the Iraq war, the right to health, and popular, community-based responses to global health problems. He has worked extensively on prisoner health and legal rights in Alabama and in Haiti.

Dr. Lyon received his MD from Harvard Medical School in 2003 and completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2007. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and a hospitalist in the Section of Hospital Medicine at the University of Chicago Medical Center. He is an editor for Health and Human Rights: an International Journal and is on the national steering committee for the People’s Health Movement in the U.S.

Dr. Lyon has worked with Partners in Health (PIH) since 1997, primarily on expanding clinical capacity in rural Haiti. He is the clinical director of PIH’s Right to Health Care program which brings patients to medical services that are unavailable in poor countries. Following the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, he helped manage disaster relief efforts through PIH at the public General Hospital in Port-au-Prince.

Peggy McIntosh 

Peggy McIntosh is Associate Director of the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She is Founder and Co-director of the United States S.E.E.D. Project on Inclusive Curriculum (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity). She consults widely in the United States and throughout the world with college and school faculty who are creating more gender-fair and multicultural curricula. In 1988, she published the ground-breaking article, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work on Women’s Studies.” This analysis and its shorter form, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” 1989, have been instrumental in putting the dimension of privilege into discussions of gender, race, and sexuality in the United States. McIntosh has taught at the Brearley School, Harvard University, Trinity College (Washington, D.C.), the University of Denver, the University of Durham (England), and Wellesley College. She is co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute and has been consulting editor the Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. She has consulted with women on 22 Asian campuses on the development of Women’s Studies, and programs to bring materials from Women’s Studies into the main curriculum. She has consulted frequently in China and Korea. In addition to having two honorary degrees, she is the recipient of the Klingenstein Award for Distinguished Educational Leadership from Columbia Teachers College. Her most recent publications are “White Privilege: An Account to Spend,” 2009, White People Facing Race: Uncovering the Myths that keep Racism in Place,” 2009, both commissioned by the Saint Paul Foundation, and “Afterword” in Privilege and Prejudice: Twenty Years with the Invisible Knapsack, ed. by Karen Weekes, Cambridge Scholars Press, U.K., 2009

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with The End of Nature in 1989, which is regarded as the first book for a general audience on climate change. He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. Time Magazine called him ‘the planet’s best green journalist’ and the Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was ‘probably the country’s most important environmentalist.’ Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, he holds honorary degrees from a dozen colleges.

Bill was president of the Harvard Crimson newspaper in college. Immediately after college he joined the New Yorker magazine as a staff writer, and wrote there from 1982 to early 1987.

Between 1989 and 2007 Bill published 9 books on topics ranging from human population to genetic engineering to the role of media in our lives.

Beginning in January 2007 Bill founded stepitup07.org to demand that Congress enact curbs on carbon emissions that would cut global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050. In October of 2009 Bill and 350.org organized the International Day of Climate Action. People from 181 countries organized 5,200 simultaneous rallies, making it what CNN called the “most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history.”

Bill is a frequent contributor to various magazines including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside.

Bill currently resides with his wife, writer Sue Halpern, and his daughter, Sophie in Ripton, Vermont.

Jeanne Meserve ’74

Jeanne Meserve has defined homeland security reporting. She covered the beat for CNN from the September 11th attacks through their tenth anniversary, as long as any reporter in the country. Her portfolio has included intelligence, law enforcement, cyber, aviation, border and port security.

 

On the ground in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, Meserve was the first to report on the devastating flooding inundating portions of the city. CNN’s coverage of the storm and its aftermath won a Peabody Award. Judges for the 2005 David Bloom Award gave Meserve special recognition, saying her coverage revealed “extraordinary composure and compassion as well as her unwavering respect for the facts.”

Meserve has covered technology and its application to homeland security problems, including border security, nuclear detection, bioterrorism, and cyber. She has also used the latest technologies in the field to bring her stories to air.

Her understanding of the international terror picture is augmented by her years as a State Department correspondent for ABC News, where she reported from China, the Middle East, and Europe. She anchored CNN’s award winning coverage of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination and the death of Princess Diana, and won an Edward R. Murrow Award for her reporting from Cuba on the international tug of war over Elian Gonzales.

Meserve is currently a Senior Fellow at the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute, and a member of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group.

Meserve has moderated interviews and policy debates for the Aspen Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. She often speaks to academic and policy groups.

Meserve received a B.A. in English Literature from Middlebury College, and is a recipient of the college’s Alumni Achievement Award.

Ernie Parizeau

Ernie Parizeau is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College and Franklin Olin College of Engineering where he teaches courses on starting new businesses, and on venture capital. He also teaches classes at Middlebury College and the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He was a partner at Norwest Venture Partners for over 20 years, and invested in early stage companies in the software, semiconductor, communications, healthcare, education and retail industries. He retired from Norwest in 2007. Ernie is a Trustee of The Cape Eleuthera Foundation – The Island School, Noble and Greenough School, and Newton Wellesley Hospital. He is on the Advisory Board of the Middlebury College “Project on Creativity and Innovation in the Liberal Arts,” and the Dartmouth College President’s Leadership Council.

A graduate of Dartmouth College (AB in Engineering Sciences and MBA), Ernie is an avid rower. His long term goal is to finish in the top 20% of his age group in the Men’s Single Sculls race in the Head of the Charles Regatta and in the CRASH-B Sprints. His odds of success are slim unless he lives long enough to make it to the “really old guys” age group. He is also trying to learn French. Feel free to challenge him if you know the language (but be prepared for a blank stare).

Ernie and his wife, Kim, have four children (ages 24, 21, 18, 15), and live in Wellesley, MA.

Tim Parsons

Tim Parsons has been the Landscape Horticulturist at Middlebury College, in Middlebury Vermont since 2006. His responsibilities include care and maintenance of the colleges’ urban forest, landscape design and installation, and sustainable turf grass management of the athletic fields. He has taught a winter term Biology class, Trees and the Urban Forest, which looked not only at tree and urban forest biology, but computer modeling for urban tree benefits, including stormwater and carbon sequestration. He is a member of the college’s Master Plan Implementation Committee, the Emergency Response Team, and the Community Council, and has served on the Environmental Council.

Tim graduated from the University of Vermont in 1989 with a B.S. in Plant and Soil Science with an Environmental Studies co-major. He is a Vermont Certified Horticulturist, and a Certified Arborist by the International Society of Arboriculture. Tim is a past president of Greenworks, The Vermont Nursery and Landscape Association, and served on the board of directors for 6 years, and was chosen in 2003 as the Young Nurseryman of the Year by the New England Nursery Association.

In the Green industry for over 25 years, Tim has run a garden center, his own landscape design/build company, and been a caretaker for a large estate. Although he grew up in Connecticut, he has lived in Vermont for 22 years, and now lives at the base of Snake Mountain in Weybridge, Vermont, with his wife, 3 daughters, and too many gardens. He writes about the landscape and environmental topics on his blog, The Middlebury Landscape.

Bart Riley ’85

Dr. Bart Riley has more than twenty years of experience in technology development and commercialization in advanced materials and energy industries.

Dr. Riley is currently responsible for R&D at A123Systems and sits on the board of directors. Prior to co-founding A123 Systems in 2001, Dr. Riley held a number of key technical and management positions at American Superconductor. Dr. Riley holds more than 45 patents and has published over 85 papers in the fields of advanced materials and energy generation, storage & distribution systems. Dr. Riley holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University and a B.A. in Physics and Geology from Middlebury College.

Conor Shapiro ’03

Conor Shapiro is the President/CEO of the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation, a nonprofit organization with more than 28 years experience providing health care, education and community development programs in rural Haiti. Since graduating from Middlebury College in 2003, he has dedicated his time and energy to helping the poor of Haiti. He started out as a volunteer for SBHF, teaching English to children in the mountains of Fond-des-Blancs, on the country’s southern peninsula.

 

Although his teaching career was short-lived, he did take an interest in public health after running the hospital’s first HIV/AIDS program. After earning a master’s degree in public health, Shaprio returned to Haiti and eventually worked his way up to director general of the St. Boniface Hospital in Fond-des-Blancs. He was promoted to executive director of SBHF after the 2010 earthquake and was instrumental in pioneering a unique spinal cord injury program at St. Boniface Hospital. He now leads the organization in its mission to help the poor of Haiti while working in cooperation and solidarity with the local population.

Originally from Concord, MA, Shapiro now lives outside Boston with his family and makes regular trips to Haiti. Shapiro holds a master’s degree in public health from Boston University and played soccer for Middlebury as an undergraduate. A profile of his work in Haiti can be found in the fall 2010 issue of the Middlebury Magazine.

 

* Middlebury alums are demarcated by their graduation years

 

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