Margaret Clements is founder and director of The Center for Knowledge Diffusion--a 501c3 research organization. This non profit has been organized to promote educational access by reducing barriers to opportunity across five substantive areas: (1) impact analysis of activities related to knowledge diffusion; (2) higher education patenting and licensing activities; (3) talent development; (4) higher education finance as it pertains to student retention and access; and, (5) school policy research. These research domains are connected by a commitment to create avenues for the realization of potential. By integrating meaningful mentoring opportunities for students, researchers, and faculty, we actively promote the diffusion of knowledge across multiple disciplines. Dr. Clements is a graduate of Indiana University where she received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science and Honors English. After living and working in Italy for more than eight years, she returned to Indiana University to pursue her doctorate in Education Policy Studies and Higher Education Administration. She also holds a Master of Science degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs. Recent funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration enables her to pursue an active research agenda.

At Barnard, Piri Halasz majored in English. She next worked for Time magazine, as a researcher, then as a writer. At the end of this period, she wrote about art for Time, and became more interested in art than in Time. She left, went to graduate school, and took her PhD in art history from Columbia. Since leaving Time, she has published more than 200 articles in 13 publications ranging from The New York Times to the College Art Journal, and most recently, artcritical.com. In addition, she publishes From the Mayor’s Doorstep, an online column/newsletter that also appears in hard copy. She has taught at Columbia, Hunter College, C. W. Post Center/Long Island University, Molloy College and Bethany College (WV). Her books: A Swinger’s Guide to London (Coward McCann, 1967; pb iUniverse, Authors Guild “back in print” program, 2010) and A Memoir of Creativity: abstract painting, politics & the media, 1956-2008 (iUniverse, 2009). The latter won a gold medal in the category of Writing/Publishing from the 2010 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and was reviewed by Ann Lee Morgan in The Independent Scholar (January 2011).

Jacquelynne Modeste is an educator and business consultant. Life-long lover of jazz and travel, Jackie merged these passions with her keen interest in analytics and developed a practical theory of collaborative relationships. The Global Roundhouse is an umbrella organization Jackie founded that provides corporate executive training for the improvement of management and business practices and portfolio and management workshops for its youth group, In the Pocket. Jackie thinks a lot about the relationship between jazz, multinational corporations, and democracy. Current thoughts can be found on her blog, http://www.theglobalroundhouse.com. Jackie is a member of the Alumni Board of Columbia University and a member of the International Committee of the American Studies Association. Presently a member of the Ethnic Studies Center at the City University of New York, Jackie is also a new blogger for Harvard Business Review.
In her “spare time” she conducts research for her new book, Global Swing: Emerging Democracies, Emerging Markets, and Jazz. Jackie lives in New York City with her two amazing sons.

Nicole brings nearly a decade of executive level administrative support, most of which has been in healthcare/non-profit, to NCIS.  No job is too big or little and she prides herself on thinking outside of the box.  She published her novella Forgotten (2011), which brings 18th century/medicine of the American Revolution to the average reader.  She is listed as a co-author on a peer-review article on Mary Edwards Walker, which was accepted and has been slotted for print in the journal: The American Surgeon.  She has presented at the Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science (PACHS), the Medical Historical Society of New Jersey (MHSNJ) and Temple University, and is a lecturer in the Thomas Jefferson University History of Medicine lecture series.  Outside of academia, she has spent nearly 15 years teaching Renaissance focused re-enactors the theoretical and practical sociology of 17th and 18th century dance, and currently teaches classes on 16th century English medicine and modern research techniques.

After I received my Ph.D. in African history from UCLA in 1988, with a dissertation on working women in Mozambique, I began a decade of adjunct, part-time, and temporary teaching positions in southern California. For personal and family reasons, I was not interested in relocating in search of a permanent position elsewhere, so I remained at UCLA, where I benefitted immensely from my research affiliation at the Center for the Study of Women. The Research Scholars program supports about thirty researchers every year, not with stipends or office space, but with library access and the opportunity to participate as part of an academic community.

I was elected to the Board of the African Studies Association (ASA) (2004-2007), and have contributed in a variety of positions for the ASA Women’s Caucus, the Western Association of Women Historians, and on the Program Committee for the 2008 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, among other service positions. I was also a founder of the Lusophone African Studies Organization, and continue as chair as well as editing our listserv, h-luso-africa. I was an appointed member of the Santa Monica Commission on the Status of Women for ten years, and currently I serve on the board of the Santa Monica Public Library.

My books include Pounders of Grain: A History of Women, Work, and Politics in Mozambique (2002) and the Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (2005) which was re-released in paperback with the title The A to Z of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (2010). My recent publications include “Creating an Archive of Working Women’s Oral Histories in Beira, Mozambique” in Contesting Archives: Finding Women in the Sources (2010), and “Cape Verdean and Mozambican Women’s Literature: Liberating the National and Seizing the Intimate,” with Isabel Fêo P. B. Rodrigues, in African Studies Review 53, 3 (2010): 77-99. I was also an associate editor for the New Encyclopedia of Africa (2007), and editor for women’s entries for the six-volume Dictionary of African Biography (Oxford University Press, 2011). I am currently on the editorial board for the African Studies section of Oxford Bibliographies, which will be available online in 2012.