Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. ~ Grace Hansen
January 21, 2004 Carmen Twillie Ambar, Dean of Douglass College
February 4, 2004 Sabrina Chase
March 31, 2004 Mallika Dutt
April 21, 2004 Dr. Claudia Osborn
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Dr. Claudia Osborn is an Associate Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine at Michigan State University, a Fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Internists and author of Over My Head: A Doctor's Own Story of Head Injury from the Inside Looking Out. Prior to her brain injury, she was a doctor and professor of internal medicine in Detroit. That career ended when her bicycle was struck head-on by an automobile.
After extensive rehabilitation at New York University Medi-cal Center, she began writing the book she wished someone had written for her. It took seven years to complete and was promptly published to excellent reviews for its writing and insights. Both the book and its author quickly gained national television, radio and print media attention. Psychology Today honored her for her contribution to improving mental health.
Today, Dr. Osborn, who is a graduate of Vassar College and Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medi-cine, teaches first year medical students at MSU, but most of her professional time is spent writing and lecturing throughout North America on the ingredients of successful traumatic brain injury rehabilitation.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Mallika Dutt is the founder and executive director of Breakthrough, an international human rights organization. She has been a human rights activist for over two decades, working passionately on transforming attitudes and approaches towards human rights.
Until December 2000, Mallika was the Program Officer for the Human Rights & Social Justice Program at the Ford Foundation's New Delhi office. She focused on addressing the rights of marginalized communities like dalits, adivasis, and women. Dutt also served as the Associate Director of the Center for Women's Global Leadership, where she held the first US meeting to create links between human rights domestically and abroad.
Mallika authored the widely-referenced With Liberty and Justice for All: Women's Human Rights in the United States. She was also the co-author of the globally utilized manual, Local Action Global Change: Learning About the Human Rights of Women and Girls.
While studying law at New York University, Dutt co-founded Sakhi for South Asian Women, combating the violence against women in the New York community. She was also an Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Rights Fellow, and worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
Mallika has served on several boards and committees, including the Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project, Sister Fund, Asian American Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Lt. Governor Committee on Public Police Relations, Committee on Sex and Law, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, and the India Abroad Person of the Year jury. Mallika is also an active member of the US NGO Coordinating Committee for the UN World Conference Against Racism and currently is on the Board of WITNESS.
She is the recipient of many awards including the Spirit of Asian American Award (USA, 2003); Phoenix Award for Service (USA, 2002); National Citizen's Award for Contribution to Women and Development (India, 2001); South Asian Women's Creative Collective Award for contribution to the South Asian community (USA, 2001); NYU Law School BLAPA Alumni Award for Distinguished Service (USA, 2001); the Public Interest Law Foundation Alumni Award (USA,1991). Mallika graduated from New York University School of Law with a JD in 1989 and is a member of the New York State Bar.
Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Sabrina Chase is the principle investigator for the Help-Seeking Pathways Project, an NIMH funded study examining the medical and mental help-seeking strategies of HIV+ Puerto Rican women in northern New Jersey. As a medical anthropologist, she focuses on women's health, racial disparities in health and the anthropology of the body. In the course of her dissertation research, Sabrina accompanied study participants to their health care appointments and explored their lives through participant-observation and ethnographic interviews. She enjoys teaching, and has taught 23 classes at Rutgers University over the past decade in Anthropology, Human Ecology, English, Women's Studies and Biology. Ms. Chase brings her ethnographic fieldwork into all of her courses; she believes that the best learning experiences emerge when both the results and experience of research flow directly into the classroom.
Prior to specializing in medical anthropology, Sabrina worked as archaeologist in Belize, Arizona and Oklahoma. Currently, she is a Research Analyst at the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy. Sabrina is in the process of completing her Ph.D and expects to graduate in May of 2003.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Carmen Twillie Ambar is the ninth woman to lead the nation's largest public undergraduate women's college. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Ambar was assistant dean for graduate education at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, overseeing the operation of its three graduate programs. In this position she was responsible for many key administrative and academic functions, including curriculum development, budget allocation, management of joint degree programs, supervision of the graduate registrar and staff, development and implementation of academic rules and regulations, and academic support and advising programs for students. She also directed the school's summer program for undergraduate students of color, hiring staff and designing its programmatic aspects.
As an attorney, Ambar served as an assistant corporation counsel in the Office of the Corporation Counsel for the City of New York, 1994-98, and participated in several high-profile cases in which she defended the city against constitutional challenges to legislative regulations and also prosecuted criminal violations of the administrative code.
In the early 1990s, she served as a program assistant for Newark Fighting Back Inc., co-writing a successful $3-million proposal to develop a comprehensive approach to reducing the demand for illicit drugs and alcohol in the city of Newark. She also aided in the conceptualization and implementation of more than 75 programs, including drug treatment for women and children, and community policing. Ambar also served as an intern in the governor's office in her native Arkansas, where she prepared memoranda on various issues for then-Governor Bill Clinton.
Ambar is a 1994 graduate of both the Columbia School of Law and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where she received a master's in public affairs. She received a bachelor of science degree in Foreign Service in 1990 from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She also studied at L'Institut de Science Politique in Paris and the Université de Caen in Caen, France, and was an exchange student in Kobe, Japan. She is admitted to the New York State Bar and is a member the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.