Stanford in New York Past Events Archive
Acting with Power Workshop
October 25th 6:00 EDT / 3:00 PM PDT
Exploring your personal relationship to power, status and authority allows you to navigate nuanced organizational and communication dynamics with increased agility. This agility helps you accomplish your strategic, operational and professional objectives. Expanding your authentic range can change how we are perceived. Combining performance techniques and data from the fields of social psychology and gender research, this session provides insight into how behavioral range - physical, vocal, intellectual, mindset, strategic - affects your impact. In this session we make the invisible visible, by looking behind the curtain at status behavior. Through research analysis and interactive exercises, we break down how verbal and nonverbal behavioral cues raise and lower our own, and other people’s status.
Kay Kostopoulos directs and teaches acting, acting pedagogy, musical theater, voice, speech, and Shakespeare in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies and Continuing Studies Program at Stanford University. She teaches “Acting with Power” at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and the Stanford Executive Education Program for Women in Entrepreneurship.
Also at Stanford, Kay has coached for the Knight Fellows Journalism Program, the Department of English, and the Clayman Institute for Gender Research where she was performance coach for the faculty videos for the Voice & Influence program. Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research
Kay has created and directed many training programs for Stanford’s School of Medicine. She has also designed and taught private seminars for live and online audiences at companies like Apple, Twitter, Airbnb, Genentech, Cisco, Hitachi, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Lippincott, Ernst and Young, First Republic, eBay’s Global Women’s Conference and Women In Cable Telecommunications, among many others.
She has acted and taught at many educational institutions, including the New Jersey, San Francisco, and California Shakespeare Festivals, (where she served as Director of Education).
Her work has been featured in “O” magazine. http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Body-Language-Signs-Body-Language-of-Women/2 and she has been featured on NPR’s Philosophy Talk radio program http://philosophytalk.org/shows/faces-feelings-and-lies for her work on understanding facial emotions in the treatment of Autism.
Melissa Jones Briggs specializes in performance as a tool for social and organizational change. On faculty at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business she co-teaches “Acting with Power” with Dr. Deborah Gruenfeld. She lectures in the Stanford Executive Program among many others and co-directed a Stanford Executive Program for Women Entrepreneurs. She is a faculty affiliate at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Melissa is especially passionate about inclusive leadership.
Outside academia, in the company of world-class partners, Melissa designs and direct global leadership programs for top corporations, NGOs, academic and federal institutions. She proudly served on the Board of Directors at Youth in Arts, an arts education non-profit with a focus on social justice. She has guest lectured at Stanford’s Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, the University of Oxford and London Business School.
Journalism on the Ground
August 5th, 12pm PDT | 3pm EDT
Join Stanford in New York for a discussion with Gabriela Bhaskar, Priska Neeley, Mark Vancleave and Danielle Jackson about on-the-ground journalism today. This panel will explore perspectives and experiences from journalists working in different mediums during this past year of unprecedented turmoil. From Covid-19, to the election, to protests for racial justice and other stories, these journalists will discuss how the profession continues to change, tenets of journalism and reporting that have been compromised, current labor conditions and protections, and how to advocate for oneself in the profession.
Panelist: Gabriela Bhaskar
Gabriela Bhaskar is a freelance photojournalist based in New York City. She is currently a Photography Fellow at The New York Times. She reports on social justice, policy and women’s issues in the US, and Southeast Asia. Her work has been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, and more. Gabriela holds a masters degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of Women Photograph and Diversify Photo
Panelist: Priska Neely
Priska Neely is the managing editor for the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between NPR and member stations in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Previously she worked at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and KPCC in Los Angeles, where she reported extensively on maternal and infant mortality in the Black community. Before that, she worked at NPR in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Panelist: Mark Vancleave
Mark Vancleave is a video journalist at the Star Tribune covering breaking news, features, and investigative projects. His work includes reporting on inequities in disabled Minnesotans' access to jobs, families' ability to intervene when elderly loved ones face abuse and neglect in care homes and civilian deaths at the hands of police–including the recent killing of George Floyd.
Moderator: Danielle Jackson
Danielle Jackson is deeply committed to bringing discrete people, ideas, and disciplines together. She is an adjunct faculty member at Stanford in New York, teaching courses on art, photojournalism, and social change. She is the co-founder of the Bronx Documentary Center, an internationally-recognized gallery and educational space that uses photojournalism and documentary film to create conversation on social change. Formerly, she ran the cultural department at Magnum Photos NY where she coordinated a range of lectures, traveling exhibitions and retrospectives for museums, universities, and photo festivals in more than a dozen countries. Her observations on cultural practice can be found on Twitter @Makerthinker. She holds a BFA in Film and Television and MA in Africana Studies from NYU.
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Thinking About Careers: A Conversation with Lindsey Pollak
May 26, 2021 1:00–2:00 PM ET/10:00-11:00 PM PT
Stanford in New York presents New York Times bestselling author and one of the world’s leading career and workplace experts, Lindsey Pollak, in a moderated virtual event on May 26. Please join us to learn how to navigate the career and hiring trends that have accelerated during the pandemic. We will explore how the old job hunting and career success roles no longer apply and how to build a plan to thrive in the “new normal”. It will be an exciting conversation with Lindsey who will provide real-world, actionable and motivational tips in such areas as personal branding, remote communication, job hunting, relationship building and mindset. Students and alumni will leave this program with clear steps to help navigate their own career and life journeys.
Lindsey Pollak (Guest/Event Speaker): Lindsey Pollak is a New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's leading career and workplace experts. She is passionate about helping individuals and organizations navigate and thrive in the ever-changing world of work. Lindsey was named to the 2020 Thinkers50 Radar List, which honors the top global management thinkers whose work is shaping the future of how organizations are managed and led. Her next book is a response to the Covid crisis: Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work was published by HarperCollins on March 23, 2021. Lindsey’s speaking audiences and consulting clients have included more than 250 corporations, law firms, conferences and universities, including Aetna, Citi, Estée Lauder Companies, GE, Goldman Sachs, Google, Pfizer, Verizon, Yale, Harvard, Wharton and Stanford. Her advice and opinions have appeared in such media outlets as The TODAY Show, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and NPR.
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So You Want to Move to New York City?
May 18, 2021 7:00–8:30 PM ET/4:00-5:30 PM PT
Join six Stanford in New York alumni for presentations discussing their experiences moving to the city, their current neighborhoods, and their favorite spots!
Panelist: Alexander Ronneburg
Alexander Ronneburg is a music director, composer, and singer. His original songs have been performed at The Cutting Room, The West End Lounge, The Glassbox Theater at Mannes, and Dinkelspiel Auditorium at Stanford University. His original podcast musical SS Splendor won the 2020 Alsop Entrepreneurship Award. He has worked on musicals including Hamilton (Philip Tour), Austen’s Pride, and Cornelia Street, starring Matthew Broderick and Barrett Wilbert Weed. He currently serves as Assistant Music Director and Arrangers’ Lab Manager for the Voices of Gotham chorus and sings lead with Madhattan Quartet. Alexander graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Music in 2017, and from The New School with a M.A. in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship in 2020.
Panelist: Grace Goheen
Grace Goheen (she/her) graduated from Stanford University in 2020 with a B.S in Management Science & Engineering and a minor in Theater & Performance Studies. Currently, she works as a business analyst at OnPrem Solution Partners - a technology consulting firm focusing on innovative digital solutions within the Media & Entertainment industry. She is also an avid writer and spends most of her free time developing her new play “All the Difference,” which debuted on campus last year and was presented at the Stanford Symposium of Undergraduate Research.
Panelist: Gillian Brassil
Gillian Brassil is a sports reporting fellow at The New York Times where she has covered a wide range of athletes, organizations and competitions, from basketball to football to horse racing. Her work often intersects with stories about the coronavirus pandemic and diversity, equity and inclusion. She graduated from Stanford University in 2019 with a Master’s in Journalism, Bachelor’s in Communication and minor in Creative Writing. At Stanford, she edited and wrote for The Stanford Daily and hosted a news segment on KZSU. She competed in artistic swimming for Stanford and Team USA.
Panelist: Julio Chávez
Julio Chávez is a producer, performer (at heart), and Ariana Grande stan. They have produced live events for over 6 years, most notably as an Admit Weekend Coordinator for Stanford University from 2015 to 2018, and currently as an Assistant Producer for The Moth since January 2019. Since working at The Moth, Julio has produced dozens of shows, workshops, and professional development opportunities, bringing storytelling to hundreds of educators, students, and community organization members in NYC and beyond. When not working behind the scenes, Julio enjoys taking the stage, and has danced in Ailey Extension's Spring 2019 Showcase with their hip-hop class, performed in a staged reading for the original play, Meat Suit (written by fellow Stanford Alum, Lillian Bornstein) in August 2019, and hosts the occasional StorySLAM for The Moth. Julio graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies in 2018.
Panelist: Nathalie Weiss
Nathalie Weiss is a Design Strategist & Content Manager at the architecture firm HLW. She is passionate about crafting environments that put the user first. Over the past year, Nathalie’s work has concentrated on how to re-open workplaces safely and she partners with clients to envision the future of how their employees will work. Before HLW, Nathalie was a Business Development & Marketing Associate at SHoP Architects, which is where she interned as an SiNY student in 2015. Nathalie received her Bachelor of Arts from Stanford in 2016, where she studied Art History and Architecture. Nathalie was coxswain and co-captain on the varsity Men’s Rowing Team. She currently leads 36 Sports Strong, an alumni group working to reinstate the 11 varsity teams that Stanford plans to cut at the end of this academic year. As a student, Nathalie worked at Cantor Arts and in NYC, she served as Co-President of the Stanford Young Alumni of New York, sat on the Board of Directors for Stanford NY Alumni, and served on the Stanford Arts Council of NY.
Panelist: Ashwin Agarwal
Ashwin Agarwal is a programmer, multimedia artist, creative technologist, and transit enthusiast based in Brooklyn, NY. He received his B.S. from Stanford University (‘19) in Computer Science, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction. At home, he likes to rewatch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and read think pieces. Outside, he likes to drink hot chocolate and get lost in the park. Most recently, he worked as a creative technologist at Local Projects, an exhibit design studio, where he helped develop both the backend systems and frontend interfaces for interactive installations at a variety of museums and cultural institutions.
More Information:
Event Zoom information will be sent to registrants. Participants will need a @stanford.edu email address to register.
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Artists of Harlem: Then and Now
April 14, 2021 12:00–1:30 PM PT/3:00-4:30 PM ET
Join Stanford in New York as we explore the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance and its influence on art in Harlem today. LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Dr. Michele Elam, Terrance McKnight, Stefen Reed, and Kiyan Williams will speak with Dr. Katie Dieter about their projects and careers, and how the local artists from 100+ years ago helped to pave their way.
Panelist: Kiyan Williams
Kiyan Williams is a multidisciplinary artist from Newark, NJ who works fluidly across sculpture, performance, and video. Rooted in a process-driven practice, they are attracted to quotidian, unconventional materials and methods that evoke the historical, political, and ecological forces that shape individual and collective bodies.
Williams earned a BA with honors from Stanford University and an MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University. Their work has been exhibited at SculptureCenter, The Jewish Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, Recess Art, and The Shed. They have given artist talks and lectures at the Hirshhorn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Princeton University, Stanford University, Portland State University, The Guggenheim, and Pratt Institute. Williams’ work is in private and public collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Williams’ honors and awards include the Astraea Foundation Global Arts Fund and Stanford Arts Award. They were selected to participate in the 2019 In Practice: Other Objects emerging artist exhibition at SculptureCenter and are among the inaugural cohort of artists commissioned by The Shed. Williams was previously an artist fellow at Leslie-Lohman Museum and is an alum of the EMERGENYC fellowship at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics at NYU. Williams is the recipient of the 2019/2020 Fountainhead Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University, where they were on faculty in the Sculpture and Extended Media Department.
Panelist: LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
A writer, vocalist and performance/sound artist, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of TwERK (Belladonna, 2013). Diggs has presented and performed at California Institute of the Arts, El Museo del Barrio, The Museum of Modern Art, and Walker Art Center and at festivals including: Explore the North Festival, Leeuwarden, Netherlands; Hekayeh Festival, Abu Dhabi; International Poetry Festival of Copenhagen; Ocean Space, Venice; International Poetry Festival of Romania; Question of Will, Slovakia; Poesiefestival, Berlin; and the 2015 Venice Biennale. As an independent curator, artistic director, and producer, Diggs has presented events for BAMCafé, Black Rock Coalition, El Museo del Barrio, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, and the David Rubenstein Atrium. Diggs has received a 2020 C.D. Wright Award for Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, a Whiting Award (2016) and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship (2015), as well as grants and fellowships from the Howard Foundation, Cave Canem, Creative Capital, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission, among others. She lives in Harlem.
Panelist: Terrance McKnight
Terrance McKnight: a proud voice resounding from the middle of the road. Terrance is the evening host on WQXR.
When Terrance McKnight moved to New York City, his 96-year-old grandmother offered him a few words of wisdom: “If you’ve got something to say, get out there in the middle of the road and say it; don’t go hiding behind no bush.” From a long line of passionate citizens — his maternal family founded a branch of the NAACP in Mississippi and his father the pastor of a church in Cleveland — Terrance and his siblings were expected to contribute to their community while growing up. Early on, Terrance decided he would take the musician’s journey.
As a teenager, he played trumpet in the school orchestra and played piano for various congregations around Cleveland. At Morehouse College and Georgia State University he performed with the college Glee Club and New Music Ensemble respectively and subsequently joined the music faculty at Morehouse. While in Georgia he brought his love of music and performing to the field of broadcasting.
Terrance is an Artistic Advisor for the Harlem Chamber Players and serves on the board of the Bagby Foundation and the MacDowell Colony. He’s frequently sought out by major cultural organizations for his insight into the cultivation of diverse perspectives and voices in the cultural sphere. He regularly curates concerts and talks at Merkin Concert Hall, the Billie Holiday Theatre, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Museum of Modern Art.
Panelist: Stefen Reed
As a native New Yorker, born and raised in Harlem, Stefen Reed has been practicing art, ranging a wide spectrum, for over two decades.
A mobile-media artist, cinematographer and painter whose abstract subject matters explore raw emotion and the pulse of the human experience, Reed employs a number of different disciplines and mediums. Linking old fashioned and contemporary techniques with up-to-the-minute technology, oil pastels, paint, spray paint, collage and digital photography.
As a cinematographer, Reed has worked on several film projects including “Welcome to Harlem,” an award-winning musical comedy in 2012. Reed has also served as a teaching artist in New York City and abroad, drawing his inspiration from a local after school arts education program he attended as a child, The Children’s Art Carnival (CAC) of Harlem, which he continues to serve to this day. In this capacity, Reed has conducted multi-media classes for both children and adults, helping to bring arts and digital technologies to schools. By linking every day life to art, technology and music, Reed explores the development of mood and tone. Recognizing the critical need and exponential benefits of arts education within all communities, Reed’s artistic pursuits have served as a vehicle for advocating on behalf of arts programming. Most recently, Reed has helped spearhead a new program, provided by CAC, called WorkSpace, where local artists are offered a chance to rent affordable studio space. Independently, Reed has been cultivating a new large series, which focuses on the history of cotton, race and American consumerism.
Panelist: Michele Elam
Michele Elam is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities in the English Department at Stanford University, a Faculty Associate Director of the Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and a Race & Technology Affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.
Elam’s research in interdisciplinary humanities connects literature and the social sciences in order to examine changing cultural interpretations of gender and race. Her work is informed by the understanding that racial perception in particular impacts outcomes for health, wealth and social justice. More recently, her scholarship examines intersections of race, technology and the arts. “Making Race in the Age of AI,” her most recent book project, considers how the humanities and arts function as key crucibles through which to frame and address urgent social questions about equity in emergent technologies. She is teaching a new course, "AI + Arts + Activism" in spring 2021.
Elam’s books include Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium (Stanford University Press, 2011), and The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin (Cambridge University Press, 2015). She has published articles on race and culture in African American Review, American Literature, Theatre Journal and Genre, as well as op-eds for CNN, Huffington Post, and Boston Review. She was awarded the 2018 Darwin T. Turner Award for Outstanding Scholarship by the African American Literature and Culture Society.
Ar Stanford, she has served as the Director of the interdisciplinary graduate Program in Modern Thought and Literature (MTL), the Director of African & African American Studies, and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the English Department. Nationally, Elam has served as Chair of the Executive Committee for the Black Literatures & Culture Division of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and on the Executive Council for the American Literature Society at MLA. She is currently on the Advisory Boards of Stanford’s Program in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Studies, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity, and serves on the Director’s Council for the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school).
Dedicated to teaching, Elam has been awarded the 2018 Walter J. Gores Award, the University's highest teaching honor. She is also thrice the recipient of the St Clair Drake Outstanding Teaching Award at Stanford (2004, 2006, 2015) and has twice received the Faculty Award for Outstanding Service to Undergraduate Students as a Teacher, Advisor and Mentor from the Program in Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity (2013, 2018), among her other teaching awards.
Moderator: Katie Dieter
Dr. Katie Dieter is the Associate Director of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. Prior to this role, she held the position of Senior Lecturer in the Humanities Department and the Art History Department at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts located in Kingston, Jamaica. She also served as the college's faculty representative for the Gender Ambassadors Programme, a government initiative that seeks to promote gender equality and education in Jamaica. Dr. Dieter also held an adjunct faculty position in the Cultural Studies department in the Institute of Caribbean Studies and Reggae Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona also located in Kingston, Jamaica. With a bachelor’s degree in African and African American Studies and Studio Art (metal sculpture and furniture design), an M.A. in Gender Studies, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in African American and African Diaspora Studies, her research focuses on the ways the visual and performing arts can be used as methods of knowledge production and resistance, particularly in the African Diaspora and in the field of African and African American Studies. In a 2019 publication in the Jonkunno Arts Journal, Dr. Dieter argued for the importance of the implementation of creative programs within Black Studies departments in order to further develop new ways to consider black identities, challenge oppressive representations, and reveal new interpretations of black identities, cultures, and histories. Dr. Dieter is also an artist and includes themes of race, gender, sexuality, culture, and nation in her artwork. In a forthcoming chapter to be included in an anthology on African diaspora dance, Dr. Dieter analyzes choreography with a creative auto-ethnographic approach in order to reimagine dance through her own paintings.
More Information:
Event Zoom information will be sent to registrants.
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A Panel on Race & Media
March 4, 2021 9:30–10:30 AM PT/12:30-1:30 PM ET
You're invited to join Stanford in New York and Stanford Women's Network - New York as we welcome award-winning journalists and media powerhouses Tracy Jan (BA ‘98 MA ‘99) of the Washington Post, Emily Ramshaw of The 19th and Erica Green of the New York Times for a powerful discussion focused on media and race. These accomplished women will discuss their careers in journalism, their professional focus on diversity and racial disparities as well as their personal experiences as working mothers during a pandemic. This virtual event is guaranteed to be an insightful, timely discussion on issues we can all learn from.
Panelist: Tracy Jan (BA ‘98, MA ‘99), Washington Post reporter covering the intersection of race and the economy Emily Ramshaw,Co-founder and CEO of The 19th Erica L. Green, New York Times journalist covering education equity and civil rights enforcement PANELIST BIOS Tracy Jan (BA ‘98, MA ‘99) Tracy Jan covers the intersection of race and the economy for The Washington Post, a beat she launched in December 2016 that encompasses racial economic disparities, immigration, housing policy and other stories that hold businesses and politicians accountable for their decisions and promises. Her work has delved deeply into reparations for slavery, systemic racism in America, and the economic and health impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black, Asian, Latino and immigrant communities. She previously was a Washington-based national political reporter for the Boston Globe, where she covered the 2016 and 2012 presidential campaigns. During her 12 years at the Globe, Jan had also written about health and science policy, higher education, and Boston Public Schools. She started her career as a crime and courts reporter at the Oregonian and was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, as well as a Fulbright Fellow in Taiwan. She has reported from Taipei, Beijing, Tibet and along the Yangtze River.
Panelist: Emily Ramshaw, the 19th’s co-founder and CEO, was until recently the editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune, a Peabody Award-winning, 10-year-old news startup that boasts the largest statehouse bureau in the nation, powers the pages of newspapers across Texas and the nation, and is considered the gold standard for sustainability in local news. She is also the youngest person ever to be named to the board of the Pulitzer Prize, where she is serving a nine-year term. In addition to overseeing more than 60 Tribune employees, a $10 million budget and 50+ live events annually, Ramshaw has spoken both nationally and internationally about the Tribune’s business model, deemed “the nonprofit news sector’s runaway success.” Before helping to found the Tribune a decade ago, Ramshaw was an award-winning investigative reporter at The Dallas Morning News, where she broke national stories about sexual abuse inside Texas’ youth lock-ups, reported from inside a West Texas polygamist compound and uncovered “fight clubs” at state institutions for people with disabilities. A native of Washington, D.C., Ramshaw graduated from Northwestern University in 2003 with dual degrees in journalism and American history.
Panelist: Erica L. Green is a correspondent in the Washington Bureau of The New York Times covering federal education policy, with a focus on the Education Department and civil rights enforcement in the nation’s schools. Erica joined The Times in March 2017 from The Baltimore Sun where she covered the Baltimore City Public School System for seven years. Over the course of her decade-long career covering education, she has produced award-winning coverage on topics such as school funding, school segregation, special education, school discipline, and children in the juvenile justice and foster care systems. She has won first place in both the investigative reporting and beat reporting categories in the Education Writers Association's National Awards for Education Reporting and was a member of The Sun team named a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Special thanks to Stanford in New York (SiNY), Washington DC Stanford Association (WDCSA), Stanford NY Alumni, Stanford Women's Club of the East Bay (SWCEB), Stanford Alumni Association (SAA), among others for generously cross-promoting this event. This event is part of SWN–NY's 100+ Project, which looks back in celebration of all that has been done and looks forward in anticipation of all that is still left to do to advance women's rights and representation. Stanford Women's Network–New York aims to promote the Stanford spirit in New York by connecting and supporting Stanford affiliates, facilitating events that spark "learning, discovery, innovation," and engaging together to proactively serve the greater good.