Director's Advisory Group
Marc H. Morial
President and CEO of the National Urban League
Co-Chair, Robert A. Fox Leadership Program's Director's Advisory Group
The National Urban League selected Marc H. Morial (C '80) as its new President and Chief Executive Officer in May 2003. Mr. Morial served two distinguished four-year terms as Mayor of New Orleans from 1994-2002. He also served as President of the United States Conference of Mayors in 2001 and 2002.
As New Orleans' chief executive, he was one of the most popular and effective mayors in the city's history, leaving office with a 70 percent approval rating.
In 2002, Xavier University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Law degree. He is the son of the late Ernest N. "Dutch" Morial, New Orleans' First Black Mayor and Sybil Morial, a teacher and university administrator.
John J. DiIulio, Jr.
Frederic Fox Leadership Professor
Co-Chair, Robert A. Fox Leadership Program's Director's Advisory Group
John J. DiIulio, Jr. (C '80) serves as the Faculty Director and Co-Chair of the Director's Advisory Group of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program. During his leave from Penn in academic year 2000-2001, he served as Assistant to the President of the United States and first Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
He is the author, co-author or editor of a dozen books, the most recent of which include American Government: Institutions and Policies (with James Q. Wilson, Houghton-Mifflin, ninth edition, 2004); What's God Got to Do with the American Experiment? (with E.J. Dionne, Brookings, 2000); and Medicaid and Devolution (with Frank Thompson, Brookings, 1998).
Rebecca Bushnell
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor, Department of English
Rebecca W. Bushnell was appointed dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Thomas S. Gates, Jr. Professor in January 2005. She is a professor of English who has served on the Penn faculty since 1982 and is also a member of the graduate groups in comparative literature and history.
Dr. Bushnell is a scholar of early modern English literature, culture, and history as well as an expert on the literary genre of tragedy. Her books include Prophesying Tragedy: Sign and Voice in Sophocles’ Theban Plays; Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance; A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice; and Green Desire, a study of early modern English gardening books. She has recently edited A Companion to Tragedy for Blackwell Publishing. She has received grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. She is also a recipient of the University’s Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Dr. Bushnell holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College, an M.A. in English literature from Bryn Mawr, and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Princeton.
Don Kettl
Director, Fels Institute of Government, Professor of Political Science and
Stanley I. Sheerr Professor Endowed Term Chair in the Social Sciences,
University of Pennsylvania
Professor Kettl is a student of public policy and public management and specializes in the management of public organizations. He has testified before congress, regularly appeared on national television, and contributed to op-ed pages in major newspapers.
Kettl is the author or editor of a dozen books and monographs, including System Under Stress: Homeland Security and American Politics, The Global Public Management Revolution, 2nd ed., The Politics of the Administrative Process (with James W. Fesler), 3rd ed., The Transformation of Governance: Public Administration for the 21st, and Leadership at the Fed.
He has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award at the National Academy of Public Administration for the best book published in public administration. Kettl has consulted broadly for government organizations at all levels, in the United States and abroad, and he is a regular columnist for Governing Magazine, which is read by state and local government officials around the country.
Kettl was awarded a Ph.D. in political science from Yale Univesity. Prior to his appointment at the University of Pennsylvania, he taught at Columbia University, the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a fellow of Phi Beta Kappa and the National Academy of Public Administration. He is also a shareholder in the Green Bay Packers.
Walter Licht
Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
Department Chair
Walter Licht received his B.A. degree from Harvard University, a Master's degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago, and a Master's and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. Dr. Licht's expertise lies in the history of work and labor markets and he teaches courses in American economic and labor history.
His books include: Working For The Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century (a 1983 Princeton University Press publication which received the Philip Taft Labor History Prize); the co-authored Work Sights: Industrial Philadelphia, 1890-1950 (Temple University Press, 1986); the 1992 Harvard University Press book, Getting Work: Philadelphia, 1840-1950; Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) and the co-authored The Face of Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century (Cornell University Press, 2005).
Professor Licht began teaching at Penn in 1977. He has received the Ira Abrams Memorial Prize for Distinguished Teaching awarded by the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania and many grants and fellowships to pursue his scholarly interests. Professor Licht is currently completing a book of essays on historical methods and American political and economic history.
Samuel H. Preston
Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography
Dr. Preston served as Dean of Penn's School of Arts and Sciences from January 1998-December 2005. He has served on the School's sociology faculty since 1979.
Dr. Preston is a demographer whose studies have focused on the causes and consequences of population change, with special attention to mortality. He has authored, co-authored, or edited 16 books and more than 140 articles. He holds a B.A. from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.
Judith N. Rodin
Robert A. Fox Leadership Professor
Judith N. Rodin (CW '66) completed her 10-year term as President and Chief Exectutive Officer of the University of Pennsylvania on June 30, 2004. She was the first alumna to serve as president of Penn and the first woman to serve as president of an Ivy League institution. Dr. Rodin also holds appointments on the Penn faculty as Professor of Psychology and as Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry in the School of Medicine. In 2004 Dr. Rodin was selected as the President of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation is a U.S.-based global philanthropy committed to enriching and sustaining the lives and livelihoods of poor and excluded people throughout the world.
Joseph P. Tierney (Ex Officio)
Executive Director, Robert A. Fox Leadership Program
Joseph P. Tierney joined the University of Pennsylvania in September 2002 as the Executive Director of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program. As Executive Director, he is responsible for all aspects of the Robert A. Fox Leadership Program.
Mr. Tierney has an extensive list of published articles and reports, including Murder is No Mystery, Overcoming Roadblocks on the Way to Work and op-eds for The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the Principal Investigator of the landmark evaluation of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Making a Difference: An Impact Study of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. In 2001, he received the Philadelphia Business Journal's "40 under 40" award which annually recognizes 40 individuals under 40 years of age who are making their mark in their professional fields and in their communities.
He holds an undergraduate degree from St. Joseph's University and an M.A. from Princeton University.
Judy Vredenburgh
President & CEO, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
Judy Vredenburgh (CW '70) became President and Chief Executive Officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America in June 1999. She came to the nation's foremost youth-mentoring organization with a proven track record and 29 years of management experience in both for-profit and non-profit organizations. She is the first woman to hold the top national position in the history of Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is the oldest and largest youth-mentoring organization in the United States. In 2004, the organization served more than 225,000 youth ages five through 18, in 5,000 communities across the country, through a network of 470 agencies.
Ms. Vredenburgh came to Big Brothers Big Sisters after six years as senior vice president with the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, where she was responsible for revenue development and marketing for the national non-profit organization. Under Vredenburgh's leadership, the March of Dimes' revenue increased by 50 percent, to $181 million in 1998. She holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master's in Business Administration from the State University of New York in Buffalo.
