Maxwell Perspective Spring 2021

MADE FOR THE MOMENT

From the World Food Programme to the halls of Congress, alumni answer the call

Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University

Perspective

Maxwell SUMMER 2021

DAVID M. VAN SLYKE

Dean

JESSICA SMITH

Director of Communications and Media Relations

JESSICA YOUNGMAN

Editor

CONTRIBUTORS

Steve Buchiere

Mike Eckel

Rob Enslin

Lenore Friend

Sarah H. Griffin

Mary Beth Horsington

Lisa Maresca

Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Christine Weber

EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS

Chad Chambers

Jennifer Congel

Sarah McLaughlin

PHOTOGRAPHY

Jeremy Brinn

Marilyn Hesler

Evan C. Jenkins

Ross Oscar Knight

Alison Mairena

Steve Sartori

DESIGN

Kiefer Creative

Maxwell Perspective is published twice yearly by the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Direct written correspondence to: Editor, Maxwell Perspective magazine, 200 Eggers Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y., 13244; or MaxwellPerspective@syr.edu

Class Notes, personal news and other updates may be submitted at maxwell.syr.edu/perspective Contents © 2021 Syracuse University, except where noted. Opinions expressed in the Maxwell Perspective are those of the authors and sources and do not necessarily represent the opinions of its editors or policies of Syracuse University.

ON THE COVER: Meghan Sullivan ’17 M.A.I.R. is shown in the salt fields of Haiti where last spring she worked with the United Nations’ World Food Programme. See story on page 16.

PrintReleaf certifies that the Maxwell School has offset the paper consumed to print this issue by reforesting 157 standard trees at its U.S. reforestation project. TX_D621EBFF1514

TWITTER/@REPBOURDEAUX

FEATURES

8 Audacious and Bold: Maxwell School Advisory Board members share their experiences and expertise with School leaders as they look to improve diversity, equity and inclusion.

12 Into the Fray: U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux ’03 Ph.D. (PA) reflects on her lessons from Maxwell and her first months in office that included an insurrection, an inauguration and the passage of her first piece of legislation.

16 From the Cover: On the heels of the World Food Programme’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, Maxwell reflects on its connections to the humanitarian organization and the legacy of one of its former leaders, Catherine Bertini, professor of practice emeritus.

Increase in extramural research funding from 2019 to 2020

35% 2,400 NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO ATTENDED MAXWELLHOSTED VIRTUAL DISCUSSIONS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS ISSUES

It’s hard to know how to begin this letter, as we come to the end of an extremely challenging academic year and look forward with hope for better times.

As I write this, signs of spring echo our optimism for growth, renewal and fresh beginnings as some of our worst failures and hardships from 2020 seem to be turning a corner—the Derek Chauvin murder trial has concluded with a conviction, the majority of adults in the U.S. are inoculated against COVID-19, local school children have returned to learning in-person and unemployment dropped to 6 percent. It is beginning to feel like things are moving in a positive direction.

At the same time, we know that we still have hard work ahead to address the challenges and divisions that remain. Among them, combatting bias and increasing diversity, equity and inclusion at Maxwell and beyond; strengthening our capacity for working through differences in political opinion and ideologies; addressing deep societal gaps and disparities in healthcare, housing, hunger and poverty; and grand challenges, like climate change.

Yet, I am hopeful. I am buoyed by the spirit of generosity and tenacity that ties us together. As I read the stories of our alumni, students and faculty on the pages of this magazine, I see the familiar ways that the Maxwell community not only steps up to help in times of need, but doubles down on these efforts when the going gets tough. You fed the hungry at local food banks and international organizations like the World Food Programme (winner of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize); you ran for national political office (and won!) in deeply competitive races; you combatted inequality in your own workplace and informed the Maxwell School’s strategic plan for diversity, equity and inclusion.

In one of the worst years in our collective memory, the Maxwell community responded in unprecedented ways. In fact, we had one of the best years on record in terms of individual giving, attendance in alumni forums (held virtually this year), faculty participation in media interviews on public affairs issues, and overwhelming support for new initiatives like our Alumni Ambassadors program. Your commitments led to positive outcomes, including increasing applications to our undergraduate and graduate programs and Maxwell’s standing as the #1 School for Public Affairs in the country, reaffirmed in the latest U.S. News rankings.

I’m always grateful to be part of a community dedicated to each other and to the public good, but even more so this year, when things seemed to be at their lowest. I hope you will find similar comfort and inspiration as you read this issue—it is our first without longtime editor Dana Cooke, who retired last summer after 20 years of service (see story, page 3). As you join us in saying goodbye to our dear friend, with deep gratitude, I look forward to your continued engagement and feedback as we embrace new beginnings and chart the course for the future.

Here’s wishing you peace, health, prosperity and happiness in the year ahead. Thank you for all you do.

In gratitude,

(and counting)

13% Increase in graduate degree program applications from 2020 to 2021 $15,564,413 Individual gifts raised in fiscal year 2020

David M. Van Slyke Dean, Maxwell School

Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business and Government Policy

By the Numbers

‘Chief Chronicler’ and ‘Inveterate Rascal’ Wraps Up 20 Years

While pursuing his undergraduate degree in magazine journalism and English at Syracuse University, Dana Cooke ’81 found himself drawn to Maxwell courses. His transcript offers a lengthy list of electives that nowadays would easily meet the requirements for a minor in history.

Cooke soaked up the lessons in religion and politics in Ralph Ketcham’s team-taught public affairs course. Arthur Legacy’s “Radicalism and Dissent in Film” was a study in critical thinking. “Half of everything I understand about politics and debate and propaganda I discovered in that class,” Cooke says of the latter.

Those experiences planted in Cooke a seed that bloomed into a long career telling Maxwell’s stories as the editor of this magazine and various other alumni and development publications.

Cooke retired on Aug. 21. The pandemic prevented the kind of fanfare his colleagues would have liked, though they did not let the occasion go unmarked: On a rainy, late summer day, Cooke and his wife, JoAnn, watched from their front yard a drive-by parade of well-wishing faculty and staff.

“As Maxwell’s chief chronicler for more than two decades, Dana used his strong sense of professionalism and commitment to good citizenship to tell the School’s ongoing record of success, and to tell it so very well,” says Robert McClure, professor emeritus of political science and public affairs who, as senior associate dean, hired Cooke in 2000.

“Less visibly, he was an inveterate rascal, who enriched colleagues with his sardonic wit, sneaky-quick rejection of can’t, and hootenanny guitar playing. He is the most un-straight-laced, steadfastly loyal Maxwellian you are ever likely to encounter.”

Indeed, Cooke was known for his dry wit, his occasional offerings of produce (he is an avid gardener) and for his other gig as a performing amateur musician, nicknamed “Short Order” (get it? Short Order Cooke).

Before Maxwell, Cooke worked as a small-town journalist and in various communications roles for SU, Upstate Medical University and Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

The Maxwell Perspective was a focus of Cooke’s recent position. “As editor, I came to know how solid and laudable Maxwell’s mission is, how well that mission is met, and how fully students, faculty and graduates rally around it,” he says. “It’s rewarding and straightforward to do communication work for an institution that knows and values itself as much as Maxwell does, and to inform alumni who truly love their school.”

Cooke’s collection of favorite experiences includes a breakfast interview with the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan shortly after he returned to the faculty in 2001. Another top story: In 2009, Cooke uncovered the history of the iconic Abraham Lincoln statue in Maxwell’s courtyard.

The most profound piece, though, was a tribute to his professor, Ketcham, following his death in 2018 at age 89. “The article I wrote sought to weave the observations of others into an understanding and appreciation of Ralph, but I undoubtedly put some of myself in it, too,” says Cooke. “Ralph Ketcham was a hero to me. Plus, as I wrote about him, I found myself writing about the school, crowning most of what I had written about Maxwell through the years, as crystallized by this one teacher’s legacy. Much of what I find laudable about the

Maxwell School was represented in Ralph.”

The significance of content that came from Maxwell’s more than 34,000 alumni was never lost on Cooke. The Class Notes often took up several back pages (as is the case with this edition — see pages 32 to 37). How many did Cooke oversee in a nearly 40-year career in college publications?

The question piques his interest. “While editing alumni magazines, I probably witnessed at least 20,000 brief snippets of careers and life pass beneath my editor’s pen, and possibly close to 25,000,” he says following some perfunctory math.

— Jessica Youngman

Editor’s Note: Those of you who have received past editions of the Perspective will no doubt notice that this edition has a different look and some new elements. We hope you find some things you like and expect you will find a few things we can work on. Putting out the first edition as the new editor following the legacy of my predecessor has been no small task, but I’m thrilled to have been given the opportunity. The stories in the pages that follow have been an honor to write and edit and provided a great window into the inspiring Maxwell community. Your feedback is valued, along with story ideas and updates. Drop me a note at MaxwellPerspective@syr.edu. —Jessica Youngman

Dana Cooke ’81 was hired to serve as editor of this magazine in 2000 but his background with the University dates back to his undergrad days.

Gift Honors Professor, Seeks to Broaden Connections to Asia

Yang Ni ’95 and his wife, Xiaoqing Li ’96, came to the U.S. in 1987 with their young daughter to pursue advanced degrees.

“At the time we were students with very limited financial means,” says Ni, an attorney-turned-entrepreneur who earned his juris doctor degree from the Syracuse University College of Law. “We came with a few hundred dollars in our pockets and two suitcases.”

The Folsom, California pair have come a long way from their humble beginnings and say the Maxwell School, while not the place from which they earned graduate degrees, played a major role. They’ve shown their gratitude with generous gifts that honor a late professor and will build on academic relationships with educational institutions in their native China and elsewhere in Asia.

Ni and Li have donated $150,000 to establish a scholarship fund in memory of Manfred Stanley, professor emeritus of sociology. They’ve also given $350,000 to Maxwell to establish the Yang Ni and Xiaoqing Li Endowment Fund for U.S.-China/ Asia Relations to encourage greater connections between Maxwell faculty and scholars in China and Asia.

“It is with deep gratitude that we thank Yang and Xiaoqing for their philanthropic investment in supporting internationally oriented educational experiences,” says Dean David M. Van Slyke. “These experiences form bridges of collaboration and mutual understanding to inform and improve policies and decisions.”

The couple came to SU after finishing master’s degrees at Southern Connecticut State University; they’d emigrated from China to attend.

Both began as doctoral students at Maxwell: While Ni was accepted into the Ph.D. program in the Department of Sociology, Li pursued her interest in history. Ni had taken the required courses, passed the exams and started writing his dissertation when he applied to the College of Law in 1993. Li, meanwhile, changed majors, earning a master of science in information resources manage-

ment from the School of Information Studies (iSchool).

“Even though we both ended up earning degrees from the Law School and iSchool respectively, those memorable years in Maxwell’s sociology and history departments are life changing experiences for us, both intellectually and emotionally,” says Ni, who now serves as CEO/president of CALNY Ventures, a U.S.-based holding corporation that provides laboratory testing and regulatory compliance services for global pharmaceutical companies. “We are fortunate to have met so many wonderful people at Maxwell, our professors, mentors, colleagues at the departments and fellow students.”

Stanley, a refugee from Nazi Germany, was particularly impactful. He served as Ni’s dissertation advisor and encouraged him to pursue a law degree. “He was just a kind and wonderful human being,” says Ni. “He was also a true intellectual who provided a strong social science perspective of society. Civil society, participatory public life, democratic citizenship—these were foreign concepts

when we came to the U.S. in 1987.”

Stanley’s son, Jason, a professor of philosophy at Yale, says the scholarship is a great honor to his father. “When I was growing up, my home was defined by the intellectual life at the Maxwell School,” he says. “For my father, and his partner Mary Stanley, there was no topic as important as democratic citizenship and its heart, civic education.”

Ni says the fund for U.S.-China/ Asia relations follows that ideal. The funds will be used to help Maxwell faculty travel, research and teach in China, and it may also be used to help Chinese academic counterparts come to the University.

“Maxwell welcomed us with open arms,” says Ni. “We’d like to see this tradition continue.”

— Steve Buchiere

Investing in Future Leaders

Stephen Heaney’76 M.P.A. has established the State and Local Public Administration Scholarship with a generous gift.

“Developing and fostering professional local government management helps establish excellence in the management of state and local government, which is a direct benefit to all citizens,” says Heaney, of Los Angeles, California.

The first scholarship recipient will be named in July 2022.

Heaney retired in 2019, wrapping up a more than four-decade career in public finance. His last role was co-head of municipal securities and managing director of public finance for Stifel Nicolaus & Co.

Over his career, Heaney worked with hundreds of public agencies and nonprofit organizations assisting with capital financing needs. From 2009 to 2013, he served on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board, including serving as the vice chair in 2013.

Interested in making a philanthropic gift?

Visit maxwell.syr.edu/giving/

Yang Ni ’95 is shown with his professor, the late Manfred Stanley.

Yang Ni and his wife, Xiaoqing Li ’96

Internship Brings ‘Full Circle’ Moment

Student Connor Muldoon watched the opening arguments in the trial of George Floyd’s convicted killer, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, on a television in the Syracuse Police Department. His viewing companions—three police officers.

A year earlier, in the days following Floyd’s death, Muldoon joined a memorial gathering in his suburban New Jersey hometown.

“I consider myself a strong ally to the Black Lives Matter movement,” says Muldoon, a junior majoring in policy studies at the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences and public relations at the Newhouse School of Public Communications. “A year ago, I never would have thought of watching the trial with police officers. It was a full circle moment for me.”

It was a moment provided by an educational opportunity; Muldoon was hired to intern in the police department in the spring semester. The opportunity was made possible by a gift from Syracuse University alumnus and Maxwell Advisory Board member David Kelso ’68.

Kelso hoped not only to provide experiential learning, but also broaden the perspectives of both students and police. “It is important to engage students with the Syracuse community,” says Kelso, who grew up on the city’s southside and attended the University with the help of a scholarship. Now the retired vice chairman for private banking at J.P. Morgan Chase, he has been generous in his support of Maxwell.

Muldoon felt the internship would fit with his degree programs and offer a unique perspective of police in a time when the vocation is under intense scrutiny. “I thought it would give me a frame of reference so I could speak better on the issues,” he says. “To go into the police department and be able to have these conversations with the officers has been a really positive experience for me, and I think the officers feel the same way.”

Syracuse officers, for instance, spoke with Muldoon as they watched the opening statements in the Chauvin trial. “We discussed the different ways that they are trained to deal with these situations,” says Muldoon, “and the officers shared with me how Chauvin’s actions were not aligned with that training.”

Sgt. Matthew Malinowski, the department’s public information officer, immersed Muldoon and a second student intern in his work. “It is the gravity of the messaging that I wanted them to understand and how that affects public perception. It is also the image of law enforcement, from the positive interactions and the human side of our officers, to the times when they need to be authoritative.”

Malinowski adds, “Having this extra help has been tremendous,” enabling the department to triple the number of press releases, photographs, social media posts and other content to inform and engage the public.

The internship has also broken down some officers’ notions about university students, who Malinowski admits have sometimes been regarded as disconnected from the city. “The officers appreciated and respected their work and came to trust them, almost as one of their own,” he says.

Malinowski is grateful to the students and Kelso. “I don’t even know if he truly understands the impact he has had by creating these internships,” Malinowski says. “These students have been invaluable in helping us as a police department better engage with the community.”

— Jessica Youngman with reporting by Christine Weber

Connor Muldoon gained perspective through an internship with the Syracuse Police Department that was made possible by a gift from Syracuse University alumnus and Maxwell Advisory Board member David Kelso ’68.

“To go into the police department and be able to have these conversations with the officers has been a really positive experience for me, and I think the officers feel the same way.”

Connor

Muldoon SUBMITTED

David Kelso ’68

A Climate for Change

Atmospheric scientist Ethan Coffel is studying the link between climate change and crop production.

As New York state farmers embark on another growing season, they are likely to feel the heat of global warming, says Ethan Coffel, assistant professor of geography and the environment at the Maxwell School.

Coffel is principal investigator on a threeyear National Science Foundation grant project exploring the link between climate and agricultural change—a process known as the crop-climate feedback cycle. He says that while staple food crops may see sharp declines in yields from global warming, agricultural adaptations, like moving crops to cooler latitudes, may reduce some of the damage. “Precipitation and temperature have huge impacts on crop growth,” he explains. “Some places have much lower yields because they’re too dry, wet or hot.”

Coffel studies how crop growth affects local climate, which impacts crop production.

“Research shows that crop growth actually cools the local climate in some of the world’s most agriculturally productive regions,” says Coffel, who also teaches in the College of Arts and Sciences. “This mitigates the effects of hot temperatures and boosts crop yields.”

Coffel and his co-principal investigator, Justin Mankin, are focusing on the upper midwestern United States, eastern Europe, northern China and southern Africa and Asia. “We’re especially interested in the central U.S.—Iowa and Illinois as well as parts of Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Nebraska— because it has not seen significant increases in maximum temperatures,” says Coffel. “The rest of the world, however, has gotten hotter over the past 40 years.”

Mankin, assistant professor of geography at Dartmouth, was Coffel’s postdoctoral advisor. Their research hinges on large-scale evaporation. “We know that water vapor transpired by plants cools the air around them,” says Mankin. “If crops are productive enough, their transpiration can reduce the number of extremely hot days that they experience.” In fact, he explains, the vast acreage of corn and soybeans in the central United States cools the climate enough to create favorable weather conditions—and contribute to bountiful harvests.

“There is a point at which global warming increases enough, even in the Upper Midwest, so that crops can no longer shed heat to keep

apace,” adds Mankin. “When this happens, we might expect a reduction in crop yields and an increase in extreme heat.”

Scientists agree that the Industrial Revolution kickstarted modern global warming. Since the 1830s, carbon-rich deposits of coal, oil and natural gas have been burned for heat energy, pumping a staggering amount of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the environment. The effects of climate change on agriculture include drought, severe weather, livestock shortages and a growing number of pests, to name a few.

In New York, the annual average temperature has risen more than two and a half degrees since 1970, prompting drought, flooding and unseasonably hot and cold temperatures. “It’s getting to the point where Syracuse’s climate is similar to what it used to be in southern New York or New Jersey,” says Coffel.

To stem the tide of global warming, he encourages small, easy lifestyle changes— from shifting toward plant-based diets to swapping cars for bikes to taking fewer flights. “Choices we make today will affect our children and our children’s children,” he says.

— Rob Enslin Assistant

Professor Ethan Coffel uses spatial analysis, climate science and statistical crop yield modeling to understand the relationship between crops and the climate.

A Safe Space to Share

The killing of eight Atlanta-area spa workers on March 16 put a spotlight on anti-Asian racism and had a profound impact on many in the Maxwell community, including graduate students Varsha Srinivasan and Angelo Baldado.

One day after the shootings, Srinivasan and Baldado approached Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Maxwell’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion, to coordinate a virtual gathering where they and others could share their anguish and personal experiences.

On Friday, March 19, nearly 50 members of the Maxwell community gathered for a virtual community dialogue. McCormick’s graduate assistant, Kyaira Coffin, helped organize and emceed.

“It was powerful and cathartic,” says McCormick, who is also the Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations. “One of the things we heard from students was the significance of providing space for them to safely and constructively talk about their experiences and actively listen to others. This is foundational to our ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.”

Srinivasan, who was born in India and raised in the U.S., says it was “refreshing” to see so many fellow students and faculty voices from the Asian and Pacific Islander community. “It was a space to have brave conversations and be vulnerable,” she says.

Baldado says he was “extraordinarily grateful” for how quickly it came together. “It’s what I needed during that time,” he adds.

The virtual event was inspired by race and ethnicity intergroup dialogue circles that began in the spring semester. Those circles have been limited to 12 to 14 participants each session and followed guidelines to encourage inclusivity and openness. “As with the small group dialogue circles, we told students, faculty and staff, ‘It’s ok to not have a solution; it’s OK that this just be a space where we talk,’” says McCormick of the March 19 gathering.

Attendees included Yingyi Ma, associate professor of sociology, who helped lead an all-campus forum the following week. “I think the virtual gathering initiated by Maxwell students reflects the genuine desire among our community to share and support each other in the face of escalating anti-Asian racism and violence,” says Ma. “The fact that it came together so quickly and so many of us including our dean, faculty and students were able to join and open up their hearts is truly remarkable.”

—Jessica Youngman

Trustee’s Gift Supports Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Training

Syracuse University Trustee Christine Larsen and her husband, Vincent Dopulos, have provided a gift in support of diversity, equity and inclusion training for Maxwell graduate students over the next five years. It is a key step toward realizing the school’s renewed vision for developing leaders and educators who are committed to improving outcomes for all.

The training framework comes from a collaboration by the University’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the InterFaith Works’ El-Hindi Center for Dialogue in the city of Syracuse. The gift funded training that allowed Maxwell to pilot three race and ethnicity intergroup dialogue circles of 12 to 14 students during the spring semester. The goal is to train 70 graduate students per year over the next five years.

Participants are encouraged to use the skills they practice in these circles in their personal, academic and professional spaces, strengthening cross-cultural understanding and reducing racial, ethnic and cultural bias.

“We are grateful for this gift as it enables us to begin making good on our commitment to create a more diverse school, and to develop more inclusive leaders,” says Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Maxwell’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion.

McCormick was appointed in June 2020 to lead a school-wide plan for catalyzing awareness and institutional change around biases and structures affecting under-represented peoples. In the fall of 2020, a draft of the preamble, vision and pillars of a strategic plan was published. Stakeholder input and community feedback is being collected from new affinity groups of graduate students of color and international students, as well as the existing faculty of color affinity group co-directed by McCormick.

For the latest, visit maxwell.syr.edu/dei

Varsha Srinivasan Angelo Baldado

Gladys McCormick

Yingyi Ma

A CALL TO BE ‘AUDACIOUS

BY JESSICA YOUNGMAN

At a recent Maxwell School Advisory Board meeting, member Mary Daly ’90 posed a question—or perhaps it was a challenge.

As she recalls, it went something like this: “What can we do that can move the needle, materially change what we see that we don’t like in our society, with regard to inequities? How are we going to literally be able to hand the next generation a better future than what we inherited?”

The meeting’s agenda was to give feedback on a draft of the Maxwell School’s strategic plan for improving diversity, equity and inclusion. “It had all the elements that are often in plans that are making progress on this,” she recalls. Yet, to really move the needle, it requires actions that are, “going to be, by definition, audacious and bold,” she says.

The exchange was emblematic of the important role the Advisory

Board plays in guiding Dean David M. Van Slyke and fellow Maxwell leaders. It also exemplifies a fundamental truth: diversity, equity and inclusion are, in the simplest terms, not only the right thing to do but also yield better outcomes.

CREATING SYNERGY

In recent years, Maxwell leadership has diversified its 40-member advisory board, including adding more women and people of color and widening the span of careers and sectors, disciplines and ages.

“Time and again, we see that a rich mix of perspectives is vital for making informed and better decisions,” says Van Slyke. Beyond that, he says, “They all are doing important work to advance equity of opportunity and demonstrating the benefits of civic engagement and leadership across all types of organizations and communities. Their work on social justice and diversity influences what we do here

at Maxwell. We are the beneficiaries of their perspectives and experiences.”

Advisory Board Chair Ron O’Hanley ’80, chairman and chief executive officer of financial services firm State Street Corp., has seen firsthand how a commitment to inclusion pays dividends.

For the last five years, State Street Global Advisors has called on companies to increase gender diversity “because evidence shows that companies with more gender diverse boards generate better performance,” says O’Hanley, who earned a bachelor of arts in political science at Maxwell. “This year, they are focused on racial and ethnic diversity because research indicates that the issue is similarly a meaningful value driver for companies.”

Fellow Maxwell Advisory Board member Lisa Y. Gordon ’90 has echoed the sentiment to School leaders as they seek to address disparities.

continued on page 10

Ron O’Hanley ’80 B.A. (PSc) Lisa Y. Gordon ’90 M.P.A.

Mary Daly ’93 Ph.D. (Econ)

Maxwell’s advisory board has a vital role in guiding the School’s efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion.

‘AUDACIOUS AND BOLD’

Maxwell Advisory Board member Lisa Y. Gordon is shown above speaking with members of her Atlanta Habitat for Humanity team.

DIVERSITY

continued from page 8

AND BOLD’

Gordon has asked leadership to consider the composition of faculty and staff in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, type of work and discipline. She says, for example, “unless there are people of color in the room, the perspective will not be represented by other groups.”

As the head of Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, she sees the impact of housing stability on marginalized families. “That changes the trajectory of not only their lives but also their kids,” she says, adding that children in families aided by the organization are more likely to graduate high school and go to college.

“Part of it is that when other people can see someone accomplish something they think is not within their bandwidth, that creates synergy,” Gordon adds.

DRAWING FROM EXPERIENCE

Felipe Estefan ’10 has encountered no shortage of people whose hearts are in the right place when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Yet, they’re often lacking the training and tools to bring those principles to practice and bring change, he says. In his capacity on the Maxwell Advisory Board, Estefan seeks to help bridge that gap.

He is guided by his unique perspective. As an international student from Bogotá, Colombia, studying at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Upstate New York, Estefan felt privileged. And yet, he was also a minority, not only in ethnicity but also because of his sexuality.

INCLUSION equity INCLUSION

“The learning that I’ve had as a student, as an international student, as an immigrant, as a queer person, informs my role on the Maxwell Advisory Board,” says Estefan, who earned a master of arts in international relations at Maxwell and a master of science in public relations at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Estefan now works as investment director for Luminate, a philanthropic organization that provides funding and other support to organizations that strive to bring social justice and uplift marginalized people. “The career that I have been able to have is very much connected to how can I use my privilege to create opportunities for others,” he says.

It is similar for Gordon, who earned a master’s in public administration at Maxwell.

Felipe Estefan ’10 M.A.I.R./M.S.P.R.

The first Black woman to lead Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, she realizes the importance of her role, especially when it comes to advocacy. “I’m always asking, ‘What action can I take? What leadership can I provide that will bring about meaningful change in the short term and the long term?’” she says.

Daly likewise draws from her personal experience to inform her work as president of the Federal Reserve of San Francisco and in serving Maxwell, where she earned a doctorate in economics. Raised in a one-income family near St. Louis, she dropped out of high school at 15 and might not have found her way back to education had it not been for the guidance of a mentor.

Her background may lend to her ease in talking with people from all walks of life, something she does as often as possible to ensure she has a more complete picture of the public she is representing. “Ultimately, I’m running an organization that should look like those we serve,” she says.

WATERSHED MOMENT

Though he’d focused on inclusion and diversity at State Street, the death of George Floyd was a turning point for O’Hanley. He took stock of the company’s progress, acknowledging that it had potential to go further. He listened and gathered insight from colleagues near and far. “Then I gathered my senior leadership team and

drafted our ’10 Actions to Address Racism and Inequality at State Street,’” he says.

The list is a set of priority actions—not an exhaustive list of deep systemic changes, explains O’Hanley.

He also launched State Street’s global Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Council to oversee the execution, transparency and accountability for all firm-wide efforts. Diversity goals were set to help State Street achieve representation of female and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) at the highest levels. Training seeks to foster awareness of unconscious bias and racism.

“I view these sets of actions as simply a starting place,” says O’Hanley. “This is a journey that requires a great deal of introspection, humility and resiliency. Progress does not equal completion. We have much more work to do to ensure that equality and justice are more than just concepts.”

At the Fed, Daly has led a “framework for change” that addresses such things as supplier diversity, hiring, community engagement and the composition of the board of directors.

“In practice when we work on any topic, whether it’s monetary policy or leadership or community engagement, we are sourcing from people of all different walks of life,” she says. “You can’t just go to your economic

research department to learn about how to improve the economy. …I have to ask all of the voices here because they all have a different lens.”

For Gordon, recent measures at Atlanta Habitat for Humanity have included a cultural audit and training for employees. One workshop was revealing: The facilitator asked employees to numerically rank their knowledge about diversity, equity and inclusion. Their scores were higher than those of the trainers. “When it comes to DEI, there’s so much we don’t know—we’re just scratching the surface,” Gordon says.

She and fellow board members agree: The work will never be completed.

“It’s the kind of thing where you can never sit and say, ‘Mission accomplished,’” says Estefan. “DEI is not only something that we should do, it’s something that we need to do to yield the outcomes we wish to see in the world. There’s a distinction between those who build for others and those who build with others.”

With the latter, he says, “You are always better positioned to achieve greater outcomes.”

EQUITY ‘AUDACIOUS AND BOLD’

“Diversity, equity and inclusion is not only something that we should do, it’s something that we need to do to yield the outcomes we wish to see in the world. There’s a distinction between those who build for others and those who build with others.”

—Felipe Estefan, Maxwell Advisory Board

INTO THE

Carolyn Bourdeaux ’03 joins Congress days before the Capitol riot.

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeax ’03 Ph.D. (PA) is shown meeting with constituents during an April event called Coffee With Carolyn.

THE FRAY

BY LENORE FRIEND

Less than three months into her freshman term, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux ’03 watched from the House floor as her first legislation passed with a near unanimous 415-to-3 vote.

Like Bourdeaux herself, the Paycheck Protection Program Extension Act of 2021 is pragmatic and rooted in Georgia’s 7th district, where the owners of a Lawrenceville community theater told her how badly small businesses like theirs needed it.

“I was surprised how sentimental I was about that. It was a very special moment to get that through,” says Bourdeaux, who earned a Ph.D. in public administration from the Maxwell School. Her bill passed the Senate shortly thereafter and was signed into law by President Joe Biden.

Bourdeaux built a career analyzing and teaching public policy. She directed the Georgia Senate Budget and Evaluation Office during the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2010. She served as a professor at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies from 2003 until this year.

Now she is making policy. Bourdeaux, a Democrat, won her seat in November following a close race with Republican Rich McCormick. Not including two candidates in North Carolina who won seats that were redrawn, Bourdeaux was the only Democratic House candidate in the country to f lip a seat previously held by a Republican in the 2020 election.

Bourdeaux had aspired to public office since she took a seminar with the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the longtime U.S. senator for whom Maxwell’s Institute of Global Affairs is named. He taught at the Maxwell School early in his career and returned as a University Professor after retiring from the U.S. Senate in 2001.

Bourdeaux admired his life, a blend of academia and public service. In addition to Maxwell, he taught at Harvard, served as an advisor to President Nixon and was named

assistant secretary of labor under presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

Moynihan saw the nation through tumult and war, though Bourdeaux faces perhaps starker questions than he did about the direction of the Republic.

‘NEUTRAL COMPETENCE’

Three days after taking the oath of office, Bourdeaux huddled with colleagues in a dark room while a mob raged beyond the door. “It was very sobering,” she says of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, “and of course I am coming out of Georgia, where we are in just a pitched battle over the rules of the game in our democracy: who gets to vote, what vote is considered to be eligible or legitimate.”

Two decades earlier, Moynihan and other Maxwell faculty had modeled a dispassionate, nonpartisan way to look at policy. Bourdeaux’s mentors also included William Duncombe (1955-2013); Bernard “Bunny” Jump (1938-2019); Larry D. Schroeder, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs; and John Yinger, Trustee Professor of Economics and Public Administration and International Affairs.

Robert Bifulco ’94 M.P.A. / ’01 Ph.D. (PA), associate dean, chair and professor of public

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assignment to the House of Representa­

Committee.

wrote, “Small businesses in my district have weathered the devastating impact of this pandemic for almost an entire year, and they need a champion in Congress. I’m ready to get to work.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF U.S. REP. CAROLYN BOURDEAUX

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux is shown in her office in a photo she shared on Twitter announcing her

tives’ Small Business

She

TWITTER/@REPBOURDEAUX

continued from page 13

administration and international affairs, refers to this tradition as neutral competence, the idea that some issues are a matter of expertise, not politics.

He adds that this can be a hazy distinction as public administrators make daily decisions imbued with their own values. Bourdeaux, he says, brings clear-eyed analysis to those messier debates over real-world decisions. At the turn of the 21st century, as they both pursued doctorates, Bifulco and Bourdeaux had an opportunity to work together.

“Carolyn was always carving her own path. She wanted her research and scholarship to be relevant and important,” he says. Her later work with the Georgia Senate gave her the opportunity to provide analysis that would directly affect decision-making, Bifulco notes, adding, “I think she was motivated by being in the mix.”

Bourdeaux gravitated toward public finance in her doctoral research and later at Georgia State, where she founded the Center for State and Local Finance to provide a more robust education to future chief public finance officers.

“When I teach my students, I say, ‘If you want to be involved in every policy discussion, this is the center of how we make our priorities as a community, a country or a society,’” she says.

Running for Congress changed the nature of those policy discussions as Bourdeaux engaged voters throughout a district that is more racially diverse and more educated than the nation at large.

“Something that I have learned that is a little bit different is how very, very deeply values, culture and worldview affect those policy choices,” she says. “I do think policy analysis and policy programs need to think a lot more about those value underpinnings in our society and how that shapes policy.”

Take, for example, rehabilitation boot camps for teenagers who commit crimes. While research shows them to be ineffective, support for such scare-them-straight tactics remains strong where the public wants to see accountability, she explains. A better policy would reduce recidivism while providing

young offenders a way to make it right with the community.

GIVE AND TAKE

Bourdeaux also gains insight through give and take with those who hold opposing viewpoints—including her uncle, a stalwart Republican and a truck driver whose back was broken in a wreck. She shared with him that Democrats support expanded health care, something he needed.

“I am voting not in my self-interest. I am voting for you,” she told him. His response, she says, was, “Carolyn, you have a son, and we have terrible debt, every year higher deficits, and you’re going to leave your son all that debt. I am not voting for me, I am voting for you.” She laughs, adding, “On the positive side, we are both trying to do something that we think is right for our country, our community.”

This exchange works in public dialogue when there is widespread agreement on the basics of democracy. The Capitol riot was the inevitable consequence of the baseless claims of voter fraud following the 2020 election, Bourdeaux says. By undermining the norms of democratic society, the former president and his supporters tried to halt the peaceful transfer of power.

“We resolve our differences through democracy—that’s the whole deal—instead of through violence. But if you lead people to believe the democracy is not functioning anymore, then that only leaves violence as a way to make effective change,” she says, adding, “One of the central themes of one of my classes is that democracy is fragile, and it depends on people of good will and good faith to make it work. Every student coming out of Maxwell, every student coming out of Syracuse University, needs to understand those norms and needs to support them and uphold them through their own involvement in our democracy.”

Bifulco worries, too, about “the complete disregard for truth, the disdain, almost, for truth,” he says. “That’s very discouraging for people in our line of work. Your job is to provide facts and as objective an analysis as you can, and you hope that has influence on people.”

Still, he finds assurance in the election of his colleague. “You’ve got to keep trying to be an advocate for the truth,” Bifulco says. “People like Carolyn actually are our reason for some faith there because she is going into the fray, and she is also someone who is committed to facts and analysis.”

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux was honored to introduce her son, Nathan, to John Lewis, the civil rights leader who served in the House of Representatives for Georgia’s 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in July 2020.

TWITTER/@REPBOURDEAUX

Notes from Maxwell in D.C.

T he whiteboard in Mark Jacobson’s home office in Washington, D.C., lists all the students taking a semester in the Maxwell School’s programs in the capital. He has written down their housing assignments, internship sites and contact information.

Updating the whiteboard and digital contact lists is a standard practice that has taken on a new urgency since the false claims of election fraud after the 2020 election culminated in an attack on the Capitol.

“Jan. 6 made the issue of domestic instability something that I have to watch,” says Jacobson, who started his job as assistant dean for Washington Programs in June of last year. “What I did double down on is the ability to reach out to students all at once.”

No students were in D.C. for classes and internships that day, but security remained tight in the weeks after the riot. The height-

ened alert was not a new experience for Jacobson, who spent 27 years in the Army and Navy reserves, including tours in Bosnia and Afghanistan. He was working at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. This time, however, the threat came from within.

A child of the Reagan years, Jacobson says he was “old enough to be scared” by The Day After, a movie about a nuclear war with the far-off Soviet Union. When he began his career in foreign policy and national security, he responded to conditions across the globe.

“It was no longer a world of a big, ferocious Russian bear, but an assortment of venomous snakes that could do our nation harm,” he says, referring to conflicts in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then Jacobson, whose research interests include the history of propaganda, watched

as President Donald Trump and his supporters spread disinformation and stoked division, tactics he had seen in overseas insurgencies.

“A violent, extremist insurgency movement driven by fear and a cultist-like ideology. I’ve seen that. I’ve seen what it did in Afghanistan. I saw what it did in the Balkans,” he says. “The last four years of watching what it did to our democracy was traumatic.”

Jacobson has been proud of the Maxwell students’ maturity in handling both the pandemic and the unsettled atmosphere in the capital. They are mindful of the questions that Jan. 6 has raised about the state of American democracy and “in that sense, they are having good, solid policy discussions,” he says, adding, “No matter what their political persuasion, whether it’s Republican, or Democrat, conservative, liberal or libertarians, they all want to do good things for their country and that binds them together.”

“One of the central themes of one of my classes is that democracy is fragile, and it depends on people of good will and good faith to make it work. Every student coming out of Maxwell…needs to understand those norms and needs to support them and uphold them through their own involvement in our democracy.”

— Lenore Friend

Mark Jacobson, assistant dean for Maxwell’s Washington Programs

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PHOTO PROVIDED BY CAROLYN4CONGRESS, THE CAMPAIGN FOR CAROLYN BOURDEAUX

FEEDING THE NEXT

Catherine Bertini has guided many students to the World Food Programme, the United Nations organization honored with a Nobel Peace Prize.

BY MIKE ECKEL

Less than an hour’s helicopter flight northwest of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince is the town of Anse Rouge, where the coastal landscape is a patchwork of squares, white mounds and tropical vegetation. Salt farming is the subsistence livelihood that Haitians eke out here; it is backbreaking, sweltering labor, whose low pay means it is mainly women doing the work. The conditions are such that the women are frequently plagued by health problems caused by dirty water and unsanitary conditions. And, the hurricanes that regularly blow through often wipe out any meager investments.

By planting trees, building canals, erecting retaining walls and using improved salt harvesting methods, development experts and aid workers hope that they can make the effort more sustainable, more profitable and healthier, particularly for women who toil there.

In the thick of the effort is the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations agency whose work helping to alleviate hunger and build resilience around the world earned a Nobel Peace Prize late last year. And one of many of those intimately involved in the program’s work in Haiti last spring was Meghan Sullivan ’17, a graduate of the Maxwell School’s master of arts in international relations program.

Speaking from her home in Port-au-Prince in early April, Sullivan says there’s no way she would be doing what she’s doing if it hadn’t been for Maxwell. “Maxwell really opened doors for me that wouldn’t have been opened otherwise,” she says. “I’m from a farming family in rural, Upstate New York. The U.N. is not a place that I thought I would end up when I was younger. It’s those relationships that Maxwell had, and the preparation that Maxwell gave me, that made all of this possible.”

Sullivan, in fact, is one of several alumni who found their calling—the place to put their Maxwell theories into practice—through the WFP.

Catherine Bertini, professor of practice emeritus, is largely to thank for that. She headed the WFP for a decade, between 1992 and 2002, serving under presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and was the U.N.’s undersecretary general in New York for three years before she joined Maxwell.

“We were thrilled when Catherine Bertini joined the Maxwell faculty. Her expertise, gained from incredible life experiences, was a tremendous asset to our students, particularly those who felt a calling to humanitarian policy and development work,” says David M. Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School.

“She took a special interest in her students’ success, pointing several of them toward the World Food Programme for internships, thereby creating a pipeline between Maxwell and the United Nations that has launched the careers of several of our alumni.”

A SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP

The photos on Catherine Bertini’s website offer a snapshot of what it might have been like to lead the World Food Programme. In one, she pours food into a bowl held by a youngster in Zimbabwe. In another, she walks hand-in-hand with two children in Rwanda. Other images show her in much different environs: Sitting, for instance, next to Pope John Paul II during a 1997 meeting, and three years later, shaking hands with then-United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Still another has her seated at a long table in the White House, along with President George W. Bush, for a 2001 talk about Afghanistan.

It has indeed been a storied career. Bertini was the first U.S. citizen to head the WFP, and she is credited with helping transform the agency’s operations with actions that no doubt helped set it on a trajectory toward last year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

NEXT GENERATION

During her tenure, she assisted millions of victims of wars and natural disasters throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

In recognition of her work, she received the World Food Prize, known as the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture” in 2003. Rather than accept the prize money, she established a trust that provides grants to local organizations around the world that improve access to training and education for women and girls.

Three years later, when she joined Maxwell, Bertini saw an opportunity for a symbiotic relationship. While the WFP could benefit from the support of Maxwell’s graduate students, the students themselves would have yet another means to gain invaluable experience and fulfill a degree requirement—international relations students must complete an internship abroad.

Students who attained internships with the WFP say her support was vital, though Bertini downplays that. “I gave advice to students on how to get internships,” she says. “They took it from there.”

In one case, a regional director for the WFP asked Bertini to recommend two interns to help as an influx of Syrian refugees moved into Jordan. She offered up two top students, Edgar Luce ’12 M.A.I.R. and Ryan Beech ’12. Following those internships, both stayed on to work for the WFP.

continued on page 18

Catherine Bertini is shown in Rwanda in 1994, two years after she became the head of the World Food Programme.

Megan Sullivan ’17 M.A.I.R.

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Beech, who received a master of arts in international relations, was hired by the WFP shortly after his internship. He worked in Jordan for five years, gained field-level experience in cash and voucher programming and then moved to the organization’s headquarters in Rome where he is

now a programme and policy officer. He develops guidance, strategies and learning materials and provides direct support to field offices.

“While I dreamed of working for institutions like the United Nations, even in high school, I never thought I would have that opportunity, or at least I couldn’t see a clear pathway to it,” he says, pointing back to Maxwell and his former professor, Bertini.

Her legacy can be seen in the organization even at a technical level, Beech says. At the WFP, Bertini focused on empowering women. “A key part of our strategy for cash and voucher programming is to give money directly to women while focusing on their greater financial inclusion, access to financial products and services and economic empowerment,” he says. “I run into WFP staff all the time who reflect positively on the period that she served as executive director.”

Back at Maxwell, Bertini also encouraged student Emily Fredenberg ’16 M.P.A./M.A.I.R. Her internship was part of the United Nations Network for Scaling Up Nutrition Secretariat, hosted by the WFP in Rome.

As was the case with Beech, it turned into a career. Before ending up in the Rwandan capital Kigali, where she has been the WFP’s head of external partnerships and communications for Rwanda since 2019, Fredenberg first spent several years in Beirut, Lebanon, helping the organization as it dealt with the influx of refugees fleeing the devastation of the Syrian Civil War.

Ryan Beech ’12 M.A.I.R. is shown leading a tour in the World Food Programme’s Azraq refugee camp in Jordan. Next to him is Antonio Gutierrez, now the secretary general of the United Nations.

Catherine Bertini is shown above with Pope John Paul II during a 1997 meeting. She is shown below with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan at the World Food Programme headquarters in Rome in 2000.

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In the chaos of human suffering and scale of the efforts by the WFP and other organizations trying to feed, clothe and shelter people fleeing Syria, Fredenberg says she couldn’t have managed there if it weren’t for her Maxwell classes: simulations, for example, that got students to grapple with real world scenarios in a classroom setting.

“That was one of those moments when we’re responding to a humanitarian crisis and here I am on the ground, the one doing this thing, thinking ‘These simulations, this is what actually happens in real life,’” says Fredenberg.

PRIDE IN THE PIPELINE

While working in Haiti in late April, Meghan Sullivan received word of a new opportunity with the United Nations, a post that would bring her back home to the States and allow her to put more focus on development, an interest she discovered while studying at Maxwell and working with the World Food Programme.

Sullivan was offered a highly competitive position as associate programme management officer in the U.N. Secretariat’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs. In simple terms, the position provides support to development projects “to enhance the capacities of developing countries” in priority areas, she explains, adding, “It is the right step for me at the right time, and I’m excited to be working in international development and to see how another part of the U.N. system works.”

Bertini, meanwhile, spends some of her time in her hometown of Homer, New York, while also frequenting Chicago, where she serves as a distinguished fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

She retired from Maxwell four years ago, around the

A Vast Network for Humanitarian Experience

The World Food Programme is one of several global humanitarian organizations that have provided internships and, in many cases, career launchpads, for Maxwell students.

Julia (Schulteis) Bernard ’14, interned as a consultant with Unicef’s Corporate Social Responsibility Office in Geneva, Switzerland, while working toward a master of arts in international relations (M.A.I.R.). Integral in helping her secure the position was Werner Schleiffer, who, like Catherine Bertini, enjoyed a career with the World Food Programme before serving as director for Syracuse University’s Geneva Summer Program for seven years.

Bernard is now a partnerships specialist with the organization and has helped cultivate a relationship with Maxwell to create further opportunities for graduate students.

Similarly, alumnus Beau Miller ’10 M.A.I.R. has created a pipeline for students with the humanitarian organization he co-founded, Aythos. One of the beneficiaries is Rachel Penner ’16 M.A.I.R., who joined Aythos as an intern helping in earthquake recovery and relief in Nepal. Penner now serves as Aythos’ U.S. board vice president.

“These capstone projects are a core part of our M.P.A. curriculum. Clients, including NEF, USAID, the Gates Foundation and other organizations report the work produced by the teams is on par with what consultants produce for $10,000 or more.”

Still other global experiential opportunities are fostered by faculty members like John McPeak, professor of public administration and international affairs. He has developed a connection with the Syracuse headquartered humanitarian organization, the Near East Foundation (NEF). Since 2010 he has helped to provide capstone projects for students in the master’s in public administration program.

“Over the years, M.P.A. student teams have worked on different NEF projects,” he says. “The past few years, we have been working with them on Siraj centers, which are training centers to support livelihoods.”

This summer, a team of students is helping the NEF with natural resource management programming in the form of climate smart agriculture, adds McPeak.

“These capstone projects are a core part of our M.P.A. curriculum,” he says. “Clients, including NEF, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Gates Foundation and other organizations report the work produced by the teams is on par with what consultants produce for $10,000 or more.”

What’s more, he says: “The students have expressed enthusiasm for the practical experience and connections they make through these projects.”

—Jessica Youngman

—John McPeak

Emily Fredenberg ’16 M.P.A. (left) is shown with a colleague this past April at a World Food Programme farm cooperative in Eastern Rwanda during the maize harvest season.

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time a fellow World Food Programme alumnus joined the faculty as a professor of practice. Masood Hyder joined public administration and international affairs in 2017 and offers courses on humanitarian action, food security, the U.N. and development aid, no doubt pulling from his experiences providing aid to places like Sudan, Bangladesh, North Korea, Iran, Indonesia and Djibouti.

“Masood brings a depth of field experience, human understanding, and a history of creative and compassionate leadership to his classes,” says Bertini. “We are so fortunate that the WFP legacy continues on the Maxwell faculty.”

Bertini has maintained the Maxwell connection, continuing to teach part-time. A signature class: A week-long intersession in which students get an up-close look at the inner workings of the U.N. in New York City.

World Food Programme:

By The Numbers

97 MILLION

The number of people assisted by the World Food Programme in 2019

15 BILLION

The number of rations delivered every year, at an estimated average cost per ration of 61 cents

This past fall, as the school and the rest of the world grappled with the fallout from COVID-19, Bertini taught online about the U.N. Though virtual and remote learning has its drawbacks, she said she was able to capitalize on the medium by bringing in more outside guest presenters. And she had her students watch the U.N. General Assembly livestream.

Bertini enjoys hearing updates about former students like Sullivan. She takes pride in watching the pipeline she helped nurture: of Maxwell graduates heading out into the world, with the WFP or other humanitarian organizations.

“My retirement package is to sit back and take pride in watching the career successes of so many Maxwell graduates,” she says.

—Includes reporting by Jessica Youngman

5,600

The number of trucks on any given day, delivering food and assistance to those in need.

The trucks are joined by 30 ships and nearly 100 planes

The Nobel Peace Prize: A Lofty Honor

World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the organization in December 2020. The award was “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict­affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.”

17.3 MILLION

The number of school meals provided by the World Food Programme in 2019 to children in 50 countries

Ajello Fellows Map Environmental Impact of Vietnam Power Plants

Valuable data about Vietnam’s electricity grid, including demand trends, air pollution levels and proximity to populated areas, is now available for the public’s use thanks to a research project by international students Nguyen Phan Bao Linh and Yu En Hsu.

Hsu and Nguyen, who received Ajello fellowships to conduct their research and create the Vietnam Power Plants database, hope others will be able to utilize their work. They have published their data on GitHub’s open-access forum. Hsu felt “It would be a public good and everyone can take advantage and benefit from it.”

The project met a need for Nguyen and Hsu. When the pandemic hit, they reached out to their favorite professor for help navigating the uncertainties of finishing the master of public administration program at the Maxwell School. They worried about finding internships required to complete the Data Analytics Certificate and feared having to leave the program.

“They’re both excellent students and that would have been a real loss,” says their professor, economist Peter Wilcoxen, director of the Center for Environmental Policy and Administration and Ajello Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy.

The fellowship funding “gave us the flexibility to quickly put together a project that let them use their unique skills and abilities to create a valuable resource for sustainability researchers worldwide,” says Wilcoxen.

Nguyen and Hsu first assessed the existing grid and then evaluated Vietnam’s plans for future sustainability. Says Nguyen, “During the process, we realized there’s no way for us to assess the grid if we cannot create a master list of operating plants.”

They set out to acquire, translate, verify and consolidate all existing power plant data into a master list. They searched Vietnamese government documents, Google and the World Resource Institute to verify operational power plants. “Then we spent a few weeks translating it from Vietnamese to English, English to Viet-

namese,” says Nguyen. They ensured the data was accurate by cross-checking and verifying coordinates.

When Hsu and Nguyen finished the list of operational power plants, they analyzed the data and saw an increase in electricity from coal and overall electricity use in the past two decades. They made policy recommendations for power plants to be either updated or closed, based on their fuel type, air pollution emissions and proximity to dense population centers.

Hsu and Nguyen are grateful to Wilcoxen and James Ajello ’76 M.P.A., who created the professorship and provides funding for the fellowships. “A very important part of donor sponsored programs is to take away the burden of thinking about money when you are working on a wicked problem that requires you to invest a lot of time,” Nguyen says. “That allowed us to pour ourselves into this project.”

—Chad Chambers

“A very important part of donor sponsored programs is to take away the burden of thinking about money when you are working on a wicked problem that requires you to invest a lot of time. That allowed us to pour ourselves into this project.”

— Nguyen Phan Bao Linh

Students Nguyen Phan Bao Linh and Yu En Hsu have created a power plant database that shows, among other things, air pollution levels and proximities to populated areas.

STEVE SARTORI

An Eye Toward Ethical Workplaces Overseas

Robertson Fellows include Kelli Sunabe, whose interest in the fashion industry has widened.

As an undergraduate at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Kelli Sunabe started off as a fashion design and merchandising major, focusing on affordable fashion and planning eventually to open her own retail shop. But her studies turned her attention toward what happens behind the scenes in the business of fast fashion—the ubiquitous brands sold worldwide—and the factories that produce their products.

“I was learning more about the supply chain and how the fashion industry functions, and I was really bothered by how workers are treated,” she recalls. “I wondered, is this the industry I want to go into anymore? I decided to learn more about what goes into companies’ decision making.”

Sunabe added majors in international business and human resource management. During a summer of field study, she visited companies in Japan, China and Vietnam and saw firsthand the inequities in labor conditions and, after completing her undergraduate studies, she returned to China as a Peace Corps volunteer. The experiences seeded a new aspiration: to pursue a career in international labor policy.

Enter the Maxwell School, where she is now pursuing dual master’s degrees in public administration and international rela-

tions. “Because I’m very interested in government work and in practices abroad,” she says, “this was the perfect fit for me.”

Sunabe is one of four members of the 2020–22 M.P.A./ M.A.I.R. class who come to Maxwell as Robertson Foundation for Government Fellows. Robertson awards, which support top U.S. graduate students pursuing long-term federal government careers in foreign policy, national security and international affairs, are among the most generous and prestigious available to professional graduate students at the Maxwell School. Maxwell has been one of the foundation’s select university partners since 2010.

All Robertson Fellows at Maxwell receive funding for two years of study, covering not only tuition but a living stipend, health insurance and assistance in finding a summer internship. Sunabe and her Maxwell classmate Elizabeth Marin (see right) are co-funded by a gift from Joseph A. Strasser ’53 B.A. (History)/’58 M.P.A. and a matching grant from the foundation.

One year into her program, Sunabe is making the most of her opportunities. This summer, she has a State Department internship through the consulate in Wuhan, China, and she plans to follow with a Boren Fellowship to study Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan for the next academic year.

“My dream is to work for the Bureau of International Labor Affairs for the State Department, which oversees regulations and ensures that American companies treat workers overseas ethically,” says Sunabe. “I’m excited to see what I can do to help.”

ALONG WITH SUNABE, THE FOLLOWING ARE ROBERTSON FELLOWS:

RICKY CIERI is a summa cum laude Syracuse University graduate (2017, who majored in international relations and modern foreign languages) who spent his senior year in Brazil, funded by the NSEP Boren Award. He later worked in Spain as a Fulbright English teaching assistant, and through the U.S. Embassy’s Go American English after-school language program for students from disadvantaged families. He returned to Syracuse to work as an international program advisor and campus advisor for the State Department’s Gilman Scholarship. He hopes to work for the State Department, expanding government-funded programming to support students who wish to live internationally.

Kelli Sunabe is one of four members of the 2020–22 M.P.A./ M.A.I.R. class who join Maxwell as Robertson Foundation for Government Fellows.

EVAN C. JENKINS

ELIZABETH MARIN graduated summa cum laude from Dickinson College in 2018, where she majored in Latin American studies and minored in Portuguese and Brazilian studies. Her family’s ancestry in Mexico fuels Marin’s passion for Latin America, and her interests in collaboration and empowering communities to create sustainable change. She has worked with organizations dedicated to refugee resettlement and emergency services relief for low-income communities of color. As a Princeton in Latin America fellow in Mexico and a Fulbright English teaching assistant in Brazil, she worked alongside educators and other stakeholders in public education. At Maxwell, Marin is exploring her interests in diplomacy, conflict resolution and international collaboration, hoping one day to create and enact just and inclusive education and immigration policy.

KATHERINE MAXWELL is a summa

cum laude graduate of the University of California–Los Angeles (global studies, with minors in gender studies and German). While at UCLA she interned for U.N. Women USA’s Los Angeles chapter and spent a summer studying international organizations in New York City. After college, she taught English via Fulbright Austria; conducted policy research on gender issues for the European Institute for Gender Equality, an EU agency in Lithuania; and supported several federally funded research projects on health disparities among sexual and gender minorities at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. After Maxwell, she plans to focus on gender equity, international cooperation and policy reform in the United States and beyond.

—Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers

Three Maxwell Students Named 2021 Syracuse University Scholars

Three Maxwell students are among the 12 seniors that have been named 2021 Syracuse University Scholars, the highest undergraduate honor the University bestows.

The Syracuse University Scholars Selection Committee chose the 2021 scholars using criteria that included coursework and academic achievement, independent research and creative work, evidence of intellectual growth and/or innovation in their disciplinary field, a personal statement, and faculty letters of recommendation.

KATELYN BAJOREK, an anthropology and history major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School, and a member of the Renée Crown niversity Honors Program

PATRICK LINEHAN, a newspaper and online journalism major in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, a policy studies major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program

SIMRAN MIRCHANDANI, a biochemistry and Spanish language, literature and culture major in the College of Arts and Sciences, an economics major in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School, and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program

Katelyn Bajorek

Patrick Linehan

Student Fellows Research Social Justice Hashtags

Maxwell students Andrea Constant and Abigail Tick are taking part in a research project called “The Social Justice #Hashtag Project: A Digital Humanities Study,” led by Casarae Abdul-Ghani, assistant professor of African American studies.

Constant, a sociology graduate student, is studying the hashtag #SayHerName. She has conducted an extensive literature review of the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as a review of literature focused on the #SayHerName hashtag and the history of Black-led social movements in the United States. She has also researched the criminalization of Black girls and women in the U.S. Her analysis showed an increase in the usage of #SayHerName following the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black 26-year-old EMT who was shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky.

“Since I began collecting this data, I’ve seen the themes and the narratives switch, depending on who is tweeting,” she says. “For example, in the tweets following Breonna Taylor’s killing, people are pleading for justice for her death and

for other Black women. I’ve seen people using the hashtag to highlight the deaths of Black trans women too.”

Tick, a sociology and citizenship and civic engagement major, selected the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport, a platform for survivors of sexual violence to disclose the reasons they chose not to officially report their experience.

She says the hashtag is a way to build a community for survivors, but it also works to destigmatize the language used to talk about rape and other forms of sexual violence. “Social media is a crucial space for victims to generate dialogue as well as find resources. I’m interested in looking at that bridge for victims of sexual violence,” she says.

Constant and Tick are part of a larger group of student researchers working under the direction of Abdul-Ghani, who received a fellowship for the project through the Lender Center for Social Justice housed in the School of Education.

Getting Out the Vote

Gretchen Coleman never backs down from a challenge. So, when the 2021 Truman Scholarship finalist recognized that young voters consistently turn out in lower numbers than older generations, she founded Ballot Z, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to broadening youth voting in her home state of Illinois.

Coleman, a dual major in political philosophy and political science, says her studies, combined with Ballot Z, will help prepare her for a career in election reform. The scholarship is regarded as the nation’s premier award for those pursuing public service leadership. “Many young people don’t vote because they don’t realize how easy it is to do,” she says. “I’ve consolidated election informa-

tion into a single website, providing a one-stop shop for voting in Illinois.”

She is familiar with the myths and misconceptions about voting—that her peers are too busy to register, or that their individual votes don’t matter, or that presidential elections are the only ones that count. “Many people think voting is more complicated than it really is. Ballot Z makes reputable voting information easy to find online,” Coleman continues. “We just need a little push to get our voices heard.”

Coleman creates and uploads content to the internet about election procedures, voting resources and changes in voting laws. She also is a sought-after public speaker, discussing the importance of “getting out the vote” with anyone willing to listen—fellow students, parents, civic groups and reporters.

Explaining that Millennials and members of Gen Z account for 37 percent of the electorate, Coleman says technology shapes the way young voters are registered and mobilized. “It takes less than two minutes to register to vote by phone,” she says. “Making our voices heard by voting is one of the easiest, most effective ways to bring about change. It is a duty and a privilege.”

Learn more about Ballot Z at ballot-z.org.

—Rob Enslin

—Lisa Maresca and Mary Beth Horsington

Andrea Constant

Abigail Tick

JEREMY BRINN JEREMY BRINN

Gretchen Coleman is the founder of Ballot Z, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing turnout among young voters.

JEREMY BRINN

Opportunity Amid Uncertainty

Maxwell welcomes dozens of Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright recipients, evacuated due to the pandemic.

On a Monday morning in March 2020, Jeremy Gonzalez opened his email and learned he was being immediately evacuated from his Peace Corps post in West Timor, Indonesia. Although COVID-19 had prompted travel restrictions around the world, his order to return to the United States was sudden.

“Evacuation was pretty hectic because up until two days before, we were being told that we’d probably be staying,” says Gonzalez, who’d been teaching English and working on community environmental projects. “It was tough, especially when you’re trying to say goodbye to people that you’ve made connections with.”

After Gonzalez arrived back home in Tennessee, it didn’t take long for him to find his bearings. Just a few months later, he was on his way to earning dual degrees from the Maxwell School—a master of public administration and a master of arts in international relations—thanks to a special program for evacuated Peace Corps volunteers and U.S. Fulbright grant recipients.

When Maxwell’s enrollment staff learned of the imminent evacuation of 7,300 Peace Corps volunteers and 2,500 Fulbright grantees in the pandemic’s early weeks, they saw an opportunity to help. Application fees and GRE testing requirements were waived and admitted evacuees were granted scholarships equal to 50 percent of tuition.

All told, Maxwell enrolled 35 Peace Corps and 18 Fulbright evacuees into its M.P.A. and M.A.I.R. programs. The School has extended the waivers and scholarships for former Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright scholars for the coming academic year. The initiative has been a success, says Cory Meyers, Maxwell’s director of enrollment management, “because the Maxwell School and the Peace Corps share a common mission to help make the world a better place for others.”

He adds, “We really see Maxwell as a natural extension to what students were doing in either the Peace Corps or Fulbright.”

Gonzalez had always planned to go to graduate school after the Peace Corps: When he left for Indonesia, he brought a heavy GRE test preparation book. After he was forced to return home, he heard about the opportunity at Maxwell.

“I did some research and found out the prestige of this program and what it offers to alumni,” he says. “I applied to other schools, but Syracuse gave me the best scholarship—and I wanted more of the practical skills that the Maxwell School focuses on.”

Domestically, Gonzalez is concerned with immigration policy. He hopes to one day run for legislative office in his home state, inspired by the legacy of his great grandfather, who was a senator in Cuba before the revolution. On the international side, his focus is on diplomacy in Asia, especially relations with Indonesia. He says a course on security challenges in Asia taught by James Steinberg, former dean and U.S. deputy secretary of state, has been particularly impactful.

“Professor Steinberg has a vast knowledge of Asian politics and Asian international relations,” says Gonzalez. “It’s very valuable to not only hear the theoretical knowledge that he has, but also the skills he has accumulated through many, many years of practice.”

This summer, Gonzalez is studying Bahasa Indonesia—Indonesia’s official language—through the State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship program.

The opportunities in graduate school have built on Gonzalez’s experiences in the Peace Corps and bolstered his interest in foreign service careers. He’s eager to return to Southeast Asia, he says, “to serve this country in whatever way I can, with the new knowledge and skills I have, in an area we are going to have to compete in.”

—Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers with reporting by Chad Chambers

Jeremy Gonzalez is one of 35 Peace Corps volunteers who found a home in Maxwell’s graduate programs after COVID forced a sudden evacuation.

ALISON MAIRENA

Retirement and a New Book

he

On the eve of his retirement this past May, Mark Monmonier, Distinguished Professor of Geography and the Environment, was less inclined to talk about his storied career, focusing instead on a recent project that brought together seemingly all his interests.

The project is his latest book, titled Clock & Compass: How John Byron Plato Gave Farmers a Real Address. Due out in early 2022, it tells the story of its namesake, who attended a pioneer Denver vocational high school, became a farmer in his mid-30s, and patented several inventions including the “Clock System,” which assigned addresses to rural residences without house numbers.

Monmonier searched census records, newspaper archives, city directories and

more to learn about the seldom photographed Plato, who also held a patent for his invention of a braking system for horse-drawn wagons.

“The thing I admire about Plato is that he is one of the few inventors of a patented map-

related invention who actually took it forward to making and selling a product,” says Monmonier, adding, “But getting there was tricky.”

Monmonier’s fascination may be inspired by his roots: His grandfather was an inventor who held patents for things like milk bottle caps. Or, it may be that the Plato story brings together so much of what has made Monmonier a legend in his field and among those who have been fortunate to take his courses at Maxwell. For as much as he is a geographer and cartographer, he is a historian with a gift for storytelling and writing (he says the last part was aided by the three courses he audited at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications).

In April, Monmonier received word that

continued on page 27

BY

As

wrapped up nearly 50 years with Maxwell, Mark Monmonier focused on his latest work, a biography of inventor John Byron Plato.

PHOTO

MARILYN HESLER

Mark Monmonier, shown in the James Library in Eggers Hall, recently wrapped up nearly 50 years with Maxwell. On the eve of his retirement, he was honored with the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award.

continued from page 26

he’d received the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award. It is a well-deserved honor, says Tom Perreault, professor and chair of geography and the environment.

“Professor Monmonier has had a truly extraordinary career,” he says. “During his nearly 50 years at Syracuse University, he has taught thousands of students and advised and mentored an untold number of them. He leaves a legacy of scholarship that is second to none and which extends well beyond the University.”

Monmonier joined the Maxwell faculty in 1973. He authored the first general textbook on computer-assisted cartography (Prentice-Hall, 1982) and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984.

All told, he has authored more than 20 books, including How to Lie with Maps, which in December 2020 was named one of the “eight essential books for geographers” by Geographical Magazine, the National Geographic of the United Kingdom.

Like Plato and his grandfather, Monmonier is regarded as an inventor. What

has become known as the “Monmonier Algorithm”—based on an article he published the same year he joined Maxwell—is an important research tool for geographic studies in linguistics and genetics.

His lengthy curriculum vitae includes editing the million-word, National Science Foundation-supported encyclopedia Cartography in the Twentieth Century (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2015) and publishing papers too numerous to count on everything from map design to automated map analysis to mass communication.

Kristen Patel ’90 Named Gregg Professor of Practice

risten (Kris) Patel ’90, a distinguished alumna of the Maxwell School with more than 25 years of experience leading intelligence and analytics programs in the public and private sectors, is the new Donald P. and Margaret Curry Gregg Professor of Practice in Korean and East Asian Affairs.

Patel returned to Maxwell from HSBC’s Compliance Office in Asia-Pacific, based in Hong Kong, where she built and managed the regional financial crime intelligence capability for one of the world’s largest banks.

In her new role, Patel serves as faculty member in the Policy Studies Program and teaches undergraduate courses in policy studies and graduate courses in public administration and international affairs. In addition, Patel

Kserves as a research associate in Maxwell’s Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration and contributes to Syracuse University’s Intelligence Center Community of Academic Excellence.

“We are thrilled to bring someone with Kris’ deep regional and topical expertise to Maxwell,” says David M. Van Slyke, the School’s dean. “She will contribute significantly to developing collaborative research and teaching initiatives that will be a great asset to faculty and students across programs. We are excited to welcome her back to Maxwell.”

Patel earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and policy studies at Maxwell. She also holds a master’s in economics from Duke University and a certificate in international finance from Georgetown University. Her public sector career also includes more than two decades in increasingly senior management positions in the U.S. federal government.

Monmonier has served on advisory panels for the National Research Council and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has received numerous honors, including the American Geographical Society’s O. M. Miller Medal in 2001 and the German Cartographic Society’s Mercator Medal in 2009. In 2016 he was inducted into the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association’s GIS Hall of Fame.

Says Perreault, “He has made an indelible imprint on the discipline of geography and is arguably the most influential academic cartographer of the past half-century.”

Indeed. Yet, Monmonier, in his preretirement interview, doesn’t mention a quarter of it. He steers the conversation back to Plato, eventually talking about his time as a student at Johns Hopkins University and then, Pennsylvania State University, where he earned a doctorate in 1969.

How does it feel to be wrapping up nearly 50 years with Maxwell? After a pause, he says, “I liked mixing classroom teaching with writing: engaging students in person and readers at a distance.”

—Jessica Youngman

The Gregg Professorship

The professorship was established in 2009 by a generous gift from Korean-American businessman Spencer Kim. It is named in honor of former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg (1989 to 1993) and his wife. Gregg was previously a member of the National Security Council staff and became Vice President George H.W. Bush’s national security advisor. He worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1951 to 1975.

Kristen Patel

“The thing I admire about Plato is that he is one of the few inventors of a patented map­related invention who actually took it forward to making and selling a product. But getting there was tricky.”

—Mark Monmonier

Shana Kushner Gadarian is a 2021 Carnegie Fellow

Shana Kushner Gadarian, professor and chair of political science, has been named a 2021 Carnegie Fellow. As recipients of the so-called “brainy award,” each Carnegie Fellow receives a grant of up to $200,000, making it possible to devote significant time to research, writing and publishing in the humanities and social sciences. The award is for a period of up to two years, and its anticipated result is a book or major study.

Gadarian’s Carnegie-funded project, “Pandemic Politics: How COVID-19 Revealed the Depths of Partisan Polarization,” will investigate the long-term impacts of the pandemic on health behaviors and evaluations of government performance.

“Shana is an impactful scholar whose research is relevant and accessible and informs how policy makers think about a range of decisions,” says David M. Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School. “She is the embodiment of a Maxwell faculty member whose rigorous and high-quality teaching is interdependent with her research and service. Shana is the type of leader and citizen that makes us proud to be her colleague. I’m very excited about this recognition of her work and the continued contributions she’ll make.”

A $53,040 grant from the National Science Foundation funded Gadarian’s research on the politics of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. Her co-authored research paper “Partisanship, Health Behavior, and Policy Attitudes in the Early Stages of the Covid-19 Pandemic” was cited in The New

York Times. Gadarian’s research has additionally been referenced by such major media outlets as the Washington Post, CBS Sunday Morning and ABC News, to name a few.

Gadarian joined the Maxwell faculty in 2011 and serves as senior research associate for the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. She earned a doctorate at Princeton University in 2008.

Her co-authored book Anxious Politics: Democratic Citizenship in a Threatening World (Cambridge University Press, 2015) was awarded the 2016 American Political Science Association Robert E. Lane Award for best book in political psychology.

She has received numerous awards in recent years, including the 2019 Neal Tate Award for best paper in judicial politics at the 2018 Southern Political Science Association annual meeting.

Gadarian is one of 26 distinguished scholars and writers selected as a Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Gardarian is the third Maxwell faculty member to be named a Carnegie Fellow in the past four years.

Jennifer Karas Montez, professor of sociology and the Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar in Aging Studies, received the honor in 2018 and Thomas Keck, professor of political science and the Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics, was honored in 2019.

Jennifer Karas Montez Leads Grant for Center for Aging and Policy Studies

Jennifer Karas Montez, professor of sociology, is the principal investigator for a $1.9 million grant to support the Center for Aging and Policy Studies at the Maxwell School.

The grant was awarded in the summer of 2020 by the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Part of the National Institutes of Health, the NIA awards grants to support 12 centers of innovative research on the demography and economics of aging.

The Center for Aging and Policy Studies (CAPS) is a research consortium that, in addition to Syracuse University, includes Cornell University and the University at Albany.

“We are delighted to receive this grant, as it recognizes CAPS as one of the leading research centers on the demography and economics of aging in the country,” says Montez, who serves as director of the Center, is a Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar in Aging Studies and a faculty affiliate of the Aging Studies Institute and Center for Policy Research. “The cross-site consortium provides exciting opportunities for new collaborations that can improve the health and independence of older adults.”

The center’s objective is to address issues facing middle-age and older adults and the families that care for them. In its first year of funding, CAPS brought together 44 affiliates whose research focuses on the demography and economics of aging, funded four innovative pilot projects, organized a monthly colloquia series, hosted a visiting scholar, offered a grant mentoring program, provided training in big data analyses and partnered with the Syracuse University Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion to disseminate research findings of CAPS affiliates.

In addition to Montez, the center’s leadership team includes Janet Wilmoth, professor and chair of the Sociology Department at Syracuse University; Douglas Wolf, professor of public administration and international affairs and Gerald B. Cramer Professor of Aging Studies at Syracuse University; Kelly Musick, professor and chair of the Policy Analysis and Management Department at Cornell University; and Benjamin Shaw, professor of health policy and management and associate dean for research at the University at Albany.

Shana Kushner Gadarian

Jennifer Karas Montez

Research Reveals Pandemic’s Impact on Vulnerable Population

In late March, a bipartisan congressional group led by U.S. Rep. John Katko (R, NY-24) and U.S. Rep Kathleen Rice (D, NY-4) cited the research of Maxwell School faculty member Scott Landes in its push to expand vaccine eligibility for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and those on the front lines who care for them.

A few months earlier, the same research was referenced in a letter from a group of U.S. senators calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to require states to report COVID data for people with IDD.

Beyond legislative action, Landes’ research generated widespread national media attention on the disparate impact of COVID-19 on people with IDD and resulted in several published studies. His work was conducted with colleagues at SUNY Upstate Medical University and Syracuse University from early April 2020 to the present.

The findings: While people with IDD are among the most impacted by COVID-19, they were underrepresented in state pandemic plans and data reporting. Landes and Maxwell doctoral student Ashley Wong found in one study that people with IDD in California had a 2.8 times higher per-case fatality rate that varied by type of residence and whether skilled nursing care was provided.

Recent Hires

Maraam Dwidar, assistant professor of political science

Dwidar’s research focuses on American national institutions and public policy, with emphases on minority representation, organized interests, and bureaucratic politics. She has published in the Journal of Black Studies and in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics and she was supported by a 2014-2016 Minority Fellowship from the American Political Science Association and a 2014-2018 Malcolm Macdonald Recruitment Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a Ph.D. in government.

A separate study by Landes showed the case-fatality rate was consistently between 1.8 and 2.2 times higher than for the state among people with IDD living in group homes across New York State.

Landes, associate professor of sociology, told PBS NewsHour, “It has not been surprising, on one hand, that states have not prioritized this group, because that’s historically been the case.” On the other, “It’s been disappointing, because the evidence was there pre-pandemic, and the evidence is there now that this group is at higher risk.”

Landes additionally spoke with the Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS News, ABC News, NPR and Newsweek, among other outlets, on the need for better reporting and prioritization of services for people with IDD.

Landes, a faculty associate with Syracuse University’s Aging Studies Institute, tracks health and mortality trends for people with IDD and veterans in the U.S. His work includes the IDD Age at Death Data Tracker, which provides a stark picture of the younger age of death for people with IDD, as well as by disability status, sex and race-ethnicity.

To view the tracker, visit asi.syr.edu/idd-age-at-deathdata-tracker/

Michael John Williams, associate professor of public administration and international affairs Williams previously served as a clinical professor and director of international relations at New York University. He researches international security, with a concentration in 20th-century Europe, and has published on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and issues of war and technology. He is the author of Science, Law and Liberalism in the American Way of War: The Quest for Humanity in Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2014). He has been associated with numerous policy institutes, including the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. He earned a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics & Political Science.

Yael Zeira, associate professor of political science

Zeira was previously an assistant professor of political science and international studies at the University of Mississippi. She examines public opinion and political behavior in authoritarian and conflict settings, with a focus on the Middle East. She wrote The Revolution Within: State Institutions and Unarmed Resistance in Palestine (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and has been published in numerous journals. Her work has been supported by the Project on Middle East Political Science, New York University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received a Ph.D. in politics from New York University.

Scott Landes

New Books

ALAN ALLPORT, professor of history, penned Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War: 1938-1941 (Knopf Doubleday, 2020), the first of two volumes documenting Great Britain history during the early years of WWII. Allport traces Great Britain’s entrance into the war and its tumultuous path to victory.

GEORGE KALLANDER, associate professor of history, authored an introduction and was the first to translate The Diary of 1636: The Second Manchu Invasion of Korea (Columbia University Press, 2020), a 360-page diary, originally recorded by Korean scholar Na Man’gap (1592-1642). Kallander’s introduction sheds light on early Korean society, military and politics.

MADONNA HARRINGTON MEYER, University Professor of Sociology, and alumna Ynesse Abdul-Malak ’13 M.A. (Soc)/’17 Ph.D. (Soc) of Colgate University, co-authored Grandparenting Children with Disabilities (Springer, 2020), which examines issues facing grandparents who care for children with disabilities, including risks to their physical and financial well-being. The book uses cumulative inequality theory to assess the link between the number of social programs in the U.S. and the growing need for grandparents to care for children with disabilities.

ELISABETH LASCH­QUINN, professor of history, authored Ars Vitae: The Fate of Inwardness and the Return of the Ancient Arts of Living (Notre Dame Press, 2020), which challenges consumer culture as a means to happiness and well-being with ancient, alternative Greco-Roman philosophies including Cynicism, Platonism, Gnosticism, Stoicism and Epicureanism. The book uses a variety of films, popular culture, manuals and scholarly works to juxtapose America’s consumerism to ancient, philosophical ways of living.

LAMIS ABDELAATY, assistant professor of political science, penned Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2020), examining the complex dimensions of refugee policy in relation to state sovereignty and human rights in refugee receiving countries. The book demonstrates that refugee affairs are frequently re-directed to the United Nations when refugees are not the ethnic kin of rival states.

JUNKO TAKEDA, professor of history and Daicoff Faculty Scholar, authored Iran and a French Empire of Trade, 1700-1808: The Other Persian Letters (Oxford University Press, 2020). It explores how early 18th-century trans-imperial trade between France and Persia worsened tensions between India, Russia, Turkey and Persia, and the effects of climate change and resource security in these regions. The book uses a macro lens to detail underexplored relations between 18th-century Asian politics and France.

CHRISTOPHER FARICY, associate professor of political science, and Bucknell University Professor Christopher Ellis penned The Other Side of the Coin: Public Opinion toward Social Tax Expenditures (Russell Sage Foundation, 2020), comparing U.S. economic expansion in 2019 to the Gilded Age where record low unemployment was accompanied by a higher wage gap. The book illustrates that Americans prefer indirect government assistance, such as tax subsidies because direct government intervention, such as Medicare for All, is perceived as “big government” overreach.

Alan Allport

Lamis Abdelaaty

George Kallander

Junko Takeda

Madonna Harrington Meyer

Christopher Faricy

Elisabeth LaschQuinn

Staying Connected in Unconventional Times

Dear alumni and friends,

We at Maxwell are hopeful for a fall semester that allows us to finally come back together for some in-person events. Like many of you, I miss the programs, receptions and networking events that bring together members of our alumni family to share their experiences at and since Maxwell.

While we haven’t been able to see each other in person over this past year-plus, we have remained connected. Maxwell has hosted nearly two dozen virtual forums that, by my best count, drew over 2,400 guests from 43 countries and 47 U.S. states, territories and the District of Columbia. These and most other virtual events held since the spring of 2020 are available online for anytime viewing. Visit maxwell. syr.edu/public-affairs-forums to check out our library of fully captioned and accessible recordings.

One memorable “faculty Q&A”—informally dubbed “Meet the Jamies”—featured a conversation between Jamie Winders, professor of geography and the environment and director of Syracuse University’s Autonomous Systems Policy Institute, and Jamie Baker, professor of law and director of the University’s Institute for Security Policy and Law.

Last fall, during the University’s virtual Orange Central weekend, we hosted a discussion that revisited women’s history at Maxwell. Carol Faulkner, associate dean and professor of history, led the conversation with Kristi Andersen, professor emeritus, and student Kyaira Coffin. A few months later, we marked International Women’s Day with an alumni panel led by Kristen Patel ’90 B.A. (Econ/PSt), Donald P. and Margaret Curry Gregg Professor of Practice in Korean and East Asian Affairs. Kristen was joined by three distinguished alumnae working internationally: Nuria Esparch ’00 M.A. (PA), Shiro Gnanaselvam ’93 M.P.A. and Jacquie WilliamsBridgers ’77 B.A. (UrSt)/’78 M.P.A.

We also held a virtual panel discussion exploring issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. The event was moderated by history Professor Gladys McCormick, who is leading a schoolwide plan to address racism, biases and structures that affect the underrepresented. Alumni who shared their experiences include Wesley Dias ’74 B.A. (PSc), Lisa Y. Gordon ’90 M.P.A., Kishauna Soljour ’16 M.A. (Hist)/’19 Ph.D. (Hist) and James Willie ’98 M.P.A.

For information on upcoming events, be sure to check out maxwell.syr.edu/ alumni. There are other ways to connect with Maxwell. Send a note to maxalum@ syr.edu (or visit maxwell.syr.edu/updateform) to let us know about promotions, career changes and other professional accomplishments. Also, consider a virtual visit to Maxwell to meet with students—there are many options available, from classroom visits to career talks offered by the Palmer Career Center. To learn more about these opportunities, reach out to maxalum@syr.edu.

While all of us at Maxwell look forward to a time when we can safely come together face-to-face, we’re grateful for the technology and interest that has fueled our virtual event series and allowed us to connect online with so many of you.

Stay in touch and be well,

Jessica Murray Director of Alumni Relations

SUBMIT YOUR CLASS NOTE

Online: maxwell.syr.edu/perspective

Email: maxalum@syr.edu

Post Office: 200 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244

KEY TO DEGREES

Alumni are designated by year of graduation, degree level, and (in parentheses) discipline—for example: Joan Smith ’87 M.A. (Soc). A few of the degree abbreviations indicate both level and discipline, such as M.P.A. and M.S.Sc. Alumni with more than one degree from Maxwell are listed under the year of the latest degree.

AmSt American Studies

Anth Anthropology

CCE Citizenship and Civic Engagement

ESP Environment, Sustainability and Policy

E.M.I.R. Executive Master of International Relations

E.M.P.A. Executive Master of Public Administration

DFH Documentary Film and History

Econ Economics

Geog Geography

Hist History

IR International Relations

J.D. Law

LAS Latin American Studies

M.A.I.R. Master of Arts, International Relations

M.A.I.R./

M.S.P.R. International Relations/ Public Relations (dual)

M.P.D.G.

Comm. Master of Public Diplomacy and Global Communication

MES Middle Eastern Studies

M.P.A. Master of Public Administration

M.P.A./

M.A.I.R. Joint M.P.A. and M.A.I.R.

M.P.H. Master of Public Health

M.Phil. Master of Philosophy

M.R.P. Master of Regional Planning

M.S.Sc. Master of Social Science

PA Public Administration

PPhil Political Philosophy

PSt Policy Studies

PSc Political Science

RusSt Russian Studies

Soc Sociology

SPsy Social Psychology

SSc Social Science

UrSt Urban Studies

Jessica Murray

Class Notes

50s

Roma Stibravy ’54 B.A. (IR/PSt) is president of NGO Sustainability, a nonprofit organization that consults with the United Nations. Stibravy previously served as expert consultant for the United Nations.

60s

Marilyn D. Shaw ’68 M.P.A. retired from practicing energy law at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld LLP in Washington, D.C. She currently serves as co-president of the Garden Club of Madison in Madison, N.J.

70s

Harvey Strum ’70 B.A. (IR)/’76 M.P.A./’78 Ph.D. (Hist) earned the Russell Sage College’s Susan Warren Beatty Faculty Award for Excellence in Research for 2019-20 and the Sherman David Spector Professor in Humanities in 2020-21.

Edward Marshall ’71 M.P.A. authored Leadership’s 4th Evolution: Collaboration for the 21st Century (Cognella Academic Publishing), which covers a wide range of critical business challenges from Microsoft IT upgrades to DuPont implementing change in their information systems. Marshall is currently serving as adjunct professor in management at Fuqua School of Business and Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University.

John Beadles ’75 Ph.D. (SSc) authored Stained with Blood and Tears: Lynchings, Murder, and Mob Violence in Cairo, Illinois, 19091910 (Saluki Publishing). Beadles’ book describes the horror of mob lynching during the Jim Crow era.

Stephen Coffin ’77 M.P.A. published Higher Education’s Looming Collapse: Using New Ways of Doing Business and Social Justice to Avoid Bankruptcy (Rowman and Littlefield) in January 2021. Coffin also earned a Ph.D. in education, finance and economics from Rutgers Graduate School of Education.

John Kazanjian ’77 B.A. (AmSt) is senior vice president and branch manager of Raymond James Financial in El Paso, Texas. Kazanjian also serves as a registered arbitrator for the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Patricia Mills ’78 B.A. (Soc) is vice dean of teaching and innovation at the University of Southern California (USC) Marshall School of Business. She is also a professor and academic director for the Jennifer and James R. Parks Master of Business Tax Program at the USC Leventhal School of Accounting.

Charles Zorn ’79 M.A. (Econ)/’81 Ph.D. (Econ) is vice provost for undergraduate education at Indiana University Bloomington.

80s

Pamela Fessler ’80 M.A.I.R. published Carville’s Cure: Leprosy, Stigma, and the Fight for Justice (Liversight) in July 2020. It tells how leprosy patients in the U.S. were treated as if they were inmates for much of the 20th century.

Carol Gifford­Bloom ’81 M.A. (PSc) is a community relations specialist for Lancaster (Pa.) VisionCorps and Manheim Township (Pa.) commissioner.

Mahboob Khawaja ’81 M.A. (PSc)/’00 Ph.D. (SSc) is vice president of academic and strategic planning at Ummah Global Planning and Development in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. In 2020, Khawaja authored One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution (Lambert Academic Publishing), sharing his thoughts about how the world might one day achieve global peace and prosperity.

Frank DelVecchio ’82 M.P.A. is senior vice president for public finance at the Boston, Mass. office of Roosevelt & Cross, a municipal securities firm.

Rebecca Riehm ’83 M.A. (Soc) retired from Jefferson Community College (JCC) in Watertown, N.Y., after 30 years of teaching. In retirement, Riehm will serve on JCC’s Affirmative Action Committee, diversity working group and on faculty search committees.

Marc Albrecht ’84 M.A. (PSc)/ M.P.A. is deputy director of grants and contracts management in the civil practice with the Legal Aid Society. He previously served 34 years at New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Anthony Bullett ’84 M.P.A. led efforts to adopt a non-discrimination ordinance in 2019 in Huntingdon, Pa., making it Pennsylvania’s first rural community and 59th municipality to adopt such an ordinance.

Katie Lichtig ’84 M.P.A. retired from her position as assistant city manager and chief operating officer for the city of Santa Monica (Calif.) in 2020. She previously served as city manager for Malibu and San Luis Obispo in Calif.

Michael Moore ’84 B.A. (PSc) is Blackbaud’s first diversity and inclusion officer. Prior to joining Blackbaud he was CEO of the International African American Museum in Charleston, S.C. Norma Riccucci ’84 Ph.D. (PA) is a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University in Newark, N.J. In 2020, she earned the William Duncombe Excellence in Doctoral Education Award for her work advising doctoral students at Rutgers. In 2021, the Midwest Political Science Association named Riccucci recipient of the Herbert Simon Award for her contribution to the scientific study of bureaucracy.

Robert Moses ’85 B.A. (Econ) is lead senior helpdesk coordinator at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). He previously served as lead senior technical support specialist for the AFL-CIO.

Stephen Brownell ’87 J.D./M.P.A. is executive vice president and general counsel at MP2 Energy LLC, a Shell Energy North America Subsidiary. He previously served as vice president and general counsel for LifeEnergy in Houston, Texas.

Richard Madaleno ’87 B.A. (Hist/ RusSt)/’89 M.P.A. is the administrative officer for Montgomery County, Md. He previously served as the county’s budget director.

Mark Weiller ’89 B.A. (IR) is partner and head of distribution and product management at Stone Harbor Investment Partners in New York City. He previously served as managing director and head of production development and distribution for New Sparta Asset management in London.

90s

Amir Hamzah Azizan ’90 B.S. (Econ) is executive officer of Employees Provident Fund in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Amir previously served as president and CEO of Tenaga Nasional Berhad in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Me’Shae Brooks­Rolling ’90 M.P.A. has been named Upstate Minority Economic Alliance’s new executive director in Syracuse. She also owns and operates an EventPrep Inc. franchise which specializes in planning and management for corporate and government clients.

Steven Mitchell ’90 B.A. (Econ) is a financial advisor at Procyon Partners in Shelton, Conn.

C. Kevin Blackstone ’91 M.P.A. is ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste. He previously served as minister counselor for management of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt.

DeChane Dorsey ’91 B.A. (PSc) has been named executive director of AdvaMed Accel, a division which specializes in helping smaller start-ups with medical technology development. Dorsey previously served as vice president of payment and healthcare delivery policy for AdvaMed.

Michele Likens ’91 M.P.A. is program manager of bioinformatics for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF). She is currently working on launching MMRF’s CureCloud, a cloud service that hosts next generation cell-free DNA analyses for at-home patients.

Melaine Rottkamp ’91 B.A. (PSc) is a certified destination management executive and president and CEO of Dutchess Tourism, Inc. in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. She was previously vice president for Dutchess Tourism and was promoted to her current position in July 2020.

Julie Caperton ’92 B.A. (Hist) is Wells Fargo’s wealth and investment management head for wealth client solutions. In 2020, Caperton was named a new member of the board of directors for Asian and Pacific Island Scholars.

Daniel Martindale ’92 B.A. (PSc) is regional vice president of the Capital Region South (WarrenWashington-Albany) of the Arc, New York, the largest service provider for those intellectually and developmentally disabled. He also serves on the Board of Governors of the Arc, New York, representing Warren, Washington and Albany counties.

Nicholas Paradiso ’92 B.A. (PSc) is vice president of government relations for National Heritage Academies and was recently appointed to Michigan’s Student Recovery Advisory Council.

Kenneth Pontarelli ’92 B.S. (Econ) is managing director for Goldman Sachs’ merchant banking division and is leading a team focused on investing in sustainable green energy. He previously served as founder and chief investment officer for Mission Drive Capital Partners LLC in New York City.

Scott Rayder ’92 M.P.A. is executive director of the Alabama Water Institute for the University of Alabama.

Shiro Gnanaselvam ’93 M.P.A. was named chief executive officer of Social Impact, a global development consulting firm in Arlington, Va. Gnanaselvam was previously chief operating officer and executive vice president at Social Impact.

Eric Heighberger ’93 B.A. (IR) is policy director and subcommittee director for the committee on homeland security in the U.S. House of Representatives. He previously served as chief of staff for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Sarah Lee ’93 M.P.A. is chief executive officer of Think Dutchess Alliance for Business, a business development and support organization for Dutchess County, N.Y. She also serves on the New York State Economic Development Council board and chairs its annual conference.

Timothy Maniccia ’93 M.P.A. is chief fiscal officer and treasurer at Hudson River-Black River Regulating District in Albany, N.Y. He previously served as chief of staff in the Office of the Chair for the Albany County legislature.

LEADING A FOOD BANK THROUGH THE STORM

While a a student at the Maxwell School, Julia Tedesco ’08 M.P.A. never would have imagined that her future career would be heading an agency aimed at alleviating hunger.

Foodlink’s longtime director, the late Tom Ferraro, saw her talent. Shortly after she graduated, he created a position for her in the Rochester, New York-based food bank, which serves a 10-county region. The agency’s primary mission: delivering food to the region’s needy through food pantries and other organizations.

When COVID-19 hit in March 2020, many lost jobs and schools closed, limiting income and youngsters’ access to food. Tedesco says the agency needed to respond—and fast.

A growing number of people didn’t have enough to eat. “We had to pivot very quickly,” she says. “We had to focus on emergency food. It was a critical test. We had to redeploy staff. But we’re an organization prepared for disaster.”

Among the most pressing needs: helping to ensure Rochester city school children had enough to eat. While the district distributed breakfasts and lunches for students now studying from home, Foodlink made sure children got meals after hours—prepared in Foodlink’s 35,000-square-foot kitchen, where, among other things, they train people to work in the food industry.

They delivered the meals any way they could—through recreation centers, daycares and directly to city neighborhoods. Since March 2020 they have given out nearly one million snacks and meals.

Partnering with public and private organizations, Foodlink also safely supplied food boxes for the drive-through distributions in the region, delivering 26.6 million pounds of food in 585 events. In all, 174,000 households, including shut-ins, were served.

“We changed everything to meet people where they are,” Tedesco says.

While Tedesco didn’t set out to become a CEO of a food bank, the work feels right, and that was driven home by what she experienced with her dedicated staff during the pandemic. “I do feel like it was meant to be,” she says.

— Steve Buchiere

Julia Tedesco ’08 M.P.A.

Alexandria Valerio ’93 M.P.A. is resident representative for the World Bank in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. She previously served as lead economist for the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

Lynda Barrow ’94 M.A. (PSc)/’98

Ph.D. (PSc) authored Religion & Politics on the World Stage: An IR Approach (Lynne Rienner Publishers), analyzing the junction of religion and world politics. To understand the world around us, Barrow explains, we must first understand how religious ideologies shape our politics.

Nancy Bell ’94 J.D./M.A.I.R./’96

Ph.D. (PSc) is director of regulatory affairs and associate general counsel for Rivian in Washington, D.C. She previously served as policy counsel for Automated Driving and Internet of Things at Intel Corporation in Washington, D.C

Stephanie Pasquale ’94 B.A. (PSt)/’97 M.P.A. was appointed to Onondaga County’s board of directors for the Syracuse-based Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency.

Peter Anastor ’95 M.P.A. is the new director of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s Office of Rail.

Tunc Berkman ’95 B.A. (Econ) is a partner at TBS Investment and Management Co. He previously served as a freelance marketing and advertising consultant at Divera AI.

Susan Gooden ’95 M.A. (PSc)/’96 Ph.D. (PSc) was named dean of the Virginia Commonwealth University L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs. Gooden previously served as interim dean at the Wilder School since May 2018.

Holly Hurlburt ’95 M.A. (Hist)/ ’00 Ph.D. (Hist) is assistant dean and executive director of academic enrichments programming at North Carolina State University.

Joyjit Roy ’95 M.P.A. is executive vice president of global programs at Winrock International. He previously served as vice president at ACDI/VOCA, providing operational support across the organization to improve project workflows.

John Powers ’96 J.D./M.P.A. was inducted as a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is currently a partner at Hancock Estabrook, LLP.

Robert Henke ’97 M.P.A. served as chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense at the U.S. Department of Defense from December 2019 to January 2020. He previously served as staff director on the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee.

Jay Silveria ’97 M.S.Sc. is executive director at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He previously served as lieutenant general for the U. S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Jason Sisney ’97 M.P.A. is budgetdirector for the California State Assembly Speaker’s Office.

Danita Nias ’99 M.S.Sc. is the new president and chief executive officer for the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin counties in Fla. She previously served as vice president for Florida Atlantic University.

NOURISHMENT FOR A COMMUNITY IN NEED

Heather Rounds ’16 B.A. (MES/CCE) co­owns Roots Cafe in Brooklyn, N.Y., with her sister and brother­in­law, fellow Syracuse University alumni Patricia ’07 and Gareth ’06 Manwaring. When the pandemic swept through, they turned Roots into a food pantry and soup kitchen for those in need. During COVID’s peak in the spring of 2020, the trio helped serve up to 200 free meals each week. “Heather was such an integral part of the mission,” her sister says. “She ran the cafe and provided free soup and sandwiches to people unable to pay for food, managed the food pantry and helped to train volunteers, coordinated deliveries and delivered food to families in need. She spent time talking on the phone with a few of the people we brought deliveries to that were just alone and scared and needed someone to talk to.” Heather is shown above with her niece and nephew, Winona and Harrison.

Stacy Reinstein ’99 B.A. (IR/PSt) is a freelance strategic consultant for communications and policy. She previously worked as a senior policy analyst for Arizona’s State Supreme Court.

Raymond Went ’99 B.A. (PSt) is an attorney at Nehmad Perillo and Goldstein, P.C. Went previously served as president of the Atlantic County Bar Association from 2019-20.

00s

Benjamin Clark ’00 M.P.A. is co-executive director for the Institute for Policy Research and Engagement at the University of Oregon. The institute partners with nonprofit organizations to engage with the public.

Mark Cohen ’00 B.A. (Soc) works on special projects for the U.S. Department of State, where he previously served as medical director.

Nuria Esparch ’00 M.P.A. is a Peruvian lawyer who has been serving as the country’s Defense Minister since November 2020.

Chris Constantin ’01 M.P.A. is the city manager of Dimas, Calif. He previously served as assistant city manager for the city of Chico, Calif.

Peter Fusco ’01 B.A. (Geog) is assistant principal at Lakeshore Elementary School (Iredell-Statesville Schools) in North Carolina.

Katherine Vasquez ’01 M.P.A. is director of planning and advisory services for solid waste at RRT Design & Construction in Melville, N.Y.

Jennifer Callaway ’02 J.D./M.P.A. is town manager for Truckee, Calif. She previously served as the finance director and acting Public Works director and public information officer for the city of Morro Bay (Calif.).

David Gaulin ’02 B.A. (Hist/ PSc)/’07 M.S.Sc. is senior director of cyber operations at BluVector, a Comcast company. He is also a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

Tracey Gray ’02 M.P.A. is vice president of communications and external affairs at Raytheon Intelligence and Space. She was previously vice president of communications and public affairs at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems.

David Levinthal ’02 B.A. (PPhil) is senior Washington correspondent for Business Insider. He previously served as editor-at-large at the Center for Public Integrity.

Anupama Rajaraman ’02 M.P.A. is mission director in Guatemala for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She previously served as a deputy coordinator for the USAID Transformation.

Jonathan Schwabish ’02 M.A. (Econ)/’03 Ph.D. (Econ) authored Better Data Visualizations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks (Columbia University Press), a modern guide for data visualization. He is also the founder of PolicyViz, a consulting firm that helps improve workflow.

Caroline Cohran­McClain ’03

M.P.A. has been named vice president of government affairs and policy at the National Rural Health Association.

Lisa Hoeschele ’03 M.A. (PA) serves on the Stakeholder Steering Committee that guides the process to merge the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and the New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports into a single state agency, the Office of Addiction and Mental Health Services.

Andrew Schwab ’03 B.A. (Hist/ PSt) is director of policy, federal affairs and partnerships at United States of Care, a nonprofit working to better American’s access to healthcare services.

Jeremy Ames ’04 M.P.A. is director of the division of communications in the Office of Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He previously served as chief of communication services staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Paul Arras ’04 B.A. (Hist)/’11 M.A. (Hist)/’16 Ph.D. (Hist) authored Seinfeld: A Cultural History (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers). The book is part of a series called The Cultural History of Television and discusses the history of the cast, NBC and the creators.

Rachel Brashier ’04 B.A. (PSt) is deputy chief of staff for Los Angeles City councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson (District 8) overseeing legislative affairs, strategy, communications and intergovernmental relations. Brashier previously served as policy director for the city of Los Angeles.

Kate Farrar ’04 M.P.A. is State Representative, 20th District, in Conn. She previously served as executive director for Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund in Hartford, Conn.

Gregory Laurence ’04 M.A.I.R. was promoted to professor of management at the School of Management at the University of Michigan-Flint. He was also promoted to director of graduate studies for the Center of Japanese Studies at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor.

Kazumasa Mise ’04 B.S. (Econ) is chief executive officer and member of the board of directors at Rakuten Trade.

Jane Nicholson ’04 B.A. (Geog/ IR)/’13 M.P.A. was selected to be part of Next City Vanguard’s cohort for 2020. Next City is a journalistic nonprofit; the Vanguard program specializes in crafting innovative responses to global development challenges at the community level.

Timothy Rudd ’04 B.A. (PSc)/’07 M.P.A. was appointed by Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh as director to lead the city’s Office of Management and Budget. There, Rudd will serve a vital role in planning for the city budget and its six-year capital improvement plan.

Daniel Ralley ’04 J.D./M.P.A. is first assistant city manager and director of community development for Hilliard, Ohio. He previously served as assistant city manager for the city of Upper Arlington, Ohio.

Adriano Udani ’04 M.P.A. is an associate professor of political science at the University of Missouri, St. Louis and director of the Public Policy Administration Program. He also serves as a research advisor for the Community Innovation and Actions Center, the university’s applied and community-partnership based research center.

Austin Vance ’05 B.A. (Hist) was named chief operating officer to Amcham Finland’s board of directors, a transatlantic business focused on ensuring Finland has a thriving economy.

Robert Vickers ’05 M.A.I.R. is the new associate vice president for leadership communications at the University of Rochester in New York.

Jason Yaley ’05 B.A. (PSc/IR)/’06 M.P.A. is interim chief management officer at Advanced Concepts and Technologies International, LLC in Arlington, Va. He previously served as advisor for INDAIS in San Francisco, Calif. and has held a variety of leadership positions in national security and the aerospace industry.

Emily Sundman ’06 B.A. (Hist) joined Texas Tech School of Veterinary Medicine in Amarillo as an assistant professor of veterinary medicine. Sundman, a doctor of veterinary medicine graduate from Cornell, previously served as associate director of clinical development for KindredBio in Weatherford, Texas.

CHRIS SNOW ’03 RAISES AWARENESS AMID ALS BATTLE

Maxwell alumnus Chris Snow ’03 B.A. (PSt), shown with his wife, Kelsie, and their two children, was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in 2019 and given 12 to 18 months to live, but thanks to an experimental gene therapy, he has made great strides against this disease that has no cure. He recently spoke with fellow alumnus John Boccacino ’20 E.M.P.A. on the ’Cuse Conversations alumni podcast. Snow talked about how he maintains a positive outlook, his family’s efforts to raise awareness and funding to support research, his career transition from sports journalist to front office executive and why he bleeds Orange. To tune in, check out ’Cuse Conversations on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts. The podcast is offered by SU’s Office of Alumni Engagement, where Boccacino is a communications specialist.

A POWERFUL VOICE FOR JUSTICE: MAZAHER KAILA ’19

Well before she knew exactly what a lawyer was, Mazaher Kaila ’19 B.A. (PSc) knew she wanted to be one. “I might have first gotten the idea from my sister,” she confesses. “But I knew, even when I was in fourth or fifth grade, that lawyers had a voice and the power to make change. That appealed to me.”

Kaila is now a second-year student in the College of Law. She moved with her family from Sudan to Central New York when she was 4 and quickly developed an understanding of certain challenges she’d face. “I’m Black, female, an immigrant and Muslim. That puts me pretty much at the lowest level when it comes to social advantage and privilege,” she says. But, she explains, this understanding also fueled her ambitions. “Civic engagement is a core value for me. I have always aspired to help the communities I’m from.”

Kaila is not waiting until she graduates law school to assume the role of advocate and changemaker. She serves as president of the Black Law Students Association and is leading efforts to help the University administration address issues of diversity and inclusion on multiple fronts, including in admissions practices and in the establishment of a resource center at the College of Law.

Growing up, Kaila loved art, played several sports and was curious about technology and engineering. But by the time she transferred to the University as a sophomore, she had discovered political science and knew she wanted to learn more. “I realized that to make meaningful change in society, I needed to understand the systems that power it—government and politics—and that’s insight I would gain by studying political science.”

—Sarah H. Griffin

Michael Scherger ’07 M.P.A. is director of the national training center for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. He previously served as division chief for the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C.

Colin Seale ’07 M.P.A. is author of Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Framework to Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students (Prufrock Press), which challenges students to think critically about law.

Ashish Upadhyaya ’07 M.P.A. serves as additional secretary and financial advisor for India’s government ministry of power division.

Steven Watson ’07 M.P.A. was promoted from deputy budget director to deputy chief financial officer and budget director for the city of Detroit.

Mohammad Mahmodi ’08 E.M.P.A./’09 M.A.I.R. is a research fellow at Yale Law School. He previously served as an independent attorney, and executive director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Christian Lee ’08 M.P.A. retired as a captain from the U.S. Coast Guard after 23 years of service and joined Cornerstone Government Affairs, where he serves as principal on the homeland and national security group.

Alok Srivastava ’08 M.P.A. is principal secretary to the state government of Punjab, India. He previously served as permanent representative of India for the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, Canada.

Abraham Awolich ’09 M.P.A. authored The Economic Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Sudan, discussing Sudan’s struggle to manage COVID-19, both in the private and public sector.

Matthew Duncan ’09 M.A.I.R. is director of intelligence of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center at North American Electric Reliability Corp. He previously served as program manager for the U.S. Department of Energy’s State/Local/Tribal/Territorial Energy Assurance.

10s

Matthew Daskal ’10 M.P.A. is assistant town manager for Plainville, Conn. He previously served as town manager for Westminster, Vt. Lauren Day ’10 M.A.I.R./M.S.P.R. was reappointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to the Texas Crime Stoppers Council, which certifies and funds local crime stopper programs throughout the state. Day’s term ends in September 2024.

Sayed Zaman Hasemi ’10 E.M.P.A. is chief executive officer at Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Investment. He previously served as general director for the legal department for the Ministry of Justice of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Changyong Choi ’11 Ph.D. (SSc) was promoted to full professor at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management at Korea Development Institute in Namsejong-ro, Sejong-si Korea.

Justin Cole ’11 B.A. (Econ/PSt/ PSc) is a presidential innovation fellow for the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services. Cole will serve for one year with the U.S. government, assisting new companies and introducing new technologies for rapid growth.

Sabithulla Khan ’11 M.P.A./ M.A.I.R. authored Islamic Education in the United States and the Evolution of Muslim Nonprofit Institutions (Edward Elgar Pub), earning the Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Book Prize awarded by the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action. Khan is a program director and assistant professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Kelly Baug ’12 B.A. (PSt) was promoted to deputy film commissioner in July 2020 for Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade in Denver, Colo.

Read the full article via the SU News website, Syracuse.edu/stories

Curtis Eatman ’09 B.A. (PSc)/’11 M.P.A. is transitioning from finance director to acting economic development director for the town of Hamden, Conn.

Benjamin Albert ’13 M.A.I.R. is director of corporate partnerships at Save the Children U.S. in Washington, D.C. Albert previously served as associate director for strategic partnerships at KABOOM.

Brent Johnson ’13 M.P.A. is deputy director of advance and operations for the second gentleman at the White House, Douglas Emhoff. Johnson previously served in the Office of Legislative Affairs for the Biden-Harris transition team.

Chinenye Monde­Anumihe ’13

B.A. (IR) is a government and regulatory relations manager at FMDQ Group in Lagos, Nigeria. She previously worked as an independent consultant at CLM Consulting with a focus on fundraising for World Economic Forum events and developing business proposals for small and medium size enterprises.

Corina Rebegea ’13 M.P.A. is the Center for European Policy Analysis director for democratic resilience. She plays a leadership role as she works toward programming future democratic governance and combatting disinformation.

Alexandra Curtis ’14 B.A. (PSc) is a second lieutenant in public affairs for Rhode Island’s National Guard. Curtis previously interned for two congressional offices in Rhode Island and Florida and was named Miss Rhode Island in 2015.

Joseph Hanna ’14 M.P.A. is a partner at Goldberg Segalla in Buffalo, N.Y. Hanna was recently elected to serve a three-year term on the board of directors of the Business Council of New York State.

Diana Pearl ’14 B.A. (Hist) is associate editor for business of fashion and managing editor of Brandsweek. She previously served as a writer and reporter at People magazine.

Claire Rupert ’14 B.A. (IR) is a disclosure policy analyst for the United States Navy International Programs Office for the Disclosure Policy and Technology Transfer Division. She previously served as senior consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton in Arlington, Va.

Oleg Tofilat ’14 E.M.P.A. is an advisor to the Republic of Moldova’s prime minister. Tofilat’s focus as advisor is centered on transportation and infrastructure.

James Jarvis­Thiébault ’15 M.P.A. is a research analyst at the Canadian Space Agency’s Division of Economic Research and Analysis in Montreal, Quebec. He previously worked at PYXERA Global in Washington, D.C.

Victoria Savage Kreiger ’15 B.A. (IR/PSt) is vice president at Goldman Sachs Prime Brokerage. She previously worked as a due diligence analyst at Stroz Friedberg in New York City.

Ashlee Newman ’15 B.A. (PSt/ PSc) is an associate at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP in New York City. Newman earned a juris doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.

Ivan Zhivkov ’15 B.A. (Hist/ IR)/’16 M.A.I.R. is vice consul for the U.S. Department of State in Moscow, Russia. He previously served as vice consul in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

Elizabeth Cole ’16 M.S.Sc. joined the board of trustees for the Cortland Free Library in Cortland, N.Y.

Sarah Davis ’16 M.P.A. is executive director for the Seneca County Industrial Development Agency in Seneca County, N.Y. She previously served as a program coordinator for CenterState CEO.

Youssef El Ayachi ’16 M.A.I.R./’19 M.P.A. is chief executive officer for Africa Bright Asset Management in Douala, Cameroon. El Ayachi was previously a board member for the firm and was adjunct professor at Emlyon Business School in France from June 2018 to August 2020.

Virginia Giannini ’16 B.A. (IR) passed the New York State Bar exam after completing a juris doctor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She is now providing legal advice to immigrants at the New York City Immigration Court.

Rebecca Maifeld ’16 B.A. (IR) is a program operations specialist at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance in the Africa Division in Washington, D.C. She previously worked as an emergency personnel and operations specialist for USAID’s Office of Food for Peace as the personnel unit lead.

Elise Roberts ’16 M.A. (PSc) is a policy research analyst at Booz Allen Hamilton and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Maxwell School. She previously served as a research and practice associate at the Syracuse University Institute for Security Policy and Law (formerly the Institute of National Security and Counterterrorism).

Charlene Cordero ’17 M.P.A./ M.A.I.R. is senior policy advisor for public safety to New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Cordero was recognized by the 2020 Latino National Security and Foreign Policy Next Generation Leaders for her work in intelligence, security and policy.

Claudia Delgado ’17 B.A. (IR) completed a juris doctor degree with honors at George Washington University School of Law. Delgado also earned the Gold President’s Volunteer Service Award for pro bono work with The Nature Conservancy.

Jamie Takashai ’17 B.A. (Econ) is a 1st lieutenant for the New YorkArmy National Guard and is executive officer for the 719th Composite Truck Co. Takashai recently joined the Paramus (N.J.) Police Department as an officer.

Oloruntobi Dare ’18 B.A. (IR) completed the master of public health degree in global health program design, monitoring and evaluation at George Washington University in May 2020. Dare currently serves as a COVID-19 case investigator for Ajilon.

Elissa Gibbs ’18 M.S.Sc. is chief of staff at Armoured One, which trains school faculty and staff on how to respond to an active shooter or other crisis situation.

Caitlin Harrison ’18 B.A. (IR) is a program analyst for the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for the Middle East. She previously served as program analyst for U.Group, supporting the U.S. Department of Defenses’ Office of Industrial Policy.

Andres Laguna Martino ’18 B.A. (IR) completed a master’s degree in political and corporate communications at the University of Navarra in Spain. Laguna Martino designed a one-year communication strategy for the Citizens Party of Spain.

Kevin Porter ’18 B.A. (PSc) accepted a job with the office of Congressman Kurt Schrader for Oregon’s 5th congressional district. Abdulaziz Al­Sulaiti ’19 B.A. (Econ/PSt/PPhil) is special advisor for the United Nations.

Colby Cyrus ’19 M.A.I.R. is program services coordinator at Interfaith Works of Central New York. He previously served as a fundraising development intern for the Near East Foundation in Syracuse.

Dina Eldawy ’19 B.A. (CCE/IR) is Syracuse University’s second recipient of the Marshall Scholarship. In the United Kingdom, Eldawy is working toward a master’s in migration and global development at the University of Sussex and a MSc in comparative and international education at the University of Oxford.

Katherine Ferguson ’19 E.M.P.A. was named chief of staff for the Office of the Secretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). She previously served as chief of staff for the White House Domestic Policy Council and as chief of staff for rural development at USDA during the Obama administration.

Sophie Katz ’19 B.A. (PSt) is clinical excellence and innovation coordinator at the Community Health Care Association in New York City. When the pandemic hit, Katz pivoted to a role that directly supported New York State’s COVID-19 pandemic relief efforts at the community level, mainly the planning, logistics and distribution of vaccines.

Kaitlyn Menegio­Stahl ’19 B.A. (IR) is a pathways intern with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the 2020-21 academic year. She is also interning at UNICEF as a graduate student consultant and is currently working toward her master of international affairs at Columbia University in New York City.

20s

Ashley Denney ’20 B.A. (IR) is serving in the AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America program in the New York City Department of Education. She focuses on education for children’s afterschool programs and coordinates partnerships with donors to sponsor grant programs.

David Schwegman ’20 Ph.D. (PA) joined American University’s Department of Public Administration and Policy as an assistant professor in Washington, D.C., in 2020. Schwegman’s research interests hinge on state and local social policy and public finance management.

Donald Meinig, Renowned Geographer

Donald W. Meinig, a renowned figure in the field of cultural and historical geography who was a full-time member of the Maxwell faculty from 1959 until his retirement in 2004, died on June 13, 2020 at the age of 95.

Meinig, professor of geography, chaired the department from 1968 to 1973. He was the doctoral advisor to more than 20 graduate students.

He authored four volumes of The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, published by Yale University Press. It provides a comprehensive perspective on the geographical development of the nation from Columbus’s arrival through 2000.

Additional published works include The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography, 1805-1910 (University of Washington Press, 1968), Imperial Texas: An Interpretive Essay in Cultural Geography (University of Texas Press, 1969), and Southwest: Three Peoples in Geographical Change, 1600-1970 (Oxford University Press, 1971). In the 1980s, a series of thematic regional maps he developed were distributed to more than 10 million subscribers of National Geographic magazine.

Meinig was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Presidential Achievement Award, the highest honor given by the Association of American Geographers. He had been a Fulbright Scholar, a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a fellow of the British Academy, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Meinig was a veteran of the U.S. Army. He received his Ph.D. in 1953 from the University of Washington. He taught at the University of Utah before joining the Maxwell School faculty.

John Burdick, Anthropologist and Advocate

John Burdick, a professor of anthropology in the Maxwell School and College of Arts and Sciences for nearly 30 years, died of cancer on July 4, 2020 at age 61.

He served as chair of the Department of Anthropology from 2012 to 2017; served as associate director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts (now PARCC); and he co-founded and led the Syracuse Social Movements initiative for 11 years.

Burdick worked on different projects in Brazil over the past three decades and reached people around the globe through his books on race, religion, gender and politics in Brazil, including Looking for God in Brazil: The Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil’s Religious Arena (University of California Press, 1993); Blessed Anastácia: Women, Race and Popular Christianity in Brazil (Taylor and Francis, 1998); Legacies of Liberation: The Progressive Catholic Church in Brazil at the Start of a New Millennium (Taylor and Francis, 2004); and The Color of Sound: Race, Religion and Music in Brazil (New York University Press, 2013). He received Fulbright-Hayes awards for research in Brazil in 1995 and 2004.

Burdick was committed to furthering peace and social justice, particularly on Syracuse’s West Side. He worked with the Westside Residents Coalition, advocating for thoughtful, equitable and community-led betterment. He was a key player in the creation of Gifford Street Community Press, providing West Side residents a platform to express their concerns about gentrification, police conduct and disability rights. He was also a longtime member of the Syracuse Peace Council.

In addition, Burdick served on the University Senate and on many other committees. He was honored with the William Wasserstrom Prize for Outstanding Graduate Teaching, the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence, the Service Through Peace Award and the Chancellor’s Inspire Award.

Sid Lerner ’53, Benefactor of Maxwell’s Lerner Center

Sidney “Sid” Lerner ’53, alumnus of Syracuse University and benefactor of the Maxwell School’s Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion, died on Jan. 12 at age 90.

During his career, the legendary advertising executive represented such well-known brands as Maxwell House and Texaco, and created memorable campaigns including “Please Don’t Squeeze the Charmin” featuring Mr. Whipple. Lerner later applied his expertise in advertising and promotion toward improving public health, and in the early 2000s founded the Monday Campaigns—a nonprofit health promotion organization that promotes sustainable behavior change by dedicating every Monday to making positive changes to improve health. In conjunction with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and the Maxwell School, the campaign has grown in the past decade to encompass numerous wellness initiatives.

In 2011, Lerner and his wife Helaine, an environmental activist and philanthropist, joined the Maxwell School to create the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion. The Center is dedicated to improving population and community health through research, outreach and education focused on the social, spatial and structural determinants of physical, mental and behavioral health.

Over the past several years, the Lerner Center has launched numerous health promotion programs and community partnerships, including the Monday Mile and DeStress for Success, and conducted timely research on pressing population health issues, including the opioid crisis and COVID-19.

Robert J. Wolfson, Outspoken Economist

Robert J. Wolfson, professor emeritus of economics, died on April 4, 2020 in Riverdale, New York from COVID. He was a member of the Maxwell School faculty from 1966 through his retirement in 1993.

After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Wolfson married Betty (Bunes) Wolfson in 1954 while completing his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.

According to his children, he relished the opportunity afforded him as a faculty member to speak out more freely than he could in the private sector, where he had worked previously. He was elected to the Faculty Senate virtually upon arrival.

In 1970, after the Ohio National Guard killed four students at Kent State University, SU students occupied the administration building, barricading the doors. Wolfson and psychology professor George Stern acted as mediators. They were hoisted up to enter through a window and speak with protesters. They then left, also via the window, and conveyed the protesters’ demands to the administration. After a few rounds of this, they came back to the students with some concessions, and the occupation ended.

Wolfson took teaching seriously. He never recycled old lecture notes, preferring instead to rewrite them each time he taught the course. “Wolfson teaches economics with a flourish,” declared a student publication that reviewed teaching and courses universitywide.

His lengthy publication record includes A Formal Lexicon for the Social Sciences (Florida Atlantic University Press, 1990), which sought to pioneer lucid ways of understanding social sciences by unifying their terminology.

Ali Khalif Galaydh ’69, Former Prime Minister of Somalia

Ali Khalif Galaydh ’69 M.P.A. /’72 Ph.D. (PA) died Oct. 8, 2020 in Jijiga, Ethopia. Khalif Galaydh was both a student and faculty member at the Maxwell School. He attended Syracuse University from 1967-72. He went on to lead Somalia’s Institute for Public Administration before returning to Syracuse University to teach public administration and international relations at the Maxwell School from 1989 to 1996. Khalif Galaydh later served as Prime Minister of Somalia from September 2000 to December 2001. In September 2001, Khalif Galaydh played a key role in Somalia’s diplomacy with the U.S. government in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Sheldon J. Horowitch, M.D.

Longtime Maxwell School donor and Maxwell Advisory Board member Sheldon J. Horowitch, M.D., died June 28, 2020. “Shelly,” as he was known to family and friends, was a physician-turned-businessman and strong supporter of Syracuse University. He and his wife, Sheila ’54, helped provide initial funding for the Maxwell School’s respected Community Geography Program and generously funded the North American Indian Art Project. Additional support through the Horowitch Family Foundation Endowed Scholarship each year assists Native American students attending SU.

Horowitch enlisted in the Navy during World War II, while attending Hamilton College. After graduating from Hamilton and SUNY Upstate Medical University, he interned at Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago and was a resident at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. During medical school, he met the love of his life and constant companion, Sheila Sporn, then an undergraduate at the University. They were married in New York City in June 1954 and had three children. Horowitch started a medical practice in Syracuse and continued in private practice for over 25 years, specializing in internal medicine with a sub-specialty in hematology. In 1974, he became the president of the Morris Distributing Co., a wholesale electronics and appliance distribution company that was founded by his father. He later founded Morris Management Co. and spent the rest of his career owning and managing residential and commercial real estate.

Also Greatly Missed

Since our last edition, the following deaths have been reported:

Carolyn Meyer Woolf ’43 M.P.A.

Betsy Howe Stafford ’45 M.P.A.

Helen Brown Flack ’46 B.A. (PSc)

Jean O’Brien Francis ’46 B.A. (PSc)

Doris Schwartz Tanger ’46 B.A. (Soc)

Samuel Brundage ’48 B.A. (PSc)

Denis Goldson ’48 M.P.A.

Elisha Freedman ’49 B.A. (PSc)/’55 M.P.A.

Melvin Margulis ’49 B.A. (Soc)

Elizabeth Van Anden Portman ’49 B.A. (Geog)

Eleanor Theodore ’49 B.A. (PSc)

Bette Birnbaum Harris ’50 B.A. (Soc)

Gordon Litwin ’50 B.A. (SSc)

Shirley Johnson Marelli ’50 B.A. (Soc)

Gabriel Renzi ’50 B.A. (Geog)/’53 M.A. (Geog)

Harvey Sladkus ’50 B.A. (PSc)

William Gilbert ’51 B.A. (PSc)

Catherine Chiquoine Jaccodine ’51 B.A. (Soc)

Phyllis Klein Rohrlich ’51 B.A. (PA)

Ruth Hallowell Singleton ’51 M.P.A.

John Uhrlaub ’51 M.P.A.

Kenneth Allen ’52 B.A. (PSc)

Floyd Brennan ’52 B.A. (RusSt)

Paul Dalrymple ’52 M.A. (Geog)

Virginia Rich Fortmiller ’52 B.A. (LAS)

John Barrows ’53 M.P.A.

James DeCesare ’53 B.A. (Econ)

Edward Ruoff ’53 M.A. (Hist)

Benjamin Walter ’53 M.P.A.

Eleanor Worster Canale ’54 B.A. (Soc)

Spencer Gaines ’54 B.A. (PSc)

Peter Linder ’54 M.A. (Geog)

Thomas McCarthy ’54 B.A. (PSc)

Corinne Beecher Yancey ’54 B.A. (Soc)

Franklin Booth ’55 B.A. (Econ)

Edward Delehanty ’55 B.A. (Hist)

Gregg Doherty ’55 B.A. (PSc)

Paul Ginnelly ’55 B.A. (PSc)

Barbara Streicher Lambert ’55 B.A. (Soc)

Richard Cancilla ’56 B.A. (Soc)

Donald Fredrickson ’56 B.A. (AmSt)

Marjorie Smerling Goldbaum ’56 B.A. (PSc)

John Noonan ’56 M.P.A.

Stanley Katz ’56 M.A. (Econ)

Thomas Kirby ’56 B.A. (Hist)

Thomas Richardson ’56 B.A. (Hist)

John Fendrock ’57 M.A. (Econ)

Thomas Martin ’57 B.A. (Soc)

Frank Vecchione ’57 B.A. (PSc)

John Yancey ’57 B.A. (IR)

Bodonna Kass ’59 B.A. (PSc)

Betty Chenault Leidal ’59 B.A. (Soc)

Richard Morton ’59 B.A. (Hist)

Robert Piper ’59 M.A. (PSc)/’65 Ph.D. (PSc)

Albert Schneider ’59 B.A. (Geog)

William Sokol ’59 B.A. (PSc)

John Beach ’60 B.A. (Econ)/’65 M.P.A.

Richard Heyde ’60 B.A. (Geog)

Michael Sheehan ’60 M.P.A.

Edward Trubac ’60 M.A. (Econ)/ ’65 Ph.D. (Econ)

Peter Decker ’61 M.S.Sc.

Pauline Grenis ’62 B.A. (Soc Studies Ed)

Sverre Haug ’62 M.P.A.

Gordon McKay ’62 M.P.A.

Laurie Gordon Zeh ’62 B.A. (PSc)

Russell Farnen ’60 M.S.Sc./’63 Ph.D. (SPsy)

Merrill Lamb ’63 B.A. (PSc)

John Manley ’63 M.A. (PSc)/’67 Ph.D. (PSc)

William Scharf ’63 M.P.A.

Barbara Gilbert ’64 B.A. (PSc)

Mary Ruth Thier Klimow ’65 B.A. (PSc)

Richard Kuzmack ’65 B.A. (Econ)

Richard Paul ’65 M.P.A.

Joyce Cohen Peterside ’65 B.A. (PSc)

Margaret Wickes ’65 M.A. (Anth)/’73 Ph.D. (Anth)

Charles Heinz ’66 M.P.A.

Michael Chateauneuf ’67 M.P.A.

Sandra Hafer Friedman ’67 B.A. (PSc)

Floyd Little ’67 B.A. (Hist)

E. Phillip McKain ’67 B.A. (PSc)

Stephen Meszaros ’67 B.A. (Geog)

Thomas Castellano ’68 M.S.Sc.

Brian Fox ’68 B.A. (Hist)

Robert Mann ’68 B.A. (Econ)

Davida Zullow ’68 B.A. (Soc)

Alan More ’69 B.A. (Geog)

William Cahill ’69 M.A. (Hist)

Ali Galaydh ’69 M.P.A./’72 Ph.D. (PA)

Harold McGuffin ’69 M.A. (PA)/’73 M.P.A.

Gary Pickard ’69 B.A. (PSc)

Roslyn Faust Gerard ’70 Ph.D. (Soc)

Kevin Gottlieb ’70 Ph.D. (SSc)

James McIntosh ’70 Ph.D. (Soc)

James Randolph ’70 M.P.A.

Robert Wechman ’70 Ph.D. (SSc)

Bruce Johnson ’71 M.A. (Geog)

James Reynolds ’71 B.A. (Hist)/ ’73 M.A. (Hist)

Ira Silverman ’71 B.A. (PSc)

David Storrs ’71 M.P.A.

Jonathan Davis ’72 M.A. (Soc)

George McMillan ’72 M.A. (PA)/’73 M.P.A.

Josephine Bell Patton ’72 M.P.A.

David Wihry ’72 Ph.D. (Econ)

Richard Brychcy ’73 B.A. (PSc)

Margaret Shelly Hunt ’73 B.A. (PSc)

Thomas Pease ’73 B.A. (PSc)

Harriet Leeds ’74 B.A. (PSc)

Thomas Murphy ’74 B.A. (Hist)/’75 M.P.A

Ronald Green ’75 B.A. (Hist)

Frank Diassi ’76 B.A. (Econ)

Christopher Jamison ’76 B.A. (Hist)

Barbara Settel ’76 M.A. (Hist)

Ernest Gustman ’77 M.A. (PA)/’78 M.P.A.

Larry McMillen ’77 B.A. (Econ)

Ann Sullivan Altmeyer ’78 M.P.A./ ’82 Ph.D. (PA)

David Beatty ’78 M.A. (Econ)/ ’83 Ph.D. (Anth)

Ilene Frisch ’78 M.P.A.

Caroline Schermerhorn Gannett ’79 B.A. (PSc)

Douglas Hojnacki ’79 M.P.A.

Wendy Silvershein Leeds ’79 B.A. (Soc)

Andrew Finnie ’80 B.A. (Hist)

Frederick Turner ’80 M.P.A.

Bruce Harlan ’82 M.P.A.

David Garwood ’83 B.A. (IR)

Varrick Osborne ’84 B.A. (IR)

Lewis Sebia ’84 M.P.A.

Edward Heler ’85 M.Phil./’85 Ph.D. (SSc)

Ranjana Madhusudhan ’86 M.A. (Econ)/ ’92 Ph.D. (Econ)

Jack Pappalardo ’86 M.P.A.

Louise Kauffman Sira ’90 B.A. (PSc)

Eizens Silins ’91 Ph.D. (PSc)

Gil-Antonio Cunha ’93 B.A. (PSc)

Karen Brick Werthan ’93 B.A. (Econ)

Irina Vasiliev ’96 Ph.D. (Geog)

Stephanie Webber Brewer ’98 B.A. (Nonviolent Conflict & Change)

Michael Wicks ’00 M.P.A.

Barbara Rumrill Dahn ’02 B.A. (Anth)

Bree Frank ’04 M.P.A.

Robert Hunter ’04 M.A. (PA)

John Mushat ’05 B.A. (PSt)

Evan Weissman ’12 Ph.D. (Geog)

Amanda Jeanty ’18 B.A. (Hist)

James Mironti ’18 B.A. (Econ)

Maxwell School Advisory Board

B. Ben Baldanza ’84 B.A. Former CEO, Spirit Airlines

Carol Becker ’76 B.A. Owner, William Greenberg Desserts

Andrew T. Berlin* ’83 B.A. Chairman and CEO (ret.), Berlin Packaging

Stephen Brodsky ’93 B.A. Chief Strategy Officer, R.J. O’Brien & Associates

John H. Chapple* ’75 B.A./’11 Hon. President, Hawkeye Investments LLC

Nicole Collier ’00 M.P.A. Director of Policy and Public Affairs, Nestlé

Cathy Daicoff ’79 M.P.A., Vice Chair, Maxwell Advisory Board Managing Director (ret.), S&P Global

Mary Daly ’94 Ph.D./’19 Hon. President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Reserve Bank –San Francisco

Wesley C. Dias ’74 B.A. CEO, Argosy Consulting Group LLC

Felipe Estefan ’10 M.A.I.R./M.S.P.R. Investment Director & Head of Washington, D.C. Office, Luminate

Amma Felix ’95 B.A./’01 M.P.A. President and CEO, Collegiate Directions, Inc.

Kelly Flannery ’00 B.A. Chief Financial Officer, City of Charlotte (N.C.)

Javier Font ’92 M.P.A. Founder and Executive Vice President, Intelligence & Public Affairs

Michael G. Fox ’95 B.A. Co-Founder, BSTEVR Inc.

Lisa Y. Gordon ’90 M.P.A. President and CEO, Atlanta Habitat for Humanity

Stephen Hagerty ’91 B.S./ ’93 M.P.A.

President, Hagerty Consulting Inc.

Allegra Ivey ’99 M.P.A. Managing Director, Global Banking & Markets, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Anjali Joseph ’19 M.P.A. Senior Policy Analyst, New York City Mayor’s Office of Operations

David Kelso ’68 B.A. Vice Chairman of Private Banking (ret.), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Erik Larson ’83 B.A. Managing Director, Management Committee Member and Global Head for Quantitative Methodologies and Analytics, Promontory, an IBM Company

Travis Mason ’06 B.A. Operating Partner, Seven Seven Six

Christopher Meek ’92 B.A./’18 E.M.P.A.

Senior Director of Global Relationship Management, S&P Global; Director/Chair, Soldier Strong, Inc.

Ronald P. O’Hanley III* ’80 B.A. Chair, Maxwell Advisory Board Chairman and CEO, State Street Corporation

John Palmer University Professor and Dean Emeritus, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

Kristen Patel ’90 B.A.

Donald P. and Margaret Curry

Gregg Professor of Practice in Korean and East Asian Affairs at the Maxwell School

Nancy Jacobson Penn ’94 B.A. Founder and CEO, No Labels

Howard G. Phanstiel* ’70

B.A./’71 M.P.A.

Chairman and CEO, Phanstiel Enterprises LLC

H. Lewis Rapaport ’59 B.A. CEO, Component Assembly Systems, Inc.

Jeffrey Scruggs*

Managing Director, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Aysha Seedat ’16 B.A. Analyst, Fitch Ratings

Donna E. Shalala ’70

M.S.Sc./’70 Ph.D./’87 LLD Trustee Professor of Political Science, University of Miami

Nate Shanok ’98 B.S. Managing Director, Tishman Speyer

Elizabeth Stearns Chair, The Judy Fund

David Sulek ’88 B.A. Senior Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.

W. Lynn Tanner ’75 Ph.D. Founder and Executive Chairman, TEC Canada

Richard L. Thompson* ’67 M.A./ ’15 Hon. Senior Counsel, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP

Brian White ’02 M.P.A. Partner, DBO Partners

Debra Whitman ’97 Ph.D. Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer, AARP

Susan Willie ’99 M.P.A. Chief, Public and Private Mandates, Congressional Budget Office

Steve Zimba ’86 B.A./’87 M.P.A. Co-Founder and CEO, Nulia

HONORARY MEMBERS

Alwaleed bin Talal bin

AbdulAziz Alsaud ’85 M.S.Sc./’99 LLD Founder and President, Kingdom Holding Co.

Molly Corbett Broad ’62 B.A./’09 Hon. President (ret.), American Council on Education

Samuel V. Goekjian ’52 B.A. Chairman & CEO (ret.), Intracon Associates LLC

Susan C.V. Penny* ’70 B.A. Private Investment Consultant

Joseph A. Strasser ’53 B.A./ ’58 M.P.A./’20 Hon. CFO (ret.), City of Jacksonville (Fla.)

*Syracuse University Trustee

HOW CAN YOU MAKE YOUR MARK?

3 WAYS TO GIVE

GIVE TO THE DEAN’S FUND: Start or deepen your commitment to philanthropy with an annual gift of any size.

MAKE A BEQUEST: Did you know that your planned gift counts toward the current campaign goals? Help Maxwell by speaking with our team about updating your estate plan today.

TRANSFER AN ASSET: Gifts of real estate, securities, personal property or retirement plan assets may benefit the Maxwell School and you through charitable deductions and minimizing capital gains tax.

LEARN MORE ABOUT GIVING options and priorities by visiting maxwell.syr.edu/giving/ or contact Laine Norton at 315.443.1053 or by email at elnorton@syr.edu.