Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Steven N. Kaplan is the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Thomas Cole Distinguished Visiting Professor Chair at the University of Chicago Law School. He is also the faculty director of the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Kaplan is one of the world’s foremost researchers on private equity, venture capital, corporate governance, executive talent, and income inequality. His papers on private equity and venture capital are the standard references in the field. His findings and opinions regularly appear in the business media. Kaplan also serves as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

Kaplan teaches advanced MBA, law, and executive courses in entrepreneurial finance and private equity, corporate financial management, corporate governance, and wealth management. His course in entrepreneurial finance and private equity is consistently among the most popular at Chicago Booth and he is consistently ranked as one of the top teachers of entrepreneurship in the country. Kaplan has been awarded the Phoenix Award four times and the Arthur Kelly Prize twice for exhibiting exceptional dedication to his students outside of the classroom. 

Co-founder of the entrepreneurship program at Booth, he helped start Booth’s business plan competition, the New Venture Challenge (NVC). The NVC has spawned over one hundred companies which collectively have raised over $500 million from investors and have created over $4 billion in market value. Companies include GrubHub (market cap $3+ billion), Braintree/Venmo (sold to eBay for $800 million), Base CRM, Bump (sold to Google), MedSpeed, Rise Interactive, and Simple Mills. NVC was rated the top university accelerator program in the U.S. as well as one of the top eight accelerators of any kind in the U.S. in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Kaplan also helped start Hyde Park Angels which was named one of the top ten angel groups in the U.S. He serves on the boards of Morningstar (MORN) and Zayo Group (ZAYO). He also serves on the advisory boards of Correlation Ventures, Global eProcure, NextGen Growth Partners, Uptake and Vistria Group.

Kaplan earned his Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard University and received his AB, summa cum laude, in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard College.

Professor Kaplan’s Athenaeum talk is co-sponsored by the Financial Economics Institute (FEI) and the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), both at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Steven Kaplan

Dave Rubin is a talk show host, comedian, and TV personality. He is the host of The Rubin Report, a talk show about ideas and free speech, known for its open and direct approach—often deemed politically incorrect—to discussing complex issues and current events. Based on its unconventional style, the show has garnered a sizeable fan base from across the world.

Passionate and outspoken about the ideological split between liberals and the progressive movement, Rubin has been influential in popularizing the phrase "Regressive Left." A self-labeled former progressive, he identifies with classical liberalism and feels strongly about building a new center in the political landscape. 

Rubin was formerly an on-air host at The Young Turks Network, and prior to that was co-host of The Six Pack on SiriusXM satellite radio, also one of the top comedy podcasts on iTunes. His television credits include Comedy Central, Fox News, HLN, CNN, and PBS. He has defended LGBT rights on The O'Reilly Factor and debated Mike Huckabee on this topic.Rubin's comedy and commentary has been highlighted in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, and he has been nominated by L.A. Weekly for Funniest Twitter. 

Food for Thought: Podcast with Dave Rubin
 

With a focus on using the public policy process to empower the least fortunate and voiceless, Senator Kevin de León, a Democrat from Los Angeles who represents California's Senate District 24, leads an agenda to increase economic opportunity for all Californians focused on education, equity for women, immigrants and low-wage workers, public safety, and on maintaining the state’s leadership in building a clean-energy economy that benefits everyone.

Senator de León has authored groundbreaking legislation on a variety of issues that have become national models and exemplify his ambitious approach to policymaking. He employs this today as he leads the upper house in California’s legislature.

As leader of the Senate, pro tempore, de Leόn also serves as chair of the Rules Committee, which is responsible for vetting the Governor’s appointments that are subject to confirmation by the Senate.

De León served four years in the Assembly before his election to the Senate in 2010. He is the first person in California history to serve as the chair of the Appropriations committees in both the Assembly and Senate. In 2014, he became the first Latino elected leader of the Senate in over a century. He was the first in his family to graduate from high school, later earning a degree with honors from Pitzer College. He is a Rodel Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a guest lecturer at the University of Southern California.

Senator De León is the keynote speaker for the 2017 Southern California Law and Social Science Forum (SoCLASS) which is sponsored by the Dreier Roundtable. 

Read more information about Senator De León.

Tim Sandoval attended Pomona High, Claremont McKenna College, and University of California Riverside. After completing his education, Sandoval returned to Pomona to help others in the community access college as well. He led Pomona Valley Community Center’s youth programs and then taught English at Charter Oak High School from 1999-2002. In 2001, Sandoval became a founding member of Bright Prospect, a mentoring organization that has helped more than two thousand low-income youth become part of the first generation of their family to complete their college degrees. Sandoval served as the program director for Bright Prospect from 2002 through 2016.

Helen Carroll is the director of the NCLR’s Sports Project, which aims to ensure fair and equal treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender players, coaches, and administrators at all levels of sport. Before joining the NCLR in 2001, Carroll served as the athletic director at Mills College for 12 years and won an NAIA National Championship as a player with the University of North Carolina-Asheville women’s basketball team in 1984.

Carroll will be joined by Kris Brackmann ‘17, an anthropology and psychology dual major at CMC, who played four years of Athena basketball at CMS. Brackmann completed her senior thesis on the “Gender Division in Sport: Through the Eyes of Female Student-Athletes at CMS” and is proud to present her findings with this discussion led by Carroll in hopes of cultivating a more inclusive culture for the LGBTQ community at the 5Cs. 

This Athenaeum program is co-sponsored by the Women and Leadership Alliance and CMS Athletics.   

Neel Kashkari took office as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis on Jan. 1, 2016. In this role, he serves on the Federal Open Market Committee, bringing the Fed’s Ninth District’s perspective to monetary policy discussions in Washington. In addition to his responsibilities as a monetary policymaker, Kashkari oversees all operations of the bank, including supervision and regulation, and payments services.

Kashkari began his career as an aerospace engineer at TRW in Redondo Beach, Calif., where he developed technology for NASA space science missions. Following graduate school, he joined Goldman Sachs in San Francisco, where he helped technology companies raise capital and pursue strategic transactions.

From 2006 to 2009, Kashkari served in several senior positions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In 2008, he was confirmed as assistant secretary of the Treasury. In this role, he oversaw the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) during the financial crisis. Kashkari received the Alexander Hamilton Award, the Treasury Department’s highest honor for distinguished service.

Following his tenure in Washington, Kashkari returned to California in 2009 and joined PIMCO as managing director and member of the executive office. He left the firm in 2013 to explore returning to public service.

In January 2014, Kashkari was a gubernatorial candidate in the state of California, running on a platform focused on economic opportunity.

Kashkari earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

(Source: The Minneapolis Fed's Website)

View Video: YouTube with Neel Kashkari

Food for Thought: Podcast with Neel Kashkari

Gabriela Pereira is a writer, speaker, and self-proclaimed word nerd who challenges students to find their voice and use their words for the power of good. As the founder and instigator of DIYMFA.com, her mission is to empower writers, artists, and other creative individuals to take an entrepreneurial approach to professional growth.

Pereira earned her MFA in creative writing from The New School and teaches at national conferences and regional workshops, as well as online. She also hosts DIY MFA Radio, a popular podcast where she interviews bestselling authors. Her book DIY MFA: WRITE WITH FOCUS, READ WITH PURPOSE, BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY is out now from Writer’s Digest Books. When she’s not teaching or developing new courses, Gabriela enjoys writing humor essays, middle grade and teen fiction, and a few "short stories for grown-ups" thrown in for good measure. A New Yorker born and raised, she lives in her beloved city with her husband, two kids, and office cat.

Ms. Pereira Athenaeum's talk is co-sponsored by the Berger Institute for Work, Family & Children at CMC.

Critically-acclaimed novelist Chris Bohjalian's writings explore contemporary social issues and the ways in which they play themselves out in the lives of ordinary people. His work covers topics as diverse as midwifery, transsexual surgery, animal rights, homelessness, domestic violence and human trafficking, and the personal, moral, and ethical dilemmas that arise from them. The author of 18 books, most of which were New York Times bestsellers, his work has been translated into over 30 languages, and three of his books have become movies.

In his novel The Sandcastle Girls, Bohjalian explores the Armenian genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed during the First World War. The genocide is seen from the perspective of Elizabeth Endicott, who joins her father in traveling to Aleppo, Syria, to provide aid to deported Armenians. There she falls in love with Armen Petrosian, an Armenian engineer searching for his wife and child despite being certain they are dead. Publishers Weekly says that “Bohjalian’s storytelling makes this a beautiful, frightening, and unforgettable read.”

Bohjalian’s books have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Bookpage and Salon. Among dozens of awards, Bohjalian has received the ANCA Freedom Award for his work educating Americans about the Armenian Genocide; the ANCA Arts and Letters Award for The Sandcastle Girls, as well as the Saint Mesrob Mashdots Medal, among many others.

Bohjalian graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from Amherst College.

Mr. Bohjalian’s will deliver the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights’ Third Annual Lecture on Armenian Studies.

Laura Richards is an internationally recognized expert and award-winning victims' advocate in the fields of domestic violence, stalking, sexual violence, risk assessment, and homicide. After a decade of analyzing violent crime at New Scotland Yard, she became the violence adviser to the National Police Chiefs Council. Trained by world leaders as a criminal behavioral analyst at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime at the FBI and New Scotland Yard, Richards has applied her psychology degrees to analyze violent crime from a behavioral and preventative perspective. She has a BSc in Psychology and Sociology and an MSc in Forensic and Legal Psychology, with a background in intelligence-led policing. She places the victim’s voice at the center of her work, was the architect of the stalking and domestic violence legislation in the UK. She has won numerous awards for her pioneering work.

In 2013, Richards launched Paladin, the world’s first National Stalking Advocacy Service  following the highly successful All Party Parliamentary Stalking Law Reform Campaign which she spearheaded, and which led to stalking becoming a criminal offence in 2012. Paladin supports, advises and co-ordinates the response to better protect high-risk victims of stalking. More recently she spearheaded the Domestic Violence Law Reform Campaign, which resulted in coercive control becoming a criminal offense, advising on the new law and the statutory guidance in the U.K.

Richards is the lead author of the booked entitled ‘Policing Domestic Violence’ published by Oxford University Press and has also published other numerous papers and articles.

Read more about Ms. Richards and find out more about Paladin.

Nancy Williams is an associate professor of chemistry at the Keck Science Department where she has been for 14 years; she is a graduate of Harvey Mudd College. She has been a volunteer with the Leadership LAB of the LA LGBT Center since 2013, and has door-to-door canvassed on trans rights in LA, Miami, and Tacoma when “bathroom bills” threatened equal rights laws that protected trans people. She sings with the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, and is on the planning committee for the Resist March, which will replace the LGBT+ Pride Parade in LA in 2017.

Amy Peterson (they/their/them) is assistant to the dean of the faculty and staff fellow at the CARE Center. They also volunteer with the Los Angeles LGBT Center on prejudice-reduction projects and with the committee for the Resist March, which will take the place of this year’s Los Angeles Pride Parade.

Al Forbes is the interim director at the Queer Resource Center of the Claremont Colleges. Before coming to Claremont, Forbes worked at Syracuse University, U.C. Santa Cruz, and Onondaga Community College. He currently serves on the executive board of the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals and has given presentations on Queer and Trans* inclusivity at NASPA, the association for Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

Mo Dyson is a 12-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps. During his time in the military, his main job was as a euphonium instrumentalist in the field music program. Mo deployed to Iraq from 2004-2005 and served as an augment to the personal security detail for the commanding general of 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. Now a sophomore at Pomona College, Mo plans to pursue a career in public health policy.

Peter Galison is a professor of history of science at Harvard University where he teaches courses in history and philosophy of 20th-century physics; history and philosophy of experimentation; fascism, art and science in the interwar years; among others. His primary work explores the complex interaction between the three principal subcultures of twentieth century physics: experimentation, instrumentation, and theory. He also delves into many other scientific topics and their implications including secrecy, security, and surveillance and technoprivacy.

Galison has launched several projects examining the powerful cross-currents between science and other fields. For example, his book (with Lorraine Daston), Objectivity (Zone Books, 2007) asks how visual representation shaped the concept of scientific objectivity, and how atlases of scientific images continue, even today, to rework what counts as right depiction. Further work on the boundary between science and other fields includes his co-edited volumes on the relations between science, art and architecture.

A MacArthur Foundation Fellow, he is also a winner of the Max Planck Prize given by the Max Planck Gesellschaft and Humboldt Stiftung.

Professor Gailson will deliver the the 2017 Ricardo J. Quinones Lecture.

Grace Stewart '17 is a CMC senior majoring in Environmental Analysis. She spends most of her time at the Athenaeum, the Keck Science Department, and the Joint Music Department, a co-production of CMC, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Scripps. Throughout her college career, Grace has been a dedicated member of the Claremont Concert and Chamber Choirs of the Joint Music Program under the direction of Professor Charles Kamm. In addition to choral training, the majority of her solo vocal training has occurred over the past four years under the direction of Professor Anne Harley.

Grace is thrilled to present this program to the Claremont community.

View Video: YouTube with Jaclyn Stewart '17

Cameron Munter is President and CEO of the EastWest Institute (EWI) in New York. The EastWest Institute works to reduce international conflict, addressing seemingly intractable problems that threaten world security and stability. 

Ambassador Munter served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for nearly three decades, having served in some of the most conflict-ridden areas of the globe. He was Ambassador to Pakistan (2010-2012) guiding U.S.-Pakistani relations through a period of crisis, including the operation against Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad. He was Ambassador to Serbia (2007-2009), where he negotiated Serbia domestic consensus for European integration while managing the Kosovo independence crisis. He served twice in Iraq, leading the first Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul in 2006 and then handling political-military affairs in Baghdad in 2009-2010. Previous overseas postings included Deputy Chief of Mission in Poland (2002-2005) and in the Czech Republic (2005-2007), as well as numerous other assignments at the State Department and at Embassies overseas. 

In Washington, he was Director for Central Europe at the National Security Council (1999-2001), Executive Assistant to the Counselor of the Department of State (1998-1999), Director of the Northern European Initiative (1998), and Chief of Staff in the NATO Enlargement Ratification Office (1997-1998).

After his retirement from the Foreign Service, Munter was professor of international relations at Pomona College from 2013 to 2015, and served as a consultant to the equity funds KKR and Mid Europa Partners. He was a senior advisor to the Albright Stonebridge Group; and advised the Gates Foundation project on polio eradication. He came to Pomona from Columbia University Law School in New York, where he was visiting professor during the fall term of 2012. He is a non-resident fellow of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.

Munter graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University in 1976 and earned a doctoral degree in modern European history from the Johns Hopkins University in 1983. He was a Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy in 1991. He taught European history at UCLA and directed European studies at the Twentieth Century Fund (now the Century Foundation) in New York before joining the Foreign Service.

Ambassador Munter's Athenaeum presentation is the 2017 Lectureship in Diplomacy and International Security in Honor of George F. Kennan.

View Video: YouTube with Cameron Munter

Food for Thought: Podcast with Cameron Munter

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley where he has been on the faculty since 1993. He is the co-director of the Korea Law Center and also acts as faculty director for the California Constitution Center and the Program in Public Law and Governance. 

Yoo received his B.A., summa cum laude, in American history from Harvard University. Between college and law school, he worked as a newspaper reporter in Washington, D.C. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Professor Yoo clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit. He served as general counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee from 1995-96 under Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. From 2001 to 2003, he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers.

Yoo is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento in Italy, and he has also been a visiting professor at Keio Law School in Japan, Seoul National University in Korea, Chapman Law School, the University of Chicago, and the Free University of Amsterdam. Professor Yoo also has received the Paul M. Bator Award for excellence in legal scholarship and teaching from the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy.

He is the author most recently of Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare (Oxford University Press, 2014). His new book, Embrace the Machines: Drones, Cyberwar, and Coercion is forthcoming in spring 2017.

Professor Yoo's Athenaeum talk co-sponsored by the Salvatori Center’s Lofgren Program in Constitutionalism.

(Information adapted from the Berkeley Law faculty pages.)

View Video: YouTube with John Yoo

Food for Thought: Podcast with John Yoo

Jay Nordlinger is a senior editor of National Review. He writes on a variety of subjects, including politics, foreign affairs, and the arts. He is also the music critic of The New Criterion. He is the author of “Peace, They Say,” a history of the Nobel Peace Prize, and “Children of Monsters,” a study of the sons and daughters of dictators. A native of Michigan, he lives in New York.

View Video: YouTube with Jay Nordlinger

Food for Thought: Podcast with Jay Nordlinger