Brandeis Magazine

Veteran attorney and college administrator James Bryant, MA’80, joined Wilson Elser’s office in Dallas, where he will expand the law firm’s higher education and nonprofit client base. James had been chair of the higher-education practice at Stolar Partnership in St. Louis. His administrative roles have included acting as assistant to the dean for external relations at Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and special counsel to the University of Iowa Board of Regents. “Dead Accounts,” a new comedy by leading Broadway playwright Theresa Rebeck, MA’83, MFA’86, PhD’89, began previews on Nov. 3 at the Music Box Theatre in New York. Theresa’s play is directed by three-time Tony Award winner Jack O’Brien and stars two-time Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz and Katie Holmes. The play tackles the timely issues of corporate greed; small-town values; and whether your family will always welcome you back, no questions asked. Freada Klein, Heller PhD’84, a philanthropist and an expert on issues of discrimination and diversity, was named to the board of governors at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C. Freada, a trailblazer on discrimination and diversity issues, co-founded the first U.S. organization to offer comprehensive services, training and consultation on sexual harassment to both the private and public sectors. She was also the first director of employee relations at Lotus Development. She is the author of “Giving Notice: Why the Best and the Brightest Leave the Workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay,” which considers why people of color, women, gays and lesbians leave corporate America. Alan Taylor, PhD’86, is a distinguished professor of history at the University of California, Davis, where he has taught since 1994. He has written six books, including “William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic,” the 1996 Pulitzer Prize winner in history. In 2010, he wrote “The Civil War of 1812,” which examines the political rupture of North America wrought by the conflict between the U.S. and Britain. German Bermudez, PhD’87, associate executive officer for academic affairs at the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, was named chair of the steering committee for the Latino Endowment Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the community foundation serving the 29-town Greater Hartford region. Nationally known parenting expert and columnist Julie A. Riess, PhD’89, delivered the keynote address at the Summit Country Day School’s fifth annual Early Childhood Education Symposium in Cincinnati. She is director of the Wimpfheimer Nursery School at Vassar College and senior adviser on child development and education at the Families and Work Institute. She also writes a weekly column for Gannett newspapers.