Privahini "Priv" Bradoo (USA 2006) Science & Technology for Economic Development
Panelist

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With a doctoral degree in developmental neuroscience from the University of Auckland and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School as a Fulbright fellow, Privahini “Priv” Bradoo has managed to bridge the worlds of business and science.  While studying for her doctoral degree, she established spark*, an entrepreneurial initiative to assist commercialization of academic research and Chiasma, an organization which builds links between the academic biotech community, the local biotech industry, and government sectors.  Dr. Bradoo is currently vice president for business development at LanzaTech, a company whose core technology allows carbon monoxide containing gases to be used for fuel and chemical production by fermentation. LanzaTech has primarily focused on two resources for carbon monoxide-containing gases, industrial waste gases and biomass syngas. Dr. Bradoo has also previously worked for Boston Consulting Group and Mascoma, a Khosla-funded biofuels start-up based in Cambridge, Mass.  She was born in Kashmir, India, grew up in Oman, then moved to New Zealand, and is now based in the United States. She has graduated in Indian classical dancing and has interests in singing, painting, and traveling.

Marianne Craven
Managing Director of Academic Programs, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

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Marianne Craven is managing director of academic programs for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State.  She is a former foreign service officer who served in Mali, Poland, and Italy.  As a civil servant, she was staff director for the ECA Bureau and senior academic exchanges officer before assuming her current position in 1999. Programs sponsored by her office include Fulbright scholarships, Humphrey fellowships, undergraduate exchanges, English teaching, foreign language study for Americans, and educational advising of international students.  Ms. Craven also represents the State Department on international higher education issues with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).  She is a graduate of Smith College.

Blair Gifford (Fulbright New Century Scholar 2008-2009)
Leveraging Resources for Health
Panelist

Blair Gifford is an associate professor of international health management in the Business School and the School of Public Health at the University of Colorado Denver.  He is also managing director of the master of business administration /sustainability program and the founder of the Center for Global Health.  Dr. Gifford was a visiting professor at Yale’s School of Public Health during the 2008-09 academic year and continues to lecture for Yale in its global health initiative to internationalize health management education.  Currently, Dr. Gifford is a Fulbright New Century Scholar for 2009-10.  His research efforts include  a comparative study of the impacts of medical tourism in India, Mexico, Brazil, and other countries, a soon to be published book on sustainable business strategies for small and medium size businesses, a large research project to enhance sustainable development infrastructure in Haiti, and an analysis of changing expectations for health care among the middle class in China.  Previously, Dr. Gifford worked at Northwestern University, the American Hospital Association, and IBM.  He has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago and did his undergraduate work in economics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Laurel Victoria Gray
2009 Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund Lecturer

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An award-winning choreographer, performer and costume designer, Laurel Victoria Gray specializes in women’s dance of the Islamic world and of Silk Road cultures. In 2007, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Ministry of Culture of Uzbekistan for her work in promoting and preserving Central Asian dance. She is the recipient of the 2006 Metro DC Dance Award for Excellence in Costume Design; the 2005 Distinguished Service Award from the Embassy of Uzbekistan; the 2003 Kennedy Center Local Dance Commissioning Project Award; and the International Academy of Middle Eastern Dance Awards for Best Choreographer (2003) and Best Ethnic Dancer (1999).  Ms. Gray is the artistic director of Silk Road Dance Company which she founded in 1995.  She has taught and performed throughout Europe, Central Asia, Australia, the United States, and Canada . Her field research includes 12 trips to Uzbekistan where she studied for two years at the invitation of the State Academic Bolshoi Theater.   Ms. Gray’s articles have appeared in the Oxford University Press International Encyclopedia of Dance, the “World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theater,” “Encyclopedia of Modern Asia,” “Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Culture,” and “Dance Magazine” as well as foreign dance journals. In 1984, she founded the Uzbek Dance and Culture Society and in 1994 established the annual Central Asian Dance Camp.  She has taught dance at George Mason University and George Washington University.

Krishna Guha (USA 2003) Plenary Address

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Krishna Guha is chief U.S. economics editor and deputy Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times where he covers the U.S. Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury and leads FT’s coverage of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  Mr. Guha’s beat includes U.S. economics, financial markets, and business.   Previously, Mr. Guha served as editorial leader writer at the Financial Times in London where he covered economics and economic policy, as well as politics in the United Kingdom, in the United States, and in Asia.  Mr. Guha spent 2003 and 2004 on leave from the Financial Times as a Fulbright scholar at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  Prior to that, he served as a Lex columnist commenting on the financial markets, and then as political correspondent, covering the Blair government, domestic policy, and the Iraq crisis.  Between 1997 and 2000, Mr. Guha served as the Financial Times’s Bombay correspondent.  Educated at Cambridge, he is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and has held several visiting fellowships in Japan.

Jane Henrici (Peru 2006)Global Economic Challenges
Moderator

Jane Henrici, who holds a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin (1996), researches gender, race, and ethnicity and their relationship to policy and development.  Since January 2008, she has been a study director with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).  Her doctoral and postdoctoral research focused on effects of tourism and export on gender and ethnicity in Peru.  From 1998 to 2003, Dr. Henrici studied the effects of welfare reform on low-income women and their families in the United States. She was co-author of “Poor Families in America’s Health Care Crisis:  How the Other Half Pays” (Cambridge 2006) and edited “Doing Without:  Women and Work after Welfare Reform” (Arizona 2006) while teaching at the University of Memphis. In 2006, supported by a Fulbright scholar award, she returned to studying development and women in Peru where she also lectured at Pontificia Universidad Católica.  She has published on poverty, health care, job training, tourism development, immigration, free trade, fair trade, and nongovernmental organizations.  In addition to research with the IWPR, Dr. Henrici is lecturer at George Mason University.  In 2009, Dr. Henrici was elected councilor to the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology and president-elect of the Association for Feminist Anthropology.

Kristina M. Johnson  (Scotland 1991)
  Keynote Address

Kristina M. Johnson is under secretary for energy of the U.S. Department of Energy.  Prior to this appointment, Dr. Johnson was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the Johns Hopkins University.  She received her bachelor’s, master’s (with distinction) and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University.  After a NATO post-doctoral fellowship at Trinity College, Dublin, she joined the University of Colorado-Boulder’s faculty in 1985 as assistant professor and was promoted to full professor in 1994.  From 1994 to1999, Dr. Johnson directed the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Research Center for Optoelectronics Computing Systems at the University of Colorado and Colorado State University.  She then served as dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University from 1999 to 2007.  Dr. Johnson was named an NSF presidential young investigator in 1985 and was awarded a Fulbright grant to Scotland in 1991.  She has been recognized by the Dennis Gabor Prize for creativity and innovation in modern optics (1993); State of Colorado and North Carolina Technology Transfer Awards (1997, 2001); induction into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame (2003); the Society of Women Engineers Lifetime Achievement Award (2004); and in May of 2008, the John Fritz Medal, widely considered the highest award in the engineering profession.  Previous recipients of the Fritz Medal include Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Orville Wright.  Dr. Johnson holds 129 U.S. and international patents and patents pending.  A fellow of the Optical Society of America, of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, of SPIE (originally known as the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers), Dr. Johnson was a director of SPIE and of the International Society for Optical Engineering.   She has served on the Board of Directors of Mineral Technologies Inc., Boston Scientific Corporation, AES Corporation, and Nortel Networks.   She has helped found several companies, including ColorLink, Inc, SouthEast Techinventures, and Unyos.

Peter Kellner (Hungary 1992)Social Entrepreneurship—Inspiring & Implementing Change
Panelist

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Vanessa B. Kerry (United Kingdom 2005)           Leveraging Resources for Health
Panelist

Staci Lewis (Barbados 2005) Science & Technology for Economic Development
Panelist

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As a Fulbright fellow in Barbados in 2005, Staci Lewis conducted field studies and ex situ experiments on the body size plasticity of the coral-eating fireworm, Hermodice carunculata.  Afterwards, she worked for the island’s only aquarium, OceanPark Barbados, as director of education and environmental programs.  Upon returning to the United States, Ms. Lewis moved to Washington, D.C., to pursue work in marine policy.  She received a master’s degree in environmental science and policy from George Mason University.  Her research thesis topic was the use of molecular and histological techniques to determine the role of the coral-eating fireworm in the etiology of coral reef disease.  Ms. Lewis was a Knauss Sea Grant Marine Policy Fellow for Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher, the previous National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator.  She served as the NOAA liaison to then President-Elect Obama’s Transition Team.  Afterwards, she was a climate policy specialist for Jane Lubchenco, the current NOAA Administrator and the under secretary for oceans and atmosphere.  Ms. Lewis’s portfolio focused on climate policy issues, intradepartmental climate and energy activities coordination, and interagency climate partnerships.  She joined the Consortium for Ocean Leadership as policy analyst in August 2009. 

Michael McCarry
Executive Director, Alliance for International and Cultural Exchange

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Michael McCarry joined the Alliance for International Educational and Cultural Exchange as its executive director in 1994.  The Alliance, an association of 78 U.S.-based organizations that conduct exchange programs of all types, is the leading collective policy voice of the exchange community.  As part of the Alliance’s mission to promote policies that support exchange, Mr. McCarry has led delegations of Alliance members to more than 40 U.S. embassies around the world to discuss the role of exchanges in public diplomacy and visa policy and practice.  He frequently lectures on exchange policy at the Foreign Service Institute.  Previously, he spent 18 years with the U.S. Information Agency as a Foreign Service Officer.  He served as cultural attaché in Beijing in the years immediately following the Tiananmen Square events of 1989 and led negotiations to restore the Fulbright Program and Peace Corps after their suspension by the Chinese government.  He also served in Thailand, in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai.  He speaks Mandarin Chinese and Thai.  Mr. McCarry also has worked as a Congressional aide and as a journalist.  He received his master’s degree. from the University of Texas (Austin) and his bachelor’s from Notre Dame.  He also studied at Melbourne University in Australia as a Rotary Graduate Fellow.

Rodrick T.  Miller
(Mexico 1999)
Global Economic Challenges
Panelist

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Founder and managing partner of The Jiao Group, Rodrick T. Miller is an experienced policy analyst, with business development, project management, and team building interests.  The Jiao Group is a management consulting firm specializing in economic development strategies, public private partnerships, and market penetration approaches.  Previously, Mr. Miller served as vice president of international economic development for the Greater Phoenix Economic Council (GPEC) where he actively increased international competitiveness for the region and was involved in projects totaling more than $2 billion in investment over the last five years.  Before GPEC, he held several positions in the public and private sectors with the City of Glendale, Infrastructure Management Group, Ernst & Young, CEMEX, and the U.S. Department of State.  He holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree in international business from St. Augustine’s College.  He received a graduate diploma in international management from Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico as a Fulbright fellow.  Mr. Miller was also a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Aspen Institute International Career Advancement Program Fellow. 

Cliff Missen is also an instructor in the university’s School of Library and Information Science.  Following a year as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Jos (Nigeria) in 1998, he founded the WiderNet Project, which has since delivered technology training programs for over 4,000 African university administrators, librarians, and technicians.  He has received funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Intel Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, USAID, and the U.S. Department of State.  The WiderNet Project works to improve digital communication in developing countries through the development of human capacity and research into low cost applications of information technology.  With over 20 years experience in computers, networking, multimedia design, teaching, and applications development, Mr. Missen oversees the development of the eGranary Digital Library, an innovative way to deliver the world’s knowledge to people and institutions with inadequate Internet access.  The eGranary Digital Library is installed in more than 300 schools, hospitals, clinics, and universities in Africa, India, Bangladesh, and Haiti.  Mr. Missen’s first visit to Africa was with a medical team in 1982, and he continues to teach and promote appropriate water well drilling technology through the U.S. non-profit organization Wellspring Africa.

Marwan Muasher (Honorary Co-Chair, Fulbright Commission in Jordan 2002-2004)
Global Economic Challenges
Panelist

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Marwan Muasher, a Jordanian national, joined the World Bank as senior vice president of external affairs on March 16, 2007, from his most recent position at the Senate of Jordan.  His career has spanned the areas of development, diplomacy, civil society, and communications.  Mr. Muasher began his career as a journalist for the Jordan Times, then served from 1985 to 1990 at the Ministry of Planning in charge of development strategies and later as press advisor to the prime minister. He subsequently served as director for the Jordan Information Bureau in Washington, building understanding and support in Congress, the press, and civil society.  In 1995, Mr. Muasher opened Jordan’s first embassy in Israel and in 1996 became minister of information and the government’s spokesman.  From 1997 to 2002, he served in Washington again as ambassador, negotiating the first free trade agreement between the United States and an Arab nation. He then returned to Jordan to serve as foreign minister, where he was deeply involved in the peace process.  In 2004 he became deputy prime minister responsible for reform and government performance and led the effort to produce a ten-year development strategy that included major recommendations on economic, financial services and fiscal reforms, employment, and education and training.  Mr. Muasher holds a doctoral degree in computer engineering from Purdue University. From 2002 to 2004, he served as honorary co-chairman of the Fulbright Commission in Jordan. 

Timothy Nohe (Australia 2006) Performing "Sounding Botany Bay, Sounding Gamay" at the U.S. Botanic Garden Conservatory

Timothy Nohe is an artist and educator engaging traditional and electronic media in daily life and public places.  His recent work has been realized in intermedia works, sound scores for dance, improvisational concert works, and art focused on sustainability. He is associate professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and currently serves as vice president of the Academic Senate.  He received a 2006 Fulbright scholar award to Australia.  Prof. Nohe is actively committed to collectivist work and is a member of the International Corporation of Lost Structures, a Sydney-based creative collective, and the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Los Angeles.  He is an active member of a number of professional organizations, including the Society of Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS), the Electronic Music Foundation (EMF), the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA), and the College Art Association (CAA).  He is an associate of the Centre for Media Arts Innovation at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.  Three Maryland State Arts Council awards and a Creative Baltimore Award have supported his work in the area of new genre and installation/sculpture.

Michael G. Plummer
(Italy 2000)
Global Economic Challenges
Panelist

The Eni professor of international economics at The Johns Hopkins University, SAIS-Bologna, and (non-resident) senior fellow of the East-West Center, Michael G. Plummer is editor-in-chief of the “Journal of Asian Economics” and director of the American Committee for Asian Economic Studies (ACAES).  Previously, he has held teaching, research, and management positions at Brandeis University and the East-West Center.  He has also been a Fulbright chair in economics (Viterbo, Italy) and Pew fellow in international affairs (Harvard University)He has been a visiting professor or scholar at a number of institutions throughout the world, including Kobe University (Japan), Sciences Po (France), University of Auckland (New Zealand), Diplomatic Academy (Vienna), the University of Bologna (Italy), the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore), Doshisha University (Japan), Bocconi University (Italy), and the Harvard Institute of International Development (USA).  He serves on the editorial boards of the “Asian Economic Journal,” “,”World Development and the “ASEAN Economic Bulletin”. He received his doctorate in economics from Michigan State University.   Prof.  Plummer’s main academic interests relate to international trade, international finance, and economic integration, especially in the Asian context.  He has written, co-authored, edited, or co-edited 18 books in these areas, and approximately 100 articles and book chapters.

Brenna Ruiz-Gordon
(USA 2008-2010)
Social Entrepreneurship- Inspiring & Implementing Change
Panelist

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Brenna Ruiz-Gordon is a visiting Fulbright fellow from Costa Rica pursuing a master’s degree in communication management at Emerson College in Boston. She graduated from the University of Costa Rica with a bachelor’s degree in collective communication sciences and journalism.  She has worked as a broadcast and print reporter covering a variety of issues from watershed protection to HIV/AIDS and the rights of people with disabilities.  She has served as communications assistant for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Central America and as strategic communications consultant for Community Chest Inc., Virginia City, Nev., as well as for several non-profit organizations and social entrepreneurship initiatives in Costa Rica.  She recently interned at the United Nationals headquarters where she worked for the under secretary general of public information’s Strategic Communications Division in charge of issues related to human rights, decolonization, and the question of Palestine.  Ms. Ruiz-Gordon’s current research at Emerson College focuses on the role local and regional cultural values play in executing effective organizational communication strategies in global and trans-cultural scenarios. She is fluent in English, Spanish, French, and Italian.

Suzanne Siskel
(Indonesia 1983)
Social Entrepreneurship-Inspiring & Implementing Change
Moderator

Named the Ford Foundation’s director, social justice philanthropy in 2009, Suzanne Siskel was previously based in Jakarta as the Foundation’s representative for Indonesia from 1990 to 2005.  Prior to that, she had been the Foundation’s representative for the Philippines and a program officer for rural poverty and resources in Jakarta.  Before relocating to the Ford Foundation’s headquarters in New York City, she had lived and worked in Indonesia for three decades, first as a Luce Scholar at Airlangga University in East Java from 1974 to 1975, and later as a Fulbright scholar from 1983 to 1984 for research on the island of Madura.  Ms. Siskel was a social science advisor to development projects in west Timor and Flores islands in eastern Indonesia before joining the Ford Foundation in Jakarta in 1990.  Previous research projects took her to northeast Brazil, Andros Island in the Bahamas, and highland Chiapas in the 1970s.   She studied social anthropology at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.  Ms. Siskel has served on the Fulbright Association’s Board of Directors since 2004.  She currently serves as president and previously served as secretary, chairing the Board’s Development and Recognition Committee.

Sonya K. Sobrian
(Yugoslavia 1987)
Leveraging Resources for Health
Moderator

An associate professor of pharmacology at Howard University College of Medicine, Sonya K. Sobrian heads a developmental behavioral pharmacology laboratory that trains both undergraduate and graduate students.  She also teaches medical, dental, pharmacy, and physician assistant professional students.  Her current research involves the lifelong consequences of prenatal exposure to cocaine and nicotine.  As a 1987 Fulbright scholar at the Immunological Research Institute in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, she re-designed the experimental facilities at the institute and conducted research on the psycho-neuroimmunology of prenatal stress.  During this sabbatical year, she also examined the educational and health care systems of several Eastern European countries, with special emphasis on women’s issues.  Dr. Sobrian was also a visiting scientist at the University of Sienna, Institute of General Biology, Sienna, Italy.  In 1994-95, Dr. Sobrian was an American Association for the Advancement of Science Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives.  From 1999 to 2000, she directed the Behavioral Neuroscience Program at the National Science Foundation. She is currently president of the Fulbright Association’s National Capital Area Chapter.  She is a member of the Chorale of the Friday Morning Music Club, the oldest musical service organization in Washington, D.C., and of Hexagon, an organization that performs political, satirical reviews to support various charities in the metropolitan area.

Diana Wells
Social Entrepreneurship- Inspiring & Implementing Change
Panelist

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            Now president of Ashoka, Diana Wells has been involved with the organization since the 1980s when she first joined its staff.  During her tenure, she has created key components of Ashoka, including Fellowship Support Services, a core program that not only supplies Ashoka’s social entrepreneurs information, resources and services, but also connects them to one another.  She has had strategic and operational responsibility for Ashoka’s geographic expansion and for increasing fellow elections, which now stand at 2,500.  Dr. Wells has contributed to the field of social entrepreneurship by implementing a widely respected tool for “Measuring Effectiveness,” one of the first standard methodologies to gauge impact in the field.  Dr. Wells, who was a Fulbright scholar in Trinidad and Tobago in 1995, is also a Woodrow Wilson scholar.  Her ethnographic research focusing on understanding how social change happens as a local articulation of a global social movement resulted in her dissertation, “Between the Difference:  The Emergence of a Cross Ethnic Women’s Movement in Trinidad and Tobago.” She serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and on the Board of GuideStar International.  She received her doctoral degree from New York University in 2000 and her undergraduate degree from Brown University (1988).  She has taught anthropology and development at Georgetown University.  Her publications include two compilations on social movements in the United States.