Emily Levine
Alum 2001Emily Levine was an American humorist, writer, actress and public speaker who lectured on science and the human condition. She began her career as a stand-up comedian, headlining in comedy clubs and making television appearances on shows such as David Letterman’s Late Night. As a television writer and producer, Emily worked on shows such as Designing Women, Love and War and Dangerous Minds. She created and produced pilots for new situation comedies for CBS, NBC, ABC and HBO.
Mike Houck
Alum 2001After heading up the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s Community Research Center and teaching biology at Oregon Episcopal School, Mike Houck found his life-long calling as an advocate for urban greenspace protection in 1982 when he launched the Urban Naturalist Program at the Audubon Society of Portland. In 1999 Mike founded the Urban Greenspaces Institute to continue his work at the local and regional scale to ensure the integration of nature into the urban fabric. Mike also works locally and regionally to ensure the city and region adopt policies that mitigate and adapt to climate change. Mike has been recognized locally, regionally and internationally for his work.
Mary Felstiner
Alum 2001Mary Felstiner has taught history at San Francisco State University since 1981. Her major research on Charlotte Salomon culminated in To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era, which in 1995 won both the Women’s Heritage Museum First Annual Book Award and the American Historical Association Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women’s History. Her most recent work, Out of Joint: A Public and Private Story of Arthritis, has as its genesis her own experiences of a chronic health problem.
Kathleen Denny
Alum 2001Long based in Oakland, writer and performer Kathleen Denny serves up smart, fresh and funny stories from life, work and family. Her new show Out of Line (formerly known as Tolerance?!) is a true and funny account from her years as a union machinist and mechanic in the air transport industry. Family and her work as a union machinist and airframe mechanic inspired essays and commentaries published in periodicals such as The Sun and Skirt!Mag, as well as on National Public Radio.
Chuck Collins
Alum 2001Chuck Collins is an author and a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good. He is also co-founder of Wealth for Common Good. He is an expert on economic inequality in the US, and has pioneered efforts to bring together investors and business leaders to speak out publicly against corporate practices and economic policies that increase economic inequality. In 2005, he became a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, where he co-edits the web site, Inequality.org, and directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good. Chuck has written a number of books about inequality, tax policy and social change philanthropy.
Linda Blachman
Alum 2001Linda Blachman has been a writer and public health professional for twenty-five years, specializing in the fields of maternal and child health and community mental health. In 1995 she founded Mothers' Living Stories, a nonprofit project that brings compassion, dignity, and support in parenting to mothers who have cancer by helping them record their life stories as living legacies. In her private practice, she's a personal historian, public health consultant and counselor for life transitions.
Jim Barilla
Alum 2001Before becoming a professor of creative writing, Jim Barilla held a variety of posts in wildlife research and management, crossing paths with wolves and mountain lions in remote wilderness and promoting “mini-beast” habitats in urban schoolyards in England. Jim is the author of two nonfiction books that explore what it means to be human in the natural world. His work has appeared in print or online in The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic and Conservation as well as numerous other publications, and he has appeared on a variety of national public radio shows such as WHYY’s Radio Times and PRI’s Living on Earth.
Walter Thabit
Alum 2001Walter Thabit was a leader among city planners in pressing cities to build low-cost housing and encourage diversity in blighted areas, a movement now known as advocacy planning. Walter approached urban planning as an activist. Projects should benefit a site's residents, he argued, not politicians or developers. n the late 1960's he was New York City's planner for East New York, Brooklyn, and he later described the area's challenges in his book How East New York Became a Ghetto.
Jan Sells
Alum 2001Jan Elise Sells is a licensed psychotherapist in Berkeley, California. In 1986 she developed a unique counseling program consisting of individual and group counseling, crisis intervention, conflict resolution and a Gay/Straight Alliance at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. King's counseling program was so successful, the model was brought to the two other middle schools in Berkeley, where personal counseling, crisis intervention, conflict resolution and a GSA are integral parts of the Berkeley middle school culture today. In recognition of her work at King, Jan was one of seven honorees to receive an award as Outstanding Woman of Berkeley for the year 2006, which coincided with her retirement from King. Jan continues to supervise interns who work with students at King Middle School, where the program she created is still going strong.
David Scheel
Alum 2001David Scheel is a field-oriented ecologist with experience in remote and wilderness settings in Africa and Alaska. He lived with African lions and wild dogs for two years in the Serengeti, researching lion hunting behavior. He began working with marine predators in 1993. In his marine research he has worked with fisheries, marine birds and mammals and marine invertebrates in Prince William Sound and the north Gulf of Alaska. David is a NAUI-certified Rescue Diver and AAUS Scientific Diver, an aquarium enthusiast and a wildlife photographer.
Ravi Rajan
Alum 2001Ravi Rajan is Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he has served since his appointment in 1997. Ravi has also served a number of civil society organizations. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Greenpeace International. His previous public service includes the Presidency of the Board of Directors of Pesticide Action Network, North America, board service for the International Media Project, which produces the weekly radio news program, Making Contact, membership of the city of Santa Cruz’s Green Building Committee and Charter Membership of The Indus Entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley, the world’s largest not for profit organization for entrepreneurs.
Todd Oppenheimer
Alum 2001Todd Oppenheimer, the founding Editor & Publisher of Craftsmanship, has been working as a journalist since 1978. The publications he has written for include The New Yorker, The New York Times and The Atlantic Monthly. He has won a variety of awards for his writing and reporting, including a National Magazine Award and a first prize from Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE). He is the author of The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology, which was a finalist for IRE’s investigative book award.