Here is what the 35th Reunion looked like!
ALUMNI REUNION FORUMS - Featuring our Classmates!
Saturday, May 28, 2016
11:00 am – Noon
Diplomacy in a Changing World: Reflections of Brown Alumni in International Affairs
Moderator: Jessica Ashooh '06, deputy director, Middle East strategy task force, Atlantic Council
Panelists: Dana M. Brown ‘96, political and economic counselor, U.S. Embassy, Havana; the Honorable Rufus Gifford ‘96, U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark; Matthew McGuire ‘91, United States executive director, World Bank Group; the Honorable Richard Olson ’81, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
With the Middle East in violent turmoil, the European Union threatening to split at its seams, a resurgent Russia, a rising China, and more refugees worldwide than during World War II, the global system is more unsettled now than at any time during the post-war era. Brown alumni are working in the top levels of government and international institutions to navigate these changes and work with international partners to steer them in a more peaceful direction. The panelists will explore how global events can change for the better. With the United States fatigued from war and facing a range of domestic challenges, why should Americans care about foreign affairs? How do perceptions about the practice of diplomacy differ from reality? And in what ways did a Brown education prepare these alumni for the challenges of a career in diplomacy?
MacMillan Hall, 167 Thayer Street
Learn more about the speakers (PDF). For information on other forums taking place Reunion Weekend, visit the Forums web page.
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Brown University Class of 1981
35th Reunion Class Forum
Saturday May 28th
1:30 pm – 3:00 pm
35 Years After Brown: Perspectives on Career, Life, and Looking Ahead
Join us as six classmates share stories of their journeys since leaving Brown, the role Brown played and how we can all draw on their perspectives and experiences as we look ahead to the next 35 years of our lives. Panelists will speak for ~10 minutes followed by an informal Q&A., and then we’ll open it up to a larger group discussion. The class photo will immediately follow the discussion, at 3 pm.
Panelists include:
Allan Chernoff on “The Rise, Fall and Attempted Revival of the News Media”
Former CNBC and CNN Senior Correspondent Allan Chernoff is CEO of Chernoff Communications. He specializes in business and opinion article writing, video production, media and speaker coaching and strategic communications services for corporate and not-for-profit organizations.
His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Newsweek and Money.
His book, The Tailors of Tomaszow, co-written with his mother Rena Margulies Chernoff, one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, is a communal memoir and history of the survivors of Rena’s hometown, Tomaszow-Mazowiecki, Poland.
Among his honors, Allan Chernoff is a six-time winner of best reporting awards from the Society of Professional Journalists' New York chapter, Deadline Club. He has won two National Headliner Awards; two New York Festival Awards; and a Prism Award. Allan’s reporting contributed to a CNN DuPont Award and his coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Hurricane Katrina and analysis of economic issues in the 2008 presidential campaign were each part of CNN's Peabody Award-winning efforts.
Nancy Northup on “The Changing Landscape of Reproductive Rights”
President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights
Since 2003, Nancy Northup has led the Center for Reproductive Rights, a global human rights organization whose game changing litigation and advocacy work – combined with its unparalleled expertise in the use of constitutional, international, and comparative human rights law – have transformed how reproductive rights are understood by courts, governments, and human rights bodies. It has played a key role in securing legal victories in the U.S., Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe on issues including access to life-saving obstetrics care, contraception, safe abortion services, and comprehensive sexuality information, as well as the prevention of forced sterilization and child marriage. With offices in Colombia, Kenya, Nepal, Switzerland and the U.S., the Center has built the legal capacity of women's rights advocates in over 60 countries.
Prior to joining the Center, Ms. Northup was the founding director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and served as a prosecutor and Deputy Chief of Appeals in U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. She is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was managing editor of the Columbia Law Review.
Ms. Northup has taught as an adjunct professor at Columbia and NYU law schools, and is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. She is quoted widely in the national press and has appeared on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, FOX News, PBS, MSNBC, and NPR.
David Corn on “Past as Prologue or You Never Know What Will Shape You”
Washington bureau chief, Mother Jones & Analyst, MSNBC/NBC News
DAVID CORN is a veteran Washington journalist and political commentator. He is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine and an on-air analyst for MSNBC. He won the 2012 George Polk award and a National Magazine Award for breaking the 47-percent video story that influenced the Obama-Romney presidential contest.
He is the author of three New York Times bestsellers, Showdown, Hubris (with Michael Isikoff), and The Lies of George W. Bush, and the e-book, 47 Percent: Uncovering the Romney Video that Rocked the 2012 Election. His novel, Deep Background, was hailed as one of the best novels of the year by the Los Angeles Times. He is also the author of the biography Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades. For 20 years, he was the Washington editor of The Nation magazine. He has written for numerous magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper's, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Slate. He has regularly appeared on Face the Nation and PBS’s Newshour and provided commentary on National Public Radio. His twitter feed--@DavidCornDC--has 215,000 followers.
Afua Hassan on “Experiences of Childbirth and Family Dynamics”
Midwife and Founder of The Birthing Center
Afua Hassan was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from Brown University, she moved to Houston, Texas to pursue her dream of being a midwife. After more than 30 years of being a Licensed Midwife, she has caught over 800 babies, participated on dozens of panels, and has appeared on several radio shows and podcasts.
Afua has focused her career on reducing infant and maternal mortality and morbidity rates in the black community, which are significantly higher than any other race in America. She opened The Birthing Place in 2011 as a full service midwifery practice and birth center in the historic Third Ward community in Houston, Texas. Before that time she was a homebirth midwife. She’s touched countless lives by helping families get off to the right start through programs and initiatives offered at The Birthing Place. A few of these programs include child birthing education, lactation support, individual and family counseling, and new and expecting mother resource group sessions.
Daniel Bergner on “Writing About Race”
Author
Daniel has been writing about race since his Brown application essay about an ill-fated interracial friendship in junior high. His first nonfiction book, God of the Rodeo, about Louisiana's Angola Prison, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and his second, In the Land of Magic Soldiers, about Sierra Leone's civil war, won a Lettre-Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage and an Overseas Press Club Award. His new book, Sing for Your Life, will be out in September and recounts the personal and artistic journey of a young African-American opera singer who was locked up as a kid and who will be starring at the Met this fall.
Daniel has just begun a collaborative book with Harvard economist Roland Fryer about how to narrow our country's racial disparities. Daniel is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, where he's written about subjects ranging from private military companies in Iraq to charter school battles in New York City. His work is included in The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction.
Sarah G. Austrian on “Behind the Scenes at the Guggenheim”
Deputy Director, General Counsel and Assistant Secretary, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Sarah Austrianjoined the Guggenheim in 2006. She is responsible for advising the Board of Trustees and the Museum and Foundation Director and staff on all legal issues involving the Foundation, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the planned Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. She plays a key role in structuring and negotiating the Guggenheim’s initiatives and collaborations and plans meetings of the Board, participates in the formulation of Board and Foundation policies and strategic plans and provides counsel to the Board on matters of governance. She serves as a member of the Foundation’s Executive Cabinet and its Ethics and Compliance Committees. She has recently been a guest lecturer at Columbia Law School, the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar.
Before joining the Guggenheim, she had extensive experience in M&A first at a law firm and later at AT&T. From 2002 to 2006, Sarah was Vice President of Domestic Tax at PepsiCo, where she provided leadership in the area of U.S. federal and state tax planning, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions and operations.
The panel will be moderated by:
Naeem Zafar
CEO of TeleSense, Professor-of-the-Practice UC Berkeley & Brown University. Naeem is a serial entrepreneur and currently serves as the co-founder and CEO of TeleSense, an IoT (Internet of Things) company creating solutions for food safety and regulatory compliance in critical industries. He co-founded and served as the CEO of Bitzer Mobile, an enterprise security and mobility company that was acquired by Oracle in November 2013.
Naeem has been teaching at the University of California Berkeley, Center of Entrepreneurship and Technology since 2005. He is also Professor of the Practice at Brown University and teaches courses in Entrepreneurship, Technology Strategy, Innovation and New Venture Finance at Brown and Berkeley.
Naeem started his own business at the age of 26 and subsequently went on to start, or work at, six startups. His first job out of Brown University with a degree in electrical engineering was to design chips and electronic systems.
Naeem has authored five books on entrepreneurship on topics ranging from conducting market research to seeking the right funding to successful ways to start a business. Information can be found on www.NaeemZafar.com. His books including “7-Steps to a Successful Startup” are also available on Amazon.com, Kindle and on the iTunes App store.