Advisory Board
Cynthia Berenson
Cynthia Berenson's strong commitment to social justice, human rights, and gender equality issues have guided her involvement in the educational and service mission of Brandeis University for almost two decades. In 1995, she established the Director’s Office in the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center and Scholars Program, where she co-chairs the national board. With her husband, Theodore Berenson, she endowed a Faculty Chair within the University’s Department of Fine Arts. Berenson and her family, including sister-in-law Helaine Allen, also endowed the Allen-Berenson Distinguished Visiting Professorship in Women’s Studies within the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, where Berenson has served on the board for the past 11 years. In 2008, Berenson and her husband donated the Cynthia and Theodore Berenson Center for Advanced Endoscopy at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She chaired the Lion of Judah event for the Jewish Federation of Palm Springs in 1998, where she also served for four years as Education Chair on the Women’s Division Board. Berenson previously served on the boards of the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Guide Dogs of the Desert.
Katie Ford
Katie Ford is the founder and CEO of Freedom For All (formerly The Katie Ford Foundation), an organization dedicated to the eradication of slavery. The not-for-profit foundation works with partners in India, Brazil, Ghana, the United States, and the Philippines. Their efforts focus on encouraging and facilitating systemic changes within these countries, freeing and advocating for enslaved victims, and supporting governments in their long-term strategies to improve justice, social welfare, and educational systems. She previously served as Global Ambassador for Free the Slaves. Ford is the former CEO and Chairman of Ford Models. During her leadership, she expanded the agency with offices in France, Brazil, and Canada. In 2008, she resigned from Ford Models to focus on the abolition of slavery.
Michele Kessler
Michele Kessler is the director of community relations at The Kessler Group and cofounder and director of the Kessler Family Foundation in Boston. She is a trustee of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and serves on the boards of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital’s Leadership Council for Psychiatry, the William J. Clinton Foundation, the American Ireland Fund, the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, the Palm Beach Civic Association, and the American Cancer Society of Palm Beach. She is also the global ambassador of the measles initiative for the American Red Cross. She is on the board of overseers of Babson College and is the Honorary Consul of Monaco in Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Jonathan Lavine
Jonathan Lavine is a Managing Director at Bain Capital, serving as the managing partner and Chief Investment Officer of Sankaty Advisors, which he founded in 1997. Before starting Sankaty, Lavine worked in Bain Capital’s private equity business, McKinsey & Company, and Drexel Burnham Lambert. Lavine sits on the Board of Trustees of Columbia University, serves as the Chair of the Columbia College Board of Visitors, and is a member of the boards of several Boston area organizations, including City Year, Children’s Hospital Trust, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Stand for Children, and Dana Hall School. He is a Director and member of the ownership group of the Boston Celtics. Lavine received his MBA, with Distinction, from Harvard Business School, and a BA, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Columbia College, which awarded him the 2008 John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement. In 2004, Lavine was named as Boston Business Journal's 40 outstanding Bostonians under the age of 40.
Julia Ormond
Julia Ormond
Julia Ormond is the founder and president of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET), a counter-human trafficking organization that is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative and Humanity United’s Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking. Based in California, ASSET was the original sponsor for the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010 (SB657), a 2012 law which requires that California-based companies with revenues exceeding $100 million to disclose on their websites policies they have in place to safeguard their supply chains against slavery. Ormond is a former UN Goodwill Ambassador for anti-human-trafficking initiatives and an award-winning actress whose film credits include "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Che," among many others, and in 2010 won an Emmy Award for her supporting role in the HBO film Temple Grandin. Ormond executive-produced the documentary Calling the Ghosts: A Story about Rape, War and Women, which won a CableACE Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
George Packer
George Packer is the author of "The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), which was named one of that year’s ten best books by the New York Times and won both the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award and an Overseas Press Club book award. His book "Blood of the Liberals" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000), a three-generational nonfiction history of his family and American liberalism in the twentieth century, won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Packer has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2003, and has contributed numerous articles, essays, and reviews on foreign affairs, American politics, and literature to the New York Times Magazine, Dissent, Mother Jones, Harper’s, and other publications. He taught writing at Harvard, Bennington, and Columbia, served in the Peace Corps in Togo, and was a 2001-02 Guggenheim Fellow.
Mariane Pearl
Mariane Pearl is an award-winning journalist and writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Sunday Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Glamour magazine, Self magazine and more. After the murder of her husband by a militant group in Pakistan in 2002, Mariane Pearl wrote "A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Daniel Pearl" (Scribner, 2003). Pearl’s memoir has won international praise, has been translated into 15 languages, and was made into a 2007 movie starring Angelina Jolie. Pearl is the recipient multiple awards and honors, including the National Headliners Award for magazine writing, the American Women in Radio and Television Award, and the Prix “Vérité” in France for excellence in nonfiction writing. She currently serves as themanaging editor of Chime for Change, a global journalism platform focusing on women and girls, in partnership with the International Herald Tribune and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Alexandra Schuster
Alexandra Schuster, granddaughter of Founding Benefactors Elaine and Gerald Schuster, is a journalist now working as a production associate for "ABC News Nightline in Primetime", a new prime time program in development that will focus on consumer investigative reporting scheduled to begin airing in mid-April 2013. Schuster worked at the White House Office of Legislative Affairs as an intern following her graduation summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where she wrote her senior thesis on "domestic minor sex trafficking in American urban centers and the commoditization of sex."
Elaine Schuster
Elaine Schuster, along with her husband Gerald, is the founding benefactor of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. She was formerly a board member of the Women’s Studies Research Center, also at Brandeis University. Schuster co-founded Operation PEACE (Positive Education Always Creates Elevation), a leading community-based network center which provides mentoring, tutoring, and life skills training for inner-city children in Atlanta and Boston. In 2010, Schuster was a Representative of the United States to the 64th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. She is a board member of the Corporation of Partners HealthCare and serves on the Trust Board and the Women’s Health Forum at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. For eight years, she was a member of the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts.
Gerald Schuster
Gerald Schuster is the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Continental Wingate Company, Inc., a holding company which owns and operates businesses specializing in financial services, real estate development, property management, and health care. He served as a specialist on multifamily interests before various committee members of the U.S. Congress and was an advisor on President Lyndon Johnson’s Committee on Inner City Banking. With his wife Elaine, Schuster founded the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, the Gerald and Elaine Schuster Fund to Support Faculty Development and Active Citizenship at Tufts University, and Operation PEACE. He serves on the Trust Board at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, is a trustee of the Clinton Library Foundation, and board member of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.
Tom Shadyac
Tom Shadyac is a Hollywood director, writer, and producer of comedies. His movies include the blockbusters "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," "The Nutty Professor," "Liar, Liar," and Golden Globe-nominated "Patch Adams," "Dragonfly," and "Bruce Almighty." Most recently, he directed and produced the documentary "I AM," in which he asks some of today’s most profound thinkers what is wrong with our world and what we can do about it. All proceeds from the film go to The Foundation for I AM to fund various causes and to educate the next generation about the issues and challenges explored in the film. In 2004, Shadyac formed HtoO, Hope to Others, a bottled water company that donates 100% of its after-tax profits to charities around the globe.