Below are the biographies for CAP’s “Art of Social Change: Child Welfare, Education, and Juvenile Justice” Fall 2013 speakers. Click on the relevant speaker’s name to link to his/her biography. This page will be updated as we finalize speaker biographies.
- Class 1 (Sept 12): Elizabeth Bartholet, Jessica Budnitz
- Class 2 (Sept 19): Catherine Fine, Thea James, Jeffrey B. Teitler & Lisa H. Thurau
- Class 3 (Sept 26): Marsha Levick & R. Daniel Okonkwo
- Class 4 (Oct 3): Brett Drake; Response Panelist: Andrew L. Cohen
- Class 5 (Oct 10): Jeri B. Cohen & James Dwyer; Response Panelist: Ivana Culic
- Class 6 (Oct 17): Paulo Barrozo & Whitney Reitz
- Class 7 (Oct 24): Margaret McKenna & Bill Shore
- Class 8 (Oct 31): Raj Chetty
- Class 9 (Nov 7): Steve Gross & John Jacobs
- Class 10 (Nov 14): James E. Ryan; Response Panelist: Damon Smith
- Class 11 (Nov 21): Josh Brody & Eric Glustrom
- Class 12 (Dec 5): Dan Pallotta & Scott Sherman
Elizabeth Bartholet
Elizabeth Bartholet is the Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School, where she teaches civil rights and family law, specializing in child welfare, adoption and reproductive technology. Before joining the Harvard Faculty, she was engaged in civil rights and public interest work, first with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and later as founder and director of the Legal Action Center, a non-profit organization in New York City focused on criminal justice and substance abuse issues.
Jessica Budnitz
Jessica Budnitz is a Lecturer on Law and the founding Managing Director of the Child Advocacy Program (CAP) at Harvard Law School. Before working at CAP, she founded and directed Juvenile Justice Partners, a child-focused legal clinic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is an Echoing Green Foundation Fellow, the 2003 recipient of HLS’s Gary Bellow Public Service Award, and a 2004 recipient of the YWCA of Cambridge Award for Outstanding Women. For many years, Ms. Budnitz served as a Prelaw Residential Tutor in Leverett House at Harvard College. She is a 2001 graduate of Harvard Law School and a 1998 graduate of Duke University.
Catherine Fine
Catherine Fine is a public health practitioner with over 10 years of experience in the field of public health violence prevention. Based on her work in Baltimore and Boston, her areas of expertise include leading teams to design and implement citywide violence prevention strategies. The focus of her work includes developing strategies and programs that are grounded in understanding the root causes of violence and are aimed at increasing resident engagement, training and capacity building, and direct services for Boston’s residents and community providers. In her role as the Director of the Division of Violence Prevention for the Boston Public Health Commission, Catherine oversees several federal initiatives funded by the Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control, as well as programs funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and private foundations. Ms. Fine is a graduate of the University of Rochester, and she holds a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Dr. Thea James
Dr. Thea James, M.D., is Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Assistant Dean, Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs at Boston Medical Center/Boston University School of Medicine. She is Director of the Boston Medical Center Massachusetts Violence Intervention Advocacy Program, and a member of the Boston Medical Center Injury Prevention Center Leadership Team as Director of Community Outreach. Dr. James was a member of Attorney General Eric Holder’s Task Force on Defending Childhood 2011-2012. She is a founding member of the National Network of Hospital-based Intervention Advocacy Programs (NNHVIP), and is a member of the steering committee and the research group. Dr. James is immediate past Chair, Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine Licensing Committee, and immediate past President, Boston Medical Center Medical and Dental Staff. A graduate of Georgetown University School of Medicine, James trained in emergency medicine at Boston City Hospital, where she was a chief resident. She is a co-founder of Unified for Global Healing, a non-profit organization that develops global partnerships, to improve the well being of underserved communities internationally. UFGH takes multidisciplinary teams to Haiti, Ghana West Africa, and India. Dr. James has been a recipient of the Boston Public Health Commission’s Mulligan Award for leadership and public service, 2012 Boston Business Journal Champions in Healthcare honoree, and recipient of the Boston District Attorney’s Role Model Award, 2012.
Jeffrey B. Teitler
Jeffrey B. Teitler holds degrees from the Yale School of Drama and New York University’s, Tisch School of the Arts. Currently serving as Professor of Production and Performance Studies at Central Connecticut State University, his narrative and documentary films have been recognized/seen in festivals nationwide.
His most recent work, THE SWEETEST LAND, collaborates with Saint Francis Hospital and Medical Center’s Trauma Team, The Hartford Police Department’s Intelligence Division and Mothers United Against Violence. Exploring violence prevention efficacy in the 14th most violent city in America, is improvement possible?
Teitler has developed original filmmaking curriculum for the Children’s Defense Fund’s Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative and has been recognized by The National Foundation For Advancement in the Arts for Excellence in Artistic Education.
Lisa H. Thurau
Lisa H. Thurau is a graduate of Barnard College and holds a Masters degree in Anthropology from Columbia University. She graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University in 1991. Before becoming an attorney, Lisa worked as a researcher and advocate for reform and improvement of the public education system in New York City. She worked as an Associate in the litigation department of Coudert Brothers, an international law firm on copyright and commercial litigation matters.
From 1999 to 2008, Lisa served as policy specialist and then as Managing Director of the Juvenile Justice Center of Suffolk Law School. There, Lisa focused on public policy advocacy on behalf of court-involved teens. She monitored juveniles’ civil rights issues regarding police treatment, tracked trends in the Center’s cases, monitored and challenged legislation affecting youth in the juvenile justice system.
In 2004, Lisa initiated a training with 180 officers in the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) Transit Police to improve police/youth interactions, to increase officers’ skills in working with youth, and to support officers’ development of innovative approaches to policing large groups of teens in public transit areas. She conducted a training with over 100 officers in the Everett Police Department. Her assessment and training of 235 officers in the Cambridge Police Department led to a reorganization of the way that Department provides services to youth.
In 2010, Lisa founded Strategies for Youth, Inc., a nonprofit advocacy and training organization dedicated to improving police/youth interactions. Working with Dr. Jeff Q. Bostic, Director of School Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, Lisa built Strategies for Youth from the ground up, without formal institutional or foundation support. Strategies for Youth has worked with police departments in California, Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and published over 10 articles on police/youth issues in national publications, and presented at numerous national police and juvenile justice forums.
Marsha Levick
Marsha Levick is the co-founder, Deputy Director and Chief Counsel of Juvenile Law Center, the oldest public interest law firm for children in the United States. For more than 35 years, Levick has been an advocate for children’s and women’s rights and is a nationally recognized leader in juvenile law. Levick has authored or co-authored numerous briefs before the US Supreme Court as well as many other federal and state courts, including Roper v Simmons, striking the juvenile death penalty; Graham v Florida, striking juvenile life without parole sentences for non-homicide crimes; JDB v North Carolina, requiring consideration of youth status in the Miranda custody determination; and Miller v Alabama, striking mandatory juvenile life without parole sentences in homicide cases. Levick has also written many scholarly articles on children and the law. Levick has led Juvenile Law Center’s work addressing the Luzerne County, PA “kids for cash” judges’ scandal, believed to be the largest judicial corruption scandal in American legal history. Levick serves on the board of several national non-profit organizations, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and is a member of the Dean’s Council of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Levick has received numerous awards for her work, including recognition from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and American Bar Associations, the American Association for Justice, and was the co-recipient of the Philadelphia Inquirer 2009 Citizen of the Year Award. Levick was also named the inaugural recipient of the 2013 Arlen Specter Award, established by the Legal Intelligencer to recognize the lawyer or judge who has done the most to promote the law, the legal profession or justice in Pennsylvania in the last ten years. Levick is also an adjunct professor at both the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Temple University Beasley School of Law.
R. Daniel Okonkwo
R. Daniel Okonkwo is the Executive Director of DC Lawyers for Youth. Daniel is a founding member and the former Board Chair of DCLY. He also sits on the Board of Directors for the D.C. Alliance of Youth Advocates, is a community advisory panel member of the Washington, D.C. Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, a member of the Executive Committee of the National Juvenile Justice Network, a mayoral appointee to the Washington, D.C. Juvenile Justice Advisory Group, and a member of the WAMU (88.5 FM) Community Council.
Upon graduation from law school, Daniel was employed at the Office of the Public Defender in Miami, FL where he represented clients in the County Court Division and Felony Drug Court. Daniel received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center where he was awarded the Georgetown University Law Center Juvenile Justice Center Award for his service and commitment to juvenile justice.
Daniel has had extensive experience with youth in Washington, D.C. While at Georgetown University Law Center, he was a student attorney in the Juvenile Justice Clinic, and the head basketball coach and a tutor at the Maya Angelou Public Charter School. Daniel’s experience with the law and youth dates back to his undergraduate days at Yale University, where he graduated with a B.A in African-American Studies. At Yale, he was the head of the Black Undergraduate Law Association and was heavily involved as a tutor at the Connecticut Youth Detention Center in New Haven.
Brett Drake
Dr. Brett Drake is a Professor at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. His substantive area is child maltreatment and public child welfare systems, with an emphasis on early system contacts, including reporting and substantiation. He formulated the popular “Harm / Evidence” model of substantiation and has a particular interest in poverty and its strong association with child maltreatment. The majority of Dr. Drake’s federally funded work features longitudinal analyses of children reported to child welfare, in comparison to socioeconomically matched controls. Dr. Drake’s work features the incorporation of geographic variables (e.g. neighborhood poverty) into child maltreatment research, and explores a range of policy issues, such as mandated reporting, and questions of class and racial bias in child welfare reporting. Dr. Drake also focuses on research methodology, and is the author of a popular social work research textbook. Some of his most recent work highlights the degree to which standard poverty measures underestimate the neighborhood poverty experienced by African-American and Hispanic children. In addition, Dr. Drake has recently published work clarifying findings from the National Incidence Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect and has done related work exploring disproportionality among African-Americans, Whites and Hispanics using data from a range of varied sources. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Drake had several years of field experience as a child protective services worker.
Andrew L. Cohen
Andrew L. Cohen has represented parents and children for the Committee for Public Counsel Services Children and Family Law (CAFL) Division since 1995. In his current position as CAFL Director of Appellate Panel, Mr. Cohen oversees the work of 110 private child welfare appellate attorneys, conducts trial and appellate trainings, and maintains a small trial and appellate caseload. He has argued many appeals before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Appeals Court, including Care and Protection of Sophie, Adoption of Vito, and Adoption of Olivette. He also regularly files amicus curiae briefs in child welfare matters on behalf of his agency. He has authored articles and book chapters on evidence, parent representation, and child welfare trial and appellate practice. Mr. Cohen has lectured at the American Bar Association, the National Center for Adoption Law & Policy, the International Commission on Couple and Family Relations, and the Massachusetts, Boston, and Juvenile Bar Associations. Before joining the CAFL Division, he worked for four years doing commercial and bankruptcy trial and appellate litigation and clerked for The Hon. Carolyn Dineen King of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Houston. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Mr. Cohen is a former chair of the Boston Bar Association Family Law Section and a former member of the Boston Bar Journal’s board of editors. He currently serves on the steering committee for the American Bar Association’s National Parents’ Counsel Organization.
Judge Jeri B. Cohen
Judge Jeri B. Cohen is currently a circuit judge in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Dependency and Criminal Drug Court Divisions. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree at Boston University, her Master of Arts degree at Harvard University, and her Juris Doctorate at Georgetown Law. Before being elected to the bench in 1992, Judge Cohen was a trial attorney with the Office of the General Counsel, Securities Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C., and an Assistant State Attorney under Janet Reno. While Judge Cohen has presided in several divisions of the County and Circuit Courts, her primary assignment has been in the Dependency Division of the Juvenile Court. Judge Cohen is recognized as a national expert on issues relating to child welfare, substance abuse and mental health. She is responsible for creating one of the first dependency drug courts in the country for parents who lose custody of their children because of addiction. She has worked on a national level with the Department of Justice and the National Drug Court Institute, to develop curricula and train dependency drug courts across the country. She has taught at statewide and national conferences and judicial colleges, and published numerous articles on family drug courts and child welfare. Her drug court was an original mentor court for The Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. She received a four year National Institute of Drug and Alcohol grant along with The University of Miami School of Epidemiology to study motivational casework in family drug court. This study was one of the first randomized court-based studies in the country. Judge Cohen is the chair of the Community-Based Care Alliance in Miami-Dade County tasked with overseeing the privatized child welfare system for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit. She is the past chair of the Statewide Court Improvement Project responsible for bringing state dependency courts into compliance with federal child welfare requirements. She served in this capacity for four years, setting up the statewide Model Court program for Florida. During her tenure, she oversaw the development of the statewide Dependency Court Benchbook that integrated law with behavioral health. She was a senior judicial fellow for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, sat on the Governor’s Commission for Substance Abuse and Mental Health, and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the South Florida Behavioral Health Network, the entity managing mental health and substance abuse services for Miami-Dade County. Judge Cohen has received numerous awards, including the Community Service Award from the South Florida Jewish Federation and the statewide Child Advocate of the Year award from the Guardian Ad Litem program.
James Dwyer
textbook was released in 2012. Professor Dwyer’s major current projects are a book critiquing liberal policy responses to parental and community dysfunction and a book developing a general theory of children’s rights and national responsibilities with respect to children’s international migration.
Ivana Culic
Ivana Culic, MD, is the Associate Director of the Special Care Nursery at Beverly Hospital as well as a staff neonatologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston. Born and raised in Croatia, Dr. Culic attended the University of Zagreb Medical School where she completed her post-graduate studies. As valedictorian of her medical school class, she was offered a postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Biology at Boston University. She then spent two years working to better understand the molecular base of adult onset illnesses. Following the time she dedicated to the basic science, Dr. Culic turned her interest towards clinical medicine. She completed her Pediatric Residency and Fellowship in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at Tufts University, (Floating Hospital for Children) in Boston. Following graduation from Tufts, Dr. Culic began her career as a neonatologist, working at both Children’s Hospital Boston and Beverly Hospital. She is board certified in pediatrics and in neonatal perinatal medicine. In addition to her clinical practice, she is an Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Culic is married, has three children and currently resides on the North Shore.
Paulo Barrozo
Paulo Barrozo is an Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School. His work focuses on Criminal Law (national and international), International Law, and Legal Theory. He received an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Rio de Janeiro University Research Institute. Before coming to Boston College Law School in the fall of 2009, Professor Barrozo was a Clark Byse Teaching Fellow, a Landon H. Gammon Fellow, and a Graduate Fellow in Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School. As a Lecturer at Harvard University, Professor Barrozo was a ten-time recipient of the Distinction in Teaching award and the first recipient of the Stanley Hoffman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. In addition to his academic work, Professor Barrozo is an active advocate for the rights of the neurodiverse and the unparented, appearing before international bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations.
Whitney Reitz
Whitney Reitz joined Senator Landrieu’s staff in October 2012, as a Senior Policy Advisor on International Child Welfare. She focuses on permanency issues for children living outside of family care and revitalizing the U.S. intercountry adoption program.
Ms. Reitz has worked on humanitarian immigration and assistance issues at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the State Department for over 20 years. At USCIS, Ms. Reitz helped lead the USCIS Special Humanitarian Program for Haitian Orphans in 2010, which united nearly 1,200 Haitian orphans with their U.S. families after the tragic earthquake. In 2011, Ms. Reitz served as a principal negotiator in multiple rounds of talks which resulted in the U.S. and Russia signing an adoption agreement, thereby preserving an important option for Russian children in need of permanent families.
For over 20 years, Ms. Reitz has dedicated her career to humanitarian issues, with an emphasis on immigration, working extensively on intercountry adoption, refugee admissions and assistance, international migration and temporary protected status.
Margaret McKenna
Margaret McKenna is an educator and lawyer who has spent her career advocating for social justice. McKenna began her work life as a civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. Later in her career, she served as the Deputy Counsel in the White House, Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education and led the education transition team for President Clinton. McKenna’s education experiences include a role as Vice President of Radcliffe College and twenty-two years as president of Lesley University. Her tenure at Lesley, included: introduction of its first PhD program, merging two other colleges as part of Lesley, growth from a student body of 2,000 to 10,000, increasing the physical plant by 400% and increasing endowment from less than $2 million to over $160 million. For the last four years, she has led the Walmart Foundation where her giving budget was over $900 million. In that role, she created and implemented Hunger and Nutrition as the signature program of the Foundation and led the Walmart initiative to become the largest donor of food in the United States. McKenna is an author, speaker an expert on issues of educational access, women’s economic empowerment, hunger and social change leadership. Serving on a number of corporate and non-profit boards, she is the recipient of ten Honorary Degrees. She presently serves as a fellow at the Aspen Institute’s Ascend program.
Bill Shore
Bill Shore is the founder and chief executive officer of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit that is ending childhood hunger in America. Shore founded Share Our Strength in 1984 with his sister Debbie and a $2,000 cash advance on a credit card. Since then, Share Our Strength has raised and invested more than $376 million in the fight against hunger, and has won the support of national leaders in business, government, health and education, sports and entertainment.
Shore is also the chairman of Community Wealth Partners, a Share Our Strength organization that helps change agents solve social problems at the magnitude they exist.
From 1978 through 1987, Shore served on the senatorial and presidential campaign staffs of former U.S. Senator Gary Hart (D-Colorado). From 1988 to 1991, Shore served as chief of staff for former U.S. Senator Robert Kerrey (D-Nebraska).
Shore is the author of four books focused on social change, including “Revolu¬tion of the Heart” (Riverhead Press, 1995), “The Cathedral Within” (Random House, 1999), “The Light of Conscience” (Random House, 2004) and most recently, “The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men” (PublicAffairs, 2010).
A native of Pittsburgh, Pa., Shore earned his B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania and his law degree from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Shore served as a director of The Timberland Company from 2001 through 2011. He was also named one of America’s Best Leaders (October 2005) by US News & World Report.
Shore has been an adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and an advisor for the Reynolds Foundation Fellowship program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Raj Chetty
Raj Chetty is the Director of the Lab for Economic Applications and Policy for Harvard University, Department of Economics as well as Director of the Public Economics group at the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Editor of the Journal of Public Economics. His research combines empirical evidence and theory to inform the design of more effective government policies. His work on the topics of taxation, unemployment, and education has been widely cited in media outlets and Congressional testimony. He was awarded the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2012 and the Clark Medal from the American Economics Association in 2013.
Steve Gross
Steve Gross, M.S.W., is the Founder and Chief Playmaker of the Life is good Playmakers, a 501(c)(3) public charity. He has devoted his career to the service of our most vulnerable children. A pioneer in utilizing exuberant, joyful play to promote resiliency in children and their caregivers, and a leader in the field of psychological trauma response, Gross is committed to the healthy development of children facing the most challenging circumstances.
The vision of the nonprofit he founded is a world where all children grow up feeling safe, loved and joyful. In order to make this vision a reality, the Life is good Playmakers partners with frontline professionals – such as teachers, social workers and child life specialists – who dedicate their lives to helping children overcome poverty, violence and illness. These Playmakers use the power of play to build healing, life-changing relationships with the children in their care. This foundation of playfulness allows children to engage the world with passion and joy while giving them the courage and creativity to see possibilities and solutions in the face of adversity. To date over 3,500 certified Playmakers have cared for more than 210,000 children throughout the United States and Haiti.
Steve’s talents have been called upon to respond to some of the greatest catastrophes of our time, including the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, and the 2012 Newtown school shooting. At the heart of his work, Steve helps others access their own playfulness so that they can build resilience and bring greater joy, connection, courage and creativity to their work and their lives.
John Jacobs
John Jacobs is Co-Founder and Chief Creative Optimist, The Life is good Company. The Boston, MA based lifestyle brand spreads the power of optimism and helps kids in need by donating 10% of its net profits to The Life is good Kids Foundation. Jake, Life is good’s iconic hero with the contagious smile, teaches men, women and kids that optimism is fun, healthy, and empowering.
John created his first poorly spelled and crudely drawn book at the age of five. He’s been writing and drawing ever since, graduating from the University of Massachusetts in 1990 with dual degrees in English and Art. He immediately began designing and selling tee shirts after college and worked as a substitute teacher to supplement his income during Life is good’s infancy.
In 1994, with a combined sum of just $78 in the bank, John and his brother Bert officially launched Life is good. Today, Life is good products are sold by over 3,500 retailers nationwide and on Lifeisgood.com. Bert, John, and The Life is good Company are living proof that “Optimism can take you anywhere.”
Life is good focuses on forging meaningful, emotional connections, and relies heavily on its community of optimists to build its brand. Because Life is good considers kids its ultimate source for inspiration, the company is committed to helping kids in need through its products and through its support of The Life is good Kids Foundation. The company with a positive purpose has raised over $9.5 million for kids in need to date, principally through the annual Life is good Festival, Life is good products and other fundraising efforts.
Bert and John are the youngest of six siblings from Needham, MA. They credit their mother with teaching them to face the bumps in the road with a smile. The Jacobs brothers see simplicity, humility and a sense of humor as the three keys to Life is good’s continued success.
When John is not evolving the brand for future seasons, he enjoys any game under the sun, film, music, and diving into the water to catch things. He lives in his favorite sports town, Boston, with his wife Jessica, their two sons, Oskar and Oliver, and daughter Lucy.
James E. Ryan
James E. Ryan is the 11th dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. An expert on law and education, constitutional law, and constitutional theory, he writes primarily about law and educational opportunity. Ryan is the co-author of the textbook Educational Policy and the Law, and the author of Five Miles Away, A World Apart, which was published in 2010 by Oxford University Press. He has also authored or co-authored articles on constitutional law and theory.
Before coming to Harvard, Ryan was the William L. Matheson & Robert M. Morgenthau Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. He also served as academic associate dean from 2005-09, and founded and directed the school’s Program in Law and Public Service. He is the recipient of an All-University Teaching Award from the University of Virginia, an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, and several awards for his scholarship. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Auckland, Harvard, and Yale law schools. Ryan was a member of the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission, a group tasked with examining how to make public education both excellent and equitable.
Damon Smith
Damon Smith is Principal of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. Before becoming Principal in March 2012, he served as the Interim Principal as well as the Dean of Curriculum and Learning Community “R” at the high school. Prior to that he was Assistant School Director at New Mission High School and a Mentor Teacher for the Cambridge/Harvard Summer Academy. He began his career in education as a Humanities teacher at New Mission High and served as a case manager for Project LEEO (Leadership, Education and Employment Opportunities), a youth development organization. Smith is a graduate of Wesleyan University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Northeastern University Principal Residency Network.
Josh Brody
Josh Brody is the Director of Sequoyah School, an independent K-8 progressive school in Pasadena, California. At Sequoyah, Josh has led the development and implementation of indexed tuition, and the recent construction of three new buildings to accommodate a 25% increase in student enrollment.
Throughout his career, Josh has been involved in education and human rights in the U.S. and internationally. After graduating magna cum laude from the University of Colorado with a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology, Josh worked in Jacaltenango along the border between Guatemala and Mexico coordinating human rights education workshops on behalf of local NGO’s in partnership with MINUGUA the U.N. peacekeeping mission. Returning to the United States, Josh started a high school summer enrichment program for at risk students in gifted and talented programs in the Pasadena Unified School District. Following his interests abroad again, Josh taught social studies and language arts, and became the principal, at a school in eastern Nepal. Josh later earned his Master’s in Education from The Harvard Graduate School of Education where he focused on decentralization of school governance. As an Echoing Green Fellow from 1999-2002, Josh created community based education programs for people living in the isolated communities near the Nepal-Tibet border. These programs included curriculum development, adult literacy classes, and facilitating the education of young women in the project area in order for them to become teachers in their own communities.
\During his years in Nepal, Josh was given the name Gajab Bahadur Gurung Lama (which translates as “strange wonderful thing”). His love of Nepali folk music led to the surprising result of national pop stardom. Known by his Nepalese name, Gajab Bahadur, Josh became the first foreigner to record original Nepali songs. He has released a CD and a number of music videos in Nepal.
Josh has served on the boards of the Transformative Action Institute and Educate the Children International.
Eric Glustrom
Eric Glustrom is the founder of Watson and Educate! – two sister organizations transforming education worldwide.
Educate! reaches 25,000 young leaders and entrepreneurs across Uganda and has created a significant shift in the national education system of the country to ensure the next generation graduates with the skills, experience and confidence to solve the toughest problems facing Uganda and Africa
Watson is a new higher education model in Boulder for student innovators, leaders and entrepreneurs that includes 15 short courses from the world’s foremost leaders, entrepreneurs, and thinkers including a leader of a Nobel Peace Prize winning movement to one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people and more; award winning training in entrepreneurial skills such as empathy, creativity, resilience, and grit; and the opportunity to earn academic credit from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Recognized as an Ashoka fellow, Echoing Green fellow, and one of Forbes 30 social entrepreneurs under 30, Eric’s work is driven by a simple belief: to solve the toughest challenges facing humanity, the place to start is within the hearts and minds of the next generation.\
Dan Pallotta
Dan Pallotta invented the multi-day charitable event industry with the AIDS Rides and Breast Cancer 3-Days. These events altered the landscape of options for ordinary individuals seeking to make an extraordinary difference. Dan’s work brought the practice of four-figure philanthropy within the reach of the average citizen who had never raised money for charity before in their lives. These multi-day events raised $582 million in nine years – more money raised more quickly for these causes than any private event operation in history.
Dan also created the Out of the Darkness suicide prevention events, which brought that issue out into the open and gave its closeted constituents the courage to put the cause on the map. The event concept has netted millions for the cause.
Dan’s career as the architect of these heroic journeys for humanity began as an undergraduate at Harvard in 1983 where he chaired the Hunger Action Committee and recruited 38 of his classmates to join him in bicycling 4,200 miles across America to raise money for Oxfam and to heighten awareness of the plight of the hungry.
Dan is the author of Uncharitable: How Restraints on Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential and more recently Charity Case: How the Nonprofit Community Can Stand Up for Itself and Really Change the World. He is the founder and Chief Humanity Officer of Advertising for Humanity, a full-service brand and inspiration agency for the humanitarian sector. He is also founder and President of the Charity Defense Council, a new national leadership movement dedicated to transforming the way the donating public thinks about charity and change. He is a member of the board of Triangle, a center for the developmentally disabled in Massachusetts, and a member of the Reason Project Advisory Board. Dan’s iconic TED Talk has been viewed more than 1.2 million times.
At the age of 21, Dan was one of the youngest people ever elected to the school board in Melrose, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He spent his twenties writing music and playing clubs in Los Angeles. Dan lives in Massachusetts with his partner and their three children.
Scott Sherman
Scott Sherman Dr. Scott Sherman is the Executive Director of an award-winning nonprofit organization, the Transformative Action Institute. The mission of TAI is to train the next generation of social entrepreneurs, innovators, and change makers for the 21st century.
Sherman is an expert on the most effective ways that citizens succeed in their attempts to change the world. He is currently writing a book summarizing his research, “How We Win: The Science of Making the World a Better Place.”
Over the last decade, Sherman has taught courses on social entrepreneurship and social innovation at numerous universities, including Yale, Princeton, NYU, and Johns Hopkins.
His work on nonviolent social change projects has been praised by such Nobel Peace Prize Laureates as the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and the late Mother Teresa. He is also a nationally recognized speaker on environmental regeneration and transformative action. He has won the outstanding teaching award from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2004, he was nominated for the National Society of Collegiate Scholars’ Faculty of the Year award for the entire U.S.
Sherman earned his undergraduate and law degrees from U.C. Berkeley, as well as his Ph.D. in environmental studies from the University of Michigan. Besides his work as a grassroots community organizer, lecturer, and author, Sherman has worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Law Foundation.
In 2005, the global nonprofit organization Echoing Green recognized Sherman as one of the world’s “Best Emerging Social Entrepreneurs.”