People

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.

Senior Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

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*.

As the Senior Director of Strategic Communications, Barbara Ayotte is always looking for the next cool story to tell about GBH's work and people. Barbara leads a team of writers, editors, and content creators. She supervises and edits GBH's The Deep Dive and Events newsletters, the GBH Annual Report, EXPLORE GBH program guide, and feature articles on the GBH website. She also curates content for the GBH Digital Mural and, in 2024, created the Community Canvas project that features local artists' work on the big screen over the Mass Pike.

Barbara K. Bodine, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, was Diplomat in Residence at the University of Southern California, Santa Barbara. She last served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Yemen. During her posting in Sanaa, the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in a terrorist attack. In 1999, she negotiated for hours to release three Americans kidnapped in Yemen. Following Kuwait, Ambassador Bodine was the Associate Coordinator for Operations and later served as the Acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism. She went on to serve as the Dean of Professional Studies at the Department's Foreign Service Institute. She has worked on the secretariat staff of Secretaries Kissinger and Vance, and as a Congressional Fellow in the office of Senator Robert Dole. Ambassador Bodine was born in 1948 in St. Louis, Missouri. She earned her B.A. in Political Science and Asian Studies, and graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She received her Master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts. She also studied at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Department of State's Language Training Field Schools in Taiwan and Tunisia. She was the recipient of the UC Santa Barbara Distinguished Alumni Award in 1991.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty is a former award-winning religion correspondent for National Public Radio and is a former reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. She is author of the book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality. She is currently a contributor to The Atlantic and NPR.

Barbara Brandon-Croft was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Long Island. After debuting her comic strip Where I’m Coming From in the Detroit Free Press in 1989, Brandon-Croft became the first Black woman cartoonist to be published nationally by a major syndicate. During its 15 year run, Where I’m Coming From appeared in over 65 newspapers across the USA and Canada, as well as Jamaica, South Africa, and Barbados. Her comics are in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. Brandon-Croft lives in Queens.