Jackson Institute names six new senior fellows

Six leading practitioners in various fields of international affairs have been named 2017-2018 Jackson Institute Senior Fellows.

The six will join 11 returning fellows, who spend a year or a semester at Yale teaching courses and mentoring students.

The new fellows are:

Elaine Dezenski, the founder and CEO of LumiRisk, an international risk advisory advancing transformational initiatives in transparency, anti-corruption, good governance, and security.  Previously, Dezenski held executive leadership positions at the World Economic Forum, including Head of the Forum’s Global Risk Response Network and Head of the Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI).  Through PACI, she created a network of and collaborated with more than 100 CEOs globally to strengthen industry engagement, leadership, and commitment to the global private-sector anti-corruption agenda. She also served in senior leadership roles at INTERPOL and Cross Match Technologies; and served in various senior positions in the U.S. government, including assistant secretary for policy development at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She began her career at the Transportation Division of Siemens Corporation. Dezenski is a senior advisor to the Financial Integrity Network and an advisory board member of the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and Wheaton College (M.A.). At Yale, she will also serve as the Mars Visiting Lecturer of Business Ethics for Ethics, Politics and Economics.

Russell Feingold, also the Martin R. Flug Visiting Professor in the Practice of Law at Yale Law School, served as a U.S. senator from Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011 and a Wisconsin state senator from 1983 to 1993. From 2013 to 2015, he served as the United States Special Envoy to the Great Lakes Region of Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In addition to his congressional and diplomatic career, Feingold has taught or lectured at Stanford University and Stanford Law School, Lawrence University, Marquette University Law School, American University, and Beloit College. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian. Feingold holds a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

John Kerry, who served during the Obama administration as the 68^th secretary of state of the United States. He also serves as a Distinguished Fellow for Global Affairs at Yale, where he will focus on U.S. foreign policy in the 21st century, including failed and failing states, the challenge of authoritarian populism, rising sectarianism and violent extremism, climate change and other environmental threats, capacity building and anti-corruption, global economic opportunity and development. He will also lead the Kerry Initiative. He became the first sitting U.S. secretary of state to meet with Iran’s foreign minister since the Iranian revolution. This meeting was the highest-level U.S. diplomatic contact with Iran in more than six years. Kerry was also a key architect of the Paris Climate Accord, signing the historic agreement to reduce carbon emissions in 2016.

Richard C. Levin, a senior advisor at Coursera and the former CEO. He joined the company in 2013, after completing a 20-year term as President of Yale, during which time he rebuilt the campus, strengthened town-gown relations in New Haven, co-founded Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and generally strengthened the University’s international programs — in China in particular. He is the Frederick William Beinecke Professor Emeritus of Economics. Levin is recognized as an advocate and leader of the emerging role of higher education in responding to the challenge of sustainable development locally and globally. He established the Office of Sustainability in 2005, and during that year endorsed an aggressive greenhouse gas reduction target and strategy for the university. In 2007-2008, Levin convened the leadership of Yale’s peer institutions nationally and internationally, challenging each of these universities to respond to the pressing issue of climate change.

Charles MacCormack, currently the senior fellow for NGO Futures at Interaction, the national association of over 200 U.S. humanitarian and development organizations. He also serves as vice chair of the Millennium Development Goal Health Alliance. Throughout 2016 he served as an Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard University. He served as Executive-in-Residence at Middlebury College from 2012 to 2016, and works with a number of international think tanks. From 1993 through 2011, MacCormack was president of Save the Children, the world’s leading independent nonprofit organization serving children in need. Save the Children works to create lasting, positive change in the lives of children in need through programs in health care and nutrition, education, and economic opportunity. He currently serves on the board of Save the Children International, which programs more than $2.1 billion in over 120 countries.

Anne Patterson, the former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs (2013-2017) and former ambassador to Egypt (2011-2013), Pakistan (2007-2010), Colombia (2000-2003), and El Salvador (1997-2000). She recently retired with the rank of Career Ambassador after more than three decades in the Foreign Service. Patterson also served as assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, as well as deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, among other assignments. At Yale, Patterson will serve as Kissinger Senior Fellow with the Johnson Center for the Study of American Diplomacy, which is part of the Jackson Institute.

The returning fellows are Eric Braverman, president of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Group; David Brooks, New York Times op-ed columnist; Rosemary DiCarlo, formerly U.S. deputy permanent representative to the United Nations; Robert Ford, former ambassador to Syria; John Jenkins, executive director of The International Institute for Strategic Studies-Middle East; Clare Lockhart, director of the Institute for State Effectiveness; General (Ret.) Stan McChrystal, former Commander of the International Security Assistance Force and Commander of United States Forces Afghanistan; Blair Miller, co-founder of BlueOrange Sustainable Capital; Rakesh Mohan, former executive director at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C., representing India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Bhutan; Stephen Roach, senior lecturer at the Yale School of Management and former chair of Morgan Stanley Asia; and Emma Sky, director of Yale’s Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program and Middle East expert.