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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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All Speakers

  • Brian Worobey currently serves as the CEO and President of openairboston.net. Brian has been involved in openairboston.net since before its formation. He co-authored the Boston Foundation report, "Boston Unplugged", served on Mayor Menino's Wireless Task Force and helped start up openairboston.net by participating in its advisory board/kitchen cabinet and serving as its COO before taking over as CEO in January 2009. Prior to joining OAB, Brian was Vice President and CIO of the Museum of Science, responsible for the creation and implementation of Museum-wide information systems strategy. Since he started at the Museum of Science in 1996, Brian was instrumental in creating strategic partnerships with leading technology companies, as well as providing strategic, architectural, and fundraising support for the Museum's technological and educational initiatives. Prior to joining the Museum, Brian was the Director of MBA Technology Services at Harvard Business School and Assistant Director for Network Services at Boston College. Brian graduated from Clark University in 1984 with a B.A. in Management. He is involved in the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and served on the steering committee for its Tech Trends events, and writes on wireless technology in education. In addition, he is a performing musician, playing saxophone in area R&B bands. Brian is the proud father of a 2-year old daughter.
  • Mr. Seaman joined the DLF in 2002 from the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library, where he was the founding Director (1992-2002). In this role, he oversaw the creation and development of an online archive of XML and SGML texts, of which many are available in multiple e-book formats. Mr. Seaman has lectured and published extensively in the fields of humanities computing and digital libraries, and since 1993 has taught e-text and internet courses at the annual summer Book Arts Press Rare Book School at Virginia.
  • James Honan is Senior Lecturer at the Graduate School of Education. Honan's teaching and research interests include financial management of nonprofit organizations, organizational performance measurement and management, and higher education administration. At Harvard, he is Educational Cochair of the Institute for Educational Management and is a faculty member in a number of Executive Education programs for educational leaders and nonprofit administrators. Honan has served as a consultant on strategic planning, resource allocation, and performance measurement and management to numerous colleges, universities, schools, and nonprofit organizations, both nationally and internationally.
  • Boston City Councillor John M. Tobin, Jr. was elected as the District 6 representative to the Boston City Council in 2001. He was re-elected in 2003, 2005 and 2007. His district includes the neighborhoods of West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and parts of Roslindale and Mission Hill. Councillor Tobin has focused on improving the quality of life for individuals and families in his district and across the city. He proposed increasing residents participation in the citywide recycling program, an idea that has been implemented on a pilot basis. Thanks to Councillor Tobin, the city's building department now notifies abutters to new construction for as of right projects or jobs that don't require zoning board approval. In 2005 he helped pass an ordinance that imposes fines on property owners who do not remove graffiti. Two years ago Councillor Tobin launched Slow Down Boston, a citywide public awareness campaign aimed at curbing speeding in the city's neighborhoods. Councillor Tobin was born in Boston on August 31, 1969. He is the son of Jack and Kathy (Freeman) Tobin and is the oldest of six children. He grew up in Dorchester's Lower Mills neighborhood and in West Roxbury where he currently resides with his wife Kate (Plunkett) and their sons Matthew and Daniel. He is a 1987 graduate of Catholic Memorial High School in West Roxbury and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
  • Known as the wild woman of the harp, Deborah Henson-Conant is a Grammy-nominated composer/performer. When she found herself chafing under the confines of the classical music world, she developed her own style of swing and Latin jazz by emulating jazz pianists, guitarists and horn players. She explored her instrument's fascinating roots in other cultures, from Mexico to the Celtic Isles. She then incorporated these elements into her own compositions, landed a record contract with the pre-eminent contemporary jazz label at the time (GRP) and became known as the world's premiere jazz harpist.
  • Dr. Paula A. Johnson is a cardiologist, the Executive Director of the Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology and Chief of the Division of Women's Health at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. At Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dr. Johnson has built the leading program in women's health in the United States. Dr. Johnson is a clinical epidemiologist and is recognized as an international expert in the area of defining and understanding the quality of cardiology care for women and minorities. She founded the Center for Cardiovascular Disease in Women at Brigham and Women's Hospital that is dedicated to developing new sex- and gender-specific strategies for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of coronary heart disease in women. Dr. Johnson is the recipient of many awards recognizing her contributions in women's and minority health and is featured as a national leader in medicine by the National Library of Medicine. The Mayor of the City of Boston appointed Dr. Johnson as a Commissioner and Chair of the Board of the Boston Public Health Commission in 2007.
  • Organic farmer and businessman who is building the Farmer's Diner in Barre, VT into a national model for economically viable and environmentally sound restaurants that support local family farms.
  • Robert Pozen is an economist who over the years has worked as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, as the head of Fidelity Investments, and on several political projects for Republicans, including US President George W. Bush's 2001 Social Security commission. He currently chairs MFS Investment Management, a Boston based fund management company.
  • Ms. Lopez is a playwright and actress. Her *Sonia Flew* won the Elliot Norton Award for Best New Play and the *IRNE (Independent Reviewers of New England)* for Best Play and Best Production. It has been produced at the Huntington Theatre, Coconut Grove Playhouse, the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Laguna Playhouse, the Summer Playwrights Festival in New York, the Milagro Theatre and the Steppenwolf Theatre. It was also broadcast on NPR's "The Play's The Thing!" Her other award-winning plays include *God Smells Like a Roast Pig* (Women on Top Festival, Elliot Norton Award--Outstanding Solo Performance,) *Midnight Sandwich/Medianoche *(Coconut Grove Playhouse),* The Order of Things *(CentaStage, Kennedy Center Fund for New Plays), and * How Do You Spell Hope?* (Underground Railway Theatre). Lopez was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a promising new voice in American Theatre. Lopez is also an actress who has appeared in regional theatres across the country, and works in film and radio. She has served as a panel member for the National Endowment for the Arts and has enjoyed residencies with Sundance and The New York Theatre Workshop. She teaches theatre and performance at Wellesley College and playwriting at Boston University.
  • Lisa Randall is an American theoretical physicist and a leading expert on particle physics and cosmology. She works on several of the competing models of string theory in the quest to explain the fabric of the universe, and was the first tenured woman in the Princeton University physics department and the first tenured female theoretical physicist at MIT and Harvard University.
  • Eric von Hippel is a professor and head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He specializes in research related to the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He also develops and teaches about practical methods that firms can use to improve their product and service development processes.
  • Amy Smith, who has a master's degree in mechanical engineering and teaches at MIT, isn't interested in building faster computers or bigger jetliners. She's thinking about how to cook dinner in a Haitian slum. Smith and her students have developed a way to turn this plentiful (and otherwise useless) material into clean-burning charcoal by carbonizing it in a covered oil drum. Smith, a practitioner of humanitarian engineering, wants to solve everyday problems for rural families in the developing world: where to find clean water, how to preserve vegetables for market, how to do laundry without electricity or plumbing. Smith's inventions include a hammer mill for grinding grain into floura task African women usually do by hand and a portable kit to test drinking water for contaminating bacteria. Smith, who was awarded a Macarthur Fellowship in 2004, runs MIT's IDEAS Competition, for which teams of student engineers design projects to make life easier in the developing world.