Forum Network

With the experience Mike Ross gained solving complex problems and bringing disparate parties together as a legislator, he now brings to his practice as an attorney where he focuses on real estate, strategic advice, and government relations. Mike served for 14 years as a Boston City Councilor, as well as serving as the President of the body. In 2013 he entered the race for mayor, sharing a bold vision for the city’s future. As an elected official he championed the opening of elementary schools in underserved neighborhoods and recently celebrated the announcement of the opening of a new downtown school - the first since the Carter administration. He brought physical education to area schools and focused on creating innovative job training models. His efforts revitalize the Boston Common and launch Food Trucks by borrowing ideas from other cities, have helped to move Boston forward. Ross represented District 8 on the Boston City Council, including Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway, and Mission Hill and some of Boston's greatest institutions and landmarks: Fenway Park, the Longwood Medical Area and Massachusetts General Hospital, the Museum of Fine Arts and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and a number of our city's finest academic institutions. World-renowned public spaces like the Boston Common, the Public Garden, the Esplanade, and Frederick Law Olmstead's historic Emerald Necklace are also in the district. Ross spearheaded the effort to turn the Boston Common into America's greatest park. As Chair of the Special Committee on Boston Common, Mike led the effort to bring more activity to the Boston Common, through improved programming efforts, as well as creating a restaurant and other eateries like the ones in a number of New York City's parks to draw tourists and residents alike to the Common. Mike has a long history of utilizing technology to make city government more accessible for residents. Prior to his election to the Council, Mike was part of a team that developed Boston's first Website. The site received the "Best of the Web" award for municipalities by Government Technology Magazine. As Councilor, Mike wrote for Boston magazine's blog, Boston Daily, as well as contributing to Blue Mass Group. He believes that there is a strong role that technology and the internet can play in making government better, more open, and more accessible.

Lillian Santiago is the Operational Manager of Bauza Associates, LLC and has assisted in the development of the multi-cultural readiness program for numerous businesses in the United States. Lillian, a recognized leader for her expertise in marketing to the Hispanic community has also dedicated her time, both professional and personal to the well being of others. For over ten years she was responsible for the direction and success of several non-profit organizations. She also devoted over four years of her time as an elected official a City Council Member for the City of Holyoke, Massachusetts, and has served as board member of the Care Center in Massachusetts, the Womens Fund of Western MA and the National Conference for Community and Justice. Lillian has presented and been interviewed by various entities for her knowledge in both womens issues and public health. She earned her M.Ed. in Education and counseling from Cambridge College in Boston and her B.S. in Psychology and Public Administration from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico.

President Bassett has published books on authors such as William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and William Dean Howells, (as well as others.) In a sense, President Bassett believes the taxonomy of "English major" has become less and less descriptive, the term itself denotes study in a wide variety of disciplines. The term "literature" has not held a large position on college campuses until the last hundred years. "English" as a discipline plays the roles now that departments of Theology, or Classics might have played at one time. He believes that a college would be greatly impoverished if literature departments did not remain "central players" in universities. He believes the study of literature can teach us the nature of human experience just as history may teach us the nature of human experience. He believes a realization of this interconnectedness would be a desirable end.

Jack Donovan Foley was the developer of many sound effect techniques used in film making. He worked on the pictures such as *Melody of Love*, *Show Boat* (1929), *Dat Ol' Ribber*, *Spartacus*, and *Pink Submarine*. He is attributed with inventing the art of Foley, which is the process of adding sound effects such as footsteps and environmental sounds to films. His crucial founding role in the development of Foley is documented in the 2009 book *The Foley Grail*.

Becky Wai-Ling Packard is interested in the intersection of motivation, identity, and mentoring. Packard's research focuses on the mentoring of women pursuing science and technology careers; the aspirations and mentoring of urban ethnic minority low-income adolescents, especially in science and technology; and understanding complex pathways toward higher education. She has designed mentoring programs in the context of her courses featuring partnerships between Mount Holyoke students and area youth from nearby Holyoke and Springfield. She received the Volunteer of the Year Award from Girls Inc., Holyoke. Packard's work is supported by the National Science Foundation's CAREER program. In June 2005, she went to the White House to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government upon early career scientists. Packard's numerous scholarly articles have been published in such journals as *Career Development Quarterly*, *Mentoring and Tutoring*, *Journal of Career Development*, *Journal of College Science Teaching*, *Advancing Women in Leadership*, and *Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy*.

Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard, and was until recently the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has served as President of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM. Sen's books have been translated into more than 30 languages. Among the awards that Sen has received are the "Bharat Ratna" (the highest civilian honour in India); the Senator Giovanni Agnelli International Prize in Ethics; the Edinburgh Medal; the Brazilian Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Gra-Cruz); the Eisenhower Medal; Honorary Companion of Honour (U.K.); The George C. Marshall Award; and the Nobel Prize in Economics. Photo courtesy of Jesus de Miguel.

Lincoln C. Chen is the Director of the Global Equity Center at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Before arriving at Harvard, he served as the Executive Vice President for Strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. In addition to providing strategic guidance for Rockefeller's worldwide programs in food, health, work, culture, and global policies, Dr. Chen also served as a member of the Board of Trustees Committee on Future Strategies and chairs or directs programs in global philanthropy, such as the Program Venture Experiment and the Bellagio Committee. For a decade before joining the Rockefeller Foundation in January 1997, Dr. Chen was the Director of the University-wide Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and the Taro Takemi Professor of International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. From 1981 - 1987, Dr. Chen was the Representative of the Ford Foundation in India, and in 1973 - 1980, he worked for the Ford Foundation both on its staff and seconded as Scientific Director of the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh. Dr. Chen has more than 100 publications on world social development, especially in health, population, and food and nutrition.

Christine Southworth, through her work with robots and automated music systems as co-founder and Director of Ensemble Robot, is making groundbreaking music based on the interaction between science, technology and creativity. Employing sounds from man and nature, from Van de Graaff Generator to honeybees, Balinese gamelan to seizmic data from volcanos, Southworth is introducing a brand new genre of music to Boston, born out of the areas complex community of scientists and artists. Southworth received a B.S. from MIT in 2002 in mathematics and music and M.A. in Computer Music & Multimedia Composition from Brown University in 2006. She composes for Western ensembles, Balinese gamelan, and mixed ensembles of gamelan, western instruments, electronics, and robots. Her compositions draw from her interests in modern American and European music, jazz, Balinese music, and rock and roll, and have received awards and recognition from the LEF Foundation, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), the MIT Eloranta Fellowship, and Bang on a Can. Her music has been played throughout the U.S., Europe, and Indonesia by ensembles including Gamelan Galak Tika, the Calder Quartet, and Ensemble Robot.

Composer/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn is a founding member of the Bang on a Can All-stars (Musical America's 2005 Ensemble of the Year), with whom he has toured the globe since 1992. He redefined the clarinet with his 2001 solo CD, *This Is Not A Clarinet*, which made numerous Top Ten lists across America. His music provided the soundtrack for the PBS film *Tail-enders*, and his playing was featured in Tan Dun's soundtrack for the film *Fallen*. He has also recorded with Paul Simon, Matthew Shipp, and Ethel. He received a Fulbright in 1987, and in 1990 began composing an ongoing series of groundbreaking cross-cultural works, combining gamelan with saxophones, guitars, electronics, Chinese and African instruments, and full orchestra. His fusion opera, "Shadow Bang," a collaboration with master Balinese dalang Wayan Wija, was the centerpiece of the 2006 Amsterdam GrachtenFest; his works have also been featured at festivals in London, New York, and the Sydney Olympics. He is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has two children. He is currently working on a opera based on the life of Colin McPhee, to be premiered in Bali with the All-stars in June 2009.

Walter Richard West, Jr. was the founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, retiring in 2007. He is also a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma and a Peace Chief of the Southern Cheyenne. His professional life has been devoted to serving the American Indian community on cultural, artistic, educational, legal and governmental issues. Richard West earned a bachelor of arts degree in American History, graduating magna cum laude in 1965 and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Redlands in California. He also received a master's degree in American History from Harvard University in 1968. West graduated from the Stanford University School of Law with a doctor of jurisprudence degree in 1971, where he also was the recipient of the Hilmer Oehlmann Jr. Prize for excellence in legal writing and served as an editor and note editor of the *Stanford Law Review*.

Mary Kelley helps organizations, cities and towns with strategic planning and project design/implementation. She brings years of professional experience in leadership positions in the performing arts in New York City and New England including eleven years as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency supporting cultural organizations, artists and schools in the Commonwealth. Mary previously served as the founding Executive Director of The Music Hall in Portsmouth NH; Director of Marketing and General Manager of The Big Apple Circus; and Production Associate at Warner Theatre Productions which produced or co produced 22 Broadway and off-Broadway productions. For Tom Field Associates, Mary created the Westbeth Theatre Center in New York from the old Bell Sound Laboratories on Bank Street in New York. From incorporation of the Center to hiring the theatre architect and designer, she oversaw the operations of this Off-Off Broadway theatre complex during its formative years. She was General Manager at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and ETC Theatre Company. She also served as New York State Director of Hands Across America, a project of USA for Africa and managed the South American tour of EVITA.