Watson Family University Associate Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs

John Major Eason holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Professor Eason, a native of Evanston, Illinois, received a B.A. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a MPP from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Before entering graduate school, he was a church-based community organizer focusing on housing and criminal justice issues. He also served as a political organizer for then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.

His research interest challenges existing models and develops new theories of community, health, race, punishment, and rural/urban processes in several ways. First, by tracing the emergence of the rural ghetto, he establishes a new conceptual model of rural neighborhoods. Next, by demonstrating the function of the ghetto in rural communities, he extends concentrated disadvantage from urban to rural community process. These relationships are explored through his book, “Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation”).

He uses multi-method, multi-level approaches in empirical investigations ranging from imprisonment, prisoner reentry, murder, health care access, and health disparities across the rural-urban continuum.

Brown University Vice President for Alumni Relations

Zack Langway, Class of 2009, is Vice President for Alumni Relations at Brown University. While at Brown, Zack studied political science before beginning his career as a professional communicator and community-builder. Zack leads the Office of Alumni Relations and a team of alumni relations professionals who work across the community and around the globe to help keep us all connected to the University, and to each other. Zack spent many years as a volunteer for Brown, including service on the Brown Alumni Association Board of Governors, and now lives back in the Providence area with his husband and their two sons.

Brown University Chancellor

Samuel M. Mencoff is a founding partner and co-CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners, one of the nation's leading private equity investment firms. Mencoff earned a bachelor’s degree with a concentration in anthropology from Brown in 1978. As a student, he served as president of the Association of Fraternity Presidents. He was elected Brown’s 21st chancellor in 2016, after having served on the Corporation as a Fellow since 2009. Previously he served on the Board of Trustees from 2003 to 2009. He is a co-chair of the BrownTogether campaign, and chairs the Corporation’s Committee on Trustee Vacancies. Mencoff earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1981. He serves as a commissioner of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, and is a director of Packaging Corporation of America, World Business Chicago, NorthShore University HealthSystem, and vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Brown University President

Christina Hull Paxson has served as Brown University’s 19th president and professor of economics and public policy since July 1, 2012.

Under Paxson’s leadership, Brown has fortified its standing as a leading research university known for its excellence and innovation in undergraduate education, its transformational vision in fueling economic development through community and government partnerships, and its commitment to inclusion and access.

Key priorities of her presidency include cultivating collaboration and entrepreneurship among teacher-scholars and students; creating engaged learning programs that integrate teaching with community-based research and real-world experiences; and expanding financial aid.

Paxson is a passionate advocate on issues of access to higher education, and Brown has gained international attention for its campus-wide effort to develop and implement its comprehensive Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion action plan, which the University launched in 2016. In addition, Brown became a national model in working with its students to create one of the first student centers for undocumented, low-income and first-generation college students.

Prior to her appointment at Brown, Paxson was dean of the Princeton School of International and Public Affairs and the Hughes Rogers Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

She is a past chair of the board of directors for the Association of American Universities, a past chair of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. She is currently a member of the board of overseers of Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. Paxson is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Swarthmore College, and earned her Ph.D. in economics at Columbia University.

Howard R. Swearer Director of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs

Edward Steinfeld is the Howard R. Swearer Director of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Dean's Professor of China Studies, professor in the Department of Political Science, and director of the China Initiative. Steinfeld received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. In addition to a variety of academic articles, Steinfeld is the author of “Playing Our Game: Why China’s Rise Doesn't Threaten the West” and “Forging Reform in China: The Fate of State-Owned Industry”. He is the author of numerous articles in both academic and non-academic journals, including Comparative Politics, Political Studies, World Development, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the South China Morning Post. Steinfeld is a member of the board of directors of the National Committee on US-China Relations, as well as a member of the academic committee of the Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance at Tsinghua University.

Brown University Senior Director of Alumni Belonging, Alumni Relations

Mary Ward is the Senior Director of Alumni Belonging Programs at Brown University. Ward oversees the Alumni Belonging team, which is responsible for designing and implementing an alumni community-building strategy centered around fostering belonging that speaks to the diversity of lived experiences, interests, and needs of the community. The Alumni Belonging team works with affinity groups and shared interest groups, and supports young alumni engagement. Ward has worked in the field of alumni relations for 20 years, gaining direct experience working with affinity groups, regional clubs, and class communities. She has also served as an alumni volunteer leader for the AmeriCorps Program, City Year Boston. She joined Brown University in 2019 after completing an MBA in nonprofit management at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Artistic Director, Brown Arts Institute
& Professor of the Practice of Arts and Classics

A writer, artistic director, creative producer, and curator of public programs, Avery Willis Hoffman is the inaugural artistic director of the Brown Arts Institute and professor of the practice of arts and classics at Brown University. As inaugural program director at Park Avenue Armory in New York, Hoffman curated and produced innovative and diverse public programming initiatives, including numerous large- and intimate-scale cultural events. Prior to the Armory, Hoffman was a senior project developer at Ralph Appelbaum Associates where her primary project was the development of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington, D.C.

For nearly two decades, her professional career has included multiple projects with acclaimed director Peter Sellars. Hoffman earned graduate degrees in classics from University of Oxford, where she was a Marshall Scholar, and a bachelors in classics and English at Stanford University.