Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Nicole Appleton '14 is a former management consultant turned startup employee. She loves using a combo of data science + real world consumer insights (art + science) to noodle on ambiguous business questions. Right now she's helping a 20-person molecular beverage printing startup come out of stealth and hit the markets.

Sarah Baker '14 is a third year economics doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating from Claremont McKenna, she worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for two years before attending graduate school on an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Yao Li '20 studied math at CMC and is now a doctoral student in operations management at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

This panel discussion is co-sponsored by the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at CMC.

Agus Sudjianto is an executive vice president, head of Model Risk and a member of Management Committee at Wells Fargo, where he is responsible for enterprise model risk management. 

Prior to his current position, Sudjianto was the modeling and analytics director and chief model risk officer at Lloyds Banking Group in the United Kingdom. Before joining Lloyds, he was an executive and head of Quantitative Risk at Bank of America. 

Prior to his career in banking, he was a product design manager in the Powertrain Division of Ford Motor Company. 

Sudjianto holds several U.S. patents in both finance and engineering. He has published numerous technical papers and is a co-author of Design and Modeling for Computer Experiments. His technical expertise and interests include quantitative risk, particularly credit risk modeling, machine learning and computational statistics. 

He holds masters and doctorate degrees in engineering and management from Wayne State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A frequent writer and advocate on issues of gender and politics in America, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf was dubbed the “architect of the U.S. campaign to squash the tampon tax” by Newsweek. She currently serves as the inaugural women and democracy fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law and in 2022 she joined Ms.—the feminist movement-making magazine—where she serves as executive director for partnerships and strategy. Weiss-Wolf is on the board of the Feminist Press and the editorial board of the Fund for Women’s Equality “Equal Voice, Equal Future” initiative. In 2015, Weiss-Wolf conceptualized and co-edited a volume of Legal Change: Lessons from America’s Social Movements. Her book, Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity (Arcade 2017), earned starred reviews by Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, and The Washington Post called it “a riveting read . . . a promising call to smart activism.” 

 In 2021, Weiss-Wolf organized the Brennan Center series, “Abortion is Essential to Democracy.” Her forthcoming book, Period. Full Stop. The Politics of Menopause, will be published by NYU Press in 2024. In addition to her books, Weiss-Wolf’s writing has also been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, TIME, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, and NPR, among others. She holds a JD from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she was editor in chief of the Cardozo Women’s Law Journal. 

Ms. Weiss-Wolf’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College. 

View Video : YouTube with Jennifer Weiss-Wolf

Alison Harris is the Ostby-Cook Associate Professor of Psychology and George R. Roberts Fellow at CMC. As a cognitive neuroscientist, she is interested how brain activity gives rise to complex cognitive behaviors. Her research uses electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERP), along with measures of behavior, to track the timing and dynamics of visual perception and decision making. Combining neurophysiological approaches with advanced statistical and modeling techniques, she has explored how decision making is affected by the interplay of preferences with contextual goals such as losing weight, minimizing physical effort, or choosing for a friend. Her publications have appeared in journals including The Journal of Neuroscience, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, and Psychological Science. With support from the National Science Foundation, she has trained students in EEG/ERP data collection and analysis in preparation for future careers in medical and research fields.

A prominent social critic and public intellectual writing mainly on the themes of racial inequality and social policy, Glenn Loury, the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, has published more than 200 essays and reviews in journals of public affairs in the US and abroad.

He has published extensively in the areas of applied microeconomic theory, game theory, industrial organization, natural resource economics, and the economics of race and inequality. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Econometric Society and a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2005 he received the John von Neumann Award, given annually by the Rajk László College of the Budapest University of Economic Science and Public Administration to "an outstanding economist whose research has exerted a major influence on students of the College over an extended period of time." He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Carnegie Scholarship to support his work. He has given the prestigious Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford (2007), the James A. Moffett '29 Lectures in Ethics at Princeton (2003), and the DuBois Lectures in African American Studies at Harvard (2000).

Loury is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is a contributing editor at The Boston Review, and was for many years a contributing editor at The New Republic. His book One by One, From the Inside Out: Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America (The Free Press, 1995) won the American Book Award and the Christianity Today Book Award.

A graduate of Northwestern University, he received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1976. He taught at Northwestern and at the University of Michigan before moving to Harvard. In 1982, at the age of 33, he became the first African American tenured professor of economics in the history of Harvard University. He has been at Brown University since 2005.

(Adapted from the website of Brown’s Watson Institute)

View Video: YouTube with Glenn Loury and Michael Javen Fortner

Monica Coleman is a professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware, an elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a renowned speaker on issues of religion and sexuality, and an initiate in traditional Yoruba faith. Her academic interests include black and womanist theologies, mental health and faith, and African traditional religions, amongst others. She teaches classes relating to these disciplines as well as courses on religious leadership and cross-cultural liberation theologies. Coleman’s research interests explore the intersection of religion, social justice, and human experience. 

She has authored several works including Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology and her memoir, Bipolar Faith: a Black Woman’s Journey with Depression and Faith. Further, Coleman received several distinctions including the Silver Illumination Award and induction into the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars. She is a recipient of fellowships and funding from the Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Association for Theological Schools, and the Forum for Theological Exploration. 

Coleman is also a co-host of Octavia Tried to Tell Us: Parable for Today’s Pandemic, a popular webinar series in which she uses lessons from Afrofuturist literature, values, and theology to address important current events and community issues.

Professor Coleman's Athenaeum lecture is sponsored by the Kutten Lectureship in Religious Studies at CMC.

Colum McCann is the author of seven novels and three collections of stories. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has been the recipient of many international honors, including the U.S National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish arts academy, several European awards, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. In 2017 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts. His work has been published in over 40 languages. He is the president and co-founder of the non-profit global story exchange organization, Narrative 4. He is the Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence in Hunter College, in New York, where he lives with his wife Allison and their family.  His most recent novel, Apeirogon, became an immediate New York Times best-seller and won several major international awards.

Mr. McCann's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Open Academy at CMC.

Daron Acemoglu is a professor of applied economics at MIT and a fellow of the Econometric Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Labor Economists. In 2019, he was named Institute Professor, MIT’s most distinguished faculty honor. He has a wide academic focus, specializing in political economy, labor economics, and economic development, amongst other disciplines. 

Acemoglu has received numerous honors, awards, and distinctions for his academic work, including the Carnegie Fellowship, the Kiel Institute’s 2019 Global Economy Prize, the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize, the John Bates Clark Medal, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize, and the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award. He has been named to Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers twice.

He has authored five books: Why Nations Fail, The Narrow Corridor, Epilogue from Introduction to Modern Economic Growth, Introduction to Modern Economic Growth, and Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Acemoglu has also written for Esquire and Foreign Policy and contributed to academic publications such as The Journal of Economic Growth, The Economic Journal, the American Economic Review, and the Journal of Political Economy, amongst others. 

View Video: YouTube with Daron Acemoglu

Food for Thought: Podcast with Daron Acemoglu

Chris Slobogin is the the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Law and director of the Criminal Justice Program at Vanderbilt University. He has authored more than 200 articles, books, and chapters on topics relating to criminal law and procedure, mental health law and evidence, and is one of the five most cited criminal law and procedure law professors in the country over the past five years, according to the Leiter Report. 

His work has been published by Cambridge, Chicago, Harvard and Oxford university presses and in journals such as the Chicago Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern Law Review, Pennsylvania Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. In recognition for his work in mental health law, in 2016 Slobogin received both the American Board of Forensic Psychology's Distinguished Contribution Award and the American Psychology-Law Society’s Distinguished Contribution of Psychology and Law Award; only a total of five law professors have received either of these awards in their 30-year history, and Slobogin is the only to receive both awards. Slobogin has appeared on Good Morning America, Nightline, the Today Show, National Public Radio, and many other media outlets, and has been cited in almost 5,000 law review articles and treatises and more than 200 judicial opinions, including five U.S. Supreme Court decisions. He holds a secondary appointment as a professor in Vanderbilt School of Medicine's Department of Psychiatry.

Food for Thought: Podcast with Christopher Slobogin

John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. For decades his field experimental research has focused on issues related to the inner-workings of markets, the effects of various incentives schemes on market equilibria and allocations, how behavioral economics can augment the standard economic model, on early childhood education and interventions, and most recently on the gender earnings gap in the gig economy (using evidence from rideshare drivers). This has lead to collaborative work with several different firms including:  Lyft, Uber, United Airlines, Virgin Airlines, Humana, Sears, Kmart, Facebook, Google, General Motors, Tinder, Citadel, Walmart, and several non-profits.

List's research includes over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and several published books, including the 2013 international best-seller, The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life (with Uri Gneezy), and The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale (publication date February 1, 2022).

List was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2015. List received the 2010 Kenneth Galbraith Award, the 2008 Arrow Prize for Senior Economists for his research in behavioral economics in the field, and was the 2012 Yrjo Jahnsson Lecture Prize recipient. He is a current editor of the Journal of Political Economy.

View Video: YouTube with John List

Food for Thought: Podcast with John List

Albert L. Park is the Bank of America Associate Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at Claremont McKenna College. As a historian of modern Korea and East Asia, his current research project focuses on the roots of environmentalism in modern Korean history and its relationship to locality and local autonomy. His book project is tentatively titled "Imagining Nature and the Creation of Environmental Movements in Modern Korea." He is the author of "Building a Heaven on Earth: Religion, Activism and Protest in Japanese Occupied Korea" and is the co-editor of "Encountering Modernity: Christianity and East Asia."

Park is the co-founder of EnviroLab Asia—a Henry Luce Foundation-funded initiative at the Claremont Colleges that researches environmental issues in Asia through a cross-disciplinary lens. He is the co-founder and co-editor of "Environments of East Asia"—a Cornell University Press, multidisciplinary book series that covers environmental issues and questions of East Asia. He also serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Asian Studies. 

Park is the recipient of four Fulbright Fellowships for Research, an Abe Fellowship (Social Science Research Council and Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership), and fellowships from the Korea Foundation and the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. 

A native of Chicago, he received his B.A. with honors from Northwestern University, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.  

Professor Park's Athenaeum presentation celebrates his installation ceremony as the Bank of America Associate Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

In awarding her the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee cited that "Personal experiences have always been an important touchstone for Louise Glück’s poetry. Childhood, family life, relationships and death are recurring themes in her collections. Glück seeks out the universal. Myths and classical motifs are found in most of her work. In addition to classical mythology, the rich English-language poetry tradition is her primary literary source of inspiration. Glück’s language is characterized by clarity and precision and is free of poetic formalities; she often uses daily spoken language."

From her first book of poetry, Firstborn (1968), through her later works, Glück has become internationally recognized as a skilled, perceptive author who pulls the reader into her poetry and shares the poetic experience equally with her audience. Glück’s poems in books such as Firstborn, The House on Marshland (1975), The Garden (1976), Descending Figure (1980), The Triumph of Achilles (1985), Ararat (1990), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Wild Iris (1992) take readers on an inner journey by exploring their deepest, most intimate feelings. “Glück has a gift for getting the reader to imagine with her, drawing on the power of her audience to be amazed,” observed Anna Wooten in the American Poetry Review, and Stephen Dobyns maintained in The New York Times Book Review that “no American poet writes better than Louise Glück, perhaps none can lead us so deeply into our own nature.”

Among numerous prestigious awards and honors, including the Nobel, Glück was the recipient of National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 1985 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1993.

Ms. Glück’s Athenaeum appearance is co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund.

(Text adapted from the websites poetryfoundation.org and biography.com)

Erik Larson is the author of eight books, six of which became New York Times bestsellers. His latest books, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, both hit number 1 on the list soon after launch. His saga of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, The Devil in the White City, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing; it remained on various Times bestseller lists for the better part of a decade. Hulu plans to adapt the book for a limited TV series, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese as executive producers. Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, about how America’s first ambassador to Nazi Germany and his daughter experienced the rising terror of Hitler’s rule, has been optioned by Tom Hanks for development as a feature film.

Larson’s first book of narrative nonfiction, Isaac’s Storm, about the giant hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas, in 1900, won the American Meteorology Society’s prestigious Louis J. Battan Author’s Award. The Washington Post called it the “Jaws of hurricane yarns.”

Larson graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Russian history, language, and culture; he received a masters in journalism from Columbia University. After a brief stint at the Bucks County Courier Times, Erik became a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal, and later a contributing writer for Time Magazine. His magazine stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and other publications.

He has taught non-fiction writing at San Francisco State, the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, the University of Oregon, and the Chuckanut Writers Conference in Bellingham, Wash., and has spoken to audiences from coast to coast.

Mr. Larson will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies’ 2022 Golo Mann Lecture, also co-sponsored by by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies and Alumni and Parent Engagement at CMC.