
Our Leadership

Ioannis D. Evrigenis
Director
Ioannis (Yannis) D. Evrigenis, the Alice Tweed Tuohy Professor of Government and Ethics, teaches courses on political philosophy, ethics and international relations, and the social contract, and is the author of books and articles on a wide range of topics in political thought, including Fear of Enemies and Collective Action, for which he received the Delba Winthrop Award for Excellence in Political Science. Before joining CMC in 2023, he taught at Tufts University, where he served as Director of the International Relations Program, co-founded Tufts' Civic Studies major, and co-taught Introduction to Civic Studies. In addition to grants and fellowships for his research, he has received several grants for civic education and has led a number of civics seminars for K-12 teachers, early-career scholars, and community college faculty.

Jennifer Valdez
Interim Assistant Director
Jennifer oversees all programming, operations, events, and staffing at the Open Academy. For the last eight years she has worked as Assistant Director of the Salvatori Center, where she successfully cultivated a robust and collaborative environment for CMC students. She remains committed to inspiring students to brainstorm new learning opportunities, events, and campus engagement, while encouraging them to utilize and enhance their strengths. She holds a Master’s degree in Legal Studies with an emphasis in Nonprofit Organizations and is currently in her final year of law school. Jennifer has been a member of the CMC community for fifteen years.

Piyush Prakash
Director of Research and Evaluation, Constructive Dialogue Program
Piyush Prakash is a senior public policy professional with over 12 years of experience working with city, state, and federal governments in India and the U.S. At the Open Academy, he leads the research and evaluation efforts for constructive dialogue initiatives. He teaches LEAD 10: Foundations of Leadership at CMC. Previously, he served as a Senior Research Officer/Under-Secretary at the Government of India's federal public policy think tank, contributing to significant initiatives such as India’s National Education Policy 2020.

Alejandro Villegas
Alejandro serves as the Program Coordinator for The Open Academy and Dreier Roundtable at Claremont McKenna College. In this role, he fosters dialogue and civic leadership among students by organizing events, supporting student initiatives, and collaborating with departments, institutes, and student groups across campus. A graduate of CMC with a degree in Philosophy and Public Affairs, Alejandro previously served as an Open Academy Post-Baccalaureate Fellow and has been part of the CMC community for nine years—as both a student and now an employee.
The Expanding Open Academy
In a wide-ranging Q&A, President Hiram Chodosh, David Mgrublian ’82 P’11, Chair of the Board of Trustees, and former faculty co-directors Heather Ferguson and Jon Shields discuss The Open Academy’s construction and evolution as a higher education model of leadership learning, how its successes have been extended to new opportunities across campus, and why CMC students and alumni are best equipped to apply these ideas and solutions to their daily lives.

Join Us
We seek strategic, programmatic, and philanthropic partners to advance the promise and potential of The Open Academy. Your partnership and support make this possible. Together, we can overcome what divides us and solve the world’s most challenging problems.