People

Amy Shaw became the President and CEO of the Nine PBS in February 2020 after serving the organization in various leadership roles beginning in 2003. She is the first woman to lead Nine in its 70-year history. She is recognized as a national leader and innovator in community engagement and public media. Shaw leads a talented team in groundbreaking work that leverages engagement, storytelling, and trust for measurable impact around important and complex issues in the St. Louis region.

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.

Amy Spitalnick is the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the national convener of Jewish coalitions working across communities to build a just and inclusive American democracy.

Amy Stein (b. 1970) is a photographer and teacher based in New York City. Her work explores our evolving isolation from community, culture and the environment. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Nevada Museum of Art, SMoCA and the West Collection.

Amy Stursberg is the executive director of the Blackstone Charitable Foundation. Since joining the Foundation, Stursberg has been responsible for the creation of a programmatic plan for the Foundation and the distribution of funds. Prior to joining The Blackstone Foundation in 2008, she served on the Spitzer administration transition team. She had been a consultant to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation managing the award of $35 million in cultural enhancement grants and $30 million in community grants in Lower Manhattan. Prior to that Stursberg worked at the September 11th Fund serving as a consultant to the Chair of the Board, Program Director for Economic Development and Revitalization, and then as the last Director of the Fund, overseeing its final distribution of funds. Stursberg has also held positions in the Office of Management and Budget for the NYC Mayors Office and at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington DC. She has also worked as a university administrator and foundation officer. Stursberg currently serves on the boards of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, Tectonic Theater Project, Children for Children and serves on the Divisional Board for Trauma and Domestic Violence for the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services. Stursberg received her BA from the University of Michigan with Honors and holds a Masters in Public Policy from the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Amy Traverso is the senior food editor for Yankee magazine and its new travel and lifestyle series, Weekends With Yankee, produced in partnership with WGBH. Previously, she served as food editor at Boston magazine and an associate food editor at Sunset magazine. She is the author of The “Apple Lover's Cookbook”, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the "American" category.

Dr. Wagers is a Principal Investigator in the Section on Developmental and Stem Cell Biology as well as an Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School. She received her doctoral degree in Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis from Northwestern University, and completed postdoctoral fellowship training in the laboratory of Irving Weissman, M.D., at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is a recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in Biomedical Sciences and Smith Family New Investigator Award.

Over the past 14 years, Amy Walter has built a reputation as an accurate, objective, and insightful political analyst with unparalleled access to campaign insiders and decision-makers. Known as one of the best political journalists covering Washington, she is the former political director of ABC News. Today, she provides political analysis every Monday evening on the PBS NewsHour. She is also a regular Sunday panelist on NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face The Nation, and FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace. She also appears on Washington Week with Gwen Ifill (PBS), the Friday Round Up on The Diane Rehm Show (WAMU), and Special Report (FOX). This is Amy’s second tour of duty with The Cook Political Report. From 1997 to 2007, she served as Senior Editor where she covered the U.S. House of Representatives. Walter was named one of DC’s “50 Top Journalists” by Washingtonian Magazine in 2009 and honored with the Washington Post‘s Crystal Ball award for her spot-on election predictions in 2000. She is a member of the Board of Trustees at Colby College where she graduated summa cum laude.

Amy Whorf McGuiggan is a freelance writer and the author of *My Provincetown* and *Christmas in New England*. She lives in Hingham, MA. She is also author of *Take Me Out to the Ball Game*.

Ana Aceves is a Digital Producer for NOVA where she produces short-form videos for its various social media platforms. She enjoys telling stories at the intersection of science and everyday experiences, especially when they empower women and historically under-represented groups.

Ana Castillo is a celebrated poet, novelist, short story writer, and esaayist. Castillo is a prolific author whose work has been critically acclaimed and widely anthologized in the United States and abroad. Castillos books include the novel, *The Mixquiahuala Letters* (Bilingual Review Press, 1986; Doubleday, 1992), *Sapogonia* (Bilingual Review Press, 1990), *So Far From God* (Norton, 1993), *Massacre of the Dreamers: Reflections on Mexican-Indian Women in the United States 500 Years After the Conquest* (University of New Mexico, 1992). As a poet Castillo is the author of several works, including the chapbooks *Otro Canto* (1977) and *The Invitation* (1979); these were followed by several volumes of poetry which include *Women Are Not Roses* (Arte Publico, 1984), and *My Father Was a Toltec* (West End Press, 1988). Most recently she published *Water Color Women, Opaque Men*, a novel in verse (Curbstone Press, 2005). Castillo has coordinated an anthology on la Virgen de Guadalupe entitled *La Diosa de las Americas/Goddess of the Americas* (Riverside/Putnam, 1996). Castillo, along with Norma Alarcon and others, co-founded the literary magazine *Third Woman*; she has since been a contributing editor to *Third Woman* and *Humanizarte* magazines. She was a community activist throughout the 1970s. Throughout this period, Castillo taught English as a Second Language, Mexican and Mexican American history in community colleges in the Chicago and San Franisco areas. She returned to California from 1986 to 1990, where she taught feminist journal writing, womens studies, creative writing, and Chicano literature at various colleges and universities. From 1989 to 1990 Castillo was a Dissertation Fellow in the Chicano Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was there that she continued her work on a new collection of poetry, *I Ask the Impossible* (Anchor Books, 2001).

**Ana Diaz Artiles**, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University. Her interests focus on the engineering, biomedical, and human factors aspects of space exploration, including artificial gravity, spacesuits, space physiology, and human health countermeasures. At Texas A&M University she directs the “Bioastronautics and Human Performance” research lab. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015, where she studied artificial gravity combined with exercise as a countermeasure for spaceflight-related physiological deconditioning. Prior to MIT, Ana worked for five years in Kourou (French Guiana) as a member of the Ariane 5 launch team. Dr. Diaz-Artiles has a background in aeronautical engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain), and SUPAERO in Toulouse (France). She is a 2011 Fulbright fellow and a 2014 Amelia Earhart Fellowship recipient.

A first generation descendant of Portuguese immigrants from the Alto Alentejo region of Portugal, Ana Patuleia Ortins grew up with the ethnic lore and traditions attached to the food of her ancestors. She holds a degree in culinary arts and teaches Portuguese cooking in her own kitchen and at local colleges.