Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Mike Madrid has been a nationally recognized political consultant and authoritative voice on Latino voters for three decades. As a pioneer in Latino communications and outreach strategies for state, local, and national political campaigns, Madrid is one of the few consultants who has successfully worked for major campaigns on both sides of the aisle.

In 2020, Madrid co-founded the Lincoln Project, a Republican anti-Trump organization. He served as an adjunct lecturer on Race, Class, and Partisanship at the University of Southern California in Spring 2021. In 2023, he was awarded the Capitol Award by UnidosUS for a lifetime of service dedicated to the Latino community. Currently, Madrid is a Senior Fellow at UC Irvine's School of Social Ecology.

His book, The Latino Century: How America's Largest Minority Is Transforming Democracy, was published in 2024.

Ryan Ogliore '00 is an associate professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis. He received his bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from Claremont McKenna College and received his Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology. His graduate research was in cosmic ray astrophysics and he currently uses various micro-analytical techniques to study extraterrestrial samples from all over the Solar System. He has worked on several past, current, and future NASA missions in planetary science, heliophysics, and astrophysics. He is a member of the Planetary Science Advisory Committee that advises NASA on its scope, priorities, and implementation of its planetary science programs.

Helena Bottemiller Evich '09 is the founder and editor-in-chief of Food Fix, a publication about food policy in Washington and beyond. She previously led food and agriculture coverage at POLITICO for nearly a decade, winning numerous awards, including two James Beard Awards and a George Polk Award, one of the most prestigious honors in journalism. Her 2022 investigation on the FDA's dysfunctional food program and groundbreaking reporting on the infant formula crisis helped fuel one of the biggest reorganizations in FDA’s history.

Before launching POLITICO’s food coverage, Helena was a Washington correspondent for Food Safety News, covering deadly outbreaks and the run-up to Congress passing the biggest update to food safety law in nearly a century.

Evich is a sought-after speaker and commentator on food issues, appearing on CNN, PBS, CBS, BBC and NPR, among others. Her work is widely cited in the media and has also been published in the Columbia Journalism Review and on NBC News.

Ms. Evich’s talk is part of the Roberts Environmental Center’s Sustainable Food Initiative 2024-2025.

Jonathan Gienapp is Associate Professor of History and Associate Professor of Law at Stanford University.  He specializes in the constitutional, political, legal, and intellectual history of the early United States. His primary focus to date has been the origins and development of the U.S. Constitution, in particular the ways in which Founding-era Americans understood and debated constitutionalism across the nation's early decades. His historical interests intersect with modern legal debates over constitutional interpretation and theory, especially those centered on the theory of constitutional originalism.

His first book, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the Founding Era, rethinks the conventional story of American constitutional creation by exploring how and why founding-era Americans’ understanding of their Constitution transformed in the earliest years of the document’s existence. His second book, Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique, presents a comprehensive historical critique of originalism. It argues that recovering Founding-era constitutionalism on its own terms fundamentally challenges originalists' unspoken assumptions about the U.S. Constitution and its original meaning. Gienapp has lectured widely on the U.S. Constitution and the American Founding era. 

Professor Gienapp's lecture is part of the 2024-2025 Lofgren Program on American Constitutionalism at CMC's Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World. His lecture is also supported by the Kravis Lab for Civic Leadership at CMC and the Jack Miller Center.

As a first-generation, non-traditional, and justice-impacted student of color from a low socioeconomic upbringing, Ruben Piñuelas uses his academic success as advocacy to reframe how institutions view and treat individuals with similar backgrounds. A widely requested speaker, Piñuelas has given talks at law schools, universities, and conferences, sharing his lived experiences with the criminal justice system's most complex failures in hopes that it can shed light on solutions that are even harder to identify. He plans to continue advocating for change in the legal system and the courtroom as a trial attorney, a civil rights litigator, and one day sitting on the bench as a judge.

Piñuelas currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Michigan Law Review and was named as an SEO Law Fellow & Catalyst Scholar, California ChangeLawyers Next Gen 1L Scholar, JD Advising Scholar, UCLA Law Fellow, White & Case SEO Mentee, and Legal Education Access Pipeline (LEAP) Fellow. He is an Executive Board Member of the National Justice Impact Bar Association and a member of Exonerated Nation and the National Organization of Exonerees. Piñuelas regularly works with Loyola Law School’s Project for the Innocent, the Michigan Innocence Clinic, and other Innocence Project organizations across the country. He is a recipient of the Anjan Choudhury Memorial Scholarship and numerous other generous scholarships that have fully funded his legal education.

Photo credit: Ian Poveda

Dean Logan is the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for Los Angeles County, California -- the nation’s largest, most diverse local election jurisdiction serving more than 5.7 million registered voters. In addition to election administration, his office records real property documents; maintains vital records; performs civil marriage ceremonies; and processes business filings.

He holds degrees in Organizational Leadership from Azusa Pacific University and a Master of Public Administration from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington.

Mr. Logan is currently President of the County Recorders Association of California, past-President of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials and serves on the Board of Directors for the National Election Center. Additionally, he is Vice President for the United States on the Board for the American Conference of Subnational Electoral Organizations for Electoral Transparency (CAOESTE).

Mr. Logan sits on Advisory Boards for the Electoral Psychology Observatory at the London School of Economics, the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, Auburn University’s Graduate Certificate in Election Administration, University of California Riverside’s Design Thinking Executive Program, and the California State University, Northridge Master of Public Administration Program where he teaches courses on Organizational Leadership, Public Sector Management, Intergovernmental Relations, and Strategic Management.

Mr. Logan's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Kravis Lab for Civic Leadership and the Rose Institute for State and Local Government at CMC.

Applauded by The Strad for her “fiery virtuosity” and “consummate performances,” violinist YooJin Jang is a winner of the 2017 Concert Artists Guild Competition and First Prize winner of the 2016 Sendai International Music Competition. These successes have resulted in a busy itinerary of international recital and concerto engagements as well as the release of two new recordings.

Her recent concerto performances include appearances with the symphony orchestras of Chautauqua, Dubuque, and Roswell. In recital, highlights include YooJin’s recent Carnegie Hall debut and concerts at Jordan Hall and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert series in Chicago.  Internationally, YooJin has performed with the KBS Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Bulgaria National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and Spain’s Extremadura Orchestra.

YooJin Jang performs on the 1714 “May-Jacquet” Stradivari Violin on generous loan from the Eastman School of Music.

--

Sheena Hui '19 is the founder of the Athenaeum Concert Series. As a pianist she has performed dozens of solo and chamber recitals in Hong Kong, Europe and across the United States, recently serving as artist-in-residence at Porto Pianofest in Portugal. In addition to her pianistic activities Sheena has an avid interest in music theory; her research focuses on completing unfinished works by the 19th century Russian composer Alexander Borodin.

Sheena is profoundly aware of her responsibility to share the artistry and knowledge she has inherited from her lineage of teachers and mentors. In addition to teaching at various music festivals and institutions, she hopes that the Athenaeum Concert Series will bring a relevant and fresh perspective on classical music to the Claremont community.

Civitas Sessions is organized by the Kravis Lab and moderated by Executive Director Vernon C. Grigg III, JD. A lawyer by training, Grigg holds degrees from Yale Law School (J.D.), the London School of Economics (G.SC.), and the University of Michigan (BA).  Vernon comes to the Kravis Lab from his role as CEO & President of Up with People, a fifty-five-year-old international nonprofit education and arts organization. He managed a global team of 50 employees across three continents as he led the nonprofit to sustainability and health despite the challenges of the worldwide pandemic.

Lily Geismer’s research and teaching focuses on 20th century political and urban history in the United States, especially liberalism and the Democratic Party. She is the author of Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality (PublicAffairs, 2022) which examines the Democratic Party during the Clinton era's effort to use the market-based solutions to address poverty and its long-term impact on both economic inequality and the fate of the Democrats. Her first book, Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton University Press, 2015), traces the reorientation of modern liberalism and the Democratic Party away from their roots in labor union halls of northern cities to white-collar professionals in postindustrial high-tech suburbs by focusing on the Route 128 corridor around Boston. She is also co-editor of Shaped by the State: Toward a New Political History of the Twentieth Century (University of Chicago Press, 2019) and her work has appeared in the Journal of American History, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, and Dissent. In 2018,  she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation. Her work has also been supported by the American Council for Learned Societies and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University.

Professor Robbie Shilliam is Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at Johns Hopkins University, He is a leading scholar of postcolonial politics and racial politics in the field of International Relations. He has authored numerous books including Race and the Undeserving Poor: From Abolition to Brexit (2018); Decolonizing Politics (2021), The Black Pacific: Anticolonial Struggles and Oceanic Connections (2015), and German Thought and International Relations (2009) and co-edited multiple volumes including Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (2014). He is co-editor of the Manchester University Press book series Postcolonial International Studies. Professor Shilliam is a long-standing active member of the Global Development section of the International Studies Association, having served as the association's Vice President. Professor Shilliam works with community and academic intellectuals and elders of the Rastafari movement to examine its impact on global affairs. Based on original, primary research, he helped to co-curate a history of the Rastafari movement in Britain, which was exhibited in Ethiopia, Jamaica and Britain.

Professor Shilliam's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at CMC.

Stuart E. Eizenstat has served six U.S. presidential administrations in a number of key senior positions, including Chief White House Domestic Policy Adviser to President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981); U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton Administration (1993-2001). During the Obama administration, he served as Special Adviser on Holocaust-Era Issues to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry (2009-2017), during which he negotiated significant Holocaust-related agreements with the governments of Lithuania and France. During the Trump administration, he was appointed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as Expert Adviser to the State Department on Holocaust-Era Issues, and in the Biden administration, he is currently serving as Special Adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Holocaust Issues. His newest book is The Art of Diplomacy: How American Negotiators Reached Historic Agreements that Changed the World (2024). He is also the author of President Carter: The White House Years (2018), The Future of the Jews: How Global Forces are Impacting the Jewish People, Israel, and Its Relationship with the United States (2012), and Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (2003). He is an international lawyer in Washington, DC.

Amabssador Eizenstat's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights (where Eizenstat serves as an honorary advisory board member) and the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies, both at CMC.

Faris Cassell, award-winning investigative journalist, earned her M.S. in journalism with honors from the University of Oregon and her B.A. in History from Mt. Holyoke College. She is the author of Inseparable: The Hess Twins' Holocaust Journey through Bergen-Belsen to America (2023). Her first book, The Unanswered Letter, won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award. She lives with her husband in Eugene, Oregon.

Marion Ein Lewin (née Hess) and her twin brother, Steven Hess, were only six years old when they were taken by the Nazis from Holland to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they endured brutal conditions and lived in a state of perpetual fear. The twins and their parents were imprisoned in Bergen-Belsen for approximately one year, after narrowly escaping being sent to Auschwitz. They ultimately were liberated and moved to the United States in 1947.

This special Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Ganesha Rasiah is a seasoned Fortune 100 senior technology executive with deep experience in driving a shift to recurring revenue business models and operations, emerging markets expansion and incubations, AI and software. He currently serves as the Chief Strategy Officer and member of the Executive Leadership Team at HP Inc., where he leads a global team across corporate strategy and corporate planning, business unit strategy and planning across all businesses ($53b in revenue), growth market incubations, market analysis and insights, corporate development, GTM strategy, and the office of the CEO. 

Prior to HP, Rasiah was the head of transformation at Cisco where he led the company’s shift to $23b in ARR and 44% recurring revenue. As part of this shift, he ran the P&L for Cisco’s enterprise agreement software business, growing the business by $700m YoY. Prior to Cisco, Rasiah was a partner at Deloitte where he led digital transformation and online channel development and acceleration at telco and tech clients in the US, Europe and Asia. During his tenure at Deloitte, he worked in 11 countries across 25+ different companies and ran a $300m global services P&L for the firm. Prior to Deloitte, he was a systems engineer responsible for designing and developing programmable ASICS for network processors.

Rasiah serves on the board of an early-stage mental health B2B SaaS startup called PeakMind, in support of a diverse CEO. He is a native of Malaysia and spent the first 20 years of his life there, prior to college. He speaks multiple languages and considers himself a global citizen. Ganesha holds a graduate degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University in NY, and an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from McGill University in Montreal.

--

Ryan Patel is a globally recognized futurist and go-to authority on global business, political economy, and corporate governance. Currently the William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow at CMC, Patel is an expert in scaling businesses, he's served startups and publicly traded firms. Listed as one of the “Creators to Follow” by LinkedIn Editor in Chief Daniel Roth and recognized as a “Top Voice” on Linkedin, Patel is a sought-after TV news commentator and Board Director. Patel also hosts "The Moment with Ryan Patel," featuring conversations with top innovators and executives filmed at the iconic HP Garage, the birthplace of Silicon Valley. He complements his literary talents with domestic and international keynote appearances, leading campaigns with corporations and universities such as the World Economic Forum, Davos, Mastercard, HP, Adobe, The Economist, Reuters, and more.

This Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Financial Economics Institute at CMC.

Richard Ross is an artist, activist and distinguished research professor of art based at UC Santa Barbara. Ross has been the recipient of grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation. Ross is both Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellow.

His most recent work, the In-Justice series, turns a lens on the placement and treatment of American juveniles housed by law in facilities that treat, confine, punish, assist and, occasionally, harm them. Four published books and traveling exhibitions of the work continue to see great success while Ross collaborates with juvenile justice stakeholders, using the images as a catalyst for change.

Professor Ross' Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies at CMC.