CLASS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
I am a rising Junior at Duke from Raleigh, North Carolina. I am majoring in Classics on the premed route intending to integrate humanities with the sciences! I am involved in research over at the School of Medicine, volunteering at the Duke Hospice Center, as well as a student health policy club. A fun fact about me is that I a fraternal twin brother, who is the complete opposite of me!
Job Titles:
- Associate Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Ada Gregory develops a variety of KIE programs related to student life and community engagement, runs the DukeEngage in New York program, and facilitates faculty involvement in projects across the Institute's portfolio. Ada graduated from Duke (BA/MA) and went on to work at the state and local levels for 20 years influencing policy and practice related to victims' rights, violence against women, and criminal justice reform. She returned to Duke in 2006 and worked in several capacities, including as director of the Duke Women's Center and chief administrator for the university's signature institutes and initiatives, before joining the Kenan Institute for Ethics in 2018.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Associate Professor in the Department of History
Adriane Lentz-Smith's interests lie in African American history, twentieth-century United States history, and the history of the U.S. and the world. Her 2009 book Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I looks at the black freedom struggle in the World War I years, with a particular focus on manhood, citizenship, and global encounters. More recently, she has been at work on a book tentatively entitled Afterlives: Sagon Penn, State Violence, and the Twilight of Civil Rights. The book looks at dramatic moments of violent encounters between African Americans and the police to explore the role of violence in sustaining and opposing white supremacy in the two decades following the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. She is also interested in how African Americans engaged the world in the age of Cold War civil rights, and how their participation in the project of U.S. state and empire set the horizons of their freedom struggles.
Adrienne Duke is a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy department at Duke. Her work is on moods and mood disorders, and she is interested in questions about well-being as it relates to psychiatry. She holds a B.S. in Philosophy from the United States Military Academy at West Point. She is an Army veteran and considers teaching undergraduates the next phase of a life devoted to service to others.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Assistant Professor of Political Science
Alexander Kirshner's research cuts across democratic theory, comparative politics, and constitutional law. His book A Theory of Militant Democracy: The Ethics of Combating Political Extremism investigates the paradoxical ethical dilemmas raised by antidemocratic opposition to democratic government. His current research explores the intellectual history and practice of legitimate opposition and the competition between religious parties in contemporary Egypt and Tunisia. Alex was an undergraduate and doctoral student at Yale, and he completed an MPhil in political thought and intellectual history at Cambridge. He also spent a few years as a management consultant and as a fellow at a foreign policy think-tank in Washington, D.C.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director for Evaluation and Assessment the Purpose Project
Alexandra Cooper serves as Associate Director for Evaluation and Assessment within the Purpose Project. She supports the Project in making question of character, purpose and meaning signature features of the Duke community by gathering evidence about the Project's programs and their effects and by working with Project team members to examine and understand what that evidence shows us about what the Project does and can accomplish.
Prior to joining the Purpose Project she worked at Duke's Social Science Research Institute, first as its Administrative Director and subsequently as its Associate Director for Education and Training. She has guided and directed a wide range of collaborative educational programming and services and devoted effort to a wide range of research projects, supporting both quantitative and qualitative data collection, management, analysis, and reporting. Prior to coming to Duke, she held faculty positions at Lafayette College and the University of North Carolina - Charlotte. She holds a B.A. in Political and Social Thought and in French from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Allison Lee is a rising sophomore from Hillsborough, New Jersey, on the pre-dental track. She is always down to discover brunch spots, plan Duke's campus concerts, and curate playlists for friends. Allison is excited to explore the power of communication in medicine, particularly how language-concordant care can help reduce health inequity. This summer, she will embrace this humanistic perspective as she interns with KinderSmile Foundation abroad in Kenya and Uganda and at their dental home in NJ.
Amogh Manral is a first-year undergraduate student from Norway interested in studying computer science and economics. He joined the Kenan Institute as a Research Assistant in September 2024 after participating in the DukeEngage Gateway Program, during which he worked with the United Nations Associations of Norway. Outside of his role at Kenan, Amogh is also a member of the Duke University Marching Band and the Duke Applied Machine Learning club.
Andrew Carlins (T'20, MMS'21) is one of two young alumni on the board. He has worked in management consulting at Bain and Company since November 2021. Currently, he is wrapping up an externship at Accion Venture Lab (AVL), working across AVL's investment and portfolio management teams. He is the founder of Empowering Education, Inc., a nonprofit that focuses on educational and economic empowerment for lower-income, first-generation students in public schools. For fun he enjoys reading and writing-his favorite book is The Little Prince. Carlins lives in Oceanside, New York.
Job Titles:
- Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Professor of the Practice, Department of Biomedical Engineering
- Is Director of the Duke Engineering First
Ann Saterbak is director of the Duke Engineering First-Year Experience and a professor of the practice in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She is a nationally recognized engineering educator with a focus on creating undergraduate programs that broaden students problem solving skills through real-world problems, inquiry-based learning, and hands-on experiences. In fall 2017, she launched a new hands-on design course for first-year Pratt students.
Before coming to Duke, she was the associate dean for engineering education and full teaching professor in bioengineering in the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University. At Rice, she launched a successful first-year engineering design course in which students solved community-based, client-driven problems and built physical prototypes. Her outstanding teaching at Rice was recognized by four university-wide teaching awards. She is the lead author of the textbook Bioengineering Fundamentals.
For her contribution to education within biomedical engineering, she was elected a fellow in the Biomedical Engineering Society and the American Society of Engineering Education. Saterbak has been a frequent presenter of educational materials at annual ASEE and BMES conferences. In building the undergraduate bioengineering laboratory at Rice, she applied four years of industry experience working at the Shell Development Company.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Anna Ghelfi is from Milan, Italy. She is a junior pursuing a major in neuroscience, along with a certificate in digital intelligence and a minor in global health. Within the Imagination and Modal Cognition Lab, she conducts research on subjective awareness and conscious perception. Through Remed, she endeavors to bridge the gap between traditional medical practices and emerging technologies by exploring innovative approaches to healthcare delivery and patient care.
Antony S. Burt (T'78, P'17) is a partner with Schiff Hardin, LLP, in Chicago. His practice focuses on representing federal agencies in connection with failed financial institutions and pursuing fraud investigations and reinsurance disputes. Burt has served as adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School and as a fellow with Leadership Greater Chicago. He served on the DukeEngage National Advisory Board and has been a board member with Metropolitan Family Services, the James B. Moran Center for Youth Advocacy, and the Albert C. Maule Urban Issues Foundation. Burt and his wife, Karin Ruetzel (T'79, P'17), live in Evanston, Illinois, and have three children: Alexander, Lara, and Christina (T'17).
Azra Kanji, T'01, is the Founding Partner of Astira Capital Partners, a middle-market private equity firm primarily focused on investing in North American-based B2B workflow solutions. Prior to founding Astira, Azra was a partner at Abry Partners where she spent 20 years in the private equity strategy. She started her career in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications group at Goldman Sachs. She has served on the non-profit boards of Boston Medical Center and United South End Settlements. Azra lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband Fiyaz and their two children. She graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in Economics in 2001.
Bren Vienrich-Felling (she/ her) is an artist and educator who explores documentary-driven stories within the mediums of cinematic expression, photography and printmaking. Her work has focused on themes related to human connections in nature, women's issues and cultural identity. Born in Lima, Peru in 1987, Bren immigrated to the United States at a young age and grew up in North Carolina. Following her graduation from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where she received a BFA in Studio Art, she worked as a multimedia artist for fourteen years and led roles as designer, consultant and art director for a variety of clients. She has collaborated with others on projects that span animation, filmmaking, design and photography. She is a graduate student within the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program at Duke University.
Brett McCarty is a theological ethicist whose work centers on questions of faithful action within healthcare. He holds joint appointments in the Divinity School and the School of Medicine's Department of Population Health Sciences. He is associate director of the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at the Divinity School, and he is also a faculty associate of the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. His publications include essays in The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and the compilation Spirituality and Religion within the Practice of Medicine. His research and teaching interests occur at the intersections of bioethics, political theology, public health, and theological anthropology. His current research projects focus on competing conceptions of agency within the modern hospital, religious responses to the opioid crisis, and historical and contemporary connections between Christian bioethics and political theology.
Brittany Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering. A Connecticut native, she received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Connecticut in 2020 before coming to Duke. As a member of the Franklin group, Brittany works on developing environmentally sustainable printed electronics with a focus on transistor and sensor applications. Brittany enjoys mentoring students in the lab and volunteering at outreach events to engage people of all ages through hands-on engineering and science activities. After holding seven teaching assistant positions (two at Duke and five at UCONN), Brittany has developed a passion for teaching and looks forward to teaching and mentoring students for years to come.
Brooks Emanuel has backgrounds in both (1) dance and choreography and (2) civil rights law, policy advocacy, and legislative and political work. He obtained his J.D. from NYU Law and his MFA in Dance from Duke University and has both performed at Symphony Space in New York City and drafted petitions to the United States Supreme Court. Among other roles, Brooks has had the great fortune to work for both Stacey Abrams (Georgia House Democratic Caucus) and Bryan Stevenson (Equal Justice Initiative), as well as serving as public policy director for Planned Parenthood Southeast. A large portion of his work in these realms focused particularly on challenging the injustices of the criminal legal system and protecting voting rights. In the dance world, he has performed with Michael Mao Dance, PearsonWidrig Dance, Beacon Dance, and Several Dancers Core, among others. In his current work, he seeks to bring all of these experiences to bear.
At the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Brooks creates and implements both curricular and cocurricular programming for undergraduates around radical imagination, expansive thinking, and strategies-including embodied and artistic-for changing the world. In addition to his work at Kenan, Brooks facilitates embodied movement workshops for social justice practitioners and creates performance works that investigate humans' relationships to each other and the rest of the natural world.
Catherine Forster Connolly (P'23) is the owner and CEO of Merida,-an American textile design house based in Fall River, MA. Catherine has been the CEO of Merida for 15 years and purchased the company seven years ago. During her tenure, Catherine has led the transformation of the company from an importer of high-end sisal to a design-driven textile company reimagining textile manufacturing in the United States. Prior to Merida, Catherine ran a market research company, Pyramid Research, in the high-tech space for 6 years and worked as head of Research and as an analyst for six years prior to taking over the company's leadership. Catherine got her MA in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in 1995 and graduated with an AB in Comparative Area Studies from Duke University in 1991. Catherine lives in Newton, MA with her husband and her three children.
My name is Catherine Nachalwe, and I am an undergraduate student in the class of 2027. I am intending to major in economics and environmental science and policy. In the first semester of my first year at Duke, I took a focus class called Environmental Justice and Climate Movements. This class exposed me to a lot of knowledge regarding environmental injustices people face in various parts of the United States, which made me think about similar challenges faced by low-income individuals in my home country of Zambia. I grew up in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. My house was about 230 meters away from Lusaka's biggest dumpsite called Chunga Dumpsite. Half of Lusaka's daily waste is dumped here and incinerated, but this causes pollution in the surrounding residences, especially toxic air fumes. In my first semester, I learned about Environmental Justice mapping tools that display different pollution intensities and the types of diseases or health conditions prevalent in those areas. After using the tools, I discovered a strong correlation between areas with high air pollution and the prevalence of asthma and other respiratory infections. I grew up near the Chunga dumpsite, and I suffered from asthma throughout my time there. This suggests that many other people near that area may suffer from the same disease or other respiratory diseases. Unfortunately, Zambia lacks Environmental Justice mapping tools that could reveal such information or provide further insight into air pollution-related diseases near the Chunga Dumpsite. Therefore, I want to do research that will enable me to find out more about this pollution, linked diseases, and analyze the results in terms of environmental justice and public health for the people of Chunga and surrounding areas.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
I am a rising senior from Plainsboro, New Jersey majoring in Biology and Global Health with a minor in chemistry. As an aspiring physician, I hope to understand health and wellness from a holistic approach and work towards constructing sustainable solutions that address health disparities in my community. I am also involved with Progress Period on campus in reducing menstrual health inequities and the on-campus science magazine Vertices.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Cecelia Wasco is a rising Junior from Neenah, WI majoring in Public Policy, minoring in Chemistry, and pursuing a Human Rights certificate. She researches reproductive health policy in North Carolina and works as an EMT. She is passionate about improving healthcare access through equitable healthcare policy, especially in Latinx and rural communities. She enjoys playing soccer, running, journaling, and hanging out with friends at Mi Gente events.
Job Titles:
- Editor
- Senior Fellow
- Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology
Charles D. Thompson, Jr. is Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and the Documentary Arts at Duke University. He holds a Ph.D. in religion and culture from UNC-Chapel Hill, with concentrations in cultural studies and Latin American studies. He also holds an M.S. degree in Agricultural Education from NC A&T State University. His particular interests include farmworkers, immigration, agriculture, Appalachian Studies, land, attachments to place, and pilgrimages worldwide. His methodologies include oral history, ethnographic writing, documentary filmmaking, and collaborative community activism.
A former farmer, Thompson has worked extensively with laborers within our food system. He has written about farmworkers, and has served as an advisory board member of Student Action with Farmworkers, the Duke Campus Farm, and other Duke food and agriculture initiatives.
Thompson is author or editor of seven books, including Going Over Home: A Search for Rural Justice in an Unsettled Land (2019), Border Odyssey: Traveling the US/Mexico Divide (2015), Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World, and, with Melinda Wiggins, of The Human Cost of Food: Farmworker Lives, Labor, and Advocacy. Thompson is also the producer/director of seven documentary films, including Homeplace Under Fire, Border Crossing 101, Faces of Time, Brother Towns/ Pueblos Hermanos (2010), We Shall Not Be Moved (2008), and The Guestworker (2007). His latest is the 2019 award-winning PBS documentary entitled, Rock Castle Home, the story of a 1930s Appalachian community displaced by the Blue Ridge Parkway that continues to struggle to hold to its roots in the place inhabited by their ancestors. For more information about these and other works, see his website at charliedthompson.com.
Thompson's current projects include a major Kenan initiative that he directs with colleague Mike Wiley, entitled, "America's Hallowed Ground." The project features artistic responses to American sites of trauma and curriculum guide for grades 7-12, as well as for community groups seeking to respond to the sacred grounds in their communities. Read more about the project here.
Charles Thompson
Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke University
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Associate Professor of African & African American Studies, Biology, Community & Family Medicine
Charmaine Royal is the Robert O. Keohane Professor of African & African American Studies, Biology, Global Health, and Family Medicine & Community Health at Duke University. She directs the Duke Center on Genomics, Race, Identity, Difference and the Duke Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation.
Dr. Royal's research, scholarship, and teaching focus on ethical, social, scientific, and clinical implications of human genetics and genomics, particularly issues at the intersection of genetics and "race". Her specific interests and primary areas of work include genetics and genomics in African and African Diaspora populations; sickle cell disease and trait; public and professional perspectives and practices regarding "race", ethnicity, and ancestry; genetic ancestry inference; and genotype-environment interplay. A fundamental aim of her work is to dismantle ideologies and systems of racial hierarchy in science, healthcare, and society. She serves on numerous national and international advisory boards and committees for government agencies, professional organizations, research initiatives, not-for-profit entities, and corporations.
Dr. Royal obtained a bachelor's degree in microbiology, master's degree in genetic counseling, and doctorate in human genetics from Howard University. She completed postgraduate training in ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) research and bioethics at the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and in epidemiology and behavioral medicine at Howard University Cancer Center.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director for Education, Operations & Media Strategy, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Christian Ferney oversees university-wide ethics initiatives, ethics curriculum development, and the KIE alumni network. In a previous role, he managed many of the Institute's co-curricular programs, such as Team Kenan and Project Change. A native of Portland, Oregon, he has lived in Durham since 2003. He holds a BA in sociology from Linfield College and an MA (2005) and PhD (2009) in sociology from Duke University.
Job Titles:
- Program Coordinator
- Program Coordinator for DukeEngage
Christine Mayer-Patel, Program Coordinator for DukeEngage, joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics team in September 2023. She manages the DukeEngage application and registration processes, including travel and visas, as well as supporting DukeEngage events and programming.
Christine has a Master's in Nonprofit Administration and a Bachelor's in Political Economy of Industrial Societies. She has 17 years of experience at Duke, during which time her work has focused on stewardship/donor relations and financial management. Prior to coming to Duke, Christine worked at the Volunteer Center of Durham and other nonprofits in North Carolina and California.
Christine Warren Ramich (T'95, P'27)) is an adolescent psychologist practicing in Matthews, North Carolina, where she evaluates and treats patients for depression, anxiety, stress, and anger, among other issues, through a variety of methods, including psychotherapy and talk therapy. She graduated from Duke in 1995 and earned her Ph.D. from Penn State University in 2001. She lives in Charlotte with her husband, Michael, and their children, James, Catherine (T'27), and Elizabeth.
Christopher Kaminski is a second-year Ph.D. student in the MEMS department at Duke University. Christopher studies in the Aeroelasticity group under the leadership of Dr. Kenneth Hall. Christopher works on harmonic balance analysis for unsteady aerodynamic phenomena in turbomachinery. He hopes that this research will lead to a greater theoretical and practical understanding of phenomena such as Non-Synchronous Vibration for turbomachinery blades, leading to longer turbofan engine lifespans and greater reliability. Christopher previously received a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Central Florida and worked briefly in the aerospace industry on Florida's Space Coast.
Claire Rostov is a Ph.D. candidate in the Graduate Program in Religion. Her research primarily focuses on the intersection of religion, consumption, media, and waste in the context of the United States. Claire considers teaching to be her top priority. In the classroom, she encourages students to consider how religion operates outside of religious institutions and is often found in unexpected places. Towards this end, she draws from a host of interdisciplinary theories and methods, including anthropology, visual and material culture, and history. Claire holds an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. from Carleton College.
Craig Saperstein (T'95) is a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP. He assists clients in developing and implementing sophisticated government relations strategies at the federal and state levels that are geared to provide a demonstrable return on investment. Craig lobbies on behalf of corporate, nonprofit, foreign sovereign, and public sector clients in Congress, the Executive Branch, and state and local governments. He represents clients on a variety of policy issues, including financial services, cybersecurity, international trade, veterans, energy, economic development, transportation, and health care matters.
Dagny Edison joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics in May 2024 as a Program Coordinator. In this role she supports a variety of undergraduate initiatives including the What Now? program, the Ethics and Society Certificate, and the Ethics and Global Citizenship LLC.
Before joining the Kenan team, Dagny worked as a Project Director for the Project Change orientation program at Duke, and she worked as a K-12 tutor for over four years. She earned her BA from Duke University in Political Science with a minor in Classical Civilizations, and is originally from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Job Titles:
- President of the William R. Kenan
Daniel W. Drake is the president of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Funds, and chairman of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Fund for Engineering, Technology and Science. From 1967-1998, Dan served as managing director of J.P. Morgan & Co. and continued to consult with the firm until 1999. Dan also served as managing member and chief operating officer of Middlebury Capital Partners LLC from 1999-2001. From 2003-2009, he was the associate publisher of the Nantucket Independent LLC. Dan is currently involved on the boards of a number of nonprofit organizations, including the Linda Loring Nature Foundation and the Nantucket Shellfish Association, serving as president for both organizations. Dan received a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Rochester in 1964 and his J.D. from the Albany Law School of Union University in 1967. Dan was admitted to the New York Bar in 1967. He and his wife Judith reside in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
Danielle Moore (T'85) earned her A.B. in history. At Duke, Ms. Moore served on the DukeEngage Advisory Board, the Leadership Gifts Committee, and as co-chair of her 30 th reunion. Ms. Moore currently serves as president of the Palm Beach Town Council. She is president of the Mary Alice Fortin Foundation, vice president of Fortin Enterprises, Inc. and a director of both the Fortin Foundation of Florida and the Barker Welfare Foundation. Ms. Moore sits on the boards of many charitable organizations including The Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, the Boys and Girls Club of Palm Beach County, Rosarian Academy (where she attended and her daughters currently go to school), Town of Palm Beach United Way, the Garden Club of Palm Beach, and Women's Southern Golf Association.
Job Titles:
- Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics
- Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
David Toole is director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics and Associate Professor of the Practice of Theology, Ethics, and Global Health. He earned his PhD at Duke in 1996 and then left for his home state of Montana, where he taught at Carroll College and the University of Montana before returning to Duke in 2005. In 2009, he started traveling back and forth from Duke to communities in the Great Lakes region of East Africa while working on grant projects and conducting research in Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan. His work in Africa led his to pursue an MPH degree from UNC, Chapel Hill, which he completed in 2014. His teaching includes courses on Global Health as an Ethical Enterprise, Ethics and the History of Humanitarianism, Challenges of Living an Ethical Life, and Ethics and Native America. He is the author of Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo: Theological Reflections on Nihilism, Tragedy, and Apocalypse, and has recently completed a manuscript titled The Morgue in the Garden of Eden: An Essay on Hope … in the Dark, which tells the story of a Burundian woman and the hospital she founded during Burundi's long civil war. David has been married to his wife, Nancy, for thirty-four years and is the father of three grown boys.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy
- Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Associate Professor, Sanford School of Public Policy
Deondra Rose is an Associate Professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy with secondary appointments in the Department of Political Science and the Department of History. She is also the Director of Polis: Center for Politics and Co-director of the North Carolina Scholars Strategy Network (SSN). Her research focuses on the feedback effects of landmark social policies on the American political landscape. In addition to U.S. public/social policy, Rose's research and teaching interests include higher education policy, American political development (APD), political behavior, identity politics (e.g., gender, race, and socioeconomic status), and inequality.
She is the author of Citizens by Degree: Higher Education Policy and the Changing Gender Dynamics of American Citizenship (Oxford University Press, 2018), which examines the development of landmark U.S. higher education policies--including the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the Higher Education Act of 1965, and Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments--and their impact on the progress that women have made since the mid-twentieth century.
Rose's research has appeared in Studies in American Political Development, the Journal of Policy History, the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, and PS: Political
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Associate Research Professor of Economic History
Dirk Philipsen is Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and an Associate Research Professor of Economic History at the Sanford School of Public Policy. His work and teaching is focused on sustainability and the history of capitalism and his most recent research has focused on GDP as the dominant measure of success in U.S. and international economic affairs. His work also includes historical explorations of alternative measures for well-being.
Raised in Germany and educated in both Germany and the United States, he received a BA in economics (College for Economics, Berlin, 1982), an MA in American Studies (John F. Kennedy Institute, Free University Berlin, 1987), and a PhD in American Social and Economic History (Duke University, 1992). He has taught at Duke University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Virginia State University. For ten years, he served as Director of the Institute for the Study of Race Relations at Virginia State University, which he founded in 1997. In 2001-2002, he served as one of the lead authors in generating a new shared governance constitution for Virginia State University.
Dirk Philipsen has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Franklin Humanities Center at Duke, and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. He has published on the history of modern capitalism, movements for social and economic justice, as well as race and race relations. His first book, We Were the People, chronicles the collapse of communism in East Germany and was published by Duke University Press. Recently, he served as editor and contributor to a volume on Green Business, published by SAGE. His latest work is published by Princeton University Press under the title The Little Big Number - How GDP Came to Rule the World, And What to Do About It (Spring 2015.)
My name is Divya Srijay, and I am a rising sophomore from Spartanburg, South Carolina interested in majoring in physics and neuroscience. I spend most of my time working on protein design in the programmable biology lab in the BME department, and in my free time, I enjoy playing the cello, reading, and spending time outside! My project this summer focuses on accessibility to equitable greenspaces. Considering the increasing urgency of preserving natural environments and the prevailing effects of redlining, after learning about the importance of nature in my writing class, Biophilic Cities, understanding how to equitably implement greenspaces entered the forefront of my interests. With the Kenan Summer Fellowship, I plan to discover who is responsible for attending to this equity- if anyone at all. To do so, I will be interning at Columbia Green, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing access to greenspaces in underserved parts of Columbia, SC, and visiting Singapore, a flagship biophilic city to learn about their approach to the ethics of biophilic design.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Law at Duke Law School
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Professor of Law, Duke Law School
Doriane Coleman is a Professor of Law at Duke Law School, where she specializes in interdisciplinary scholarship focused on women, children, medicine, sports, and law. Her recent work has centered on sex, including its evolving definition and its implications for institutions ranging from elite sport to medicine and, of course, to law. A first article in this series, Sex in Sport , is at 80 LAW & CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS 63-126 (2017), and a second, Re-affirming the Value of the Sports Exception to Title IX's General Non-Discrimination Rule, is at 27 DUKE J. GENDER L. & POL'Y 69 (2020). She is currently working on a third article on Sex in Medicine and a book project called Sex in Law.
A regular teacher of Torts, Coleman is co-author of the first-year casebook Torts: Doctrine and Process (2019). She is also co-director of the Law School's Center for Sports Law and Policy, a faculty affiliate of the University's Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities and the History of Medicine, and the Center for Child and Family Policy. Her recent cross-campus projects include co-leading a Bass Connections team on Cheating, Gaming, and Rule Fixing: Challenges for Ethics Across the Adversarial Professions (2018-19), and directing the program Head Trauma in Football: Implications for Medicine, Law, and Policy (2018).
Coleman received her Juris Doctor degree from Georgetown Law (1988), and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University (1982). She was a litigation associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering before beginning her academic and teaching career at Howard University School of Law. While she was at Wilmer, she worked on the development of the world's first random, out-of-competition drug-testing program for what is now USA Track & Field, a project which led to her years-long engagement with the Olympic Movement's anti-doping efforts.
Before law school, Coleman ran the 800 meters in collegiate and international competition, where she was a multiple All American, All East, and All Ivy athlete, the U.S. National Collegiate Indoor Champion in 1982, the U.S. National Indoor Champion (with teammates) in the 4 x 400 meters relay in 1982, and the Swiss National Champion in 1982 and 1983. Over her athletic career she competed for Villanova, Cornell, the Swiss and U.S. National Teams, Athletics West, the Santa Monica and Atoms Track Clubs, and Lausanne Sports.
Doug M. Fuchs (T'89, P'25, P'27) is a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's Los Angeles office and is the co-chair of the firm's Los Angeles Litigation Department. He has a special expertise in representing corporations and individuals in white collar criminal, SEC, and other regulatory enforcement matters, including cases involving allegations of securities fraud, environmental violations, public corruption, antitrust violations, economic espionage, and government contracting fraud. Doug lives in Pacific Palisades, California, with his wife, Caroline Wittcoff. They have three children, Jackson (T'25), Lauren (T'27), and Ryan.
Elena joined the Kenan team in November 2024. She is a Program Coordinator for DukeEngage helping manage the Gateway, Brodhead, Decaminada, and Group programs. She previously worked for DukeEngage as a Site Coordinator (SC) in Brazil and Uganda, and currently supports SC training and student recruitment.
Her background is in Engineering Physics, Spanish, Mathematics, and Music. Prior to working for Duke, she was a two-time Fulbright Scholarship recipient and worked with Universities in Bucaramanga and Tunja, Colombia.
Ellen Kollar (T'89, P'21, P'25) has served as general counsel for the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company and for Mars, Inc., North America, and has also been in private practice at McDermott, Will & Emery in Chicago. She is a founding member of East Beach, LLC, a private investment company, and also of Towpath Productions, which produced an award-winning independent film, AKRON, in 2015. She served on the DukeEngage National Advisory Board and is an active member of the advisory board of the Gene Siskel Film Center, a public program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her J.D. from New York University School of Law and an A.B. in Economics and History from Duke. She lives in Kenilworth, Illinois, with her husband Tim. They have three sons: Lou, Tim (E'21) and Frank (T'25).
Hi, my name is Elly Ronald and I am a rising sophomore from Mill Valley, California. I plan to study environmental science and visual media studies. In my free time I love to do anything outside, including surfing, rock climbing, and backpacking. I have always been intrigued by how we can more ethically navigate the outdoor world while enjoying it for recreation or other reasons. This summer as my group and I walk one of the routes of El Camino de Santiago, a month-long catholic pilgrimage across Spain, we are investigating ethical cultural tourism as well as the economic, environmental, and social effects of the recent secularization of the pilgrimage on the local towns and people.
I'm a rising senior from Waterville, Maine, and I'm studying biology and global health on the pre-med track. I am particularly interested in marine biology, as well as the intersections between the environment and community health outcomes. I am a certified Wilderness EMT, and I love running, hiking, and reading!
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Faculty Fellow
Eric Mlyn is a Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics and Lecturer at Duke's Sanford School for Public Policy. He was the founding Executive Director of DukeEngage and Assistant vice Provost for Civic Engagement. Before that he was the founding director of the Robertson Scholars Program and served on the Political Science Faculty of UNC-Chapel Hill. He is currently the Director of the Certificate in Civic Engagement and Social Change and chairs Duke's Global Travel Advisory Committee. He collaborates with colleagues across campus on the development and implementation of Project Citizen, which seeks to puts the consideration of citizenship at the center of the Duke experience and the Duke community. His intellectual interests focus on the role of higher education in fostering democracy and working with undergraduates to foster political and civic engagement. He holds a BA in Political Science from Tufts University and PHD in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. During the fall of 2019 he will be a visiting scholar at the Tisch College for Civic Life at Tufts.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Teaching on Purpose Fellow 2024
Eric is a Ph.D. candidate in the Theology Department at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studies constructive and political theologies. His dissertation offers a constructive account of Christian eschatology that is attentive to political and ethical concerns. Elsewhere, his work focuses on democratic organizing, responses to historic injustice, apocalyptic theology, and doctrines of God.
Job Titles:
- Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Professor of Environmental Policy and Public Policy
Dr. Weinthal specializes in global environmental politics and environmental security with a particular emphasis on water and energy. Current areas of research include (1) global environmental politics and governance, (2) environmental conflict and peacebuilding, (3) the political economy of the resource curse, and (4) climate change adaptation. Dr. Weinthal's research spans multiple geographic regions, including the Soviet successor states, the Middle East, South Asia, East Africa, and North America. Dr. Weinthal is author of State Making and Environmental Cooperation: Linking Domestic Politics and International Politics in Central Asia (MIT Press 2002), which received the 2003 Chadwick Alger Prize and the 2003 Lynton Keith Caldwell Prize. She has co-authored Oil is not a Curse (Cambridge University Press 2010) and co-edited Water and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (Earthscan Press, 2014) and The Oxford Handbook on Water Politics and Policy (Oxford University Press 2018). She is a member of the UNEP Expert Group on Conflict and Peacebuilding and a co-editor of Global Environmental Politics. In 2017 she was a recipient of the Women Peacebuilders for Water Award under the auspices of "Fondazione Milano per Expo 2015".
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Esosa Ediae is a rising junior from Delaware majoring in Global Health and Biology and pursuing a minor in Spanish. She aspires to work as a medical doctor in communities globally, improving the health outcomes of children and families and demonstrating the love of Christ through quality healthcare. She is currently part of a Bass Connections team that will work with the Children's Complex Care Coalition of North Carolina to develop transitional care interventions to support families with children with complex health needs. Apart from school, she enjoys playing and watching basketball, reading, spending time outside, and being with her family and friends.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Teaching on Purpose Fellow 2024
Evan Pebesma is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in Literature at Duke University. His research interests include U.S. literature, American studies, political theory, and comedy studies. He is currently serving as the Academic Affairs Intern at The Graduate School. Evan specializes in literature and language arts education, with an emphasis on teaching writing skills. He has undertaken extensive pedagogical training through the Certificate in Teaching Writing in the Disciplines, the Certificate in College Teaching, and the Humanities Teaching as Leadership Training Workshop.
Job Titles:
- Physician
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Farr Curlin is a hospice and palliative care physician who joined Duke University in January 2014. He holds joint appointments in the School of Medicine, including its Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine, and in Duke Divinity School, including its Initiative on Theology, Medicine and Culture. He works with Duke colleagues to foster scholarship, study, and training regarding the intersections of medicine, ethics, and religion.
After graduating from medical school, he completed internal medicine residency training and fellowships in both health services research and clinical ethics at the University of Chicago before joining its faculty in 2003. His empirical research charts the influence of physicians' moral traditions and commitments, both religious and secular, on physicians' clinical practices.
As an ethicist, he addresses questions regarding whether and in what ways physicians' religious commitments ought to shape their clinical practices in a plural democracy.
Fouad Bashour (T'98, P'28) is a founding partner of CIC Partners and has been with CIC and its predecessor since 1999. CIC Partners is a private equity firm that invests in growth-oriented middle market companies primarily in the food and restaurant industries. CIC manages the personal capital of its investment team and operating partners, who are successful CEOs and entrepreneurs, and seeks to partner with owner/operators, founders, and management teams. He began his career at The Boston Consulting Group. He is a former trustee of the Alcuin School in Dallas, TX and previously served on the Duke Annual Fund Advisory Board. He lives in Dallas, Texas with his wife Dr. Jennifer Bashour and their two children.
Georgia Rabin is a second-year student double-majoring in Biology and Public Policy with a minor in Economics. She first got involved with the Kenan Institute through the "It's Not Too Late to Build a Better World" FOCUS Program, and is passionate about environmental sustainability and bioethics. She prefers to spend her free time outside in nature and is currently trying very hard to become a runner!
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School
- Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Norman Wirzba is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School and a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. He pursues research and teaching interests at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies. He lectures frequently in Canada and the United States. His work focuses on understanding and promoting practices that can equip both rural and urban church communities to be more faithful and responsible members of creation. Current research is centered on a recovery of the doctrine of creation and a restatement of humanity in terms of its creaturely life.
I am a junior majoring in Biology with Global Health and Chemistry minors. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, I am interested in addressing oral health disparities as a dentist. I research Goldsboro Hospital, a segregated asylum for Black Patients during the early 20th century. As DukeAfrica co-president, I foster an inclusive and diverse community of African students.
Job Titles:
- Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Gopal Sreenivasan (Ph.D. 1993, UC Berkeley) joined the Duke faculty in 2008. His research interests cover a wide range of topics across the whole spectrum of moral and political philosophy.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Gracie is a rising senior from Nashville, Tennessee majoring in Biology with minors in creative writing and global health. She is passionate about health equity and how art can reduce inequalities in healthcare. In her free time, Gracie loves reading, writing, playing the bassoon, and mobile games.
Job Titles:
- Program Director
- Program Director at the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Hillary Train is program director at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. She oversees program implementation across the institute's priority areas and is responsible for the planning and successful execution of KIE's major events.
Hillary worked previously as the interim director of DukeCreate in 2022, a program offering free arts enrichment activities for students and staff. She has also coordinated research colloquia, concerts, and major conferences for Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts and has worked closely with Jeremy Begbie, Distinguished Research Professor at Duke Divinity School, to coordinate multi-year research projects and public-facing events. Prior to moving to Durham, Hillary was a program coordinator for Baylor University's Interdisciplinary Core, an Honors College program serving over 700 students. In this role, Hillary recruited and advised students, coordinated program events, and liaised with faculty, administration, and students on all facets of university life - including assessment and retention; course development and curriculum equivalencies; and co-curricular enrichment opportunities. She also taught a course for first-year students called "The Examined Life."
Indigo Cook is a second-year student in the Duke dance program's MFA in Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, they work within the intersection of movement, music, and contemporary performance practices of experimental and avant-garde art. They relish any opportunity to listen deeply, move wildly, and remain ever in flux.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Operations for DukeEngage
Inga Peterson is the Associate Director of Operations for DukeEngage. She has been developing and managing programs and cross-functional teams at Duke for the majority of the past eleven years, five of which she spent as an assistant director for programs with DukeEngage. Most recently, she served as the Vice President for Campus Engagement for the Duke Alumni Association, where she was the senior administrator responsible for the campus-facing programs and functions of the 175,000-member Association. Prior to coming to Duke, Inga working in academic advising and student affairs at the University of Chicago, Harvard, and Boston University, and developed and managed international community development programs with the Academy for Educational Development, the Harvard Institute for International Development, and the United States Peace Corps. Inga lives in Durham with her son and Yorkie mix.
Job Titles:
- Teaching on Purpose Fellow 2024
Ivy Flessen is in her third year in the Political Science Ph.D. program. She is a budding political theorist whose work lies at the intersection of the history of political thought and moral psychology. She writes primarily on ancient Greek and early modern political thought, with a focus on the political mechanization of "sub-rational" passions. She has many working papers at the submission stage, including a piece on the rhetoric of Plato's Republic, co-authored with Michael Gillespie and Mike Hawley. While, administratively, she is spending this year leading a funded Franklin Humanities reading group and running the Duke Political Theory Graduate Conference, she is also developing her dissertation topic. Her project will explore the political value of indignation in the history of political thought.
Jacob Little is a Ph.D. candidate in Duke's Political Science department with a specialization in political theory. He earned his bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Houston. He studies the history of political thought broadly, with particular interest in ancient, early modern, and American political thought. His dissertation is on how regimes can manage the promise and the peril of political ambition.
Jacqueline Dinh is double majoring in sociology and statistics and hopes to pursue a career in research and academia. In addition to working at Kenan's front desk, she was a research assistant at the Worldview Lab's project on political identity formation in middle schoolers.
Janice A Gault (T'87, MD'91, P'24) is an Associate Surgeon for Wills Eye Ophthalmology Clinic, Wills Eye Hospital, and is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. She teaches and has a clinical practice. She earned her bachelor's and M.D. degrees from Duke. She has served on the Duke Annual Fund Advisory Board and the DukeEngage National Advisory Board and received the Duke Alumni Association award for Outstanding Volunteer Service. Her husband, James Vander, is a retina surgeon at Mid-Atlantic Retina at Wills Eye Hospital. They have three children: Caroline (T'24), William, and Eli.
Jennifer Hainsfurther Saperstein (T'05) is a partner in the Washington DC office of Covington & Burling LLP, where she serves as vice chair of the Anti-Corruption Group and a Managing Partner for Legal Personnel. Jennifer's practice focuses on advising clients on compliance issues arising under anti-corruption laws, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act ("FCPA"). Jennifer also leads cross-cutting compliance projects to help companies build and improve their compliance programs across areas of regulatory expertise, and conducts internal investigations on issues related to workplace culture, diversity, and inclusion. Jennifer was recognized by Law360 as a 2020 "Rising Star" in Compliance.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of the Purpose Project
- Director, University Initiatives, the Purpose Project / Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics Adjunct Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Jesse Summers is the Associate Director of the Purpose Project and an adjunct Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. Previously, he was an Academic Dean in Trinity College.
He received his PhD in Philosophy from UCLA, his MPhil in philosophy from University College London, his BA in philosophy, political science, and French from the University of Kansas, and his sense of humor from a latchkey childhood watching age-inappropriate comedy.
His book Clean Hands? Philosophical Reflections on Scrupulosity, co-authored with fellow Fellow Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, came out from Oxford University Press in 2019.
Jessica Reif is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Management + Organizations area at Fuqua. Her research explores social networks and social influence at work, as well as the role of technology in shaping the future of work. Prior to starting her Ph.D., Jess was the Director of Research & Development for a consulting firm in Washington, DC.
Jim Bruyette (T'77) is a CPA and Certified Financial Planner and co-founder of Sullivan, Bruyette, Speros & Blayney, one of the largest wealth management firms in the DC area. Its services include comprehensive personal financial planning, portfolio management, and income tax preparation. Bruyette is an avid golfer and played on the Duke men's golf am as a student. He lives in Annandale, Virginia, with his wife, Phyllis. They have three grown children, Eric, Kimberly, and Jill.
Jingyi Liu is a second-year graduate student in Critical Asian Humanities at Duke University. She received her bachelor's degree in Chinese language and literature from Peking University. Her current research focuses on the literature and political history of modern China, with an emphasis on war reportage and female novels. Her areas of interest include diaspora studies, religious studies, and comparative literature.
Job Titles:
- Director of Storytelling and Public Engagement
- Journalist
John Biewen is a longtime audio journalist, documentary maker, and educator. He is the producer and host of the award-winning podcast, "Scene on Radio."
"Scene on Radio's" 2017 series exploring the history of white supremacy, "Seeing White," and its 2020 series on American democracy, "The Land That Never Has Been Yet," were each nominated for a Peabody Award. Biewen is also a two-time winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for outstanding coverage of the disadvantaged.
Before joining Kenan, he directed the audio program at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University. Previously, John reported for NPR News, American Public Media, and Minnesota Public Radio. John is co-editor of the book, "Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound," published by the University of North Carolina Press.
John Bussel (T'91, P'25) is Chief Investment Officer and a principal of Team Hewins, LLC, an independent advisory firm located in South Florida and Northern California. John has spent over thirty years in the investment advisory business starting with Fiduciary Trust International, Prudential Securities, and his own practice before joining Team Hewins in 2004.
John has been connected to several non-profit boards and currently serves as a board member of Barry University in Miami Shores, FL, The Loomis Chaffee School (Windsor, CT), Greater Miami Jewish Federation, Jewish Community Services of South Florida, and the Board of Governors of the American Jewish Committee. He is also Vice President of The Shepard Broad Foundation, a Miami based private family foundation.
John graduated with an A.B. from Duke in 1991 in history and Spanish and is currently a Duke parent. He lives in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida with his wife Laura and three children Miriam (T'25), Adriana, and Samuel.
Jonathan Colen is a Ph.D. candidate in the University Program in Ecology. His research interests focus on how species may stay distinct despite the homogenizing effects of hybridization. As an educator, Jonathan believes that teaching is an act of empathy and that the best teachers are those that foster kindness and compassion in the students that they instruct. His prior teaching experience includes teaching labs as a Teaching Assistant in introductory biology courses (Bio 201 and 203) and leading guest lectures for Bio 263. Prior to graduate school, Jonathan served as a tutor for UNC-Chapel Hill's Academic Support for Student Athletes Program. He graduated from Stanford University with a B.S.H. in Biology in 2016.
Job Titles:
- Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Associate Professor of Pediatrics Associate Dean of Student Affairs and Advisory Dean for MD Program
Job Titles:
- Professor of Medical Humanities
Farr Curlin is a hospice and palliative care physician who joined Duke University in January 2014. He holds joint appointments in the School of Medicine, including its Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine, and in Duke Divinity School, including its Initiative on Theology, Medicine and Culture. He works with Duke colleagues to foster scholarship, study, and training regarding the intersections of medicine, ethics, and religion.
After graduating from medical school, he completed internal medicine residency training and fellowships in both health services research and clinical ethics at the University of Chicago before joining its faculty in 2003. His empirical research charts the influence of physicians' moral traditions and commitments, both religious and secular, on physicians' clinical practices.
As an ethicist, he addresses questions regarding whether and in what ways physicians' religious commitments ought to shape their clinical practices in a plural democracy.
Julia Grimes is a senior majoring in Public Policy with minors in Psychology and Visual & Media Studies. Julia first became involved with Kenan as a freshman in the What Now? course and has since worked as a fellow for the program by leading small group sections on topics ranging from mindfulness to what success means. Outside of her role as a communications assistant, Julia enjoys going on walks, playing pickleball with friends, and going to the movies. Julia's favorite candy from the front desk stash usually rotates, but right now is Reese's Pieces.
I am a rising sophomore from Sonoma County, California. In my free time I love spending time exploring the outdoors, running, and going to concerts! I am planning on majoring in both Neuroscience and Philosophy - a path of study that I hope will guide me to a better understanding of individual people and humanity as a whole. This is my primary intellectual interest, and also what I will explore as a Kenan fellow. This summer I will be looking into the secularization of El Camino de Santiago, an ancient Catholic pilgrimage, primarily through a person-centered lens. I hope to gain an understanding of how shifting demographics and modernization impact both the lives of locals and the experiences of pilgrims, and how these effects can be applied broadly.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Juliette Duara is a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. Duara's research interests include investigating the viability of human rights as an ethical system for the 21 st century, comparing U.S. federal and state governmental responses to perceived conflicts between religious freedom and women's and LGBTQ persons' rights to equality, as well as probing gendered implications of human rights violations. Duara's publications include a book entitled Gender Justice and Proportionality in India: Comparative Perspectives, published by Routledge in 2018 as part of its "Advances in South Asian Studies" series and an article on "Religious Pluralism, Personal Laws and Gender Equality in Asia: Their History of Conflict and the Prospects for Accommodation" in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law (2012). Duara has a BA in History from Whitman College, an MA in Asian Studies from Stanford, a JD from the University of Chicago Law School, and a PhD in Law from the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law.
Karen Bond (T'80) has over 20 years of experience designing innovative programs that increase educational access for first-generation students. She has held leadership positions with the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and led the Jack Kent Cooke Young Scholars Program and Goldman Sachs Next Generation Venture Fund. Her experience includes teaching classes in Diversity Management for the Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins University. In 2020, she joined the Judge Alexander Williams Center for Policy at the University of Maryland College Park. She has served on the boards of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Friends School, Meals on Wheels, Maryland Nonprofits, and the Greater Baltimore Leadership Committee Lead- ership Board, Invest in Girls and the Executive Alliance, for which she served as president in 2017. She graduated from Duke University with an A.B. in English and Political Science and a graduate degree in Organizational Development and Training from Johns Hopkins University.
Job Titles:
- Director, Program Development and Design, the Purpose Project
Katherine Jo works with The Purpose Project, developing courses, programs, and pedagogy that engage students in questions of meaning, purpose, and character. In addition to teaching undergraduate courses, she leads programming for graduate and professional school students, including Teaching on Purpose, which prepares doctoral students for their future roles as educators, and is an instructor in the Program in Education. Katherine also serves on the Advisory Board of The Project on the Good Surgeon at Duke Medical School and is on the Project Leadership Team of Yale University's Life Worth Living Network. Her scholarly interests include philosophies of liberal learning, the place of leisure in education, and faculty vocational identity. She has previously worked in career development, undergraduate advising, and faculty development. She holds a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University, an M.A. in Philosophy of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
My name is Katherine Wiest, and I'm from Newport, Rhode Island. I am a Biology and Italian major here at Duke, and I am currently working in a lab studying ovarian cancer. In my free time, I work at a preschool here in Durham and would love to work in pediatrics in some capacity in my future as well!
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Kay Jowers directs the Just Environments Program, a joint initiative between Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Kenan Institute for Ethics. Her work focuses on bringing scholars, students, and community co-researchers together to understand the structural sources of environmental and climate injustices and challenge the deeply held assumptions that perpetuate them. Through partnerships grounded in research and data justice principles, her collaborations focus on generating research and policy solutions that address the traditional issues of alleviating environmental burdens as well as on creating healthy sustainable communities with access to quality and affordable housing, food, green spaces, utilities, etc. She also co-directs the Environmental Justice Lab, a collaboration with the Duke Economics Department, where students, faculty, and community partners work together to use computational social science methods to study environmental inequality and assess the efficacy of policy solutions. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a JD from Tulane University Law School, and an MSPH in environmental health sciences from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Kaylie Page is a candidate in the Graduate Program in Religion, concentrating in Christian Theological Studies. Her dissertation research compares four pre-modern theologians on the theme of Christ as the Mediator between God and Man, considering how this theme speaks to modern debates about Trinitarian theology and how theological language signifies; her broader research interests are Trinity, Christology, and pre-modern interpretation of Scripture. Kaylie grew up homeschooled along with her nine younger siblings, and she maintains a keen interest in the philosophy of education broadly conceived. In addition to her teaching roles at the Divinity School, she has led reading groups for undergraduates and Bible studies for various populations.
Job Titles:
- Teaching on Purpose Fellow 2024
Kiersten Hasenour is a Ph.D candidate in Sociology at Duke University. She received a B.A in Sociology and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Evansville in 2018. Through her research, she seeks to better understand how others' identities impact our understanding and response to interaction with them. Her work primarily focuses on gender identity and often takes place in the legal sphere.
Job Titles:
- Administrative Coordinator
- Administrative Coordinator for the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Kimberly Dorman is the Administrative Coordinator for the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. She is a graduate of North Carolina Central University with 10 + years of experience in Program/Administrative Coordination; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coordination; and Financial Management. In her spare time, she likes to participate in community activities, watch sports, and spend time with her family. She is excited to bring her talents to the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
My name is Kimi, and I am a rising junior studying Biomedical Engineering. I was born in Beijing and lived in 5 different states in the U.S. growing up (Texas, Iowa, Colorado, Arkansas, North Carolina)! I'm excited to be a part of ReMed!
Kirsten Villers (T'01) spent her early career working in investment and commercial banking at J. P. Morgan and its legacy organizations. During her time at JPM, she worked for the CFO of Chase Commercial Banking, assisting in all aspects of supporting a $6 billion dollar business. Subsequently, Ms. Villers worked at Chase Capital, providing subordinated debt and equity capital to Chase customers. Recently, Ms. Villers served as the Board Chair to Great Lakes Academy (GLA), a public charter school in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. During her time on the Board, GLA expanded from K-2 to K-8 and currently serves almost 600 students. During this time, Ms. Villers oversaw the $3 million purchase and expansion of GLA's campus to deliver a new, state-of-the-art facility to its students and families. She also led the transition process of the school's management from its founder to the current Executive Director. GLA continues to be a top-performing elementary school in the city. Ms. Villers earned a B.A. in Political Science from Duke, followed by her M.B.A. from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, with concentrations in Finance and Not-for-Profit Administration. She lives in Chicago with her husband, Ned, their three children and two dogs.
Kristen Farrell (P'26) is an accomplished businesswoman and designer who has been in the luxury home and hospitality industries for over 25 years. She has built a vast portfolio of successful projects in the construction and design fields, including over 250 houses in the Hamptons and a variety of other ventures under the Farrell brand. Her keen knowledge of Hamptons real estate and design acumen have earned her a reputation as a respected industry leader. Kristen has recently expanded the Farrell brand to include the Farrell Design Group, making an imprint in the NYC and Boston hospitality sectors.
Kristen is also a mother of three-Joey, an integrated design student at The New School; Kate, Duke P'26; and Jack, a senior in Southampton High School.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director for Programs at DukeEngage
Kristin serves as a point person for faculty-led DukeEngage group programs, supporting faculty and staff in program development and implementation. She also directs and organizes the DukeEngage Academy, as well as faculty and staff development and training.
Kristin has a background in education and worked in admissions and program evaluation at the University of British Columbia for several years before returning to NC to coordinate faculty support and student development efforts for Duke's academic service-learning program. She lives in Durham, and amidst herding the people and animals in her life, tries to squeeze in a few minutes reading and connecting with nature.
Laura joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics in November 2023.
As Research Associate, she supports new institute collaborations at Duke University, particularly with the Native American Studies Initiative (NASI), and provides event support. She also serves as editorial assistant for Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, which as of 2023 has its editorial home at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
Previously, Laura spent nine years at UNC-Chapel Hill, the last six of which she worked on the development team at Carolina Performing Arts (CPA), one of the nation's Major University Presenters. Laura is a graduate of Davidson College, and she lives in Durham.
Alexis Ligon Holloway is a Cultural Anthropology Ph.D. candidate and Dean's Graduate Fellow at Duke University. Stemming from personal experience, her research explores how the mechanisms of white supremacy operate in classical music performance, examining how racial and aesthetic hierarchies position Black bodies as aberrant in these spaces. Specifically, Alexis's research centers on the resilience and resistance that Black musicians display in the face of racism in classical music pedagogy and performance. As a filmmaker, Alexis hopes to produce a multi-modal dissertation, consisting of a written portion and an accompanying documentary that attends to the aural and performative aspects of her research.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
I am a member of the Class of 2025 from Berlin, Connecticut. On campus, I spend my free time serving as co-president of the Duke Medical Ethics Journal, researching cancer therapies as well as the quality of life of cancer survivors, guiding campus tours through Duke Presidential Ambassadors, captaining an intramural volleyball team, and working at Bella Union Cafe as a barista. I am working towards a Biology major (Genetics concentration) in addition to completing Chemistry and Psychology minors. Following graduation, I intend to pursue a Masters in Genetic Counseling and study how best to provide psychosocial support to those affected by genetic disease.
Job Titles:
- Development Representative
Margaret Krause joined the Kenan team in May 2022.
As Kenan's Development Representative, she manages the Kenan Institute for Ethics advisory board and oversees development-related projects to advance KIE's fundraising and engagement strategies.
Margaret earned a B.A. from Duke University with a double major in English and History. She has previously worked in the IT industry and residential real estate in Charlotte, NC. A native of Durham, Margaret is thrilled to be back at Duke and in the Triangle area.
My name is Margot Madison, and I am a rising sophomore from Newton, MA, studying Economics and Global Health. In my spare time I enjoy running, cooking, and long walks with podcasts. This summer, with Julia Simon and Elly Ronald, I will be investigating the secularization and commercialization of pilgrimage while on El Camino de Santiago in Northern Spain. We are specifically hoping to investigate the economic, environmental, and social impacts of pilgrims on towns along the route.
Hi! I am Marko Jakovljevic, and I am a rising sophomore pursuing a double major in Political Science and Economics with a minor in Philosophy. I am passionate about political theory, ethics, and American politics. Apart from academics, I am a rower on the club team, an associate editor of a literary magazine on campus, and love to explore coffee-shops in my free time. It is no secret that the experience of elections in American politics has become a high-stakes and even existential process. As the 2024 elections approach, the ethics of voting and abstaining will become a more pressing conversation. Arguments about why, how, and whether people should vote are as unavoidable in household conversations as in scholarly debate. This summer with the Kenan Summer Fellowship, in my project "The Challenges of Ethical Voting," I am researching the ethics of voting and whether voting is necessary to live an ethical life. In this project I will be confronted with a wide range of perspectives and questions about the debated importance of voting, the idea of ethical and civic duties, and fundamentally what it means to live in a political order.
Mia Xie is a third-year undergraduate studying Philosophy and Economics. She joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics as a Research Assistant in September 2024. Mia is interested in comparative philosophy and ethical economic development. At Duke, she is also involved in the Duke International Relations Association and Duke University Union.
Job Titles:
- Stephen and Janet Bear Assistant Research Professor of Arts, Ethics, and Education / Co - Director, America 's Hallowed Ground
Mike Wiley is a North Carolina-based actor, playwright and director of multiple one-man documentary dramas and full-cast ensemble plays, including LEAVING EDEN, THE PARCHMAN HOUR, DOWNRANGE: STORIES FROM THE HOMEFRONT, DAR HE: THE STORY OF EMMETT TILL, the theatrical adaptation of BLOOD DONE SIGN MY NAME and more. The film adaptation of Wiley's DAR HE, in which he portrayed 30+ roles, received more than 40 major film festival awards around the globe. THE PARCHMAN HOUR was selected as the closing event of the official 50th year anniversary commemoration of the Freedom Riders in Jackson, MS. Wiley has twenty years credits in providing documentary theatre for young audiences plus film, television and regional theatre. An Upward Bound alum and Trio Achiever Award recipient, he is an M.F.A. graduate of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and is a former Lehman-Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies. He has conducted numerous educational residencies funded through grant programs of the North Carolina Arts Council and his plays have been selected for spotlight showcases by arts industry conferences throughout North America.
A gifted and visionary artist and communicator, Wiley's overriding goal is expanding cultural awareness for audiences of all ages through dynamic portrayals based on pivotal moments in African-American history and, in doing so, helping to unveil a richer picture of the total American experience. Wiley is recipient of the University of North Carolina's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017. His epic LEAVING EDEN, premiered in spring of 2018, became the largest commissioned project ever undertaken by Playmakers Repertory Company and enjoyed a record-breaking run. Wiley's ensemble cast original plays are available for licensed productions by theatres worldwide, and Wiley himself tours eight original one-person plays for student and adult audiences throughout North America, in addition to offering virtual streamed adaptations for educational systems and presenting theatres nationwide.
In 2020, Mike Wiley received the Ann Atwater Award presented by Manbites Dog Theater Fund to recognize Triangle theater artists and companies whose body of work reflects and honors Durham activist Ann Atwater's lifelong commitment to social justice. He is also recipient of the NC Theatre Conference Constance Welsh Award for Theatre for Youth. Wiley currently leads the online series "Higher Ground Conversations" with national civil rights and social justice leaders.
Minjee Kim is a first-year from Seoul, South Korea majoring in Public Policy. She became involved with Kenan through their FOCUS program and the Team Kenan Fellowship. At Duke, she is also involved in Mock Trial and the Korean Undergraduate Students Association. When she's not working or studying, you can find her listening to podcasts, crocheting bags, or rewatching The Good Place. CONTACT ME
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Miranda Harris, from Hillsborough, North Carolina, is a member of the Class of 2025 at Duke University. Through Program II, she designed a major titled: "The Medical and Social Experience of Disability" and is on the pre-med track. She hopes to attend medical school after completing a gap year. In her free time, you can spot her playing piccolo in the band at Duke sporting events.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Norman Wirzba is Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School and a Senior Fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. He pursues research and teaching interests at the intersections of theology, philosophy, ecology, and agrarian and environmental studies. He lectures frequently in Canada and the United States. His work focuses on understanding and promoting practices that can equip both rural and urban church communities to be more faithful and responsible members of creation. Current research is centered on a recovery of the doctrine of creation and a restatement of humanity in terms of its creaturely life.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Professor Smith works at the intersection of social ethics, moral philosophy, and theological bioethics. More particularly, his specific academic interests are in the areas of end-of-life care, palliative care ethics, and ethically addressing issues surrounding health and health care disparities. His work and service in bioethics and social ethics has spanned academic, professional, and community spaces.
Before coming to Duke, Professor Smith held an academic appointment at Harvard Medical School through the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. He was core faculty for the Master of Bioethics degree program offered through Harvard's Center for Bioethics. In addition to his work with the Center for Bioethics, he was a principal faculty member for the Initiative on Health, Religion, and Spirituality, an interfaculty initiative across Harvard University.
Professor Smith has worked professionally as the ethics coordinator for Angela Hospice Care Center in Livonia, Mich. He served on the Ethics Advisory Council for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, on the board for the Hospice Palliative Care Association of Michigan, as a member of Boston Children's Hospital's ethics committee, and on the Board of Directors for the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities.
Professor Smith's communal and ecclesial work has included service on the board of directors of organizations working for the common good and more equitable social arrangements such as YW Boston, which aims to empower women and eliminate racism. He also contributed thought leadership by serving on the board of a community development corporation, which supports local communities through building affordable housing, engaging in advocacy work, and providing education on housing policies and practices in Mass.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Theology / Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Dr. Casarella's primary field of study is systematic theology followed by world religions and world church. He was appointed to the faculty of Duke Divinity School as of July 1, 2020. Formerly, he was an associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame from 2013-2020 and served as director of the Latin American North American Church Concerns (LANACC) project in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. He served as professor of Catholic Studies from 2007-2013 at DePaul University, where he was also the founding director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology. He has published ninety-one essays in scholarly journals or books on a variety of topics including medieval Christian Neoplatonism, contemporary theological aesthetics, intercultural thought, and the Hispanic/Latino presence in the U.S. Catholic Church. He served as president of The American Cusanus Society, The Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the U.S. (ACHTUS), and the Academy of Catholic Theologians (ACT). He is currently serving a second five-year term on the International Roman Catholic-Baptist World Alliance Ecumenical Dialogue and served also on the Roman Catholic-World Communion of Reformed Churches Dialogue.
He has published a monograph, Word as Bread: Language and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa (2017) and a collection of his own essays, Reverberations of the Word: Wounded Beauty in Global Catholicism (2020). He has also edited or co-edited: Cuerpo de Cristo: The Hispanic Presence in the U.S. Catholic Church (1998), Christian Spirituality and the Culture of Modernity: The Thought of Louis Dupré (1998), Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance (2006), A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theory and Trinitarian Theology (2011), and, most recently, The Whole is Greater than its Parts: Ecumenism and Inter-religious Encounters in the Age of Pope Francis (2020). He is currently working on a book titled: The God of the People: A Latinx Theology.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Hello! My name is Pranav Mukund, and I am an undergraduate student from Dallas, TX, studying biomedical engineering at Duke! In my free time, I enjoy playing the violin, conducting scientific research, and coaching a local youth basketball team in Durham. In the long term, I would love to practice medicine, run a lab, and stay involved with sports!
Priya Virmani Rajparia (P'28) is the owner and founder of Privee by Priya - a personal styling company based in Short Hills, NJ. Priya founded the business in 2017. Since starting the business, Priya has helped elevate the style of many C suite executives. She firmly believes that style is a key element in executive presence and lends to self confidence and success. Priya is also employed as a stylist by the prestigious Mall at Short Hills. Prior to starting this business, Priya has worked in financial services for 10+ years. She has an MBA from Case Western University. Priya has spent 5 years in Paris with her husband and 2 girls. She is an avid reader, home chef, traveler, and mah jongg player!
The Honorable Rodolfo ("Rudy") Ruiz II (T'02) is a United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of Florida. Prior to his confirmation to the federal bench, he was a Circuit Court Judge for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida from 2014 through 2019, and a Miami-Dade County Court Judge from 2012 through 2014. Before entering judicial service, Judge Ruiz was an Assistant County Attorney with the Miami-Dade County Attorney's Office, where he represented Miami-Dade County and government employees in federal and state court at both trial and appellate levels. Judge Ruiz was also an associate with White & Case L.L.P., where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, asset-backed financings, and general corporate matters.
Sadé M Jones is a movement alchemist. Her talent as a dancer, choreographer and theater maker paired with her expertise as a Trauma Informed Yoga Facilitator, social psychologist, griot and energy worker supports this. Her research and practice lives within the intersections and fringes of somatic, cultural discourse, performance and the healing arts. Her healing practice, SADEIZM Movement Alchemy provides artistic, mindful and culturally relevant ways for individuals and groups to embody innate wholeness and walk their path with it. Her award winning work has been featured at Women & Their Work, The Vortex, The Long Center, University of Louisville, Dixon Place, Collegium Of African Diasporic Dance. Sadé holds a graduate degree in Social Psychology and is a 2025 candidate for a Master's of Fine Arts at Duke University where she will be studying Dance as Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
I'm a rising junior from middle of nowhere, PA with dreams to someday work in Emergency Medicine or Surgery. I'm majoring in Cultural Anthropology with a focus on medical anthropology and patient-centered care. In my free time, I enjoy cuddling with my dog, going to the gym, and procrastinating everything and anything.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Samantha Seewald is a rising senior from Pittsburgh, PA majoring in Biology, minoring in Psychology, and pursuing a certificate in Child Policy Research. She is passionate about community service and is involved in many service-oriented clubs at Duke, including Runway of Dreams (an organization that empowers people with disabilities through fashion), FEMMES+ (an educational outreach program for elementary school students who are underrepresented in STEM fields), and Challah for Hunger (an organization in which students bake and sell challah bread to raise money for charities that fight hunger). Through ReMed, she hopes to learn more about the intersection of healthcare and the humanities, specifically while working with patients who have complex care needs. She looks forward to applying these teachings while working at an Orthodontics practice this summer and in her future career as a dentist.
Sara Barron Zablotney (T'99) is a Partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. She focuses her practice on the tax aspects of mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures and spin-offs, both domestic and cross-border. She also advises clients on the tax aspects of securities issuances, bankruptcy and restructuring, and investment fund formation. Sara was recognized as a 2014 "Rising Star" by Law360 for Tax Law, is listed in The Legal 500 U.S., and is listed as a "Recognized Practitioner" in the Chambers USA 2017 edition.
Sarah Campbell Brown is a first-year undergraduate interested in studying English and Sociology. She first discovered the Kenan Institute through her participation in the DukeEngage Gateway Program, during which she partnered with Historic Columbia, a historic preservation nonprofit. She continued her involvement with Kenan through participating in the Ethics, Leadership, and Global Citizenship FOCUS Cluster. At Duke, she is the Junior Events Coordinator for Duke Democrats, the Digital Design Intern for Duke Business of Retail Society, and a Chapel Ambassador. Her favorite candy from the front desk stash is the dark chocolate Hersheys.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director for Communications, Kenan Institute for Ethics
- Kenan Institute for Ethics As Assistant Director for Communications
Sarah Rogers joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics as Assistant Director for Communications in December 2021. A storyteller at heart, she is passionate about writing and creating digital content that shares the transformative experiences that people have at the institute.
Sarah attended Duke University as an undergraduate, earning a BA with a double major in English and Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She studied abroad with the Duke in Berlin program, and, after graduating, she won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to Germany, and worked in a secondary school in Berlin. After returning to the United States, she continued her studies as a graduate student in the English Department at Duke University, where she TAed, taught undergraduate courses in academic writing and literature, and earned an MA. She earned a Certificate in Digital Communication from the UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism in 2020.
Scott Hayward (P' 22, P' 25, P' 25, P'28) is the Chief Executive Officer, member of the Board of Directors, and Partner of GMO, a global investment management firm headquartered in Boston. Prior to joining GMO in 2017, Scott served as the CEO and Chairman of Quantitative Management Associates (QMA) for 11 years. Previously, he was Head of Client Relations at QMA and Jennison Associates (both affiliates of Prudential Financial, Inc.). Prior to joining Prudential in 2003, Scott was a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan, where he spent 16 years in a variety of roles in investment management, the investment bank, the private bank, and corporate functions. In addition to various corporate boards, Scott has served as the President of the Board of the Reeves-Reed Arboretum and Head of Strategy for the Board of Newark Academy, and he currently serves on the Board of Regents for Boston College and the Executive Advisory Board of Give to the World.
Job Titles:
- Associate Director of Student Engagement
- Associate Director of Undergraduate Engagement
As Associate Director of Student Engagement, Shannan develops and oversees several undergraduate co-curricular programs at Kenan. She brings with her an emphasis on "practice," embodied thinking-feeling, historical materialism, and a healthy skepticism toward the framework of "ethics" when exploring lived questions about what personal, interpersonal, social, and institutional ethics might entail. As a person, Shannan enjoys techno raving, film, and trying to learn to surf! Her dog Krewe is often in the office.
Shannan comes to Kenan having worked with undergraduates in the interdisciplinary humanities classroom since 2006. She was most recently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford College, teaching critical theory across the departments of Political Science, Peace, Justice & Human Rights, Writing, and Visual Studies. She has also taught in the Stern School of Business at NYU, in the Studio Art and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies departments at Stony Brook University, and in Writing, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, and Global Culture & Theory at Duke. Shannan returns to Duke having received a PhD from the Literature Department and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies in 2019. She remains connected to Philly (from where she recently came) and NYC through various DIY political-aesthetics endeavors, while nesting now in Durham.
Her publications appear in the journals differences, Camera Obscura, Women & Performance, Feminist Formations, and The Journal of Visual Culture, with invited keywords entries in Finance Aesthetics: A Critical Glossary and The John Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory.
Shannan received a Neurosomatic Intelligence Certification in 2023 and has practiced Zen and Mindfulness meditation for 3+ years. She is enrolled to receive a Mindfulness teaching certification through MIEA this summer, and is dedicated to developing trauma-informed, mindfulness-based undergraduate pedagogy and programing.
Job Titles:
- Michael W. Krzyzewski University Professor of Leadership, Professor of Management and Public Policy
- Senior Fellow, Kenan Institute for Ethics Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Michael W. Krzyzewski University
Sim B. Sitkin is Michael W. Krzyzewski University Professor of Leadership, Professor of Management and Public Policy, and founding Faculty Director of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics (COLE) at the Fuqua School of Business, and Director of the Behavioral Science and Policy Center at Duke University. Since joining Duke in 1994, he served at various times as Area Head for the Management and Organizations Department, Faculty Director of Fuqua's Health Sector Management Program, and Academic Director at Duke Corporate Education.
Sitkin's research focuses on leadership and control systems and their influence on how organizations and their members become more or less capable of change and innovation. He is widely known for his research on the effect of formal and informal organizational control systems and leadership on risk taking, accountability, trust, learning, M&A processes, and innovation. His research has appeared in a leading academic and practice-oriented journals. His most recent books are Organizational Control (2010), The Six Domains of Leadership (2016) and Routledge Companion to Trust (2017). He is President of the Behavioral Science and Policy Association, Founding Editor of Behavioral Science and Policy, Consulting Editor of Science You Can Use, Advisory Board Member of the Journal of Trust Research, and Advisory Board for the Routledge Book Series on Trust, having previously served as Editor of the Academy of Management Annals, Senior Editor of Organization Science and Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. He has extensive consulting and executive education experience with corporations, non-profits, and government organizations worldwide. In this work, he has focused on strategic leadership, leading and managing change (including mergers and acquisitions), organizational trust, learning and knowledge management, and the design of organizational control systems.
Sonali Mehta (T'20) is one of two young alumni on the board. She is currently working as a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Arlington, Virginia. During law school, she interned in the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Appellate Section; the ACLU Women's Rights Project; Public Justice; and Protect Democracy. In college, Sonali became the first woman to win Trial by Combat, the one-on-one mock trial national championship. Sonali graduated from Duke in 2020 and from Harvard Law School in 2024.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Srishti Kumari is a rising senior from Sioux Falls, South Dakota majoring in neuroscience with minors in global health and chemistry. Her academic focus lies primarily at the intersection of neurological disorders and public health, an area where she hopes to bridge the gap as a physician. Beyond the classroom, you can find Srishti pursuing new creative ventures--culinary, cinematic, and otherwise.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
My name is Stephanie, born and raised in Northern Virginia, and pursuing a double major in Global Health and Biology, with aspirations of joining the medical profession. My passion for healthcare stems from a deep-rooted desire to address socioeconomic disparities, aiming to mitigate the inequalities that impact healthcare access and outcomes. Providing assistance to those who have been underserved is at the core of my mission, a way of reciprocating the support I once received. Aside from my excitement about the opportunities with ReMed, I'm eager to connect with our cohort! In my downtime, I love playing soccer, exploring new restaurants, and embarking on spontaneous adventures. On campus, I'm actively involved in various executive roles and organizations, including Duke Cardea Fellows, Mi Gente, Duke Women's Club Soccer, and Duke Catholic Center.
Job Titles:
- Senior Fellow and Director of Worldview Lab, Kenan Institute for Ethics Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics / Professor of Sociology
Stephen Vaisey's research focuses on where people get their ideas about what a "good life" looks like and what it means to be a "good person," and to determine how this shapes the choices they make. Most generally, he examines why people do the things they do, and figures out the role of culture and cognition in explaining human behavior. He has also conducted research on 1970s communes, religion, and marijuana use, educational overqualification, gene-environment interactions, and the relationship between poverty and educational aspirations, among other topics.
He is director of the Worldview Lab at the Kenan Institute, an interdisciplinary collaborative research group that brings together faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students to work on shared empirical projects. Worldview Lab's main goal is to better understand diversity in values, goals, and worldviews both internationally and within contemporary American society.
Stephen earned a BA in French and a BS in sociology from Brigham Young University, and an MA and PhD in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Stephen is a Ph.D. candidate in the joint Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies. His dissertation examines the relationship between conceptions of nature and models of worldhood in contemporary Austrian prose, from global to planetary existences in the Anthropocene, against a history of nature writing and the cultural and political significance of nature in the Austrian contexts. He is also an "Austrophile," having spent two years as an English Teaching Assistant in Linz and a year conducting dissertation research in Vienna through Fulbright Austria. He is most likely to be found hiking a mountain, at the opera, playing volleyball, at his cello, hunched over a board game, or studying a new language.
Suhhyun Lee is an undergraduate sophomore ('27) studying political science and economics. She first discovered the Kenan Institute as a participant in its Ethics, Leadership and Global Citizenship FOCUS cluster and has continued her involvement through the Worldview Lab and the Kenan LLC. Outside the Kenan, Suhhyun is involved in Duke Beyond Borders, Leap2School, and Club Taekwondo.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
Victoria Ko is a rising junior (Class of 2026) from San Francisco majoring in Chemistry and Biology and pursuing certification in Science and the Public. She works in the Matsunami Lab on olfactory receptors. After her undergraduate years, she plans to pursue a career in medicine and/or research. In her spare time, she enjoys singing with the Duke Chorale, cheering on the Blue Devils at Duke Basketball games, roaming the beautiful Sarah P. Duke Gardens, and attending various club activities.
Vincent Price (chair, ex officio) is the President of Duke University and the Walter Hines Page Professor of Public Policy and Political Science. A leading global expert on public opinion, social influence, and political communication, Price came to Duke in 2017. As president, he also oversees Duke Health and one of the most successful collegiate athletics programs in the nation. Price previously served as Provost of the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of Political Science in the School of Arts and Sciences. Previously, he was at the University of Michigan as Chair of the Department of Communication Studies. He is a member of The National Humanities Center Board of Trustees. Price earned his PhD (1987) and MA (1985) in Communication from Stanford University and a BA magna cum laude (1979) in English from the University Honors Program at Santa Clara University.
Job Titles:
- Advisory Council
- Co - Director of MADLab at the Kenan Institute for Ethics
- Professor
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is the Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. He has worked on ethics (theoretical, applied, and empirical), philosophy of law, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and informal logic. He has received fellowships from the Harvard Program in Ethics and the Professions, the Princeton Center for Human Values, the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, the Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University, and the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Sinnott-Armstrong is co-director of MADLab at the Kenan Institute for Ethics and has served as the co-director of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project and co-investigator at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics.
He is the author of Morality Without God? and Moral Skepticisms, editor of Moral Psychology, volumes I-III, and has published articles in a variety of philosophical, scientific, and popular journals and collections. His most recent book, Think Again: How to Reason and Argue, discusses the benefits that sound, fair arguments grounded in mutual understanding can have. His MOOC course of the same name, offered through Coursera, has attracted more than 900,000 registered students from over 150 countries.
Sinnott-Armstrong earned his BA from Amherst College and his PhD from Yale University. His current work is on moral psychology and brain science as well as the uses of neuroscience in legal systems.
Wanyi Chen is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science. She is from China and received a B.A. in computer science and cultural studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2019. She worked as a software engineer at Audible before joining graduate school. Her current research centers around Human-AI interaction. She investigates the subjectivities involved in machine learning model creation and aims to build tools to help fellow computer scientists think more critically about the models they are training. At Duke, she served as a teaching assistant for the "Race, Gender, Class, and Computing" class.
Job Titles:
- Advisory Council
- Professor of Ethics
Wayne Norman is the Mike and Ruth Mackowski Professor of Ethics in the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Department of Philosophy at Duke University. He is a political philosopher who also teaches courses in business ethics, sports ethics, and the philosophy of play and humor. His work in political philosophy focuses mostly on the special challenges that arise in multicultural societies where citizens have diverse and overlapping identities and attachments. He has been most interested in states that incorporate more than one people or nation with its own historic homeland (as more than 90% of countries do). He is the author of Negotiating Nationalism: Nation-building, Federalism, and Secession in the Multinational State and co-editor or author of four other books. And he is currently writing a book entitled The Ethical Adversary: How to play fair when you're playing to win - in sports, business, politics, law, and love. Before arriving at Duke almost 13 years ago he held distinguished professorships at the Université de Montréal and the University of British Columbia.
Wayne Norman
Mike and Ruth Mackowski Professor of Ethics in the Kenan Institute for Ethics and the Department of Philosophy
Faculty Advisory Council, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
I am a junior majoring in Biology with Global Health and Chemistry minors. Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, I am interested in addressing oral health disparities as a dentist. I research Goldsboro Hospital, a segregated asylum for Black Patients during the early 20th century. As DukeAfrica co-president, I foster an inclusive and diverse community of African students.
I am an international student from the UK majoring in Neuroscience with minors in Biology and Chemistry. I love chatting with people and absorbing their wisdom and knowledge. I am also an avid Rugby fan and player and was the president of Duke Club Rugby 2021-2022. Fun fact: I drive a 1990 convertible that is constantly breaking down! But that's the fun of it.
Wendy Johnson Bilas (T'85, P'17) is a professional oil painter. Her work is available at Sozo Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina, and through juried shows and charity auctions across the country. Bilas's Duke activities have included the Annual Fund Executive Board, the Tisch Brain Tumor Center Advisory Board, the Athletic Council, AAAC, the Duke Women's Forum, and the DukeEngage National Advisory Board. She received her A.B. from Duke in 1985 and her M.B.A. from Wake Forest. Bilas is married to Jay Bilas (T'86, J.D.'92) and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. They have two children, Tori (T'17) and Anthony.
Job Titles:
- Re - Imagining Medicine Fellow
William Yan is a rising junior from Plano, Texas majoring in biology. He was born in Shanghai, China and moved to the US in middle school. He plans to pursue a MD-PhD degree and is interested in translational research, health literacy, and scientific communication. Outside of classroom and lab, William enjoys watching Formula 1, playing basketball with friends, and pingpong. This summer, he will work as a CNA at Hillcrest.