Board of Directors
The SSRC is governed by a board of directors made up of social scientists and practitioners from a broad range of disciplines and institutions. The board elects the SSRC president and regularly reviews the Council’s intellectual program. An executive committee of the board oversees financial and operational aspects.
List of Board Members
Jonathan Aronson
Professor of Communications and International Relations
University of Southern California
John Seely Brown
Visiting Scholar
University of Southern California
Independent Co-Chairman
Deloitte’s Center for Edge Innovation
Craig Calhoun (Ex-Officio)
President
SSRC
Lincoln C. Chen
President
China Medical Board of New York
Sandra Dawson
Deputy Vice Chancellor and Professor of Management Studies
University of Cambridge
Mamadou Diouf
Professor of History
Director, Institute of African Studies
Columbia University
Edward Glaeser
Professor of Economics
Harvard University
Alfred Gusenbauer
Former Chancellor of Austria
Visiting Professor in International Studies
Watson Institute
Brown University
William H. Janeway
Managing Director and Senior Advisor
Warburg Pincus
Ira Katznelson
Professor of Political Science and History
Columbia University
Michael D. Kennedy (Chair, Executive Committee)
Professor of Sociology and International Studies
Brown University
Margaret Levi
Professor of Political Science
University of Washington
Professor of Politics
University of Sydney
Ellen Levy
Vice President, Strategic Initiatives
LinkedIn
Managing Director
Silicon Valley Connect
Claudio Lomnitz
Professor of Anthropology
Columbia University
Thandika Mkandawire
Professor of African Development
London School of Economics
Peter Nager
Senior Managing Director
Egret Capital Partners
Walter W. Powell
Professor of Education and Sociology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science, Communication, and Public Policy
Stanford University
John Shepard Reed
Chairman
Corporation of MIT
Barbara Stallings
Professor of International Studies
Watson Institute
Brown University
Claude M. Steele
Professor of Psychology
Dean of the School of Education
Stanford University
Michael J. Watts (Chair, Board of Directors)
Class of ’63 Professor of Geography and Development Studies
University of California, Berkeley
Jonathan Aronson
Jonathan Aronson is professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, professor of International Relations, and director of the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication (ARNIC), at the University of Southern California. His research interests include international communications, international communications policy, and global governance. He investigates how communication and network developments related to privacy, equity, standard setting, competition policy, cybersecurity, and international intellectual property shape the path of globalization. His book (with P. Cowhey) Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets: The Political Economy of Innovation (MIT, 2009) explains how innovation in information and communication technology (ICT) fuels the growth of the global economy. Previously he was director of the USC School of International Relations, executive director of the Annenberg Center of Communication, and co-director of the European Union Center of California. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and served as president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA). Professor Aronson received his degrees from Stanford (1976) and Harvard (1971). He received an honorary doctorate from Saint Petersburg State University in 2000.
John Seely Brown
Executive Committee Member
John Seely Brown is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California and also the independent co-chairman of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge. He was chief scientist of Xerox Corporation until April 2002 and also director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center until June 2000, a position he held for twelve years. While head of PARC, Dr. Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as organizational learning, complex adaptive systems, microelectricalmechanical systems, and nanotechnology. His personal research interests include digital culture and rich media, ubiquitous computing, institutional innovation, and organizational and individual learning. He has published over a hundred papers in scientific journals and is co-author of The Social Life of Information (with Paul Duguid, HBS Press, 2000), The Only Sustainable Edge (with John Hagel, HBS Press, 2005) ) and The Power of Pull with John Hagel and Lang Davison (Basic Book, 2010). Dr. Brown serves as a trustee of the MacArthur Foundation and on the boards of Amazon, Corning, and Varian Medical Systems.
Lincoln C. Chen
Lincoln C. Chen is president of the China Medical Board, an independent foundation started in 1914 and endowed by John D. Rockefeller Sr. to advance health in China and throughout Asia by strengthening medical education, research, and policies. Prior to joining the board, Dr. Chen founded and directed the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard University's Asia Center and was Harvard’s Taro Takemi Professor of International Health and director of the university-wide Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (1987–96). He previously served as executive vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation and has represented the Ford Foundation in India and Bangladesh. In 2007, Dr. Chen assumed the chair of the board of BRAC USA, having completed two terms as chair of the board of CARE/USA. He also serves on the boards of the Institute of Metrics and Evaluation (University of Washington), the Public Health Foundation of India, and the UN Fund for International Partnership. He was the special envoy of the WHO director-general in human resources for health (2004–7) and the founding chair of the Global Health Workforce Alliance, a public-private partnership based in the World Health Organization (2006–8). Dr. Chen is a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He received his BA from Princeton University, an MD from Harvard Medical School, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
Dame Sandra Dawson
Dame Sandra Dawson is KPMG Professor of Management Studies at Judge Business School and a deputy vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge. From 1999-2009 she was Master of Sidney Sussex College and the first woman to hold such an office in one of the Cambridge Colleges founded originally for men. From 1995-2006 she served as the director of Judge Business School. Professor Dawson’s research focuses on organizational structure and change, technology transfer and knowledge sharing, and health management and policy. Recent publications deal with healthcare in the United Kingdom, including two edited volumes, Engaging with Care, A vision for the health and care workforce of England (The Nuffield Trust, 2007) and Future Public Health: Burdens, Challenges and Opportunities (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2009), and two articles analyzing the organizational dynamics of multi disciplinary team work in cancer care. She serves as a board member of Oxfam and the Financial Services Authority, which regulates banks and other financial institutions in the UK. She chairs the Advanced Institute for Management, a cross business school network in the UK. She is also a member of an advisory group for Aga Khan University on the establishment of a management school to serve the needs of emerging economies and the UK-India Round Table. Prior to her appointment at Cambridge University, Professor Dawson was professor of organizational behavior and deputy director of the Management School at Imperial College, London University. She holds a BA from Keele University and an MA from the University of Cambridge. She has been awarded an honorary DSc from Keele University as well as fellowship status from City and Guilds and was honored with the Order of Dame Commander by the British Empire.
Mamadou Diouf
Mamadou Diouf is Leitner Family Professor of African Studies and History at Columbia University, where he also leads the Institute of African Studies. Prior to teaching at Columbia, he taught at the University of Michigan and before that at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. Educated primarily in France, Diouf is a renowned West African scholar who has taught in his native Senegal at the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar and guest-lectured at many European and American universities. He holds a Ph.D.from the University of Paris-Sorbonne (France). His research interests include urban, political, social and intellectual history in colonial and postcolonial Africa. His most recent books are Histoire du Sénégal: Le Modèle Islamo-Wolof Et Ses Périphéries (2001) and La Construction de l’Etat au Sénégal, with M. C. Diop & D. Cruise O’Brien (2002). He is the author, editor and co-author of several other works including Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic : Rituals and Remembrances (2010), edited with I. Nwankwo, New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power and Feminity (2009), Les Figures du Politique En Afrique, Des Pouvoirs Hérités aux Pouvoirs Elus (1999) and Les Jeunes, Hantise de L'Espace Public dans Les Sociétés du Sud (2001). He is also a member of the editorial board of several professional journals including African Studies Review and la vie des idées.fr. He is also the co-editor (with Peter Geschiere) of the book series, Histoires du Sud/Histories of the South, Karthala, Paris, France.
Edward Glaeser
Ed Glaeser is Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he has taught since 1992. He serves as director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He studies the economics of cities and has written on scores of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1992. Dr. Glaeser has written numerous journal and op-ed articles. His books include Cities, Agglomeration, and Spatial Equilibrium (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Rethinking Federal Housing Policy (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2008).
Alfred Gusenbauer
Alfred Gusenbauer, most recently chancellor of Austria, is visiting professor in international studies at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies and is the first Leitner Global Fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. He is the chair of the Next Left Research Project of the Party of European Socialists (PES) and the owner and CEO of Gusenbauer Project - an Austrian based consulting company. He holds several different board positions, including chairman of the board of STRABAG SE - one of Europe's largest construction companies. During his career, former chancellor Gusenbauer has served Austria’s Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and government in many capacities, among them party leader, leader of the Social Democratic Group in the Austrian Parliament, vice president of the Socialist International, and vice president of the International Union of Socialist Youth. He studied political science, philosophy, and law at the University of Vienna, where he earned his law degree and a PhD in political science. He is author of Netzwerk Innovation (Network Innovation) (Czernin Verlag, 2002).
William H. Janeway
Investment Committee Chair • Executive Committee Member
William H. Janeway is a managing director and senior advisor at Warburg Pincus. He received his doctorate in economics from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He was valedictorian of the class of 1965 at Princeton University. Prior to joining Warburg Pincus in 1988, where he was responsible for building the information technology practice, he was executive vice president and director at Eberstadt Fleming. Dr. Janeway sits on the boards of directors of Magnet Systems, Nuance Communications, O’Reilly Media, Roubini Global Economics, Nuance Communications, and Wall Street Systems. He is also chairman of the Board of Trustees of Cambridge in America, University of Cambridge and co-chair of Cambridge’s 800th Anniversary Capital Campaign, as well as a founding member of the board of managers of the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance. He is also a member of the Board of Governors of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.
Ira Katznelson
Secretary • Executive Committee Member
Ira Katznelson is Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History at Columbia University. He returned in 1994 to Columbia, where he had been an assistant and associate professor from 1969 to 1974. In the interim, he taught at the University of Chicago, chairing its department of political science from 1979 to 1982, at the New School for Social Research, where he was dean of the graduate faculty from 1983 to 1989. His books include Religion and the Political Imagination (edited with Gareth Stedman Jones, Cambridge University Press, 2010), Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (with Andreas Kalyvas, Cambridge University Press, 2008), When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in America (W.W. Norton, 2005), and Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge after Total War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust (Columbia University Press, 2003). Professor Katznelson was president of the American Political Science Association for 2005–6. Previously, he served as president of the Politics and History Section of the American Political Science Association, president of the Social Science History Association, and chair of the Russell Sage Foundation Board of Trustees. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Michael D. Kennedy
Treasurer • Executive Committee Chair • Audit Committee Chair
Michael D. Kennedy is professor of sociology and international studies at Brown University where he explores the relationship between knowledge practices and global transformations. Beginning with studies of intellectuals and professionals in East European social movements and systemic change (e.g. Professionals, Power and Solidarity (1991), Cultural Formations of Postcommunism (2002)), Kennedy now works on how transformations in the communicative capacities of intellectuals and their institutions articulate alternative futures around extensions of democracy, peace, and sustainability with particular places in mind. His most recent publications have addressed the public university, area studies and energy security in these terms. He has also explored these relationships in academic administration; he served as the University of Michigan's first Vice Provost for International Affairs and founding director of its Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia and Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies; director of its Center for Russian and East European Studies, Center for European Studies/European Union Center for Excellence, and Program for the Comparative Study of Social Transformations; as well as the Howard R. Swearer Director of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Professor Kennedy has received awards in recognition of his teaching, including the University of Michigan's Class of 1923 Memorial Teaching Award and the University Teaching Award. Poland's President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, presented Professor Kennedy with the Gold Cross of Merit to recognize the contributions he made to scholarship and education about Poland.
Margaret Levi
Margaret Levi has a joint appointment as the Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington and as the Chair in Politics in the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. She is director of the CHAOS (Comparative Historical Analysis of Organizations and States) Center and formerly the Harry Bridges Chair and Director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. She earned her BA from Bryn Mawr College in 1968 and her PhD from Harvard University in 1974, the year she joined the faculty of the University of Washington. She became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 2002. She served as president of the American Political Science Association from 2004 to 2005. Professor Levi is the author or co-author of numerous articles and six books, including Of Rule and Revenue (University of California, 1988), Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (Cambridge University, 1997), Analytic Narratives (Princeton University, 1998), and Cooperation Without Trust? (Russell Sage, 2005). She is co-editor of six others. She is currently completing a book, co-authored with John Ahlquist, entitled Building a Community of Fate, which explores how organizations provoke member willingness to act beyond material interest. In other work, she investigates the conditions under which people come to believe their governments are legitimate and the consequences of those beliefs for compliance, consent, and the rule of law. Professor Levi recently served as chair of the board of directors of the Center for Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. She continues to serve as General Editor of Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics and of the Annual Review of Political Science. She is also involved in research and networks devoted to understanding and improving supply chains so that the goods we consume are produced in a manner that sustains both the workers and the environment.
Ellen Levy
Ellen Levy is vice president of strategic initiatives at LinkedIn and a managing director at Silicon Valley Connect. Formerly, she was director of industry collaboration and research at Stanford University’s Media X, a program that facilitated collaboration between Stanford scholars, corporate leaders, and policymakers. She continues her work with universities as a member of the board of councilors for Steven’s Innovation Institute at the University of Southern California and as an advisor to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Decision Science Laboratory. During the course of her career, Dr. Levy has had formal roles in venture capital (Softbank, NeoCarta, Draper Fisher Jurvetson), start-ups (WhoWhere, Softbook), technology think tanks (Interval Research), big companies (Apple Computer, PriceWaterhouse), foundations (Clinton Global Initiative), and universities (Harvard, Stanford). She received her BS from the University of Michigan and her MA and PhD in cognitive psychology from Stanford University.
Claudio Lomnitz
Claudio Lomnitz is Campbell Family Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Prior to joining Columbia, Dr. Lomnitz was University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research and, before that, taught at the University of Chicago and New York University. He served as editor of the journal Public Culture from 2003 to 2009, and has been a frequent collaborator in the Mexico City Press. He is author of Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in Mexican National Space (University of California, 1992), Death and the Idea of Mexico (MIT, 2005), and Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (University of Minnesota, 2001).
Thandika Mkandawire
Professor Thandika Mkandawire is former Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the first person to take on the new position of Chair in African Development at the London School of Economics (LSE). He was formerly Director of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen, and has taught at the Universities of Stockholm and Zimbabwe. He currently holds the Olof Palme Professorship for Peace at the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm. Of Malawian origin, Professor Mkandawire is an economist with particular expertise on development issues. His research interests are mostly in development theory, economic policy and development, social policy in developing countries, and the political economy of development in Africa.
Peter Nager
Peter Nager is Senior Managing Director of Egret Capital Partners. He is a former partner of the corporate advisory and investment banking firm James D. Wolfensohn Incorporated. Following the sale of Wolfensohn to Bankers Trust (BT), he became a partner and senior managing director at BT and assumed the same positions with Deutsche Bank upon their merger with BT. Earlier in his career, he was a lawyer at the firm Debevoise & Plimpton, specializing in mergers and acquisitions.
Mr. Nager has advised the boards, CEOs, and other senior executives of such noteworthy companies as Dupont, Unisys, Lubrizol, Johns Manville, Major League Baseball, John Labatt, Northern Telecom, Ault Foods, and Nova Chemicals. His advisory work encompasses traditional transactional mergers-and-acquisition work as well as financing assistance and corporate strategy.
Mr. Nager has an ongoing involvement with numerous charitable endeavors. He is a member of the board of trustees and of the executive committee of the Caramoor International Music Festival, held every summer in Westchester County, NY, as well as of the boards of trustees of the Beaver Dam Sanctuary, also in Westchester County, and the City Parks Foundation in New York City. Previously, Mr. Nager served as president of Symphony Space, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Walter W. Powell
Executive Committee Member
Walter W. Powell is professor of education and (by courtesy) sociology, organizational behavior, management science and engineering, communication, and public policy at Stanford University, where he is co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Professor Powell works in the areas of organization theory, economic sociology, and the sociology of science. An author of numerous articles and books, he is most widely known for his contributions to institutional analysis and network studies. His current research projects include an examination of the effects of interdisciplinary and translational research on scientific innovation, and the ramifications of the growing use of benchmarking metrics by nonprofit organizations to purportedly “account” for virtue. He has served on the SSRC Board since 2000.
John Shepard Reed
John Shepard Reed was born in Chicago in 1939 and was raised in Argentina and Brazil. He came to the United States to go to college and graduated from Washington and Jefferson College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961 under a joint degree program, earning BA and BS degrees. He served as a lieutenant in the US Army Corp of Engineers from 1962 to 1964 and then returned to MIT for his MS. Mr. Reed spent thirty-five years with Citibank/Citicorp and Citigroup, the last sixteen years as chairman, retiring in April of 2000. He returned to work as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange from September 2003 until April 2005 and is currently serving as chairman of the Corporation of MIT. Mr. Reed is a trustee of MDRC, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Barbara Stallings
Barbara Stallings is William R. Rhodes Research Professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. She is also editor of Studies in Comparative International Development. Before arriving at Brown in 2002, she was director of the Economic Development Division of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile (1993–2002) and professor of political economy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1977–93). She has been a visiting professor or visiting scholar at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, the University of Tokyo, the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, the Institute for Fiscal and Monetary Affairs of Japan’s Ministry of Finance, and a number of universities and research centers in Latin America. She has doctorates in economics (University of Cambridge) and in political science (Stanford University) and is a specialist in development economics, with emphasis on development strategies and international finance. In addition, she works on issues of economic relations between Asia and Latin America and comparisons between the two regions. Her most recent book is Finance for Development: Latin America in Comparative Perspective (Brookings Institution, 2006), a comparison of the financial sector in Latin America and East Asia.
Claude Steele
Claude Steele is professor of psychology and dean of the School of Education of Stanford University. Steele has received the Dean’s Teaching Award at Stanford University, the William James Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society, the Kurt Lewin Award and the Gordon Allport Prize in Social Psychology from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award and the Senior Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest from the American Psychological Association, and the Cattell Faculty Fellowship. Dr. Steele received his BA in psychology from Hiram College and his MA and PhD in social psychology from Ohio State University in 1971. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the board of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, Yale University, Princeton University, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has published articles in numerous scholarly journals, including the American Psychologist, The Journal of Applied Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. A book entitled Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us is forthcoming.
Michael J. Watts
Chair • Executive Committee Member
Michael J. Watts is Class of ‘63 Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught for thirty years. He served as the director of the Institute of International Studies at Berkeley from 1994 to 2004. His research has addressed a number of development issues, especially food security, resource development, and land reform in Africa, South Asia, and Vietnam. Over the last twenty years he has written extensively on the oil industry, especially in West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea; his most recent book is The Curse of the Black Gold: Fifty Years of Oil in the Niger Delta (Powerhouse Books, 2008), with photographer Ed Kashi. Professor Watts was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2003 and was awarded the Victoria Medal by the Royal Geographical Society in 2004. He has consulted for a number of development agencies, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and other development organizations and has provided expert testimony for governmental and other agencies. He was educated at University College London and the University of Michigan and has held visiting appointments at the Smithsonian Institution and at the universities of Bergen, Bologna, and London. He serves on the boards of advisors for a number of nonprofits, including Food First and the Pacific Institute.
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