People

**Christopher Cook** was elevated to Chief of Environment, Energy, and Open Space for the City of Boston in June 2018. He holds this position in addition to his role as Commissioner of the Boston Parks Department. He is responsible for leading the Cabinet in achieving its mission of enhancing the quality of life in Boston by protecting air, water, climate, and land resources, and preserving and improving the integrity of Boston's architectural and historic resources. Cook received his Master’s in Public Administration from Suffolk University and a BA in English/Theatre from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He lives in West Roxbury with his wife and two daughters. Photo: [City of Boston](https://www.boston.gov/departments/parks-and-recreation/christopher-cook "Christopher Cook | CIty of Boston")

Christopher T. Cross is chairman of Cross & Joftus, LLC, an education-policy consulting firm. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for Education Policy and a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Education Commission of the States. In addition Mr. Cross serves as a consultant to the Broad Foundation and the C.S. Mott Foundation. He is a member of the advisory board for the School Evaluation Service program of Standard and Poor's. From 1994 to 2002 he served as president and chief executive officer of the Council for Basic Education (CBE). Before joining CBE, Mr. Cross served as Director of the Education Initiative of The Business Roundtable and as Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Improvement in the US Department of Education. Mr. Cross has a BA degree from Whittier College and a MA in Government from California State University, Los Angeles.

Chris Dede's fundamental interest is the expanded human capabilities for knowledge creation, sharing, and mastery that emerging technologies enable. His teaching models the use of information technology to distribute and orchestrate learning across space, time, and multiple interactive media. His research spans emerging technologies for learning, infusing technology into large-scale educational improvement initiatives, policy formulation and analysis, and leadership in educational innovation. He is currently conducting funded studies to develop and assess learning environments based on modeling and visualization, online teacher professional development, wireless mobile devices for ubiquitous computing, and multiuser virtual environments. Dede also is active in policy initiatives, including creating a widely used State Policy Framework for Assessing Educational Technology Implementation and studying the potential of developing a scalability index for educational innovations. From 2001 to 2004, he served as chair of the Learning & Teaching area at HGSE.

Chris Finan is president of American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, which was established by the American Booksellers Association in 1990 to defend the First Amendment rights of booksellers and their customers. Mr. Finan has been involved in the fight against censorship for over 25 years. He is the chair of Media Coalition, a trade association that defends the rights of businesses that produce and distribute First Amendment-protected material. He studied American history at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992. He is the author of *Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior* (Hill and Wang), a biography of the New York governor who was the first Catholic to run for President. His latest book is *From the Palmer Raids to the PATRIOT Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America* (Beacon Press), the winner of the American Library Associations Eli M. Oboler Award for the best work on intellectual freedom published in 2006 and 2007.

Christopher Flavin is President of the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based international research organization focused on energy, resource and environmental issues. Worldwatch is recognized around the world for its pathbreaking work on the global connections between economic, social, and environmental trends. Chris has spent his career at Worldwatch where he previously served as Senior Vice President and Vice President for Research. Chris is a leading voice on the need to build a low-carbon economy that will meet human needs without undermining the Earth's ecological support systems. He is co-author of three books on energy, including *Power Surge: Guide to the Coming Energy Revolution*, which anticipated many of the changes now under way in world energy markets. Chris is a regular co-author of the Institute's annual *State of the World* report, which has been published in 36 languages. He has participated in several historic international conferences, including the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and the Climate Change Conference in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997.Chris appears regularly in the national and international media, including outlets such as the BBC, National Public Radio, CNN, PBS Newshour, and Voice of America.

Gabrieli is chairman and co-founder of Massachusetts 2020, a nonprofit organization working to provide educational and economic opportunities to children across the Commonwealth. Massachusetts 2020, along with the state Department of Education, has been overseeing an Expanded Learning Time Initiative and assisting schools in putting ELT into practice since 2004. Gabrieli is co-chairman of the National Center on Time & Learning, a think tank that researches expanded learning time; supports public policy efforts at the local, state and federal level; and provides technical assistance to schools, districts, and states seeking to convert to a longer school day. He is also co-author of *Time to Learn: How a New School Schedule is Making Smarter Kids, Happier Parents, and Safer Neighborhoods*, a book about the need to rethink the standard school schedule.

Ecologist and epidemiologist Christopher Golden, Ph.D. is a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and associate director of the Planetary Health Alliance at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. His research is concerned with the effects of global environmental trends on human health, and he has conducted studies on environment and health in many developing nations where biodiversity declines are now threatening human health.

New York Times reporter Chris Hedges is author and 20-year war correspondent who shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of global terrorism. In his 20 years as a journalist for many of the most respected news organizations in the United States, Hedges has reported from the world's most war-ravaged regions, from the Middle East and Central America to the Balkans and the Persian Gulf. For more than a decade, Hedges covered hot spots for *The New York Times*, first in 1991 in Operation Desert Storm, then in Bosnia and Kosovo from 1995-98, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, he was part of a team of *Times* reporters that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for the paper's 2001 coverage of terrorism. The winner of numerous other awards for his coverage, he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism.

Christopher Henzel is director of the office of Israel and Palestinian affairs at the State Department. He is a member of the senior Foreign Service. From 2011 to 2013, he headed the office of Regional and Multilateral Affairs in the Department’s Near East bureau, responsible for economic and security assistance budgets, and for the Sinai observer force. From 2010 to 2011, Henzel led the provincial reconstruction team in Mosul, Iraq, and from 2007 to 2010 he was deputy chief of mission and chargé at the American embassy in Manama, Bahrain. From 2004 to 2007 he was counselor for political affairs in Amman, Jordan. He has also been posted in Yemen, Pakistan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. In other Washington assignments he has served as economic officer for North Africa, and as desk officer for Iran. Henzel is a graduate of the National War College and of the College of the Holy Cross, and studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute field school in Tunisia. He has received several State Department Superior Honor Awards, as well as the U.S. Army’s Superior Civilian Service Award.

Christopher Eric Hitchens is an author, journalist and literary critic. He has been a columnist at *Vanity Fair*, *The Atlantic*, *World Affairs*, *The Nation*, *Slate*, *Free Inquiry*, and a variety of other media outlets. Hitchens is also a political observer, whose books the latest being *God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything* have made him a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. In 2009 Hitchens was listed by *Forbes* magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in U.S. media." In 2007, on his 58th birthday, retaining his British citizenship, Hitchens also became an American citizen after residing in the US for a quarter century. Hitchens is known for his ardent admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, and for his excoriating critiques of Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Henry Kissinger, amongst others. He is an anti-theist, and he describes himself as a believer in the Enlightenment values of secularism, humanism and reason. In September 2008, he was made a media fellow at the Hoover Institution. Hitchens is currently writing his memoirs, due for publication in the spring of 2010.

Christopher Hutton is a baritone with the Boston Lyric Opera. He recently performed the title role in Gianni Schicchi with Lyric Opera Theater at Arizona State University, and Marullo in Verdis Rigoletto with the Arizona Opera.