Pamela Murarka previously worked at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as a Senior Business Administrator. She received her bachelor's degree and MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is originally from Cleveland and currently resides in upstate New York.
The Leadership Network for Change (LNC) is an expansive group that encompasses over 2,100 up-and-coming leaders and change-makers from all corners of the globe. This diverse and widespread network is comprised of alumni of three practitioner programs based at the Stanford Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL): the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program, Leadership Academy for Development, and the Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development Program (formerly the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program). These practitioner-based training programs engage emerging civic leaders and social entrepreneurs who are working to achieve or deepen democracy and social justice in some of the most challenging environments around the world.
Reunions are always marked by the distinct nostalgia of your most memorable moments with people whom you shared lengths of time with. No doubt that the Leadership Network for Change reunion held this past summer at Stanford was one such event for me. Right from walking back into Munger residence, I immediately remembered how, with newly made friends in the Draper Hills class of 2018, we chatted as we walked back and forth to our classes or spent many hours sitting on the benches talking about global events or sharing personal stories – almost always with a bottle of wine (the famous room 555 of the class of 2018 comes to mind). For most of the people I spoke to during this reunion, there was a shared sense despite our different cohorts, of how ‘not long ago’ it was since leaving (not even the occurrence of the pandemic made it seem like it was a long time ago). It felt like we’d just been there months earlier. It speaks to how impactful our time together was and the deep connections made in and out of class experiences.
Seeing the familiar faces of Larry Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, Michael McFaul, Kathryn Stoner, and Erik Jensen reminded me how fortunate I was to have had access to legendary global democracy shaping minds. What is always humbling, however, is when they each tell you that it is an honor for them to meet us.
Over a weekend of thought-provoking panels and lectures, we had tough conversations about the global state of democracy since COVID and more recently since Russian troops had attacked Ukraine. With the depressing reality of rising authoritarianism staring us in the face, one could only marvel at the moments of inspiration that brewed during this reunion. There was a spontaneous and very somber time when during one of the sessions fellows stood up and celebrated the alumni (by name) who were no longer with us and some who languish in prisons under the grip of dictatorships. Michael McFaul followed that by asking us to share stories of hope from our regions — igniting a crackling bonfire of hope with both tears and laughter that lifted our spirits.
Honoring the life and work of Carl Gershman, the former president of the National Endowment for Democracy, at this reunion was a moment to reflect on my own journey. Carl is a giant of his era and as he recounted his years of service in support of global democracy, it felt like a challenge to serve humanity’s fragile freedom with strategy, determination, and whatever resources are at our disposal. And that, in my humble opinion, is the enduring legacy of the CDDRL Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. It was good to be back again.
Applications for the 2023 Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program and the Strengthening Ukrainian Democracy and Development Program are open now through 5:00 pm PT on January 15, 2023. Visit each program's web page to learn more and apply.
Over the weekend of August 13-15, 2022, CDDRL hosted a reunion for the LNC community on campus at Stanford. It was the first global meeting and an exciting opportunity to bring together all generations of our fellows to connect, engage, and envision ways of advancing democratic development. 2018 Draper Hills alum Evan Mawarire (Zimbabwe) reflects on the experience.
Friday, December 16, 2022 5 - 6 PM Pacific Time
Saturday, December 17, 2022 9 - 10 AM Beijing Time
From Picking Stones in Sand to Inventing Skin-like Electronics that will Change the Future of Electronics
A Conversation with Professor Zhenan Bao
What’s the secret to innovation? How do scientific findings transfer to the real world? Professor Zhenan Bao, K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University and former department chair of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, sits down with Scott Rozelle, the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions, to answer these questions and more. Born in China, Professor Bao moved to the U.S. during college and rose to become a leading scientist and professor of chemical engineering whose work pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in fundamental science. During the conversation, she will share how she became who she is today, her thoughts on Stanford’s culture of innovation, and her passion for mentoring the next generation of innovators.
Zhenan Bao is K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Bao founded the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiate (eWEAR) in 2016 and serves as the faculty director.
Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995. She has over 700 refereed publications and over 100 US patents with a Google Scholar H-Index 190.
Bao has received notable recognition for her work in chemical engineering. Most recently, she was the inaugural recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2021, the ACS Chemistry of Materials Award 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, and the Gibbs Medal by the Chicago session of ACS in 2020.
Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups. She serves as an advising Partner for Fusion Venture Capital.
Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner.
Questions? Contact Tina Shi at shiying@stanford.edu
Zoom Webinar
Join the Program on Democracy and the Internet (PDI) and moderator Andrew Grotto, in conversation with L. Jean Camp for Create a Market for Safe, Secure Software.
This session is part of the Fall Seminar Series, a months-long series designed to bring researchers, policy makers, scholars and industry professionals together to share research, findings and trends in the cyber policy space. Both in-person (Stanford-affiliation required) and virtual attendance (open to the public) is available; registration is required.
Today the security market, particularly in embedded software and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, is a lemons market. Buyers simply cannot distinguish between secure and insecure products. To enable the market for secure high quality products to thrive, buyers need to have some knowledge of the contents of these digital products. Once purchased, ensuring a product or software package remains safe requires knowing if these include publicly disclosed vulnerabilities. Again this requires knowledge of the contents. When consumers do not know the contents of their digital products, they can not know if they are at risk and need to take action.
The Software Bill of Materials is a proposal that was identified as a critical instrument for meeting these challenges and securing software supply chains in the Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity} by the Biden Administration (EO 14028. In this presentation Camp will introduce SBOMs, provide examples, and explain the components that are needed in the marketplace for this initiative to meet its potential.
Jean Camp is a Professor at Indiana University with appointments in Informatics and Computer Science. She is a Fellow of the AAAS (2017), the IEEE (2018), and the ACM (2021). She joined Indiana after eight years at Harvard’s Kennedy School. A year after earning her doctorate from Carnegie Mellon she served as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. She began her career as an engineer at Catawba Nuclear Station after a double major in electrical engineering and mathematics, followed by a MSEE in optoelectronics at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Jonatas Teixeira Prates is a PhD student in Health Policy. Born in Curitiba, Brazil, Jonatas attended Georgia State University, where he graduated with a BS and an MA, both in Economics. His main research interests are in how the environment – as composed of natural and cultural factors – can affect health, health-related behaviors, and healthcare delivery.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Hybrid Seminar: Lunch will be provided for on-campus participants.
Please register if you plan to attend, both for in-person and via Zoom.
Log in on your computer, or join us in person:
Encina Commons, Room 119
615 Crothers Way
Stanford, CA 94305
Co-sponsored with Stanford University Libraries
About the Event: Join us for an engaging conversation with the Ambassador of Estonia to the U.S. Kristjan Prikk, Rose Gottemoeller, and Steven Pifer, who will discuss Russia's war in Ukraine - what's at stake and what we should do about it.
Russia's unprovoked war against Ukraine has brought about the most serious reassessment of the European security realities since the end of the Cold War. The epic clash of political wills, the magnitude of military operations, and the scale of atrocities against the Ukrainian people are beyond anything Europe has seen since World War II. The past nine months have forced many to reassess what is possible and impossible in international security A.D. 2022. What is this war about, after all? What's at stake in this – to paraphrase former British PM Chamberlain – "quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom most Americans know nothing?" What should be the lessons for U.S. strategists and policymakers? What are the wider implications for U.S. national security interests, particularly those related to the Indo-Pacific? How has the Alliance supported Ukraine since the war started? What should the end of this war look like and how to get there?
All these questions are relevant and should be carefully weighed with current information from the war as well as historic perspective and regional knowledge in mind.
About the Speakers:
Estonia's Ambassador to the U.S. Mr. Kristjan Prikk started his mission in Washington, D.C. in May 2021. He is a graduate of the USA Army War College and has served as the National Security Coordinator to the Prime Minister. Prior to arriving in D.C., he was the Permanent Secretary of the Estonian Ministry of Defense. Among his previous assignments are two other tours in Washington as an Estonian diplomat and work on NATO-Russia and NATO-Ukraine topics at a time when these relationships were considerably less charged than today.
Rose Gottemoeller is the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford, Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO's adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism. Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs.
Steven Pifer is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation as well as a non-resident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. He was a William J. Perry Fellow at the center from 2018-2022 and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin from January-May 2021. Pifer's research focuses on nuclear arms control, Ukraine, Russia, and European security. A retired Foreign Service officer, Pifer's more than 25 years with the State Department focused on U.S. relations with the former Soviet Union and Europe, as well as arms control and security issues, and included service as the third US ambassador to Ukraine.
All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.
Green Library, East Wing
Anu Ramachandran is a Medical Informatics Fellow affiliated with the VA's Center for Innovation to Implementation. She completed her medical degree at Johns Hopkins University and pursued a Masters degree in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as a Marshall Scholar. She recently completed her residency in Emergency Medicine at UC San Francisco/SF General Hospital. Her prior research has focused on the health needs of populations affected by humanitarian crisis. Broadly, she is interested in the intersection of informatics methodologies and health policy, with a focus on crisis preparedness and protecting medically vulnerable populations. She also hopes to use these tools to improve health system design and optimize the resiliency and equity of healthcare delivery in low-resource settings.
Robert Gallo is a medical informatics research fellow in the Department of Health Policy and the VA Palo Alto Health Care System’s Center for Innovation to Implementation. He obtained his medical degree at Washington University School of Medicine, and subsequently completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at Stanford. Dr. Gallo’s research focuses on inpatient health services delivery, particularly for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He also has interest in the evaluation and implementation of prediction models.
Duncan is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Health Services Research and Development, with the VA Center for Innovation to Implementation (Ci2i) and the Stanford Department of Health Policy. Duncan uses methods from computer science and operations research for resource allocation and decision making in applied settings. To ensure that these systems meet appropriate standards of quality and safety, he is also developing processes for governing and monitoring deployed algorithms in healthcare settings. Duncan’s past projects have focused on blood donor recruitment (with Facebook), kidney exchange (with UNOS), and financial services (with FinRegLab). He holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics (AMSC) from the University of Maryland, College Park.
