Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Ravi Shankar Aysola ’96 is an assistant clinical professor in internal medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is also director of the UCLA Pulmonary Sleep Medicine Program and director of the UCLA Santa Monica Pulmonary & Sleep Medicine Clinic.

Aysola majored in psychobiology and graduated summa cum laude from CMC in 1996. He attended the U.T. Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Parkland Hospital also in Dallas. He went on to pursue fellowships in pulmonary and critical care medicine and sleep medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

Aysola will discuss his experiences at CMC as a survivor of a critical illness and a student with disabilities. Specifically he will address the long-term impact of those experiences and how they affected his personal perspectives and what they taught him about practicing compassion in his academic, professional, and personal life.

Eight-time Emmy recipient Michael Graber ’74 became a cinematographer by pursuing his passion for mountain climbing. After graduating from Claremont McKenna College with a degree in Philosophy, he moved to eastern Sierra Nevada to join the ranks of climbing and skiing adventurers who made their living in the mountains. Winters were spent teaching skiing at Mammoth Mountain and summers guiding for the Palisades School of Mountaineering, which operated out of Big Pine, California. His illustrious climbing career has encompassed expeditions to remote mountain ranges around the world including the Alaskan Range, the Andes, the Himalayas, Greenland, the jungles of the Amazon and the Antarctic Peninsula.

Graber has worked on a number of award-winning television documentaries, netting eight national Emmy’s along the way. Graber ‘s credits also include feature films (Dust To Glory (2005), 007 — Die Another Day (2002), Endless Summer 2 (1994), Crimson Tide (1995), Twister (01996), Almost Heroes (1998)) and 70mm IMAX films (Storm Chasers (2011), Amazon (1997), Wild California (2000), Shackleton (2002)). He currently splits his time between Capistrano Beach and Bishop.

Michael Graber is the keynote speaker for CMC's Second Annual Green Careers Conference sponsored by the Roberts Environmental Center in partnership with Student impACT.

Read more about Michael Graber... 

View Video: YouTube with Michael Graber '74

Thomas Sanderson directs the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Transnational Threats Project, where he investigates terrorism, transnational crime, global trends, and intelligence issues. He has conducted field research in more than 70 countries and has authored or co-authored 15 reports, as well as opinion pieces, debates, and articles in The Economist, New York Times, Washington Post, West Point Counterterrorism Center Sentinel, and Harvard Asia-Pacific Review. He engages a variety of sources including journalists, terrorists, traffickers, foreign intelligence officials, business leaders, nongovernmental organizations, clergy, and academia.

Sanderson led a multiphase study of emerging trends in terrorism covering South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa through 2015. He has also co-directed an al Qaeda study and numerous studies on Central Asia. From 2004 to 2009, he directed studies on violent extremism in Europe and Southeast Asia.

He also serves as a course instructor and consultant for the U.S. government and the private sector on terrorism, geopolitics, and global threats and often provides expert commentary for the media and courts of law. From 1998 to 2002, he worked for Science Applications International Corporation, conducting research on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Office of Counterterrorism.

 Thomas Sanderson is the Spring 2016 speaker for Res Publica Society Speaker Series. 

View Video: YouTube with Thomas Sanderson

Food for Thought: Podcast with Thomas Sanderson

Jessica Setnick, MS, RD, CEDRD, envisions a world where no one is ashamed to talk about his or her eating issues. Setnick blends her anthropologist training with 17 years of experience helping individuals with eating disorders, mixes in her personal experience of eating disorder recovery and a splash of mischievous humor for a presentation that will make you think about your eating in a whole new way.

Ms. Setnick’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Claremont University Consortium’s Eating Disorder Task Force Team.

View Video: YouTube with Jessica Setnick

Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations.

Kennedy attended Princeton University, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and Yale Law School. He clerked for Judge J. Skelly Wright of the United States Court of Appeals and Justice Thurgood Marshall of the United States Supreme Court. Awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award for Race, Crime, and the Law (1997) in 1998, Kennedy writes and speaks on a wide range of topics. His books include For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law (2013), The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency (2011), Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (2008), Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (2003), and Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002).

Both in the classroom and in lecture halls, Kennedy is admired for his wit and accessibility. He is known for his fearlessness in tackling sensitive racial issues and for challenging audiences to confront their own racial prejudices and the prejudices embedded in society. Frank conversations include the ongoing linguistic and historical baggage of loaded words like the n-word and "sellout," interracial intimacies and adoptions, and overt (and covert) racial lines.

Using results of audits involving automobile transactions, employment applications, the receipt of tips by cab drivers, and the provision of medical care, in his talk Kennedy will examine the claim that, with certain exceptions (such as affirmative action or racial profiling by law enforcement authorities), relatively little invidious discrimination impedes the forward progress of racial minorities.

Professor Kennedy's Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund.

Read more about Randall Kennedy…

View Video: YouTube with Randall Kennedy

Food for Thought: Podcast with Randall Kennedy

From living in a tent in a Syrian refugee camp to working as radish farmers and surviving on one dollar a day in Guatemala, Zach Ingrasci  and Chris Temple are pioneering a new style of documentary filmmaking. Their work thus far has raised over $490,000 directly for micro-finance loans, education scholarships, and refugee services around the world.

Ingrasci's journey to become a “disruptive storyteller” began while working for a small Mexican microfinance program. Ever since then he has continued to focus on the intersection of the creative arts, business, and sustainable development. His work experience includes strategy consulting at Deloitte Consulting LLP as well as working for Freedom From Hunger on the ground in Ecuador. 

Temple is an avid adventurer and big thinker. On a gap year from school, he worked for Grameen Trust to launch new microfinance organizations in New York, Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia before founding the student microfinance organization, MFI Connect. He has also worked at the advocacy and communications consulting firm, Global Health Strategies. 

Since graduating from Claremont McKenna College in 2012, Ingrasci and Temple have spoken at the United Nations, TEDx Buenos Aires, and over 60 universities, high schools, and conferences. Real Leaders Magazine recognized them alongside Angelina Jolie, and Bill Gates as two of the top 100 Visionary Leaders of 2015.

There will be a movie screening of Salam Neighbor (2015) after the talk in McKenna Auditorium. The movie screening is open to all. 

Mr. Ingrasci and Mr. Temple's Athenaeum talk and the movie screening are co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund and the Kravis Leadership Institute. 

Food for Thought: Podcast with Chris Temple'12

From living in a tent in a Syrian refugee camp to working as radish farmers and surviving on one dollar a day in Guatemala, Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple are pioneering a new style of documentary filmmaking. Their work thus far has raised over $490,000 directly for micro-finance loans, education scholarships, and refugee services around the world.

Founders of the non-profit production and impact studio Living on One, Ingrasci and Temple use immersive storytelling to create films that inspire action around pressing global issues.

Come hear their inspirational story...

(Location: Parents Dining Room)

Gamiel Gran is the owner of Ease VR, an analytics platform for virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality software/hardware companies. Gran will speak about his experience in venture capital, raising capital and his virtual reality company. The Ease VR team will also give a demo of the Samsung and Oculus software/hardware.

Mr. Gran’s talk and demonstration at the Athenaeum is co-sponsored by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as part of Entrepreneurship Week at CMC.

Read more about Gamiel Gran…

(Location: Security Pacific Dining Room)

View Video: YouTube with Gramiel Gran P'16

The panelists, CMC grads at various career stages, work at technology firms in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. The panel discussion, moderated by Professor Frederick Lynch, will address a range of topics including: preparation for careers in tech, how to leverage past accomplishments and personal and professional networks to develop careers in tech, obstacles and challenges faced in the competitive and male-dominated culture of Silicon Valley, and approaches for problem solving, including work/life balance issues.

Candace Adelberg ’10 works at Google’s counter-abuse technology team, where she fights internet bad guys; Kristie Howard ’15 is a software engineer at Docker, Inc., a San Francisco startup that makes building and shipping applications; Mayumi Matsuno ’01 is director of product at Electric Imp, a cloud service and hardware solution that facilitates connecting devices to the Internet; and Jacinth Sohi ‘11, a product support manager at Uber, specializing in scaling the infrastructure and launching support operations for new products like UberEATS and uberPOOL. More details and biographical information about the panelists is available here.

Moderator Frederick Lynch is associate professor of government at CMC. His teaching and research focus on policy issues pertaining to inequality, workforce and occupational trends. He is currently studying how Silicon Valley and the high tech industry are responding to demands for greater workforce diversity.

The panel discussion at the Athenaeum is co-sponsored by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as part of Entrepreneurship Week at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Women of High Tech

 

Colin Adams is the Thomas T. Read Professor of Mathematics at Williams College. He is particularly interested in the mathematical theory of knots, their applications and their connections with hyperbolic geometry.

He is the author of The Knot Book (2004), an elementary introduction to the mathematical theory of knots, a mathematical comic book Why Knot?: An Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Knots with Tangle (2008) and Riot at the Calc Exam and Other Mathematically Bent Stories (2009), a compendium of humorous math stories. His most recent book is Zombies & Calculus (2014).

He is also the co-author of the humorous supplements How to Ace Calculus: The Streetwise Guide (1998) and How to Ace the Rest of Calculus: The Streetwise Guide, Including MultiVariable Calculus (2001) as well as the textbook Introduction to Topology: Pure and Applied (2007).

He also appears with Thomas Garrity in The Great Pi/e Debate (2006), The United States of Mathematics Presidential Debate (2010) and The Derivative vs. the Integral: The Final Smackdown (2012), all DVD’s of humorous debates on mathematical topics. He is also the humor columnist for the Mathematical Intelligencer.

Adams is a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the Mathematical Association of America, a Polya Lecturer, a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer, and a recipient of the Robert Foster Cherry Teaching Award for Great Teaching.

Read more about Colin Adams…

Pardis Mahdavi, Ph.D., is associate professor and chair of anthropology at Pomona College. Her work focuses on gender and sexuality in the Muslim world, including gendered labor, sexual politics, labor migration, human rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health, and human trafficking. She is the author of Passionate Uprisings: The Intersection of Sexuality and Politics in Post-Revolutionary Iran (2008), Gridlock: Labor, Migration and Human Trafficking in Dubai (2011), and From Trafficking to Terror (2013). She is currently researching the impacts of gendered migrations on family and love across Asia.

She has held fellowships with the Social Science Research Council, the Asia Research Institute, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Policy, Google Ideas, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Asia Society Asia21 Young Leaders Initiative.

Read more about Pardis Mahdavi…

Food for Thought: Podcast with Pardis Mahdavi

Colleges across the country have employed different models of resource spaces on their campuses. Sumi Pendakur, the associate dean for institutional diversity at Harvey Mudd College, Yuka Ogino, the interim director of SCORE at Scripps College, and Mariana Cruz, former chief diversity officer and director of the Multicultural Resource Center at Amherst College, will participate on a panel to help outline the different models in place at those institutions. They will also help frame open and critically-minded questions about the functions and structure of such a center at CMC. Nyree Gray, CMC’s chief civil rights officer and Title IX coordinator, will moderate the discussion.

Please note that there will no wine and cheese reception this evening. Dinner will be served at 6 pm. In addition, a dessert buffet will be available starting at 6:30 pm for those who are not able to make it to the dinner. For those who plan to attend the dinner, please register as you normally would. For those who intend to come for dessert and the panel conversation only, please send an email to the athenaeum@cmc.edu. The panel discussion will begin at 6:45 pm and is open to all.

The panel discussion is sponsored by the PSR Subcommittee on Campus Climate at CMC.

W. Kamau Bell has emerged as a post-modern voice of socio-political comedy. Named an Ambassador of Racial Justice by the ACLU, W. Kamau Bell is best known for his critically acclaimed TV show, Totally Biased. His new show United Shades of America will premier on CNN in early 2016.

Kamau also co-hosts the podcast The Field Negro Guide to Arts & Culture with Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid; he writes the blog “Kamau’s Komedy Korner” for the San Francisco Weekly; and he sits on the board of The Applied Research Center, a racial justice think tank and home for media and activism.

Praised by Punchline Magazine as “one of our nation’s most adept racial commentators with a blistering wit,” Kamau was voted San Francisco’s best comedian by the SF Weekly, the SF Bay Guardian, and 7×7 Magazine. The New York Times called him “the most promising new talent in political comedy in many years.” The late Robin Williams calls Kamau “ferociously funny,” and Vernon Reid of the band Living Colour offers the offering: “W. Kamau Bell is in the vanguard of a new era of American comedy for an unsettling, troubling, and strangely hopeful time.”

Read more about W. Kamau Bell…

Food for Thought: Podcast with W. Kamu Bell

Lincoln Miller is the senior director for program management at Landesa. Landesa, which received the Kravis Prize in 2006, works with governments around the world to advance land rights reforms by using local law and public policy tools.

Miller provides strategic leadership and oversight for Landesa’s program work throughout the world. He has held several senior positions at Landesa including chief operations officer, chief program officer, and chief financial officer. Before coming to Landesa, Mr. Miller spent twenty-five years working within the business and government sectors, holding a number of positions in the educational travel industry, serving as a founding member of a start-up, and as a certified public accountant. Working in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, Mr. Miller has initiated and executed successful growth strategies that have yielded financial, social, and organizational returns in many different structural and challenging environments.

Miller’s Athenaeum talk will focus on Landesa’s work in China and specifically address recent historic legal and policy changes through which the Chinese central government has laid the foundation for rural development. These historic legal changes, if fully implemented, can help small-holder farmers spark and sustain broad-based development in China, fostering a more equitable and stable society.

Recent CMC alumni Paige Costello ’12 and Kyle Weiss ’15, both at Intuit (makers of Mint, Turbotax, and QuickBooks), feel that CMCers excel in tech jobs that require strong leadership and creative problem solving skills. In this unique Athenaeum event, Costello and Weiss return to CMC to talk about real-life product management (indeed, come prepared to tackle a problem as a group with your dinner table peers); highlight opportunities in technology including in VC, design, engineering, marketing, and analytics; delve into the different skill sets these types of jobs look for; and finally give some insider information on landing a job in tech including effective search techniques, preparation, and interview tips.

Paige Costello '12 is a senior product manager at Intuit where she works on Quickbooks Online. At CMC, she majored in literature and international relations and served as an Athenaeum Fellow her sophomore year.

Kyle Weiss ’15 is a product manager at Intuit on the Payroll Team. At CMC, he majored in philosophy and economics, wrote a thesis on the Human Machine Convergence, worked for Admissions, The Golden Antlers, and FUNDaFIELD.org