People

**Bethany Van Delft** is an award-winning comedian. She was recently named Boston Magazine’s “Best Comic.” Her comedy album I’m Not a Llama spent time at #2 on the iTunes charts. She is a passionate advocate for her daughter who was born with Down syndrome.

Economic justice activist Betsy Leondar-Wright is the communications director at United for a Fair Economy. She has worked in mixed-class movements for over 25 years. Betsy Leondar-Wright is a long-time economic justice activist who has been Communications Director at United for a Fair Economy since 1998. A veteran of many conflicts along class and race lines, she has worked across class lines in a number of roles.

Betsy McAlister Groves, founder of the nationally recognized Child Witness to Violence Project at Boston Medical Center, dramatically disproves the myth that very young children are not affected by violence. Drawing on her experiences with the project, Groves contends that many children in the US witness violence at home, in school and on television, and that adults can, and should, help these children cope with their reactions.

Betsy Prioleau is a cultural historian and author of "The Circle Eros: Sexuality in the Work of William Dean Howells," "Swoon: Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them," and "Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love." She has a PhD in American Literature from Duke and taught literature and cultural history at Manhattan College and New York University.

Bettina Tam was one of the co-founders of the Sudan Radio Project. Although she is no longer a part of SRP, she worked as producer, reporter, and PR representative for the group during the first two years of its operation. Her reporting focused on Sudanese music, with many of her pieces centering on Sudanese musicians living abroad as refugees, child soldiers or expatriates.

Betty Bland National President of the Theosophical Society in America, is a national lecturer for the Society, and has presented workshops and lectures on the spiritual life both in the United States and abroad. Her professional life has included work as a teacher, employment counselor, systems analyst, and entrepreneur. She is interested in the practical application of theosophical principles to everyday life situations. Serving also on the Boards of Directors of the Theosophical Order of Service and Theosophical Book Gift Institute, she has been a member of the Society since 1970, and has served in many capacities for local and regional activities.

Betty Burkes is a life-long educator and activist. Her work as an educator has included the Peace Corps in Africa, public schools in California and private schools in England. She founded and coordinated the Montessori Paradise pre-school on Cape Cod for 12 years offering young children an environment in which peace-making and social justice mingled with the affirmation of childhood. Betty co-founded and ran a Summer Arts and Music program from 1986-1999. Her activism and grassroots organizing has taken place internationally and nationally with the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) where she was president of the US Section of WILPF for 3 years and served on the National Board from 1989-2002, conducting workshops on educating and organizing for action around oppression issues. From 2002-2006, Betty worked with a joint project of the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs and The Hague Appeal for Peace. The HAP/DDA project involved supporting the local initiation of peace education projects in 4 communities internationally (in Cambodia, Albania, Peru and Niger) in which weapons reduction projects were launched. Those projects have been sustained beyond the end of the project due to the full integration and leadership within the local communities.

Dr. Sternberg has been the Commissioner of Education for the Connecticut State Department of Education (SDE) since 2003. She has dedicated much of her career in education to the SDE as Associate Commissioner in the Division of Teaching and Learning for over 12 years (1992- 2003); as Director in the Division of Curriculum and Professional Development from 1985-1992; and as Bureau Chief in Curriculum and Staff Development from 1980-1985. As Commissioner of Education and Chief Executive Officer of the State Board of Education, Dr. Sternberg is responsible for over 350 employees at the central office and approximately 2000 staff members in the States technical high schools. She oversees public education in the States 166 local public school districts, 17 regional technical high schools, 3 endowed and incorporated academies, 12 charter schools and 39 full and part-time magnet schools. She is also responsible for developing, recommending and implementing the components of a $2.0 billion state education budget. As the first woman to serve as Commissioner since the inception of the position in 1838, Dr. Sternberg has continued to promote programs and strategies for improving teaching and learning in the state. She is the key author of the standards piece of the Education Enhancement Act of 1986, nationally recognized legislation designed to attract and retain high-quality teachers to Connecticut. She directed the development of the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), considered the most effective in the country. She was instrumental in developing the first school-by-school database in the nation in the form of the Strategic School Profiles and she is responsible for the development of The Connecticut Framework: K-12 Curricular Goals and Standards in 11 core curriculum areas.

**Betül Kacar** is an astrobiologist from Istanbul. She is a Resarch Project Leader at Harvard's Dept. of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology, where she resurrects inferred ancestral genes in the laboratory and engineers them inside modern genomes. Prior to that, she was a Postdoc with NASA's Astrobiology Institute, where she designed a bacterial system combining paleogenetics with laboratory evolution. Dr. Kacar is a recipient of research grants from NASA and The John Templeton Foundation, and is a co-founder of SAGANet: The Online Astrobiology Grassroots Network, designed to promote mentorship and outreach activities in science, engineering and related fields.

Beverly Daniel Tatum has had a distinguished career as a psychologist, educator, scholar, and college administrator. She has written two books and numerous articles on the subject of racial identity and other topics. In 2002 she was named president of Spelman College. Tatum was born on September 27, 1954, in Tallahassee, Florida, and was raised in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. A productive scholar, Tatum has written numerous articles and book chapters. Though she has written on gender and academic achievement, the primary emphasis for her research has been racial identity and development.

Bev Edgehill is The President and CEO of The Partnership, Inc. Previously she was Vice President, Organizational Effectiveness, at Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA. For twenty years, she has served in various management and organization development roles, applying program planning, and adult and group learning practices in the public sector, retail, high technology, insurance and financial services industries. Bev has been a speaker on leadership and women's career development topics at several national conferences. She holds an M.Ed. from the University of Massachusetts, and is currently completing her doctoral dissertation at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests are related to career women and their approach to learning and achieving career success.