BROWN UNIVERSITY - CLASS OF 1971

50TH YEAR REUNION

THE MAIN EVENT

May 1, 2021 5-7 PM (ET)

WELCOME Elie Hirschfeld, President, Class of 1971

STELLAR PANEL MY LIFE / MY BROWN (70 min)

Moderator Ralph Begleiter

Panelists (Bios )linked here: Tom Acosta Susan Bennett

Christy Carpenter Sheryl Brissett Chapman

Spencer Crew Kathy Farley

Malcolm Niedner Josh Posner

Barbara Reisman Ruby Shang

BROWN SPRING BREAK MUSIC

BREAKOUT & CHAT ROOMS (45 min)

It's An Open Curriculum!

This is your chance to move between Breakout Rooms (credit) & Chat Rooms (no credit) at any time. Feel free to attend any "Rooms" of your interest and enjoy connecting with classmates and our great panelists! The choice is yours ... just like it was 50 years ago!

What is a Breakout Room?

Breakout Rooms are themed conversations with a Host and our Panelists that classmates can join.

(Topics and speakers are listed below.)

What is a Chat Room?

Chat Rooms are virtual (online) places where classmates meet for more causal conversations.

Ask a classmate to join you at a any Room or connect with other classmates you've never met. A It's an opportunity to engage and reminisce about your fond Brown memories.

TRIBUTE TO BROWN CLASS OF 1971 VIDEO AND MUSIC (5 min)

Here is more about our Amazing 50th Reunion Panelists (in alpha order):

Tom Acosta - is a senior partner at Black Thorn Lynch Associates, Inc. in New York, where he offers expertise in labor relations, health care and foundations and provides guidance in corporate governance, financial services, public, community and government relations.

Ralph Begleiter - is a retired broadcast journalist who was CNN’s “world affairs correspondent” in the 1980s and ‘90s. After leaving CNN, he taught journalism and political science at the University of Delaware, where he was founding director of the Center for Political Communication. He’s worked in 100 countries and on all seven continents.

Susan Bennett - Susan’s experience at Brown led her to careers as: singer, keyboardist, voice actor, and speaker. At Brown, her major was Classics, but her concentration was in the arts, specifically music. Her first professional job as a musician was at Brown, with Jon Klein ’70 and Jeff Rosenblatt ’70, in the band, “Conglomerate.” After college Susan moved to Atlanta, where she sang and played in clubs and recording studios, and began doing voiceover work. Her speaker career began just a few years ago after she revealed herself as The Original Voice of Siri. Susan is still involved in all of these activities today, working with her husband of 24 years, guitarist and audio engineer, Rick Hinkle.

Christy Carpenter - grew up in Washington, DC as the child of two journalists. She spent virtually all of her career in media and communications, in both the business and non-profit worlds. Always fascinated with the future, right after law school, she gravitated to the explosion of new communications technologies and became an early Internet pioneer with several start-up ventures in NYC and California. She fed her passion for media by serving as the EVP & COO of the Paley Center for Media in NYC and LA for eight years. At the Paley Center, she spearheaded some 250 forums each year on all aspects of the rapidly changing media landscape. Public media was a particular passion for Christy and, in 1988, President Clinton appointed her to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She has since served on public television station boards in LA and in Austin, where she now lives.

Sheryl Brissett Chapman - is Executive Director of The National Center for Children and Families, which she has stewarded for three decades, from a small, local orphanage to a nationally accredited organization. Today, NCCF propels over 50,000 children and families annually into an improved quality of life, through a continuum of 20+ evidence- and research-based programs.

Spencer Crew - I came to Brown from Ohio not having traveled much outside of the state. Consequently I was excited and nervous to attend a school like Brown. I had expected to attend a school in Ohio until my senior year when my guidance counselor suggested applying to Brown. I found a wonderful community of people there and discovered my passion for history. That love of history has stayed with me ever since and propelled me through graduate school and onto a career as a historian. I have been fortunate enough to work at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution and more recently at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. What also gives me great joy is teaching history to college students which I presently do in Northern Virginia. I live there with Sandra Prioleau Crew “71 and hope to visit again our two children who both graduated from Brown and our nearly two-year-old granddaughter who live in New York City. .

Katherine Farley - Katherine left Brown to join a group of crazy and idealistic Brunonians in a community organizing experiment called “The Brockton Project,” with Josh Posner, Eileen Rudden, and Susan Reisman among others. (Note that Josh and Susan are both also on the panel.) The work the group did renovating houses sparked her interest and led to a Masters Degree from Harvard in architecture followed by eight years working for Turner Construction, where at the time there were 3200 employees including two women. For the next 33 years, she worked for Tishman Speyer, a Fund Manager and Real Estate Development Company where she was a Senior Managing Director and ran the businesses in India, China, and Brazil. Her great passion is for the performing arts, and she has been Chair of Lincoln Center for ten years. Kathy has been married to Jerry Speyer for nearly 30 years, and between them they have 4 kids, 8 grandkids, and one on the way.

Elie Hirschfeld (’71, P'06, P'16, P’20). Brown Trustee Emeritus. President Class of 1971. NYU Law School '74, then practiced law, Milbank.com. Now running family real estate development firm, HirschfeldNYC.com. Wonderful blended family with 10 children and 3 grandkids. Active in his original art collection of NYC scenes, philanthropy, and triathlon and skiing. Says he loves Brown so much he funded the renovation of 163 George Street, home of Judaic Studies, now named Hirschfeld House.

Malcolm Niedner - From an early age, “Mal” Niedner was an enthusiastic observer of the night sky; becoming an astronomer was his life goal. Brown provided the physics underpinning crucial to pursuing his dream. In early 2020, Mal retired after a 40-plus year career at NASA that included research on comets and the solar wind and service as Deputy Senior Project Scientist of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes. Mal lives in Maryland close to Washington, DC, with his wife and son. Mal's terrestrial interests include family history, reading, classical music, film scores from cinema’s golden age, and 19th century suspension bridges.

Josh Posner - has spent most of his career developing affordable housing, and is still at it. He graduated with an Independent Concentration in Political Philosophy, made possible by the New Curriculum, and Josh, Ira Magaziner, and others formed a community organizing project with lofty ambitions for social change. Josh also leads the board of the Cambridge Health Alliance, focused on the underserved in cities north of Boston and another effort to protect the eastern coast of Nantucket from erosion. Josh served as Student Body President - called it the Cammarian Club at the time - and lived for 2 years at Chaplain Charlie Baldwin’s house where he did babysitting and was supposed to wash the kitchen floor. Josh and his wife of 45 years, Eileen Rudden, Brown ’72, live in Cambridge, Mass, have three married sons, all Brown grads, and three grandchildren with a 4th on the way.

Barbara Reisman - was a first generation college student who had never travelled by airplane until her sophomore year at Brown. Her post Brown life started in her senior year, when she was awarded an Arnold Fellowship, the first woman to have received one. The fellowship launched her 50-year effort to expand and improve child care in the US – first as a community organizer in Massachusetts, then in the labor movement and with the Coalition of Labor Union Women, as the director of a national child care advocacy organization, and now as an advisor to philanthropists investing to improve children’s opportunities and reduce inequality.

Ruby Shang - is a Trustee of The Asia Foundation. She was previously Country Director, Asia Director and Advisor at the Clinton Foundation. Earlier, she performed with The Paul Taylor Dance Company and served on the dance faculties of The Juilliard School and the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. As a choreographer, she chaired the Dance Panel for the New York State Council for the Arts, and was a member of the Board of Governors for the New York Foundation for the Arts.