People

Bailey White's commentaries can be heard on NPR's award winning newsmagazine *All Things Considered*. White was born in 1950 in Thomasville, Georgia. White still lives in the same house in which she grew up, on one of the large tracts of virgin longleaf pine woods. Her father, Robb White, was a fiction writer and later a television and movie script writer. Her mother, Rosalie White, was a farmer, and worked for many years as the executive director of the local Red Cross Chapter. She has one brother, who is a carpenter and boat builder, and one sister, who is a bureaucrat. White graduated from Florida State University in 1973, and has taken a break from teaching first grade to pursue writing full-time. White is the author of *Sleeping at the Starlite Motel*, *Mama Makes Up Her Mind*, and *Quite a Year for Plums*.

Ban Ki-moon was born in South Korea and graduated from Seoul University in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations. In 1984 he received a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. In 2008, the UN Secretary-General also earned an honorary Doctoral Degree from Seoul National University. Ban Ki-moon has worked all his life as a career diplomat. His 38-year career in the Foreign Service has included 12 years on UN-related missions. Mr. Ban discovered an interest in diplomacy early on. He decided to devote his life to this passion after meeting President John F. Kennedy on a visit to the United States in 1962 as an 18-year-old student. Upon graduating from college he joined the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs after receiving the top score on the Foreign Service entrance exam. He accepted his first posting in New Delhi, where he served as the Vice Consul. Mr. Ban first started working for the UN as First Secretary at the Republic of Korea's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. He continued his career as the director of the United Nations Division in Seoul at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and became the International Organizations and Treaties Bureau director of the UN. Mr. Ban had several postings in Washington, DC and also served as Director-General for American Affairs in the foreign ministry. During his time as the ambassador to Vienna, he served as Chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization. He was appointed as Foreign Minister in January 2004. During his term as Minister he endeavored to establish peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and promoted the adoption of the Joint Statement on resolving the North Korean nuclear issue at the six-party talks. He was elected the eighth Secretary-General by the United Nations General Assembly on October 13, 2006.

Banafsheh Keynoush, PhD, is a scholar of international affairs. An academic for over thirteen years, she has conducted fieldwork in the Middle East for two decades, including in Saudi Arabia and Iran, was a visiting scholar at Princeton University, and a visiting fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. The author of Saudi Arabia and Iran: Friends or Foes? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), she is the editor of Iran’s Interregional Dynamics in the Near East (New York: Peter Lang, 2021). Her other publications include articles published in academic journals, policy papers, and media reports. In addition, she is the translator and editor of Refugee Rights in Iran written by Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi (London: Saqi, 2008), and the editor of five volumes of Persian poetry entitled the Five Treasures of Ferdowsi (Tehran: Iranian Calligraphy Society, 1999).

Barack Obama is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama was the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until November 2008, when he resigned after his election to the presidency. Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first African American president of *the Harvard Law Review*. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for United States Senate in 2004. His victory from a crowded field in the March 2004 Democratic primary raised his visibility, and his prime-time televised keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 made him a rising star nationally in the Democratic Party. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 by the largest margin in Illinois history. He began his run for the presidency in February 2007. After a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination, becoming the first major party African American candidate for president. In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican candidate John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.

Baratunde Thurston is a storyteller exploring interdependence across our relationships with each other, nature, and technology. He is an Emmy-nominated host, writer, public speaker, and proud Earthling. His newest creation is Life With Machines, a YouTube podcast focusing on the human side of the A.I. revolution. He is also host and executive producer of the PBS TV series America Outdoors, creator and host of the How To Citizen podcast, and a founding partner and writer at Puck. His comedic memoir, How To Be Black, is a New York Times best-seller. In 2019, he delivered what MSNBC’s Brian Williams called “one of the greatest TED talks of all time.” Baratunde is unique in his ability to integrate and synthesize different and difficult topics in a style that’s intelligent, compassionate, and humorous. Baratunde serves on the boards of Civics Unplugged and the Brooklyn Public Library and lives in Southern California.

“Bobbie” Roessner, founding editor of The New Bedford Light, is passionate about the power of public service journalism to inform and empower communities. Former managing of The Hartford Courant, where she helped lead the Courant newsroom to one Pulitzer Prize and three Pulitzer finalists. As executive editor of Hearst Connecticut Media Group, she oversaw an amalgam of five daily newspapers, more than a dozen weekly newspapers and an array of digital products. Roessner was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University and has twice been a Pulitzer juror. She currently serves on the board of the New England First Amendment Coalition, advocating for open government and press freedoms.

Professor Abrams is the Director of the Global and Cultural Studies Major Program. Her work focuses on Global and Cultural Studies, French literature of the Enlightenment and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her most recent work includes an archival research project titled ReSisters which examines women cloistered against their will in 18th century France, and a multi-graph book titled Reframing Rousseau’s Le Lévite d’Ephraïm: The Hebrew Bible, Hospitality, and Modern Identity. Her book, Le Bizarre and Le Décousu in the Novels and Theoretical Works of Denis Diderot: How the Idea of Marginality Originated in Eighteenth-Century France, examines the background of our modern concept of marginality by focusing on Diderot’s materialist philosophy. Professor Abrams is the academic liaison for the Suffolk/CAVILAM intensive French program in Vichy, France and the student exchange program at the Catholic University of Lille.

Professor Abrams’ is the Director of the Global and Cultural Studies Major Program. Her work focuses on Global and Cultural Studies, French literature of the Enlightenment and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her most recent work includes an archival research project titled ReSisters which examines women cloistered against their will in 18th century France, and a multi-graph book titled Reframing Rousseau’s Le Lévite d’Ephraïm: The Hebrew Bible, Hospitality, and Modern Identity. Her book, Le Bizarre and Le Décousu in the Novels and Theoretical Works of Denis Diderot: How the Idea of Marginality Originated in Eighteenth-Century France, examines the background of our modern concept of marginality by focusing on Diderot’s materialist philosophy. Professor Abrams is the academic liaison for the Suffolk/CAVILAM intensive French program in Vichy, France and the student exchange program at the Catholic University of Lille.

Barbara Almond is a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice, a member of the faculty at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and Emeritus Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford University. She is coauthor of *The Therapeutic Narrative: Fictional Relationships and the Process of Psychological Change*.