Albright Institute for Global Affairs

Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State (1997-2001), Wendy Sherman, Senior Counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, and Paula Johnson, President of Wellesley College, discuss democratic principles in the current political landscape in light of their remarkable and diverse careers. They answered questions from Fellows and from listeners online.

Emmanuel Kamanzi, Director of Campus Development at the University of Global Health Equity, and Ophelia Dahl ‘94, Founder and Board Chair of Partners In Health, discussed the development of the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda and its implications on radical changes to health care globally.

Carol Dougherty, the Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy T. Carlson Professor in Comparative Literature and a professor of classical studies at Wellesley College, explores the intersection between technological advancement and the morals of the story of Prometheus.

Bruce Stokes, Director of Global Economic Attitudes at the Pew Research Center, shared global polling data depicting attitudes toward the United States and explained the implications of recent trends.

Brendan Nyhan, Professor of Government at Dartmouth University, discussed the implications of facts and science in today’s society and why such seemingly reliable concepts can fail to change people’s minds in conversation and debate.

Dan Sichel, a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, talks about the emerging fear of technological advancements replacing humans in the workforce and how it will shape the next generation of workers.

Jay Turner, associate professor of environmental studies at Wellesley College, discusses the science, history, and politics of climate change.

Jonathan Zittrain, the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School, discussed the challenges of the emerging science of artificial intelligence and its future impact.

Kathy Moon, the Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies and a Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College, examined many of the most common myths surrounding life in North Korea and shared with Fellows the facts of the country, its government, and the life of its citizens.

Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State (1997-2001), Wendy Sherman, Senior Counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, and Joanne Murray, Director of the Albright Institute, discuss the importance of relationships in diplomacy and as emerging leaders in an increasingly interconnected world.

Nina Tumarkin, the Kathryn Wasserman Davis Professor of Slavic Studies and a Professor of History at Wellesley College, shared her insight into the history of the rise of Vladimir Putin and his role and goals in the current global landscape.

Martha Goldberg Aronson '89, Corporate Director and President of North Arm Partners, Rudina Seseri '00, Founder and Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures, and Jenny Brandemuehl '85, Chief People Officer of Chegg, Inc.

Wendy Sherman, Senior Counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group, answered questions about her career and leadership in a discussion moderated by Panagiotis Takis Metaxas, Faculty Director of the Albright Institute.

Xiaohe Cheng, an Associate Professor of International Relations at the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China, provided insight into the Chinese perspective on current affairs in North Korea, what he sees as the countries’ options for action, and what he predicts will happen between the two moving forward.

Joseph Joyce, the M. Margaret Ball Professor of International Relations; Professor of Economics at Wellesley College spoke on the different understandings of populism from an economic perspective.

Dick French, the Louise Sherwood McDowell and Sarah Frances Whiting Professor of Astrophysics and a professor of astronomy at Wellesley College, shared his experience working on the 2017 Cassini Mission to Saturn.

Sally Yates, former U.S. Deputy Attorney General, led a discussion moderated by Larry Rosenwald, the Anne Pierce Rogers Professor of American Literature and a Professor of English at Wellesley College. She answered probing questions about her time serving in the Department of Justice, the implications of current political events on our democratic institutions, and offered advice to the rising leaders of tomorrow.

Sandra Pepera, the Director of the Gender, Women and Democracy branch of the National Democratic Institute, spoke about her experiences working with intersectional thinkers around the world to tackle issues of gender inequity.

Sarah Sherman-Stokes, a lecturer and clinical instructor at Boston University School of Law, shared her experiences and reflections as an attorney working for the protections of immigrants.

Stanley Chang, the Mildred Lane Kemper Professor of Mathematics at Wellesley College expanded the overlap between what we consider the world of math and what we consider the “real” world, demonstrating how mathematical analysis can expand our understanding of global issues.

Amy Banzaert, Director of Engineering Studies and Lecturer in Engineering at Wellesley College, inspired 2018 Albright Fellows to serve society by finding practical solutions to real world problems taking the approach of “fail[ing] fast to succeed sooner”.

Takis Metaxas, Faculty Director of the Albright Institute, welcomed the 2018 Fellows to Wintersession and expanded upon the importance of harnessing technology while navigating truth and trust in our increasingly interconnected world.

Joanne Murray, Director of the Albright Institute, opened Wintersession 2018 with a warm and inspirational welcome to the Fellows. She explained the reasoning behind and relevance of the theme of Wintersession and reminded Fellows of their powerful opportunity to practice putting principles into action.

Mfoniso Udofia '06, Artist and Educator, NOW AFRICA: Playwrights Festival shared her personal experiences trying to “create authentic nuanced literature and roles for Africans within the American [United States] theater”.

Smitha Radhakrishnan, Associate Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College discussed how narratives about microfinance help to reinforce existing social hierarchies and inequities.

Bob Kitchen, Director, Emergency Preparedness and Response, International Rescue Committee presented information on the scale and scope of the international refugee crisis and what the IRC is doing to address this pressing concern.

Craig Silverman, Media Editor, BuzzFeed News discussed how fake news originates and spreads online and the lasting impact fake news can have on individuals’ perceptions of truth.

Heather West '07, Senior Policy Manager, Mozilla discussed some of the challenges (moral and practical) that face those that want to regulate the internet and shared some cases where policy makers can and should take action.

James Turner, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Wellesley College, shared information on the science behind climate change and discussed the impact that policy decisions may have on carbon emissions.

Harry Lewis, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University, John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences encouraged Fellows to wrestle with the question of how to balance the benefits and drawbacks of internet anonymity.

Joseph Joyce, M. Margaret Ball Professor of International Relations; Professor of Economics, Wellesley College, discussed how the unequal distribution of benefits from globalization have impacted politics, particularly in the U.S., and started a conversation with Fellows about how inequalities can be reduced through government policy.

Jennifer Leaning, Ph.D., Director, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health shared with Fellows information regarding the factors fueling the global refugee crisis, as well as the scale of the crisis, with a particular emphasis on the case of Syria.

Layli Maparyan, Ph.D., Katherine Stone Kaufmann '67 Executive Director of the Wellesley Centers for Women and Professor of Africana Studies, Wellesley College, encouraged Fellows to involve grassroots women in conversations when designing programs and policies that affect them.

Deborah Amos, International Correspondent, NPR News, shared her experiences reporting on the refugee crisis and discussed why sharing personal experiences is important to changing minds and inspiring people to take action.

Amy Banzaert, Director of Engineering Studies and Lecturer in Engineering, Wellesley College, inspires 2017 Albright Fellows to serve society by finding practical solutions to real world problems taking the approach of “failing fast to succeed sooner”.

Dame Amelia Fawcett ‘78, Deputy Chairman, Investment AB Kinnevik Stockholm/Chairman Hedge Fund Standards Board, London shares her thoughts on Brexit, the U.S. presidential election and the role and responsibility of journalism in the current environment.

Joanne Murray ‘81, Director, Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, and P. Takis Metaxas, Professor of Computer Science, Wellesley College and Faculty Director, Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, share their thoughts and encouragement for 2017 Albright Fellows on the first day of Wintersession.

Katherine Blakeslee has worked in international development beginning at the International Planned Parenthood Federation in London. On her return to the United States, she joined the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) where she has held a number of senior positions. Sahana Dharmapuri is an independent gender advisor with over a decade of experience providing policy advice and training on gender, peace, and security issues to USAID, NATO, The Swedish Armed Forces, The United States Institute for Peace, international development consulting firms, and NGOs. Sally Engle Merry is a senior scholar at the Wellesley Centers for Women and the Silver Professor of Anthropology at New York University. She is also the Faculty Co-director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law and past president of the American Ethnological Society.

Inela Selimović holds B.A. degree from the University of the South-Sewanee and Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from the University of Kentucky. Selimović's research focuses on the literary and cinematic constructions of urban spaces, citizenship performances and human rights in works of mostly contemporary Latin American writers and filmmakers. Her studies of Latin American fiction—and particularly Argentine fiction—have broadened out into several avenues of research on New Argentine Cinema, centering specifically on the intersections of gender, trauma and urban youth subjectivities’ displacements. Her recent publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as Revista Hispánica Moderna, Confluencia, Human Rights Quarterly and in edited book volumes. Apart from language and cultural studies-focused courses she teaches at Wellesley College, Selimović’s teaching draws from her research on Latin American contemporary film and media, urban writing, and human rights. In addition to her academic pursuits, Selimović has remained involved with sociopolitical and cultural movements in her homeland (Bosnia and Herzegovina). She has led several human rights-related projects at the United Nations Security Council, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Netherlands, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Nicholas Burns is Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is Faculty Chair of the school’s Middle East Initiative, India & South Asia Program, and is director of the Future of Diplomacy Project. He writes a bi-weekly foreign affairs column for the Boston Globe and is a senior foreign affairs columnist for GlobalPost. He is also Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and a Senior Counselor at the Cohen Group. He served in the US Foreign Service for twenty-seven years, during which time he was appointed Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Ambassador to NATO, Ambassador to Greece, and State Department Spokesman. He worked on the National Security Council staff as Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and Director for Soviet Affairs for President George H.W. Bush.

Martha Goldberg Aronson is Executive Vice President and President of Global Healthcare for Ecolab Inc., the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services that provide and protect clean water, safe food, abundant energy and healthy environments in more than 160 countries. Prior to joining Ecolab in 2012, she was Senior Vice President and President, North America, at Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc., a leading worldwide manufacturer and provider of medical technologies and related services for the healthcare industry. Before Hill-Rom, Goldberg Aronson worked at Medtronic in numerous general management positions in the U.S. and Europe, and led several functions. Prior to joining Medtronic, Goldberg Aronson was an associate consultant at Bain & Company, a global management consulting firm, based in Boston. She graduated phi beta kappa and magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1989. At Wellesley she was named All-American in Division III tennis, as well as Academic All-American. She earned her Master’s in Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1995. Goldberg Aronson currently serves on the Board of Directors of Hutchinson Technology and the Guthrie Theater. She also serves on the Board of the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, where she is Secretary/Treasurer. She previously served on the Board of the MN Opera, the Minneapolis Club, Friends of Wellesley College Athletics, and is currently a member of the Minnesota Women’s Economic Roundtable and the Wellesley College Business Leadership Council. Martha was named to the Edina High School Hall of Fame and the Edina High School Athletic Hall of Fame. She also received the Women In Business and Industry Leader Award in 2009 from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.

Dan Chiasson is an Associate Professor at Wellesley College and the author of three books of poetry: The Afterlife of Objects (2002), Natural History (2005), and Where's the Moon, There's the Moon (2010). A book of criticism, One Kind of Everything: Poem and Person in Contemporary America, was published in 2006. He reviews poetry regularly for the New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review and formerly served as a poetry editor for the Paris Review. He has received the Whiting Writers' Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

Helen Mountford has been deputy director of the Environment Directorate of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) since late 2010. She joined the OECD as an environmental economist and policy analyst in 1997, and was head of the Division on Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Development from 2006 to 2010. Her work at OECD has included a leading role in the preparation of the 2001 and 2008 OECD Environmental Outlook reports, as well as analysis of policies in the areas of water pricing, biodiversity incentive measures, market-based instruments, and reform of environmentally harmful subsidies. She developed analysis on the economic crisis and green growth that underpinned a 2009 OECD Declaration on Green Growth, which was adopted by Ministers of Finance and Economy, and is leading the OECD work of fossil fuel subsidies that has been an input to discussions by G20 Leaders. Prior to joining the OECD, Mountford managed a local recycling company in the U.K. and worked for an environmental NGO in Australia. She is a national of the United Kingdom and the United States, and has master's degrees in environmental economics from University College London and in environmental management from University of Melbourne.

Elizabeth R. DeSombre (Beth) works on international environmental politics and law, with a focus on issues of the global commons. Recent projects have involved the regulation of international fisheries, the impact of flag-of-convenience shipping, protection of the ozone layer, and global environmental institutions generally. She has published six books. Her current book project (while on sabbatical) has the working title of Why Good People Do Bad Environmental Things (with the implicit subtitle: “and what to do about it”), looking at the sources of environmental behavior. She is also an award winning singer-songwriter with two CDs, about to begin recording a third.

Bonnie Docherty is a lecturer on law and senior clinical instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School. She is also a senior researcher in the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch. Docherty specializes in disarmament and international humanitarian law. She has done extensive field research on the civilian effects of war and has worked on the negotiation and implementation of multiple treaties. She has played an especially active role in the campaign against cluster munitions. More recently, she has been at the forefront of the emerging movement to ban fully autonomous weapons. Docherty has additional expertise in the field of human rights and the environment, focusing on the effects of mining and climate change. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her A.B. from Harvard University.

Benita Mosley, Sharon Taylor, Mimi Murray, & Sue Enguist

Nannerl O. Keohane is a senior scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. From 1981 until 2004, Nan Keohane served as president of Wellesley College and then Duke University. Her publications include Thinking about Leadership (Princeton University Press, 2010); Higher Ground: Ethics and Leadership in the Modern University (Duke University Press, 2006); Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 1980) and Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology (co-edited with Barbara Gelpi, University of Chicago Press, 1982). Professor Keohane has taught at Swarthmore College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford University, as well as Wellesley, Duke, and Princeton. She is a member of the Harvard Corporation and the board of trustees of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. She received her B.A. at Wellesley College, M.A. from St. Anne’s College, Oxford (as a Marshall Scholar, Class of 1961), and Ph.D. on a Sterling Fellowship from Yale University. Nan Keohane is married to Robert O. Keohane, professor of political science in the Woodrow Wilson School; they have four children and nine grandchildren.

Kitty Bartels Di Martino is a Senior Advisor to Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm. Ms. Di Martino brings to bear her experiences in forming an investment fund for emerging and frontier markets in Africa and from communications and media in both the private and public sectors to provide unique perspectives for clients seeking to navigate the intersection of business and public policy. From 2009 to 2011 Ms. Di Martino served in the Obama Administration as Chief of Staff to the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In this role, Ms. Di Martino managed a top-to-bottom strategic review of public diplomacy tools and functions. The review allowed for greater alignment of resources and personnel to support U.S. foreign policy, national security and national economic interests outlined by the President and Secretary of State. Prior to 2009, Ms. Di Martino worked in partnership with the Global Environment Fund to develop and launch the GEF/African Growth Fund, a private equity fund focused on providing expansion capital to small and medium-sized businesses across the complete value chain of the consumer goods and services sector in key African markets. From 2004 to 2007, Ms. Di Martino served as Vice President, Chief of Staff to the President and CEO of Discovery Communications, the parent company of Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC. In this role, Ms. Di Martino helped to promote focused executive execution against a clear strategy of launching and delivering high-quality content to a broad set of US and international audiences. Ms. Di Martino joined Discovery in 2001 as Director of Corporate Affairs & Communications. Previously, Ms. Di Martino was staff to Madeleine K. Albright, first when Albright served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and then when she was confirmed as the 63rd United States Secretary of State. Serving the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Department Spokesman James P. Rubin, she coordinated Secretary Albright’s participation in media interviews, public affairs events and foreign travel. In 2000, Ms. Di Martino was named Director of Communications for Albright. Ms. Di Martino holds a Bachelors of Arts degree with Honors in Political Science from Loyola University Chicago.

Joseph P. Joyce, Professor of Economics; Faculty Director, Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs, Wellesley College