Forum Network

As manager of adult education, Pam develops a range of programs to encourage interest in and exploration of horticulture, gardening, natural sciences, and landscape. In May 2010, she received a master’s degree in communications management from Simmons College. Outside of work, she gardens with her three cats and plays ice hockey year-round with several women’s teams.

Matthew Salesses was adopted from Korea at age two. He has written about adoption, race, and parenting for NPR’s Code Switch, The New York Times Motherlode blog and many others. His latest book, The Hundred-Year Flood, is set for release in September 2015 and tells the story of twenty-two-year-old Tee as he escapes to Prague in the wake of his uncle’s suicide and the aftermath of 9/11. His other books include I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying and The Last Repatriate.

Linda K. Wertheimer is the author of Faith Ed, Teaching About Religion In An Age of Intolerance (Beacon Press, August 2015). A veteran journalist, she is the former education editor of The Boston Globe. She teaches writing at Grub Street in Boston and also has taught journalism part-time at Boston University. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and son.

Danielle Legros Georges is Boston's Poet Laureate. She was born in Haiti but grew up in Boston's Haitian community in Mattapan. She has been teaching in Lesley University's Creative Arts in Learning Division since 2001. Her recent literary awards include the 2014 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Poetry, the 2012 Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist in Poetry, Lesley University Faculty Development Grants, and a 2013 Black Metropolis Research Consortium Fellowship/Andrew W. Mellon Grant. She’s quoted on the website as saying, “America is best when it recognizes its inherent plurality. Americans are best when, embracing plurality, we move toward and seek to understand those around us. Americans are best when we are engaged and dialogic . . . . It allows us to see that, though different in many ways, de Crèvecoeur, Wheatley, and Lazarus, were each immigrants or the daughter of immigrants. They were bicultural, and bilingual, if not speakers of several languages.”

Joe Bergin is a founding member of the Carpenter Poets of Jamaica Plain.

Bill Thibodeau is the author of a collection of poetry: American Icon and Other Poems. He is a member of the Carpenter Poets of Jamaica Plain: a group of men and women who gather after work once a week at a local pub to share their poetry about their trade and other matters. Bill, along with his fellow carpenter poets, has been featured on PBS, The Hallmark Channel, and in the Boston Globe. As a carpenter, Bill is in demand around Boston's neighborhoods: The South End, Bay Village, Beacon Hill, and the Back Bay where historical accuracy and quality work are equally important.

Wen Stephenson is a journalist and climate activist, and author of \_What We're Fighting for Now Is Each Other: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Climate Justice\_. Stephenson has written on climate, culture and politics for organizations such as \_The New York Times\_, \_The Boston Globe\_, \_The Boston Phoenix\_, Grist and Slate, and edited for \_The Atlantic\_, TheAtlantic.com, PBS's Frontline.org and the \_Globe\_.

**Athena Z. Peters** is an Executive Producer at Warner Bros. Games-Turbine running Lord of the Rings Online. She has been in the online games business for over fifteen years contributing to multiple games such as City of Heroes, Guild Wars, and Dungeons and Dragons Online, as well as many others. She has a BFA in Directing Theatre from Texas State University. Her passion is telling truly immersive and connected stories and the tech space is the perfect place to push the boundaries of those experiences.

Haril A. Pandya, AIA, LEED AP, is an award-winning Principal at CBT Architects, a 48-year-old international design architectural firm headquartered in Boston. With over 21 years of professional experience in corporate office, hospitality, mixed-use and retail projects, Haril leads the firm’s rapidly expanding Building Repositioning and Asset Strategy division. His 40+ team is focused on the repositioning and rebranding of urban and suburban corporate/commercial – often historic – buildings and the public areas around them, ultimately upgrading and transforming these spaces into increasingly attractive commodities for building owners looking to retain existing tenants and attract new ones. Currently overseeing over 30 high-profile projects totaling over $180 million in the U.S. and Canada, he often tells his team that you need to think differently on every project because each property has a rich history and great story to tell. Repositioning is all about leveraging and enlivening a building’s existing features and amenities, while maintaining the essence of what makes the building unique in the first place. Haril is a published writer, regular blogger on his personal website www.harilestate.com and has made numerous public speaking appearances, including a regional TEDx Talk in Boston discussing what the future of the workplace will be like for generations to come. He is a recipient of the AIA’s Young Architects Award - the highest recognition for architects who have been licensed for 10 years or less. Haril was also named to Building Design + Construction's “40 under 40” and Banker & Tradesman’s “New Leaders” lists. He served as the youngest elected member on the Boston Society of Architects’ Board of Directors, the Boston Center for the Arts, the AIA Government Affairs Committee and the NAIOP Gavel Board Board of Directors where he worked as a thesis advisor for the Master of Interior Design program at Suffolk, and as a visiting critic at the Boston Architectural College. He received a Bachelor’s of Building Science and a Bachelor’s of Architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Kevin Briggs, aka Dark Traveler, is an analog photographer—he shoots "film" - Black + White to be exact. Briggs develops the film, uses the darkroom to create prints and completes the process by scanning the negatives for digitization purposes only. Briggs' camera of choice is a Hasselblad film camera. » [Read more about what's in his camera bag.](http://www.japancamerahunter.com/2013/05/in-your-bag-no-522-kevin-j-briggs/ "") Briggs' current project is a series tackling a subject matter that most people in this country aren't comfortable talking about, refuse to talk about or have rather strong opinionated views on. He thinks the images he creates will certainly invoke conversation, open the mind and hopefully change some views.

**Edward Mazria, FAIA** is an internationally recognized architect, author, researcher, and educator who focuses on how to transition the urban built environment to a carbon-free future. He is the founder of the nonprofit think tank Architecture 2030 and the 2030 Challenge, which asks that all new buildings, developments, and major renovations be carbon-neutral by 2030. Ed is the author of the 2015 report Achieving 80 x 50: Reducing Energy Use, Creating Jobs, and Phasing Out Carbon Emissions in New York City’s Buildings.

Patricia Davis' play, "Digna," based on the life of Mexican human rights attorney Digna Ochoa, was produced in February-March 2017 by the Digna Theater, a new professional theater company in Tucson, Arizona, directed by Barclay Goldsmith, and has since been produced in Spanish and English in Mexico and the U.S. Patricia participated in Arena Stage's 2015-2016 Playwrights' Arena, where she developed “Digna.” Other productions include "Alternative Methods," about a psychologist's work on a torture team in Iraq, produced in the New York International Fringe Festival, where it won a Best Director Award and garnered a Pick of the Fringe recommendation from The New York Theatre Review. "Alternative Methods" was also selected for readings at Urban Stages, Georgia State College and University, and Catholic University, in collaboration with Theater J. "After the Blood" is a one-act about two activists in Washington, DC during the summer of 2014, at the height of the war in Gaza. "After the Blood" received a reading at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in January 2015. "Cleared," a fifteen-minute play, focuses on Guantanamo, protests at the White House, and the conundrums of a suburban mom with highly placed friends. "Cleared" was selected by Theater Alliance for presentation in the Kennedy Center’s 2013 Page-to-Stage Festival. Short plays include "Daphne in Leaf," produced as part of the Kathy Rasmussen Womens Theater's Magical Creatures Festival in 2019; "Four Minutes," produced in the Jane Addams New Play Festival in 2019 and a finalist for the Bridge Initiative; and "Fish Story," selected to be read in the 29th Street Playwrights Collectives' Feisty Women Festival in 2018.