Brown Leadership Institute Faculty Profiles
Brown Leadership Institute: Leadership Development for High School Students
Robin Rose, Associate Dean for Continuing Education and Director of Leadership Programs, has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology and has been employed by Brown for 30 years, having served in the counseling center and as the chief student affairs officer, Dean of Student Life. She directed the Brown Outdoor Leadership Training (BOLT) program for 15 years. Dean Rose has a national reputation among outdoor and leadership educators and has served as a consultant to many programs across the country. She enjoys backpacking, canoeing, gardening, snorkeling and working with and learning from young people.
Lexi Weintraub, Assistant Director of Leadership Programs, has been involved in education and academic research for ten years. She has served as a research assistant with Brown University, the University of Chicago, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Her most recent position in Veracruz, Mexico with Iowa State University had her climbing trees to conduct experiments in the forest canopy. Lexi taught High School science at the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago and facilitated many outdoor and service retreats. She enjoys biking and served on the Board of Working Bikes Cooperative, a Chicago-based non-profit that diverts bikes from the waste-stream and distributes them to partner organizations across the globe. She has worked with the Leadership Institute for six summers, directing the Brown Environmental Leadership Laboratory for the past four. She has a B.A. in biology from Brown University.
Brown Environmental Leadership Laboratory (BELL/RI): Sustainable Development
Kurt Teichert is a Lecturer in Environmental Studies and Manager of Environmental Stewardship Initiatives at Brown University. He teaches courses and advises students on Sustainable Design and Environmental Stewardship. In 1990, Brown established an environmental education and advocacy initiative that links student research and education efforts with university operations to implement programs that reduce the negative environmental impacts. Kurt came to Brown in 1992 to support that initiative. He is a LEED Accredited Professional and has been involved in research, design and construction of high performance educational facilities for 20 years. Teichert serves as a Stakeholder in the Rhode Island Greenhouse Gas Initiative to develop and implement a state climate action plan. Prior to coming to Brown, Kurt served as Research Associate and Facilities Manager at New Alchemy Institute. He holds an M.Sc. in Resource Economics from Oregon State University and a B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College.
Changing Business: Becoming a Social Entrepreneur
Alan Harlam is the Director of Social Entrepreneurship at the Swearer Center for Public Service at Brown University. In that role, he launched the Social Innovation Initiative (SII) that has expanded Brown's curricular and extra-curricular resources for social entrepreneurs. He teaches the introductory course in Social Entrepreneurship and is leading launch of a Social Innovation Concentration within the Masters of Public Affairs degree in the fall of 2012. Alan also leads the CV Starr Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship, a three semester program that supports students through the process of launching or growing a social venture with funding, mentoring, and skills development. Alan's work as a social entrepreneur started with the launch of More Than a Meal, a catering social enterprise in Providence and is informed by his 20 years as a consultant, turnaround manager, and community volunteer. He currently serves on the boards of City Year Rhode Island, Social Venture Partners of RI, and Generation Citizen, as well as an advisor to Gardens for Health International, Real Food Challenge, Mali Health Organizing Project, Public Trust Project, and Runa.
Documentary Film for Social Change: Production & Theory
Edrex Fontanilla is a new media artist, digital art lecturer, and multimedia instructional technologist based in Providence, RI. He trained as a classical musician at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, studied digital art as an undergraduate student at Brown University, and multimedia composition through Brown's graduate computer music program. Edrex has shown his video art, digital prints, and interactive sculptures locally and abroad, including the Boston CyberArts Festival, the Tampa Museum of Art, SIGGRAPH, and other international venues. Edrex currently collaborates with neuroscientist Robert Goldschmidt on a series of video art sculptures that explore materiality, continuity, and the limits and assumptions in viewers' perception. Through the presentation of the 'falsely real,' Edrex and Robert explore the various unstable ontological states between video, sculpture, and installation. Edrex currently teaches digital art at Brown University and the Community College of Rhode Island.
Identity, Diversity and Leadership
Marc Harrison has worked in independent schools for the past 19 years as a teacher, administrator, advisor and coach. For the past thirteen years, he has worked at The Wheeler School in Providence, RI. He has been Director of Diversity Planning and Services for the past nine years where, in addition to serving as a liaison to students and families around diversity issues and creating programs to foster diversity and inclusion school-wide, he teaches high school science, a community service course, and courses within the school's multicultural curriculum. He also advises the high school multicultural club and supports affinity groups in the middle and upper schools. Additionally, he has presented workshops on multicultural course development at the regional and national level. Marc grew up in New York and Bermuda before graduating from Brown. A Resource Scholar for his research on the role of racially-specific role models within curricula, Marc earned an A.B. in Education Studies in 1992.
Kelly Garrett is the Coordinator of the LGBTQ Resource Center at Brown University. She received her M.Ed. in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where she specialized in teaching about issues of Racism, Heterosexism and Ableism. She has been working in the field of Campus Life/Student Affairs for about 18 years and has been directly involved in supporting LGBTQ students for about 12 years, first as the Assistant Director of LGBT Affairs at the University of Michigan and now in her current position at Brown. In addition to her work in Student Affairs she has taught Social Justice Education courses at the University of Michigan and the University of Massachusetts.
Leadership and Conflict Resolution
Molly Wallace is Hood House Lecturer in the International Affairs program at the University of New Hampshire and previously served as a visiting lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Brown University; between the two institutions, she has taught courses on nonviolent action, the ethics of war and peace, gender and global politics, approaches to understanding war and political violence, and theories of global politics, in addition to teaching Leadership and Conflict Resolution for the past several years at Brown's Leadership Institute. She earned her PhD in Political Science at Brown in May 2010, specializing in the sub-fields of international relations and political theory. Her dissertation research explored the role of nonviolent action in global politics with a particular focus on the work of Nonviolent Peaceforce, an international NGO engaged in nonviolent intervention/civilian peacekeeping in Sri Lanka, where she conducted field research in fall 2008. While in Providence, she also served for over four years as a volunteer mediator with the Community Mediation Center of Rhode Island. Before coming to Brown, Molly spent four years working at conflict resolution/international affairs NGOs in Washington, DC. She holds a BA in Peace & Conflict Studies from Mount Holyoke College and studied abroad at the European Peace University in Austria and the University of Dakar in Senegal.
Leadership and Global Development
Moshi Herman (Optat Tengia) was born in Tanzania and is a PhD student at Brown University. Prior to Brown, he received a BA in economics from Middlebury College. He also studied in Swaziland and briefly in France. His research and teaching interests are in the subfields of development, demography, and global political economy. His focus is on the effect development policies, global health policies, population policies, and global integration on well-being outcomes in the Global South. His interest in demography (population studies) is centered on life course and population health. His current work explores the impact of economic and political transformation, also known as Structural Adjustment, in the late 1980s and 1990s on subsequent development outcomes in sub Saharan Africa. He has also researched and written about the relationship between adolescents’ wellbeing and their life course aspirations and expectations in Ethiopia. Moshi enjoys travelling, reading, and running when the weather permits.
Leadership and Global Engagement
Kristin Hayes-Leite has been teaching U.S. History, Contemporary Issues, U.S. and the World, and Civics and the Senior Project for the past 11 years at Narragansett High School in Rhode Island. She is a Teaching Fellow for the Choices Education Program at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. In 2010 she was selected as one of 50 Horace Mann - Abraham Lincoln Fellows and is currently serving on the Rhode Island State Panel on Civics Education. Kristin holds a M.A. in Teaching History and an M.Ed. in Reading and Literacy from Rhode Island College.
John Bierbaum teaches Psychology, Sociology, and Regional World Studies at Normal Community West High School in Normal, Illinois. He earned his Masters in History from Illinois State University and has taught at the secondary level for 7 years becoming a National Certified Board Teacher in 2011. For the past 7 years he has been the head Mock Trial coach and is a team captain for the McLean County Diversity Project. He has worked with the Choices Education Program at the Watson International Institute at Brown University doing curriculum workshops for his local school district.
Kelly Keogh teaches International Relations, Regional World Studies and A.P. American Government at Normal Community High School in Normal, Illinois. He earned his Masters in Diplomatic History from Illinois State University and has taught at the secondary level for twenty-five years becoming a National Certified Board Teacher in 2006. He is a Teaching Fellow for the Choices Education Program at the Watson International Institute at Brown University where he has written curriculum units and done workshops around the country for the program.
Ashley Ferranti currently serves as a residential faculty member at Cheshire Academy where she teaches Chinese and ESL courses, advises Model United Nations, and serves as the dance coach. Prior to joining Cheshire Academy, Ashley graduated from Johns Hopkins University in with a B.A. in East Asian Studies and an M.A. in the Humanities. After graduation, she immediately completed her CELTA ESL Teaching certificate from Cambridge University. She spent a summer teaching an intensive course in Burma (Myanmar) and later taught in a bilingual vocational school in Bangkok, Thailand. She was the ESL specialist at the Brown Writing Center during the 2009-2010 school year, and received her Master's degree in Teaching Social Studies/History (7-12) from Brown University in 2010. Ashley will serve as the Assistant Academic Dean at Yale University’s Summer Institute for Gifted Students in June 2012 and is looking forward to joining the Brown Leadership Institute for the third consecutive summer.
Leadership in Science, Technology and Society
Dolores Iorizzo has been a university lecturer and researcher in the UK for over 20 years. Educated at Brown (MA) and Imperial College London (MSc), she has held lectureships at Birkbeck College London, King’s College London, and Imperial College London. She has also been a researcher on ground-breaking international projects that have received support from the National Science Foundation, European Science Foundation, Max Planck Centre for the History of Science, European Commission, United Nations and the UK e-Science Fund. In 2009, Google and Nature invited her to become a member of its SciFoo (http://www.nature.com/natureconferences/scifoo/index.html) community, a cross-disciplinary group of science and technology researchers who advance creative ideas about how to solve global problems. She is passionate about public engagement in science, technology and medicine, and is its effects on society - locally, nationally, and globally. She currently teaches at New York University in London.
Leadership, Religion and Politics
Jason Swadley is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Brown University. He studies theories of self-interest and the common good in the history of political thought. He graduated summa cum laude from Drury University, and holds a master’s degree in political theory from the University of Chicago. He is adjunct faculty at Drury and teaches courses on American politics and political philosophy. He writes at jasonswadley.com
Human Rights: Leadership and Action
David Blanding is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Brown. Broadly, his research interests lie at the intersection of race politics, public opinion, and public policy. He recently published a study on the impact of state policies toward immigrants on the educational attainment of the children of immigrants. David currently serves as both a member of the Board of Directors and a mentor with Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education (RISE), a Providence-based non-profit that provides mentors and scholarships to children in RI whose families have a history of incarceration. Prior to matriculating at Brown, David worked on litigation and public education campaigns around educational equity, racial profiling, and voting rights with the Racial Justice Program of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Political Science from Boston University and Brown, respectively.
Leadership & Global Health
Cate Oswald currently works at Partners In Health, an international health nonprofit focused on providing the highest possible standard of healthcare to the poor, as a research coordinator for projects in Haiti and throughout Latin America. Cate has experience working on issues of social justice and equality locally in Rhode Island and Massachusetts through homeless rights initiatives, especially in access to nutrition, housing, and health care. Internationally, Cate has worked in Sub Saharan Africa, South America, and the South Pacific on projects aimed to understand the social context of disease while working alongside communities to improve health outcomes. She holds a Masters in Public Health in International Health and is a 2004 graduate of Brown University with a B.A. in International Development Studies. While at Brown, Cate was involved in numerous leadership development programs, including working with middle school and high school students on health education.
Amara Ezeamama currently works at the Health Effects Institute, a non-profit organization that supports impartial scientific research aimed at elucidating the human health effects of air pollution. Amara holds a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from Brown University and has conducted research on the morbidity consequences of polyparasitic helminth infection in children using data from Leyte, The Philippines. She has co-taught Burden of Disease in Developing Countries – a course geared towards Brown University undergraduates.
Leadership for Social Change
Caitlin Bradford Murphy is a history teacher at Hudson High School in Hudson, MA. She has taught in Hudson for the past ten years specializing in the social and political history of the United States. While at Hudson High School, she developed a social justice course that encourages students to become actively involved in identifying inequities and working to create social change. Prior to her career in teaching, Caitlin spent six years as a community organizer and advocate for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. She holds a Masters in Education from Cambridge College and a B.A. in Sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of New Hampshire.
Women and Leadership
Kisa Jo Takesue is the Director of the Student Activities Office and Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center at Brown University. She previously served as a dean in Student Life and developed campus-wide diversity initiatives. Kisa has extensive experience developing and exploring leadership skills with teens and young adults and is an active board member of Youth in Action, an organization that fosters partnerships between youth, adults, and community members to create positive social change. Kisa has an A.B in American Civilization, specializing in Asian American Studies from Brown University and a Master's degree in Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin. She grew up in Hawai’i and Massachusetts.
Arts for Social Change
Aaron Junglels is co-founder and co-artistic director of Everett Dance Theatre, and brings a variety of skills in performance, design, and media creation to his work with the company. Aaron graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in film and video, and studied acting at Trinity Rep Conservatory. In addition to designing and constructing many of the innovative props, set pieces, and untraditional projection surfaces used by Everett, Aaron renovated a carriage house that houses the company's studio theater and school. For his work outside of Everett, Aaron has received fellowships and grants from the Creative Capital MAP Fund and from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts.
Laura Colella is a filmmaker currently in post-production for her third narrative feature as Writer/Director/Editor. With her second feature, Laura was a Sundance Institute Directing and Screenwriting Fellow, and her first feature received equipment support from Sundance. Laura has also made several shorts, and her films have cumulatively screened at over 100 festivals and venues, winning 20 awards. She is represented by United Talent Agency and her first two features are distributed by Passion River Films. She has been awarded numerous fellowships and grants, and was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. She collaborates on multimedia productions with Everett Dance Theatre, freelances as a screenwriter, cinematographer, camera assistant and editor, and teaches Directing and 16MM Film Production at the Rhode Island School of Design.