2014-06-17



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Mount Holyoke College President Lynn Pasquerella ’80 is a teacher, scholar, and prominent ethicist whose career is marked by local and global engagement. Her first years as the College’s eighteenth president have been marked by a robust strategic-planning process, by outreach to local and regional communities and to the worldwide network of Mount Holyoke alumnae, and by a commitment to a thriving campus community. She has written extensively on medical ethics, theoretical and applied ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. A celebrated teacher, Pasquerella has found time to coteach classes with faculty in departments as disparate as sociology, biology, and Africana studies. As president, she has focused especially on strategic planning, shared governance, longterm financial sustainability, access for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds, and increased visibility for Mount Holyoke. At the core of Pasquerella’s career and her priorities is an abiding commitment to liberal education as a force for good, both for the individual and for civic society.

Maimuna Ahmad ’09 is the Founder and CEO of Teach For Bangladesh (TFB), a startup nonprofit organization working to eliminate educational disparity in Bangladesh by enlisting diverse leaders to spend two years as full-time teachers in low-income schools before going on to shape systemic change. A former Teach For America Corps member, Maimuna was inspired to start TFB by her experience teaching secondary school math at a public charter school in southeast Washington D.C. Prior to this, she worked at a human rights organization in Dhaka, Bangladesh, leading research projects on children's and indigenous women's rights in Bangladesh.

Maimuna holds a BA in international relations from Mount Holyoke College and an MA in teaching from American University.

Lisa Belkin is the chief national correspondent for Yahoo News, doing original reporting on social issues. She joins Yahoo after three years as senior columnist at the Huffington Post, covering life, work, and family. Belkin spent most of her career at the New York Times, where she was a Houston-based national correspondent, a medical reporter, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and the creator of the “Life’s Work” column and the “Motherlode” blog. The author of several books, including Life’s Work: Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom, Belkin was also the host of Life’s Work with Lisa Belkin on XM Radio, as well as a regular contributor on parenting topics to Public Radio’s The Takeaway and NBC’s TODAY Show.

Barbara Cassani ’82 started her career in management consulting and afterward held a variety of strategic and general management roles at British Airways, culminating in the start-up of London-based, low cost airline Go. Using £25m in capital, the airline became profitable in less than three years. Go was known for its fun brand, low prices, good service, and great people, winning the UK’s top travel consumer awards. Barbara was named UK Businesswoman of the Year and co-authored the UK award-winning book Go: An Airline Adventure. Barbara established the successful London 2012 Olympic Bid as founding chairman then vice-chairman, hiring the winning team, creating the blueprint for the Games, and developing UK public support. She was awarded an honorary CBE (Commander of the British Empire) from the British government. She has served on a number of corporate and non-profit boards, including Marks & Spencer and hotel group Jurys Inns. Barbara was a trustee of Mount Holyoke College from 1999–2004 and currently serves on the leadership group for Princeton University’s Women in Leadership Initiative. She is currently acting as mentor to a number of entrepreneurs.

Barbara graduated magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College with a BA in international relations and received MA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University in 1984.

Robin (Northup) Conn ’78 has more than 20 years experience as a human resources manager, primarily in Asia. Her expertise includes coaching, training, talent development, employee relations and compliance for global organizations. Robin began her human resources career in 1993 with DFS Hawaii in Honolulu, where she managed the Recruitment and Training Departments. She developed innovative strategies to hire, train, and retain employees servicing the Japanese customer. In 1999, Robin joined Bloomberg L.P. in Tokyo to start up their Asia-Pacific Human Resources Team, which she managed during a period of extensive business expansion across sixteen countries. In 2012, she moved to Singapore and has been managing the career development initiative for Bloomberg employees in the Asia-Pacific region. She has also worked closely with the philanthropy team to design and implement leadership-based programs to engage top talent by partnering with non-profits.

Robin holds a BA in Asian studies from Mount Holyoke College, an MA in Japanese language and literature from Columbia University, and an MBA from Cornell University.

Pascale Fung is a professor in the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at HKUST and the founding director of InterACT@HKUST, a joint research and education center with Carnegie Mellon University.

Pascale is a leading researcher in the fields of statistical speech, language, and music processing. She co-founded a company that launched the first Chinese natural language search engine in 2000 and her entrepreneur story was featured in the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and other magazines. Her second company launched the first Chinese virtual personal assistant on a smartphone in 2009 and the first Chinese language automobile infotainment system with a 3G connection in 2010. Her company also invented a world-leading intelligent music technology engine that powers the digital music services to more than 50 million Chinese users. She has published more than 130 papers and book chapters and holds fifteen world-wide and Chinese patents and software copyrights. In addition to core engineering subjects, Pascale also teaches technology entrepreneurship to engineering students at HKUST. In 2011 she co-founded the Women Faculty Association at HKUST to push for diversity in academia.

Pascale received her PhD in computer science from Columbia University in 1997.

Maria S. (Corina) Gochoco-Bautista ’78 is currently senior economic advisor in the Economics and Research Department of the Asian Development Bank, on leave as professor of economics at the University of the Philippines School of Economics. She has published widely in the areas of open economy macroeconomics and monetary policy. She previously held the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Sterling Chair Professorship in Monetary Economics at the University of the Philippines School of Economics. She started her academic career as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Other previous appointments include visiting research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and senior research fellow at the Bank for International Settlements Office for Asia and the Pacific in Hong Kong SAR. She is a member and former chair of the Asian Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and a board member of the Institute for Strategic and Development Studies.

She received a BA in economics from Mount Holyoke College, magna cum laude, and was inducted into Mount Holyoke’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter. She has a PhD in economics from Columbia University.

Barbara Hou is a lawyer, social entrepreneur, public speaker, and doctoral candidate at Harvard University. Her research focuses on international higher education, the values, purposes, and design of universities, liberal arts education in the 21st century, and social impact through education. In addition to her work in academia, Barbara has devoted herself as an activist in the area of women, development, and education. She is the founder and president of a non-profit organization called the Asian Women's Leadership University (AWLU) Project which has the mission to establish a global women's leadership university for women from Asia and the Middle East. Her advocacy for greater educational opportunity in developing countries has appeared in a variety of publications and media, including the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and the TEDx forum. She is also listed on GOOD Magazine's 2013 Top 100 List and is a recipient of the 2013 Sponsors for Educational Opportunity Alumni Award. Prior to Harvard, Barbara was an international capital markets lawyer at Cleary Gottlieb in Hong Kong. She holds a JD (cum laude) from the University of Michigan Law School where she was a member of the Michigan Law Review. She also holds an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an MA in International Relations from NYU, and a BA in Economics from Smith College. She is admitted to practice law in the States of New York and Massachusetts.

Erica Ma is community advisor at CoCoon, an entrepreneurship community with 100+ entrepreneurs and freelancers in hardware, software, graphic design, social media, and more. As community advisor, she oversees CoCoon's Community Development Team. Erica graduated from Stanford with an undergraduate degree in Communication and a graduate degree in Psychology. After working in Silicon Valley at both Macys.com and eBay.com, she began her journey as an entrepreneur. Erica has experience in social media marketing, web analytics, search engine marketing and product development.

Su-Mei Thompson is CEO of The Women’s Foundation, a leading NGO dedicated to the advancement of women in Hong Kong through ground-breaking research, innovative community programmes, and education and advocacy. She is also the founder of the 30% Club Hong Kong, a group of chairmen and business leaders committed to bringing more women onto corporate boards. In 2013, Su-Mei was appointed by the Chief Executive of Hong Kong to the Equal Opportunities Commission. Su-Mei started her career as a corporate finance associate at Linklaters before assuming senior management positions with The Walt Disney Company, the Financial Times and Christie’s. An alumna of Cambridge and Oxford Universities and IMD, Su-Mei is a non-executive director of HKEx-listed Natural Beauty Bio-technology Limited, an advisory board member of Intelligence Squared Asia, a board member of Opera HK and a council member of The Cheltenham Ladies College, her alma mater.

Jennifer Meehan has more than sixteen years of experience in the global microfinance and development industry. She most recently served as Co-Head of Global Programs & CEO Asia at Grameen Foundation USA (GF), a US$20+ million global non-profit organization that focuses on poverty alleviation through financial services and mobile technology.  Among the initiatives she led during her 8-year tenure was developing a 3-year strategy that redefined GF’s role in fighting global poverty and the structuring and launch in 2006 of a US$31 million credit guarantee program that to date has leveraged more than US$200 million in local currency financing for microfinance institutions in emerging markets around the world.  Jennifer’s experience also includes serving as an Investment Committee member of the Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Capital Fund and as an analyst for Calvert Social Investment Foundation. She began her career with The Chase Manhattan Bank (formerly Chemical Bank) where she worked in corporate banking and project finance.  She currently serves as Chair of Grameen Foundation India, Co-Chair of PathFinders HK, and Board member of KHL Holdings Ltd. Jennifer graduated with a M.A. in International Affairs with a concentration in International Economics and a minor in French language from The George Washington University.

Vijaya Pastala ’89 is CEO and founder of Under The Mango Tree (UTMT). Established in 2010, as a social enterprise, UTMT promotes beekeeping to increase agricultural productivity, enhance incomes and improve livelihoods of marginal farmers in India. Vijaya’s passion lies in developing community based, pro-poor approaches for environmentally sustainable economic development in India. Before establishing UTMT, she worked as a development professional with the World Bank, KFW, European Commission, DFID, and the Aga Khan Foundation primarily on livelihood and natural resource management. A local of Mumbai, Vijaya took a gap year after school to travel across India as a hippie. She made her way across the country with the first edition of the Lonely Planet. Vijaya later earned her Bachelor's in International Relations and Women's Studies from Mount Holyoke College and a Masters in Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Frances Waikwun Wong began her career at McKinsey & Company in the United States and later returned to Hong Kong to join Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. There, she was managing director of Weatherite Manufacturing Limited, CEO of Metro Broadcast Corporation Limited, and CFO of Star TV.  She later became group CFO for the Pacific Century Group. In 2000, she founded the Independent Schools Foundation Academy in Hong Kong, where she currently serves as Chairman of the Board. Frances is an independent non-executive director of PCCW Ltd. and Pacific Century Regional Developments Ltd. She also runs the investment management portfolio of her family office. Frances was a member of the Central Policy Unit and has served on the boards of the Canadian International School and the Open University of Hong Kong. She has a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University and a Master of Science degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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