ACADEMIC ADVISORS
Dr. Joan Woodard
Joan Woodard holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Thermal Sciences) from the University of California Berkeley; a M.S. in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University; and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the Missouri University of Science & Technology (magna cum laude).
Having retired from Sandia National Laboratories where she served in various areas of national security for over 35 years and for ten years as an Executive Vice President and Deputy Laboratories Director, Joan currently serves on a Defense Science Board Task Force and on the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. She has served on the Intelligence Science Board, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AF/ SAB), and the Congressional Commission to Assess the Vulnerabilities of the US Infrastructure to EMP. She also served on the National Academy Study on S&T for Countering Terrorism resulting in the publication “Making the Nation Safer.”
Mi'Jan Celie Tho-Biaz
Joan Woodard holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Thermal Sciences) from the University of California Berkeley; a M.S. in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University; and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the Missouri University of Science & Technology (magna cum laude).
Having retired from Sandia National Laboratories where she served in various areas of national security for over 35 years and for ten years as an Executive Vice President and Deputy Laboratories Director, Joan currently serves on a Defense Science Board Task Force and on the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. She has served on the Intelligence Science Board, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AF/ SAB), and the Congressional Commission to Assess the Vulnerabilities of the US Infrastructure to EMP. She also served on the National Academy Study on S&T for Countering Terrorism resulting in the publication “Making the Nation Safer.”
The Honorable Janice LaChance
Janice is the Chief Executive Officer of the Special Library Association and was a Cabinet level officer in the Clinton Administration as Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. She is an attorney and, with her links to 9,000 special libraries around the globe, brings knowledge of library, archive and research practices.
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Lachance has led Ministerial-level delegations to the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Republic of China (Taiwan), Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, France.
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Janice is a graduate of Tulane University School of Law and a member of the bar in the District of Columbia and Maine.
Mariko Nagai
Having grown up in Europe and America, Mariko Nagai studied English with concentration in poetry at the New York University where she was the Erich Maria Remarque Fellow. She has received the Pushcart Prizes both in poetry and fiction (nominated five times in total) and has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, UNESCO-Aschberg Bursaries for the Arts, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Yaddo, and Hawthornden International Writers Retreat, to name a few. She is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Japanese Literature at Temple University Japan Campus where she is also Director of Research.
Dr. Martha (Marni) Sandweiss
Marni is a professor of history at Princeton University. She received her PhD in history from Yale University and began her career as a photography curator at the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas. She later taught American studies and history at Amherst College for twenty years before taking her post at Princeton.
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The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Beinecke Library at Yale University, Marni is the author or editor of numerous books on American history and photography.
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Marni serves on the governing boards of the Organization of American Historians and the American Antiquarian Society, and consults broadly on issues relating to the use of visual images for historical research and teaching.
Dr. Virginia Scharff
Dr. Virginia Scharff is an Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. A highly respected authority on Southwest and women’s history, she is Women of the West chair at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, and a Fellow of the Society of American Historians.
Her scholarly publications include “Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age” (1991); “Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West” (2003), two textbooks, “Present Tense: The United States Since 1945” (1996); and “Coming of Age: America in the Twentieth Century” (1998); and the edited volume, “Seeing Nature Through Gender” (2003); “The Women Jefferson Loved” (2010); and is the author of four mystery suspense novels, written under the name of VIRGINIA SWIFT: “Brown-Eyed Girl” (2000), “Bad Company” (2002), “Bye, Bye, Love” (2004), and “Hello, Stranger” (2006)
Dr. Aline Coudouel
Aline Coudouel works for the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice in South Asia, after working in West and Southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Previously, she was part of the poverty team in the World Bank, working on poverty reduction strategies and poverty and social impact analysis. She was a coauthor of the flagship World Development Report 2012, on gender equality and development. Prior to joining the Bank, she worked as a researcher for the United Nations Children’s Fund, where she focused on the welfare of children and women in Europe and Central Asia. Aline holds a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute in Italy.
Dr. Wendy Cunningham
Wendy adds to the AAC’s international and business perspective as the World Bank’s Sector Leader for Human Development for Mexico and Colombia. She managed the research agenda of the World Bank’s Caribbean Region’s Gender team for several years, focusing on labor supply decisions, informal labor markets, and household risk management. Her PhD is in labor economics from the University of Illinois.
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Previously, Wendy spent several years as a senior economist in the World Bank’s Latin America and the Caribbean Region where she led studies and projects in social protection, labor markets, and youth development. She managed the research agenda of the Region’s Gender team for several years, focusing on labor supply decisions, informal labor markets, and household risk management.
Dr. Elizabeth W. Hutchison
Elizabeth is an Associate Professor of Art History at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her research centers on the role of visual and material culture in the interactions between the diverse cultural groups of the American west, using close visual analysis, feminist and postcolonial theory, and cultural history to interpret the contributions of art objects to current and historical cultural debates. She was one of the first academics to recognize the significance of the Acequia Madre House™ archives.
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She has written extensively on how Native Americans used “modern”art to negotiate a place for themselves within modern industrial culture at the turn of the twentieth century. More recently, she has turned her attention to the role of photography in documenting and defining the topographical and cultural landscape of the West in the nineteenth century.
Renata Golden
Renata Golden is the recipient of the 2021 Douglas Preston Travel Grant from the New Mexico Writers. Her essays have been published in several literary journals and anthologies and have been nominated for four Pushcart prizes. Her essays were finalists for the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award, Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth Nonfiction Book Contest, and Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University Award. Her essay collection titled Mountain Time: A Field Guide to Astonishment takes place in Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains, near the borders of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Houston. Originally from the South Side of Chicago, Renata lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she owns a technical writing company.
Dr. Alesha Durfee
Dr. Alesha Durfee's (she/her) is Professor and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at St. Louis University. Her research focuses on domestic violence and has been funded by the National Institute of Justice, the National Science Foundation, and the Center for Victim Research. She has published more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, many co-authored with students.