Seminar Moderators
The following is a partial list of our seminar moderators. We will continue to update the list regularly.
Keith Berwick is a senior fellow of The Aspen Institute and Executive Director of the Henry Crown Fellowship Program, an advanced leadership development program for high-achieving young business executives.
A native Canadian, Berwick has had a long and varied career as a historian, educator, television broadcaster, newspaper publisher and editor. He was educated at Syracuse University and the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. degree in U.S. history. He has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Claremont Graduate School, Pepperdine University and the University of Southern California Graduate School of Business, and has lectured extensively at colleges and universities around the world.
Berwick is a four-time Emmy Award winning television broadcaster and principal of Berwick Communications, Inc., a newspaper and communication consulting company. He was founding president of Barry Ambrosetti & Associates, an Italian-American joint venture in global strategic planning, associate editor of Pacific Historical Review and editor of New Management magazine. From 1990 to 1996 he and his wife Sheena were publishers of the Country News, a weekly newspaper on California's Central Coast.
Berwick is author of The American Revolutionary Experience, 1776-1976 and The Federal Age, 1789-1829: America in the Process of Becoming, among other historical works. He is currently at work on The Search for an American Hero, a book about the American presidency. He and his wife make their home in Santa Barbara, California.
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Lee T. Bycel is an Independent Consultant who is currently working with International Medical Corps, as Special Advisor, Global Strategy. He moderates a variety of leadership seminars for The Aspen Institute, and offers seminars on leadership issues, ethics and strategy for a variety of corporate and non-profit organizations. He also moderates seminars for senior executives at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia.
For several years he served as President of The Brandeis-Bardin Institute, a national conference and retreat center located in Southern California. For fifteen years he was Dean of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, where he was the Senior Academic and Administrative Officer of the campus. He has also served as the Smither Visiting Professor of World Religions at the Claremont School of Theology.
Born in Los Angeles, Dr. Bycel graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in Philosophy. He earned his doctorate from the Claremont School of Theology.
Bycel's leadership experiences have led him to his current work with organizations and leaders. Since 2001, he has addressed the U.S. Presidential Scholars in Washington, D.C. on the subject of Leadership and Ethics. Lee is an active member of the Los Angeles community where he is involved in a variety of interfaith, social justice and educational organizations and activities. He served as President of the County of Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations. He has a number of publications to his credit as well as the recipient of many awards including the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCCJ) Humanitarian Award. He recently went on a humanitarian trip to Chad where he visited three refugee camps and has over raised $100,000 for food and medical supplies. He will be going to the Darfur region of Sudan at the end of March 2005 on another humanitarian trip.
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Benjamin Bernard Dunlap, 10th President of Wofford College, was born December 3, 1937, in Columbia, SC. After graduating summa cum laude from Sewanee, the University of the South, in 1959, he attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard University as a graduate student in English language and literature, receiving his Ph.D. in 1967. Since that time, he has held academic appointments at Harvard, the University of South Carolina and Wofford College, where for seven years prior to becoming president he served as the Chapman Family Professor in the Humanities.
A frequent moderator for the Aspen Institute's Executive Seminars as well as its Crown Fellowship Program, he has lectured widely in this country and abroad, including time as a Fulbright professor in Thailand and a Japan Society Leadership Fellow in Japan. His many publications include poems, essays, anthologies, guides and opera libretti. As a writer-producer for public television, he has been responsible for more than 200 programs, for which he has won numerous national and international awards. Recognized also for his teaching and research, he has also completed his first novel, Famous Dogs of the Civil War.
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Elliot Gerson is Executive Vice President of the Aspen Institute in June 2004, where he is responsible for Seminars and Public Programs and relationships with Aspen’s International partners.. His career previously spanned business, law, government, politics and the non-profit sector, with executive experience at high levels in each. His responsibilities at the Aspen Institute span across all its seminars and include major conferences such as the Aspen Ideas Festival, and the Aspen Health and Environmental Forums.
Before he joined the Aspen Institute, he ran one of the largest insurance groups of the Travelers Corporation, and subsequently led smaller start-up and growing companies in technology and specialized health care. After a United States Supreme Court clerkship, he practiced law in Hartford, Connecticut and in Washington, D.C., and served as the Deputy Attorney General of Connecticut. In addition to state government service, he worked as Staff Assistant to the Secretary of Defense in the Carter Administration, where he was awarded the Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Medal, and also as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. He was also the policy director, finance chair and senior advisor in a U. S. presidential campaign.
In addition, he has been the American Secretary of the Rhodes Trust (U.K.) since 1977 (the chief administrator for the American Rhodes Scholarships), has served as a trustee or president of leading non-profit organizations in the arts, education, social services and public policy, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a founding Trustee of the Friends of Mandela Rhodes Foundation, dedicated to African higher education and leadership development. He is on the board of the International Biomedical Research Alliance, which is affiliated with the National Institutes of Health, and serves on the board of a Kabul-based logistics, security and construction company that is focused on the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan.
Mr. Gerson is a 1979 graduate of Yale Law School. He attended Magdalen College of Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, winning First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He completed his undergraduate work at Harvard College in History and Science. He lives in Washington, D.C., and has five children.
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Leigh Hafrey has worked as a teacher, journalist, and consultant in international development, communication, and professional ethics. He is currently Senior Lecturer
at the Sloan School of Management, M.I.T., where he teaches in the MBA and executive education programs. Together with his wife, Sandra Naddaff, he is also co-Master of Mather House, one of the 12 residential complexes in Harvard College.
Over the last fourteen years, Hafrey has taught courses in communication at the Harvard Business School, Arthur D. Little's Management Education Institute, and the Sloan School at M.I.T. Since 1992, he has also worked in professional ethics, with a focus on ethics and management, teaching courses at Harvard and the Sloan School and consulting with professional groups in medicine, architecture, law, and business. In the spring of 2001, he began an ongoing series of seminars in managerial ethics for the M.I.T.-China Management Education Project in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing.
In the late 1990s, Hafrey served as a core committee member of the Brandeis Seminars
in Humanities and the Professions, part of the Brandeis University/Jerusalem Foundation International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life. In 1997, he was a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum, participating in panels on leadership and cultural diversity and moderating a seminar in ethics at the WEF Davos Summit. For the past eight years, Hafrey has moderated the Aspen Institute's Executive Seminar in values-based leadership, and other seminars sponsored by the Institute.
A former staff editor at The New York Times Book Review, Hafrey has published book translations from French and German and reporting, essays, reviews, and interviews in The New York Times and other American and European periodicals. He serves on the editorial advisory board of the journal Philosophy of Management (U.K.) and the Journal of Business Ethics Education (U.S.), and is currently writing a book for Other Press on how people use story to articulate ethical norms. Hafrey holds an A.B. in English from Harvard College and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University.
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James O'Toole is Research Professor in the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California (USC). He is also the Mortimer J. Adler Senior Fellow of the Aspen Institute.
At USC he held the University Associates' Chair of Management and served as Executive Director of the Leadership Institute. He has also been editor of New Management magazine and Director of the Twenty-Year Forecast Project (where he interpreted social, political, and economic change for the top management of thirty of the largest US corporations).
O'Toole's research and writings have been in the areas of leadership, political/economic philosophy, planning, and corporate culture. He has addressed dozens of major corporations and professional organizations, and has published over seventy articles. Among his thirteen books, Vanguard Management was named "One of the best business and economics books of 1985" by the editors of Business Week. His latest book, Leadership A to Z, received an enthusiastic review in Fortune (Dec. 6, 1999).
O'Toole received his Doctorate in Social Anthropology from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He served as a Special Assistant to Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Elliot Richardson, as Chairman of the Secretary's Task Force on Work in America, and as Director of Field Investigations for President Nixon's Commission on Campus Unrest. He won a Mitchell Prize for a paper on economic growth policy, has served on the prestigious Board of Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and was editor of The American Oxonian magazine.
From 1994-97, O'Toole was Executive Vice President of the Aspen Institute. He also has served recently as Managing Director of the Booz•Allen & Hamilton Strategic Leadership Center, and as Chair of the Center's academic Board of Advisors.
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Elizabeth Hayes Patterson is an Associate Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Before joining the Law Center faculty in 1980, Professor Patterson served as Chair of the D.C. Public Service (Utilities) Commission and was a Commissioner of the D.C. Public Service Commission. She now teaches Conflict of Laws, Contracts, Race and American Law, and Commercial Law: Sales Transactions. From 1993 to 1997, she served as Associate Dean for the JD and Graduate Programs at the Law Center, with responsibility for the supervision of academic programs, including curriculum development, full-time and adjunct faculty, and the Registrar's Office, as well as student affairs. In 2001, she received the Law Center's Frank F. Flegal Teaching Award. She has been Treasurer of the D.C. Bar and a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Private International Law (the Study Group on the Law Applicable to International Sales), the D.C. Bar Screening Committee, and the Editorial Board of the Washington Lawyer. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Emmanuel College, the Frederick B. Abramson Memorial Foundation, and the National Florence Crittenton Mission.
Before becoming involved in public service, she practiced privately with the D.C. firm of Hogan & Hartson and taught Conflicts at Catholic University. After graduation from the Columbus School of Law at Catholic University, she served as a clerk for the Honorable Ruggero J. Aldisert of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction from Emmanuel College and studied French at the Sorbonne in Paris and at Stanford University, as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow.
Professor Patterson (Ginger) is a member of the American Law Institute and has written articles on both domestic and international law regulating the sale of goods.
She is married to Jerome A. Patterson and has two grown children, Sala and Malcolm.
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Peter Thigpen
Stanford University, AB Economics and MBA
U. S. Marine Corps Officer, 3 years in a fighter squadron
Levi Strauss & Company, 24 years, positions included:
President, European Division
President, Levi Strauss-USA
President, The Jeans Company
Senior Vice President, Operations
Member of the Board
Member of the Boards of three publicly traded corporations over the last ten years.
Experience in education includes:
Board of Trustees, Branson High School, current
Board of Trustees, Kentfield, CA School District, current
Board of Trustees, Mills College, 9 years
Board of San Francisco Volunteers, 5 years
Board of Josephson Institute of Ethics, 5 years
Volunteer, Marin City Children's Program, 5 years
Volunteer, Junior Great Books, Bacich/Kent, 3 years
Lecturer in Ethics & Great Books, Graduate School of Business, University of California
Moderator and Senior Fellow, The Aspen Institute
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Lynne Waldera is president and chief executive officer of InMomentum, Inc. Founded by Lynne in 1999, the company specializes in organization strategy and development consulting with a particular focus on leadership development, internal branding, and culture-building for companies in dynamic markets.
Prior to founding InMomentum, Inc., Lynne was Managing Director at Cunningham Communication, a leading technology public relations firm. Previously, Lynne was a partner at the organization and communication consulting firm, Gehlhausen Ruda & Associates.
Lynne is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychologists and the American Psychological Association. She serves as a moderator at the Aspen Institute and on the board of ALLIANCE for Community Care, the largest community-based mental healthcare provider in Santa Clara County. She is also a member of the advisory board for The Art and Technology Network, a charitable organization that is dedicated to fostering the collaboration between artists and technologists.
Lynne earned a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology at George Washington University and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology at Duquesne University. She and her husband, Tom, reside in Pleasanton, California.
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Roger Widmann was a Principal of the investment banking firm of Tanner & Co., Inc. from 1996 to 2004, providing advice and negotiation and evaluation services to corporations ranging from Fortune 200 companies to mid-sized firms.
From 1986 to 1995, Mr. Widmann was a Senior Managing Director of Chemical Securities Inc., a subsidiary of Chemical Banking Corporation (now JPMorgan Chase Corporation). He established the Bank's fee-based corporate finance business in 1986. In addition to his responsibilities in the U.S., he was responsible for projects ranging from South America to Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Prior to joining Chemical, Mr. Widmann was a founder and CEO of First Reserve Corporation, the largest independent energy investing firm in the U.S.
Previously, he was Senior Vice President with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, responsible for the firm's domestic and international investment banking business. He has also been a Vice President with New Court Securities Corporation (now Rothschild, Inc.), completing a series of venture capital and merger and acquisition transactions. Mr. Widmann began his career in 1964 as an SEC trial attorney.
Mr. Widmann was Chairman of Lydall, Inc. (NYSE), Manchester, Connecticut, a manufacturer of thermal, acoustical and filtration materials, from 1998 to 2004, and a board member since 1974. He is also a director of Cedar Shopping Centers, Inc., Port Washington, New York, a real estate investment trust, and Paxar Corporation, White Plains, New York, the leading manufacturer of labeling systems. He was a director of First Reserve Corporation, Greenwich, Connecticut from its inception in 1980 until December 1995 and a director of Weatherford Enterra, Houston, Texas from 1993 to 1998.
Mr. Widmann has been a senior moderator of the Executive Seminar in the Humanities at The Aspen Institute since 1990 and has been President of the March of Dimes of Greater New York since 1994. He is also a Director of Oxfam America, an affiliate of Oxfam International, the global humanitarian and crisis relief organization.
Mr. Widmann earned a B.A. degree from Brown University, cum laude, and a J.D. Degree from Columbia Law School.
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Howard Zeiderman is Director of the Aspen Institute's Executive Seminar Program.
Howard did his undergraduate work at Dartmouth College and at St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, where he studied in the great books program. He did his graduate work in philosophy at Princeton University from 1968-1973. At Princeton, he focused on Philosophy of Language. In 1973, he joined the faculty of St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1976, he moved over to the Annapolis campus of St. John's College where he became tenured in 1980. Since then he has taught undergraduates and graduates throughout the "all required" program of St. John's, and has conducted many faculty study groups.
The discussion and seminar approach at St. John's is a unique environment for investigating the use of seminar discussions in other institutional settings. On the basis of this experience, Zeiderman co-founded the non-profit Touchstones Discussion Project of which he is now president. Touchstones introduces a discussion environment in a variety of institutions to develop various cognitive, leadership, and behavioral skills. Currently, 250,000 pre-college students in grades 4-12 participate in the program. The success of this approach in schools has led to extensions of the program for after-school programs, inmates, senior citizens, and executives in this country. Touchstones has also developed programs for use in China, Haiti, South Africa, and eastern Europe. Zeiderman has co-edited and translated texts for the 14-volume Touchstones series of seminar materials and authored or co-authored the 14-volume series of leader's guides for conducting discussions using these materials. These include works for conducting discussions in mathematics and science. He has led workshops for pre-college teachers and college faculties in how to conduct seminars.
Zeiderman has designed leadership programs for the National Security Agency and is currently designing a program for upper-level members of the Intelligence Community as well as collaborating in an initiative to re-create the educational system of Jordan. He has moderated executive seminars for the Aspen Institute and at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In June 2004, Zeiderman became director of the Aspen Institute's Executive Seminar Program and has primary responsibility for the program's curriculum and moderator corps.
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