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  • Helen Norton joined the Colorado Law faculty in 2007, after earlier serving as a visiting professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and as the E. George Rudolph Distinguished Visiting Chair at the University of Wyoming College of Law. Recognized with the 2008 and 2009 Excellence in Teaching Awards, her scholarly and teaching interests include constitutional law, civil rights, and employment discrimination law. She holds a J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, where she served as Associate Editor of the California Law Review, and a B.A. from Stanford University, where she graduated with distinction. She served as leader of President-elect Obama’s transition team charged with reviewing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2008, and is frequently invited to testify before Congress on civil rights law and policy issues. Before entering academia, she served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice, where she managed the Civil Rights Division’s Employment Litigation, Educational Opportunities, and Coordination and Review Sections, and as Director of Legal and Public Policy at the National Partnership for Women & Families, where she practiced appellate litigation and engaged in administrative and legislative advocacy on a range of employment and civil rights matters.
  • Michael has experience in every facet of production. He began his career as a camera operator, then director and producer for public television stations. He moved into management at CNN in the 1980's as director of operations of the Washington bureau and then as Vice President and General Manager of CNN NewsStand. He was also the Vice President of Production for Turner Original Productions.
  • Dr. Elliott H. King is an art historian and leading specialist in the work of Spanish artist Salvador Dali (1904-1989). A Colorado native educated at the University of Essex and the Courtauld Institute of Art, he has lectured widely on Dali's work at museums and universities throughout the world. He is presently a Lecturer in European Modern Art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the University of Denver, and also guest curator of Dali: The Late Work, a major exhibition currently on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia until January 2011.
  • Jared Duval is a Fellow at Demos, a New York based think tank where he is helping to build a first-of-its-kind fellowship program for young authors. He was the National Director of the Sierra Student Coalition, the national student chapter of the Sierra Club and the largest student environmental organization in America. A recipient of the David Brower Youth Award and the Morris K. Udall and Harry S. Truman scholarships, he graduated Summa Cum Laude from Wheaton College in Massachusetts in 2005. A Trustee of the Orton Family Foundation, Jared is a tenth-generation Vermonter.
  • Robert Kaplan has taught mathematics to people from six to sixty, at leading independent schools and most recently at Harvard University. He is the author of the best-selling *The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero*, which has been translated into 10 languages, and with his wife, Ellen Kaplan, he wrote* The Art of the Infinite*.
  • Susan Clark-Johnson became Executive Director of Morrison Institute for Public Policy in May 2009. She retired as President of the Gannett Newspaper Division in May 2008 after 41 years in a variety of news and executive leadership roles with the company. Gannett is a large diversified news and information company with headquarters in McLean, VA., and operations in 41 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong and Singapore. It is the USA’s largest newspaper group in terms of circulation. The company’s 85 daily newspapers in the USA have a combined circulation of about 4 million. The Newspaper Division, which also includes about 80 websites and about 1000 weekly newspapers, shoppers and magazines, is the largest division of the Gannett Company. Prior to being named Gannett Newspaper Division President, Clark-Johnson was Chairman and CEO of Phoenix Newspapers, Inc. as well as Senior Group President of Gannett's Pacific Newspaper Group with oversight responsibility for thirty-two companies throughout the West, including Hawaii and Guam. During her newspaper career she worked in Niagara Falls, N.Y., Binghamton, N.Y. and Reno, NV. In addition to her role as newspaper executive for Gannett, she also served a term as Chairwoman of the Newspaper Association of America. She has been recognized by numerous organizations including lifetime achievement awards from The Washington Women’s Center, and the National Association of Female Executives. She was awarded the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Diversity efforts from the National Association of Minority Media Executives and the Jerry J. Wisotsky Torch of Liberty Award from the Anti-Defamation League. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations; on the board of directors of Pinnacle West, the parent company of APS, and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN); and Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University. Clark-Johnson is a member of the O'Connor House board of directors and chair of the O'Connor House advisory group. She also is a former board member of Morrison Institute. Clark-Johnson is a graduate of State University of New York at Binghamton, from which she also received an honorary doctorate. She and her husband, Brooks, live in Paradise Valley, Az. and Lake Tahoe, NV.
  • Dr. Harris is the president and chief executive officer of Science Foundation Arizona (SFAz). Prior to joining SFAz, Dr. William C. Harris was in Ireland serving as director general of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), a new Irish agency that helped facilitate tremendous growth in Ireland’s R&D sector during Harris’ tenure. Immediately prior to going to Ireland, Dr. Harris was vice president of research and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of South Carolina (USC). There, he oversaw research activities throughout the USC system, several interdisciplinary centers and institutes, the USC Research Foundation and sponsored research programs. Dr. Harris served at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1978 to 1996, including as the director for mathematical and physical sciences (1991-1996). He was responsible for federal grants appropriation of $750 million. He also established 25 Science and Technology Centers to support investigative, interdisciplinary research by multi-university consortia. Earlier in his career, he catalyzed the Research Experience for Undergraduates program in the chemistry division and it became an NSF-wide activity. In 2005, Dr. Harris was elected a member of the Irish Royal Academy, and received the Wiley Lifetime Achievement Award from California Polytechnic State University. He has authored more than 50 research papers and review articles in spectroscopy and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr. Harris earned his undergraduate degree at the College of William and Mary, and received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of South Carolina.
  • Colin Adams is a mathematician known for making mathematical concepts accessible to the general public. He is currently researching hyperbolic 3-manifolds and knot theory and is the author of *The Knot Book*, an accessible approach to knot theory. Beyond that, Adams contributes to a humor column for the *Mathematical Intelligencer*. Adams is a professor of mathematics at Williams College and has won the Haimo Distinguished Teaching Award from the Mathematical Association of America for his lighthearted, often comical presentations. Adams is a professed atheist who has taught a course on the subject.
  • Paul Gootenberg's research and graduate training interests span most of modern Latin America, with special strengths in Andean and Mexican history and in questions of historical sociology. His current writing centers around the history of drug commodities, especially the emergence of Andean cocaine as a global drug. Professor Gootenberg is also interested in historical dimensions of Latin American inequalities. In the first part of his career, he wrote largely about nineteenth-century Peru--its economic and social history, state formation, political economy, and the history of economic ideas. Professor Gootenberg was trained as an interdisciplinary historian at Chicago and Oxford, and maintains his broad interest in social science and historical practice, including an affiliated appointment in Sociology at the State University of New York Stony Brook.
  • Born in 1929, the eldest son of Shell Corporation engineer, van Dijk spent most of his childhood far from the Netherlands—partly because of his father’s career, partly because of his parents’ determination to keep him and his two younger brothers away from the war that had soon engulfed Europe. Van Dijk attributes part of his interest in building things to the fact that he and his brothers, growing up in relative isolation in a colony in Venezuela, were forced to make most of their own toys. After earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Oregon (1953) and serving two years in the army, van Dijk enrolled in the master’s degree program in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the Korean War G.I. Bill. There he would study with the great Louis Kahn (a major influence) and (then dean) Pietro Belluschi. Belluschi introduced van Dijk to Eero Saarinen, of St. Louis Arch fame, who gave van Dijk his first job. He worked four years for Saarinen, who he remembers as a “great teacher, never arrogant, and very supportive of younger talent.” Van Dijk also spent a year in Rome on a Fulbright fellowship, immersing himself in the enduring art and architecture of the Renaissance. “The thoughtful architect,” he once wrote, “will appraise the spirit which moved other ages”—not for the purposes of imitating, but of “truly understanding it, which means seeing the thousand ties which bind architecture to its own age”—everything, that is, from materials to assumptions about things like community and our place in the universe. In the early 1960s three Cleveland firms were hired to work together on the 1 million square foot Anthony J. Celebrezze Federal Building; van Dijk was brought to Cleveland to oversee the project. At its conclusion, all three firms offered the young architect a job. He opted to go with Schafer, Flynn & Associates, whose history he held in great respect. Started by the son of President Garfield in 1905, the firm continually rotated its lead architects and designers to give new young architects a chance to make their mark on the world. By 1966, it would be known as Schafer, Flynn, van Dijk & Associates; later as Flynn, Dalton, van Dijk & Partners; then as Dalton, van Dijk, Johnson & Partners; and finally as van Dijk, Westlake, Reed, Leskosky. Van Dijk, in his turn, stepped down in 2004 as a lead architect with the firm (now known as Westlake, Reed, Leskosky) but still reports to work every day to do what he loves and pass on what he knows. His distinguished legacy includes Blossom Music Center, the beloved summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra; Cleveland State University’s Music and Physical Education buildings and state-of-the-art Natatorium (van Dijk himself is a champion swimmer); Ursuline College; Cain Park Amphitheater; University School’s Upper School; John Carroll University’s Chapel and Rec Center; Westlake Performing Arts and Rec centers; major medical facilities in Cleveland, Cincinatti and Warren, Ohio, and Wheeling, West Virginia; and the Temple Hoyne Buell Theater in Denver, Colorado. A fellow of the Ohio chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), in 2000 van Dijk was awarded the Gold Medal, its highest honor. In the 1970s van Dijk turned his hand to the stunning restoration/updating of a number of historic buildings in the Cleveland area: notably, the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and the Society (now Key) Bank and Huntington Bank buildings downtown; five buildings on the campus of Baldwin Wallace College; the Palace, State and Ohio theaters in Cleveland’s Playhouse Square; the MK Ferguson Plaza, formerly Cleveland’s main post office; and the 1981 adaptation of the Old Akron Post Office into the Akron Art Museum. Van Dijk’s dedication to historic preservation and creative reuse led to numerous awards from the Cleveland Restoration Society, the American Institute of Architects, and National Preservation Honor Awards, among others. As a citizen, he says, he feels “a strong obligation” to help “breathe new life into old buildings and preserve what is still useful and valuable for future generations to enjoy”—something that is also important, he strongly believes to the stability of a community. “Just as it is so much more interesting to have friends of varying ages, races and diverse backgrounds, a city is more interesting if it contains buildings of the past along with the buildings of today.” The presence of complexities and contradictions of style, he says, evoking the title of Robert Venturi’s classic book on urban architecture, is part of what makes certain cities so appealing.
  • Professor John J. Grabowsoki’s interests and research span the fields of public and academic history. He specializes in the areas of immigration and ethnicity; local (Cleveland) urban history;and public history, particularly the fields of archives and museums. He holds a joint appointment with the Department of History at CWRU and the Western Reserve Historical Society, where he serves as Director of Research. In addition to teaching at the department he also oversees the World Wide Web edition of *The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History/Dictionary of Cleveland Biography*, a joint project of Case Western Reserve University and the Western Reserve Historical Society.
  • Xernona Clayton is the Founder, President and CEO of the Trumpet Awards Foundation, Inc. and Creator and Executive Producer of the Foundation’s Trumpet Awards. The Trumpet Awards is a prestigious event highlighting African American accomplishments and contributions. Initiated in 1993 by Turner Broadcasting, the Trumpet Awards has been televised annually and distributed internationally to over 185 countries around the world. Ms. Clayton began her television career in 1967 and became the south’s first Black person to have her own television show. The Xernona Clayton show was a regular feature on WAGA-TV, CBS affiliate in Atlanta . Xernona Clayton was employed at Turner Broadcasting for nearly 30 years where she served as a corporate executive. In 1988, Xernona Clayton was appointed Corporate Vice President for Urban Affairs with Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. In this capacity, she directed internal and external projects for the Corporation, and served as liaison between Turner Broadcasting (TBS SuperStation, CNN, Headline News, TNT, Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks) and civic groups in Atlanta and across the country. As a corporate executive, Ms. Clayton was one of the highest-ranking female employees in Turner Broadcasting System. Xernona moved to Atlanta in 1965 where she accepted a position with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and worked closely with the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ms. Clayton also traveled extensively with Mrs. Coretta Scott King on her nationwide concert tours. Dedicated to promoting racial understanding, Xernona Clayton has been a leader in civic projects and civil rights activities for several years. In 1966, she coordinated the activities of Atlanta ’s Black doctors in a project called Doctors’ Committee for Implementation , which resulted in the desegregation of all hospital facilities in Atlanta . This project served as a model and a pilot for other states throughout the country and received national honor from the National Medical Association for its impact. Her persistent fight against the dragons of prejudice and bigotry was never more apparent than in 1968, when the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan denounced the Klan and credited Xernona’s influence with his change. Ms. Clayton’s dedication to the community is reflected in the many hours she spends promoting human relations through bi-racial groups devoted to improving racial understanding. A recipient of numerous media awards, Xernona has been widely honored for her contributions to humanity. She is included in various editions of some very impressive biographical publications. “The Peaceful Warrior” a biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. authored by her late husband Ed Clayton and co-authored by Xernona in the revised editions, has been published in several languages. Xernona Clayton’s autobiography, “I’ve Been Marching All the Time” , was published in 1991. In private life, she is married to Judge Paul L. Brady. She is a member of Ebenezer Baptist Church , formerly co-pastored by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. In recognition of Xernona’s contribution to broadcasting, her community and the nation, the American Intercultural Student Exchange (AISE) has created a scholarship in her honor. Each year, since 1987, Ms. Clayton chooses an outstanding minority high school student to spend a year living abroad with a European family, all expenses paid. The Xernona Clayton Scholarship is dedicated to increasing open relationships, internationally, through a global high school student exchange program. Additionally, the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists named its scholarship in her honor and annually presents the Xernona Clayton Scholarship to a student pursuing a career in communications. NAMIC (the National Association of Minorities in Cable) presented, to Ms. Clayton, its highest award, the Mickey Leland Award , which honors the late United States Congressman. Xernona, along with former Congressman Kweisi Mfume and the late Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown, was awarded the 1996 Distinguished Leadership Award by NAFEO (The National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education) at impressive ceremonies in Washington , D.C. She also received NAFEO’s 2003 Corporate Award . In 2000, Clark/Atlanta University conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Letters Degree on Ms. Clayton. She was additionally honored in 2004 with two very impressive awards. Spelman College presented Ms. Clayton the first Local Community Service Award, for her continued dedication to leadership in the community. The State of Georgia Commission on Equal Opportunity presented her with the Leadership and Dedication in Civil Rights Award. Along with her other honors, she has received the first Coretta Scott King Award from the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) the Madam C. J. Walker Award from EBONY’S Outstanding Women in Marketing and Communications, the Outstanding Corporate Professional Award from the PowerNetworking Family and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters Degree from Tennessee State University. Upon the announcement of Xernona’s appointment as the first Black female corporate executive, Ted Turner said, “Xernona has an impressive record of accomplishments and we are proud to recognize her commitment to bettering human relations with this promotion.”