APS Member History

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	Name:	Dr. Elizabeth Alexander
	Institution:	Mellon Foundation
	Year Elected:	2020
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors
	Residency:	resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1962

	Elizabeth Alexander - poet, educator, memoirist, scholar, and cultural advocate - is president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder in arts and culture, and humanities in higher education. With more than two decades of experience leading innovative programs in education, philanthropy, and beyond, Dr. Alexander builds partnerships at Mellon to support the arts and humanities while strengthening educational institutions and cultural organizations across the world. Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. Alexander served as the director of Creativity and Free Expression at the Ford Foundation, shaping Ford’s grantmaking vision in arts and culture, journalism, and documentary film. There, she co-designed the Art for Justice Fund-an initiative that uses art and advocacy to address the crisis of mass incarceration-and guided the organization in examining how the arts and visual storytelling can empower communities. Over the course of a distinguished career in education, Dr. Alexander has taught and inspired a generation of students. She was the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University from 2015 until joining the Foundation in 2018. Between 2000 and 2015, Dr. Alexander taught at Yale University, where she was a professor in the departments of African American Studies, American Studies, and English, helping rebuild the school's African American Studies department while serving as its chair for four years. In 2015, she was appointed Yale University's inaugural Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry. At Smith College, Dr. Alexander was the Grace Hazard Conkling Poet-in-Residence and the inaugural director of the Poetry Center. While an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, she was awarded the Quantrell Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. An author or co-author of fourteen books, Dr. Alexander was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize: for poetry with American Sublime and for biography with her 2015 memoir, The Light of the World. Her poetry and essays include Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 (2010), Power and Possibility: Essays, Reviews, Interviews (2007), American Sublime (2005), The Black Interior: Essays (2004), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), Body of Life (1996), and The Venus Hottentot (1990). Accolades for her work include the Jackson Poetry Prize, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the George Kent Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes for Poetry. In 2009, Dr. Alexander composed and delivered a poem, "Praise Song for the Day," for President Barack Obama's inauguration. Alexander earned a BA from Yale University, an MA from Boston University, and a PhD in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She holds honorary doctorates from Yale University, Haverford College, Simmons College, and the College of St. Benedict. Dr. Alexander is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and serves on the board of the Pulitzer Prize. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2020.

	Name:	Ms. Louise Henry Bryson
	Institution:	J. Paul Getty Trust
	Year Elected:	2020
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors
	Residency:	resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1944

	Louise Henry Bryson served on the Board of Trustees for the J. Paul Getty Trust for twelve years, four as Chair of the Board. She was made Chair Emerita in 2010. She was asked to Co-Chair the task force to develop and deepen awareness and private support for the first Pacific Standard Time initiative, a project she had strongly supported as Board Chair. In 2011, she co-founded the Getty Conservation Council and serves as its Chair. Ms. Bryson had a thirty-four-year career in media and retired in 2008. She was President of Distribution for Lifetime Entertainment Services and Executive Vice President and General Manager of Lifetime Movie Networks (LMN). Previously, as Senior Vice President at FX Networks, she represented Fox-owned and affiliated stations in negotiations with all U.S. cable and satellite companies and launched FX in June of 1994 with the then largest distribution in cable history. She was a member of the NBC team that initiated the first Pay-Per-View Olympics and was the General Manager of Z Channel, a critically acclaimed LA-based movie channel. Ms. Bryson started her career as a producer and writer for public television and continued her interest in public media. She was a founder and Chair of the Board of KCET in Los Angeles, and a former member of the PBS National Board, which honored her with the 1998 Award for Excellence in Public Television Leadership. She serves on the boards of Huntington Memorial Hospital, California Community Foundation, Second Stage Theatre in New York, Public Policy Institute of California, and Public Media Group of Southern California. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and is a member of the Academy’s Trust and Board and Co-Chair of the AAAS 2022 $100 Million Campaign. Ms. Bryson is a former Trustee of American Funds, WETA, the PBS station in D.C. and Trustee Emerita of Pomona College She has an MBA and MAT from Stanford University and a BA from University of Washington. She and her husband, John, have four daughters and reside in San Marino, California.

	Name:	Secretary Lonnie Bunch
	Institution:	Smithsonian Institution
	Year Elected:	2020
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors
	Residency:	resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1952

	Historian, author, curator, and educator, Lonnie G. Bunch, III is the 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex, who was appointed in June 2019. Prior to assuming this position, Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). In this position he provided strategic leadership in areas of fundraising, collections, and academic and cultural partnerships. As a public historian, a scholar who brings history to the people, Bunch has spent nearly 30 years in the museum field where he is regarded as one of the nation’s leading figures in the historical and museum community. Prior to his July 2005 appointment as director of NMAAHC, Bunch served as the president of the Chicago Historical Society, one of the nation’s oldest museums of history. Bunch has held several positions at the Smithsonian, and spent a number of years at both the National Museum of American History and the National Air and Space Museum. A prolific and widely published author, Bunch has written on topics ranging from slavery, the black military experience, the American presidency, and all black towns in the American west to diversity in museum management and the impact of funding and politics on American museums. In service to the historical and cultural community, Bunch has served on the advisory boards of several professional organizations. Among his many awards, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to the Commission for the Preservation of the White House in 2002 and reappointed by President Barack Obama in 2009. Bunch has received honorary doctorates from an array of Universities including: Harvard University, Princeton University, Brown University, Dominican University, Roosevelt University, Rutgers University, Northwestern University, and Georgetown University. Born in the Newark, N.J. area, Bunch has held numerous teaching positions across the country including American University; the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth; and The George Washington University. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees from American University in African American and American history. He is married to Maria Marable Bunch, a museum educator. They have two daughters, Sarah and Katie.

	Name:	Dr. David Oxtoby
	Institution:	American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Pomona College
	Year Elected:	2020
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors
	Residency:	resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1951

	David Oxtoby became President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019. Dr. Oxtoby is President Emeritus of Pomona College and was President-in-Residence at the Harvard Graduate School of Education prior to becoming President of the American Academy. In 2017, he co-founded the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a coalition of over 400 college and university presidents. As the ninth president of Pomona College, serving from 2003-2017, Oxtoby has been recognized as a leader in American higher education, at the forefront in advancing environmental sustainability, increasing college access, cultivating creativity, and pursuing academic excellence in the context of an interdisciplinary liberal arts environment. Previously, he served as Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences and the William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He served as Chair of the Board of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and as President of the Harvard Board of Overseers. He is the author of over 160 scientific articles, and of two leading chemistry textbooks. Dr. Oxtoby graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. He has been the recipient of several fellowships, including from the Guggenheim and National Science Foundations. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Dr. Oxtoby received honorary degrees from Occidental College (2005), Lingnan University in Hong Kong (2009), and Miami Dade College (2019). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. He was elected a Member of the American Philosophical Society in 2020.

	Name:	Sir Robert Tony Watson
	Institution:	University of East Anglia
	Year Elected:	2020
	Class:	5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs
	Subdivision:	503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors
	Residency:	International
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1948

	Sir Robert Tony Watson, CMG, FRS My career has evolved from a Ph.D. student at QMC, London University; a post-doctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley and University of Maryland, USA; a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, USA; a Federal Government program manager/director at the US NASA; a scientific advisor in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), White House, USA; a scientific advisor, manager and chief scientist at the World Bank; chief scientific advisor to the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Sir Louis Matheson Fellow, Monash Sustainability Institute (MSI), Monash University, Australia, and Professor of Environmental Sciences and strategic director for the Tyndall Center at the University of East Anglia, UK. In parallel to my formal positions I have chaired, co-chaired or directed a number of national and international scientific, technical and economic assessments, including WMO/UNEP stratospheric ozone depletion assessments, Global Biodiversity Assessment, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, UK National Ecosystem Assessment and its Follow-on, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Intergovernmental Assessment of Agricultural Scientific and Technology for Development, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. I have also been awarded a number of honours, including 2012 Knights Bachelor,UK, 2003, Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, UK; fellowships (2011, Fellow of the Royal Society, UK), and awards, including 2014, UN Champion of the World for Science and Innovation, 2010, Asahi Glass Blue Planet Prize, 2008, American Association for the Advancement of Science Award for International Scientific Cooperation, and I contributed to the 2007 - Nobel Peace Prize for the IPCC, which I chaired from 1997-2002. Sir Robert Tony Watson was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2020.