Forum Network

Alan Solomont is the former United States Ambassador to Spain and Andora (2009-2013) and a lifelong social and political activist. He is currently the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Dean of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. His Jewish community involvement includes serving on the boards of the Israel Policy Forum, the New Israel Fund, Jewish Fund for Justice, J Street and Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston.

Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust (1993) and The Eichmann Trial (2011), currently teaches Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Lipstadt has served as a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and has served on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In 2000, a British court ruled in her favor in a highly publicized libel trial justifying her characterization of David Irving as a Holocaust denier.

Diego Ornique, Europe Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, is a recognized expert in community development, managing social welfare operations in central Europe and the Balkans, and creating frameworks for outreach to unaffiliated Jewish young adults.

Andras Borgula, born in Hungary, a veteran of the Israeli army and graduate of the University of Tel Aviv, founder and director of the GOLEM (Hungarian Jewish) Theatre in Budapest, chair of Limmud Hungary and host of his own radio show.

David Siddhartha Patel is a Junior Research Fellow at Brandeis University's Crown Center for Middle East Studies. Patel’s research focuses on social order, religious authority, and identity in the contemporary Middle East. He conducted independent field research in post-Hussein Iraq on the role of mosques and clerical networks in generating order after state collapse. At the Crown Center, he is completing a book tentatively titled "Order Out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and Social Order in Iraq." He has also conducted comparative research on the transnational spread of protests during the so-called Arab Spring and on changes in the support base of Islamist movements. Prior to joining the Center, Patel was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. He received his B.A. from Duke University in economics and political science and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in political science. He studied Arabic in Lebanon, Yemen, Morocco, and Jordan.

Barbara Rubel is the director of Community Relations at Tufts University.

Iphigenia Kanara currently serves as the Consul General of Greece in Boston. Her work consists of providing a wide array of consular services to the Greek-American community of New England while reaching out to public and private local stake holders in order to establish greater economic, political and cultural partnerships.

Anthony Pangaro is the principal developer of Millennium Partners in Boston.

Kathy Spiegelman is currently the Vice President and Chief of Campus Planning and Development at Northeastern University. This position was created in 2013 to ensure that the university’s physical resources keep pace with its core values and ambitions. In this role, Kathy is responsible for the effective use of land and buildings on Northeastern’s main campus in Boston, its graduate campuses around the country and other properties owned or leased by the university.

As the director of planning for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Boston's agency for economic development and planning, Kairos Shen was intimately involved with several high-profile projects, including the planning and permitting of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, a job that included developing legislation for construction and financing.

Heidi Cullen serves as chief scientist for Climate Central and leads the World Weather Attribution program. Before joining Climate Central, she served as The Weather Channel’s first on-air climate expert and helped create Forecast Earth, a weekly television series focused on issues related to climate change and the environment. Prior to that Heidi worked as a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO. Heidi received a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial engineering from Columbia University and a PhD in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Heidi also serves as chief science advisor for the Years of Living Dangerously project and is the author of The Weather of the Future published by Harper Collins in 2010.

Waleed Abdalati is the director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado and a professor in the university’s Department of Geography. CIRES, established through a cooperative agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is a diverse institute that focuses on understanding the Earth system and its components, as well as the human relationship with our environment. His research interests are in the use of satellite and airborne remote sensing techniques, integrated with in situ observations and modeling, to understand how and why the Earth's glaciers and ice sheets are changing and the implications for sea level rise. In addition to his academic experience, he has a wide range of experience in various positions at NASA that includes research scientist (1997–2000), program manager (2000–2005), manager of a 50-person research group (2004–2008), and most recently NASA Chief Scientist (2011–2012). From 1986–1990, he worked as an engineer in the aerospace and defense fields. Waleed received a BS in mechanical engineering from Syracuse University in 1986, an MS in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado in 1991, and a PhD in geography from the University of Colorado in 1996.