Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Named by Refinery29 as a "50 Female Stand-Up Comedians You Need to Know”, Dr. Priyanka Wali is a stand-up comic who performs routinely throughout the United States and abroad, including at corporate gigs, casinos, and comedy clubs.  She has been featured on KFOG Radio, Women's Health Magazine, The Today Show, Business Insider, Uproxx, Cosmopolitan, India Currents Magazine, and Healthline. 

A believer that laughter is truly the best medicine, she still likes to cover her bases as a board-certified practicing physician in internal medicine and obesity medicine. Wali graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California and continued there for medical school. She completed her residency in internal medicine at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Her philosophical approach to medicine stems from holistic concepts primarily that "Food is Medicine" and that many medical illnesses arise from disconnection of natural-occurring phenomenon. She encourages dietary therapies that can help manage, if not reverse, common conditions. Wali is particularly interested in health optimization for individuals of all ages and demographics and has a passion for solving medical conundrums.

Dr. Wali’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the CMC Advocates’ as part of Safe Sex Week programming.

Michael D. Shear ’90 is a White House correspondent at The New York Times. A veteran political correspondent in Washington, he spent eighteen years writing about local, state, and national politics at The Washington Post, where he was also part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007.

Shear is a 1990 graduate of Claremont McKenna College where he majored in government and journalism and has a master’s in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

View Video: YouTube with Michael Shear '90
 

Food for Thought: Podcast with Michael Shear '90

Jeff Klein ’75 studied political science and psychology at CMC and has served on the CMC Board of Trustees since 2010. A long-time media executive, lawyer, writer, and communications professor, Klein was a senior executive at the LA times for 15 years and is the founder of a B2B multimedia company. He is also a columnist and a lecturer.

Kendyl Klein ’14, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of CMC, majored in media studies and is an expert in digital content strategy, audience development, social media, and client services. Since graduation, she has worked as a strategist at AT&T’s Fullscreen, a social-first, digital content company that provides creative, strategy, marketing, and even production services for digital creators and brand clients, including national brands such as Mattel, NBCUniversal and GE. She is now the manager of market intelligence and analytics at Barstool Sports in New York City.


Food for Thought: Podcast with Jeff Klein '75 P'08 P'11 P14 and Kendyl Klein'14

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of the collection The Tradition (2019). His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies.

Brown grew up in Louisiana and worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans before earning his Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of New Orleans and graduated magna cum laude from Dillard University. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.

Professor Brown’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at CMC.

Vivek Maru founded Namati in 2011 to grow the movement for legal empowerment around the world. Namati and its partners have supported cadres of grassroots legal advocates – sometimes known as “barefoot lawyers”– in ten countries. These advocates work with vulnerable people to protect community lands, enforce environmental law, and secure basic rights to healthcare and citizenship.

Namati convenes the Global Legal Empowerment Network, more than 2,000 groups from 160 countries who are learning from one another and collaborating on common challenges. This community successfully advocated for the inclusion of access to justice in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Maru is co-author of Community Paralegals and the Pursuit of Justice (Cambridge University Press). His TED talk, How to Put the Power of Law in People’s Hands, has been viewed over a million times.

Michael A. Rodríguez is professor and vice chair in the UCLA Departments of Family Medicine and Community Health Sciences; he is also the founding director of the Health Equity Network of the Americas and founding chair of the UCLA Minor in Global Health.

His research activities focus on health equity and social determinants of health. He is a leading researcher and policy expert in the areas of intimate partner violence, social cohesion, quality of health care and health for immigrants and other groups across the age spectrum. He has published widely and consulted for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Pan American Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Institute of Medicine. He is also a board member for the Blue Shield of California Foundation and Latino Coalition for a Healthy California.

Rodríguez is currently investigator of a NIH-funded project examining how state-level policies for immigrants impact their health and access to health care. He is also co-principal investigator for the UCLA University of California Firearm Violence Prevention Center.

Rodríguez completed his undergraduate training at the University of California, Berkeley, attended medical school at UCLA, and completed his residency at the University of California, San Francisco. He obtained his master’s in public health from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and was a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at the Stanford-UCSF Program.

Funded by Joel Appel ‘87, the Appel Fellowship provides first-year students with funding to engage in independent writing projects including:

Axel Ahdritz (’22): A song album and journal inspired by the refugee population in Jordan and Germany.

T.J. Askew (’22): A series of essays inspired by travels along the Pacific Crest Trail to Fairbanks Alaska and based upon the experiences of Chris McCandless.

Raj Bhutoria (’22): Articles that examine the intersection of family history and national identity in India.

Alex Futterman (’22): Essays based on interviews held with extreme athletes in Chile, Peru, and New Zealand.

Maria Gutierrez-Vera (’22): Vignettes - inspired by the work of Sandra Cisneros - that capture the experiences of the author’s grandmother.

Madelyn Kwun (’22): A children's book that introduces young readers to Asian-American history and culture, based on travels through South Korea. Madison Menard (’22): A photojournalism series that represents the culture of "historic soccer" in rival Italian provinces.

Marisa Mestichella (’22): A documentary and "how-to" guide to street performance, based on travels to New York, New Orleans, and Nashville.

Serena Myjer (’22): Essays inspired by the work of John Muir created while the author walks the John Muir Trail.

Robin Peterson (’22): A short story collection that represents the experiences of refugees in Jordan.

Daenerys Pineda (’22): A series of short stories depicting heritage sites in Northern California.

Courtney Reed (’22): A documentary that represents the history of the hair industry in Atlanta, China, and India.

Toluwani Roberts (’22): A zine featuring essayettes, poetry, and interviews related to the expression of spirituality and the natural world in Equador.

Dorcas Saka (’22): Short stories that represent the experiences of Muslim communities in Chicago, New Jersey, Arkansas, and Arizona.

Sobechukwu Uwajeh (’22): A podcast series that examines the impact gentrification has had upon people of color in Chicago and New York.

Kyril Van Schendel (’22): A documentary film based on the author's experiences distance running in the South West U.S.

Laura Vences (’22): A zine that explores the connections between immigration, labor, and the Latinx community in several U.S. cities.

Kimberly Zamora-Delgado (’22): A collection of stories based on interviews with park rangers and visitors at National Parks on the west coast of the U.S.

Alison Marouk-Coe & Shania Sharna (’22): An experiment in immersive empathy based on travels to locations - such as Mumbai and Beijing - that are significant to the authors.

Note: Some Fellows are not pictured.

View Video: YouTube with 2019 Appel Fellows

Julie Lindahl is an American-Swedish author and educator living in Sweden. She writes and speaks widely about her experiences, is a contributor to WBUR Cognoscenti and has been featured on National Public Radio several times. Julie holds a BA from Wellesley College, an MPhil in International Relations from Oxford University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Frankfurt, Germany.

Raised in ten countries on three continents, she is the founder of Stories for Society, a non-profit organization for renewing the art of storytelling for social transformation, which in 2018 launched “Voices Between: Stories Against Extremism,” an award-winning initiative aimed at creating a force for peace by building a global network of established authors demonstrating and discussing the impact of intolerance, extremism and war through their stories. In 2019 NPR’s Snap Judgment released “Quiet is Best,” a program about her relationship with her grandmother. In 2018 The American Embassy in Sweden provided a grant for the launch of her online learning program for schools and universities in tandem with the publication of “The Pendulum,” which has been critically acclaimed in the U.S. and a best-seller in Sweden.

Ms. Lindahl’s Athenaeum presentation is sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Photo credit: Kajsa Göransson

Kathryn Matthews, Ph.D., is the chief scientist for Oceana, the largest international advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the world’s oceans. She is responsible for ensuring that Oceana’s advocacy is informed by the best and most current scientific understanding, as well as tracking emerging issues, advising on strategic direction, and supporting the nearly 50 staff scientists across the organization.

Her varied work environments have included Arctic ice caps, Capitol Hill, international treaty negotiations, and the waters of the eastern tropical Pacific.  After 10 years in research, she returned to Washington DC, her hometown, to work as a legislative fellow in the U.S. Congress and then for the Office of Marine Conservation in the U.S. State Department.  Katie continued her science-based policy work with the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation and then with The Pew Charitable Trusts, where she ran a marine conservation and sustainable fisheries grantmaking program. She also serves on the Society for Conservation Biology’s Board of Governors, heading its Marine Section’s board of directors as president (2017-2019).

Matthews has an M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Earth and Environmental Science.

(Source: Oceana)


View Video: YouTube with Kathryn Matthews

Food for Thought: Podcast with Kathryn Matthews

John B. Taylor is the Mary and Robert Raymond Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution. He is director of the Stanford Introductory Economics Center. He formerly served as director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where he is now a senior fellow.

Taylor’s academic fields of expertise are macroeconomics, monetary economics, and international economics. He is known for his research on the foundations of modern monetary theory and policy, which has been applied by central banks and financial market analysts around the world. He has an active interest in public policy and has served in multiple advising capacities at both the state and federal levels.

For four years from 2001 to 2005, Taylor served as under-secretary of Treasury for international affairs where he was responsible for currency markets, trade in financial services, foreign investment, international debt and development, and oversight of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He was also responsible for coordinating financial policy with the G-7 countries, was chair of the OECD working party on international macroeconomics and was a member of the Board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

His book "Global Financial Warriors: The Untold Story of International Finance in the Post-9/11 World" chronicles his years as head of the international division at Treasury. His book "Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis" was one of the first on the financial crisis, and he has since followed up with two books on preventing future crises, co-editing "The Road ahead for the Fed" and "Ending Government Bailouts As We Know Them." His book "First Principles: Five Keys to Restoring Americas’ Prosperity," was the winner of the 2012 Hayek Prize.

In 2010, Taylor received the Bradley Prize from the Bradley Foundation and the Adam Smith Award from the National Association for Business Economics for his work as a researcher, public servant, and teacher. Taylor was awarded the Alexander Hamilton Award for his overall leadership at the U.S. Treasury, the Treasury Distinguished Service Award for designing and implementing the currency reforms in Iraq, and the Medal of the Republic of Uruguay for his work in resolving the 2002 financial crisis. He was awarded the George P. Shultz Distinguished Public Service Award at Stanford, the Hoagland Prize for excellence in undergraduate teaching and the Rhodes Prize for his high teaching ratings in Stanford’s introductory economics course. He also received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Econometric Society; he formerly served as vice president of the American Economic Association.

Previously, Taylor held positions of professor of economics at Princeton University and Columbia University. Taylor received a B.A. in economics summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1968 and a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University in 1973.

In conversation with Professor Taylor will be CMC's Manfred Keil who received his M. Sc. and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. After appointments in Montreal and Boston, Keil joined Claremont McKenna College in 1995. He is currently the associate director of the Lowe Institute of Political Economy and the chief economist for the Inland Empire Economic Partnership. He specializes in economic forecasting for geographical areas. He teaches statistics, econometrics, and macroeconomics at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with John Taylor, Manfred Keil

The first Deafblind person to graduate from Harvard Law School, Haben Girma advocates for equal opportunities for people with disabilities. President Obama named her a White House Champion of Change. She received the Helen Keller Achievement Award, and a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Girma believes disability is an opportunity for innovation and travels the world teaching the benefits of choosing inclusion. In August, she published her first book, Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law. She has since been featured on the Today Show. Her work has also been featured in the Financial Times, BBC, Washington Post, NPR, and more. 

Adam Jones, professor of political science at the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, B.C. and executive director of Gendercide Watch, is best known for his work in the field of comparative genocide studies. He is the author or editor of numerous books on genocide and crimes against humanity including Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction; The Scourge of Genocide: Essays and Reflection; Genocide, War Crimes and the West; and Gendercide and Genocide. He has also published two books on the media and political transition.His writings on gender and international politics have appeared in the Journal of Genocide Research, Review of International Studies, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Caribbean Studies, and other publications.

Throughout his career, Jones has developed a distinctive approach to the study of gender and international relations. In 1999, he co-founded the Web-based NGO Gendercide Watch with Carla Bergman and Nart Villeneuve, aimed at "confront[ing] gender-selective atrocities against men and women worldwide." His essays on gender, violence, and international politics are compiled in Gender Inclusive: Essays on Violence, Men, and Feminist International Relations (Routledge, 2009). Jones was a postdoctoral fellow (2005-07) in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and earned his Ph.D. in political science from the University of British Columbia. 

Professor Jones' talk is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College.

 

View Video: YouTube with Adam Jones

Paul Hessburg, Ph.D., is a research ecologist with Pacific Northwest Research Station, U.S. Forest Service. He has studied historical and modern era forests of the Inland West for the last 32 years and has published extensively in leading national and international journals. His work documents large changes in forest conditions and how these changes, along with climate change, have set the stage for large and severe wildfires.

Hessburg was the recipient of the USFS 2017 R&D Deputy Chief's Distinguished Science Award for his significant contribution to fire and landscape ecology. His most recent book, Making Transparent Environmental Management Decisions, offers compelling new insights into using modern-day decision support systems to plan for forest restoration.
 

Food for Thought: Podcast with Paul Hessburg

In 2010, Susana Martinez was elected governor of the state of New Mexico. She became New Mexico’s first female governor and the first Hispanic female governor in the history of the United States. Prior to being elected governor, Martinez was a prosecutor for 25 years along the nation’s southern border and served as Doña Ana County’s elected district attorney for over half that time. As governor, she prioritized keeping New Mexico’s communities safe, ensuring all students receive a high-quality education, and diversifying and growing the state’s economy.

Martinez’s two terms were marked by many successes including eliminating a $450 million inherited budget deficit and leaving the state with a $2 billion surplus; job growth at a 12-year high; improving the state’s high school graduation rate by 10 percentage points – to an all-time high of 74 percent; and implementing a number of public safety initiatives.

Martinez won re-election to her second term in 2014 by the largest margin of any Republican gubernatorial candidate in modern history, earning substantial support from Democratic and Independent voters in rural and urban areas alike. She served alongside a Democratically-controlled Legislature throughout her time in office, with the exception of a two-year period of Republican control of one chamber. She has been named as Time Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People in the World (2013) and served as a Chairman and long-time executive committee member of the Republican Governors Association (RGA). 

Born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley, Martinez has lived in Las Cruces, New Mexico since the 1980s. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at El Paso and later earned her law degree from the University of Oklahoma School of Law, where she was recently inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame.

Martinez currently serves as a board member for the Foundation for Excellence in Education (ExcelinEd) and as an advisory board member for the Hunt-Kean Leadership Fellows program of the Hunt Institute.  A proud Blue Star Mother, Martinez is also an advisory board member for the Global War on Terrorism Memorial Foundation. 

Governor Martinez is a William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow at CMC this fall.

This event is for CMC students, faculty, and staff only.