| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Babak Ashrafi | | | Institution: | Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | 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: | 1960 | | | | | | |
Under Babak Ashrafi’s leadership, PACHS (Philadelphia Area Consortium for the History of Science) established a collaboration among repositories and universities for the purposes of promoting scholarly and public understanding of the history of science, technology and medicine. Beginning with a 12-member consortium of Philadelphia-region institutions, he has been highly productive and innovative, successfully establishing, for example, an on-line union catalogue of the history of science holdings of PACHS members, and deploying a unique and universally admired search facility. PACHS has been so successful it was one of the models used to establish the Chicago Collections Consortium (to which Ashrafi served as a key consultant). PACHS evolved from a regional to a national/international collaborative, and in January 2015 became the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. In its expansion beyond its regional focus, the current 12 members are joined by the University of Toronto, Yale University, Columbia University, The New York Academy of Medicine, the American Institute of Physics, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Linda Hall Library. Ashrafi uniquely combines the talents of scholar, non-profit entrepreneur, development officer, and executive administrator, and has improved productivity prospects for an entire discipline by changing the way historians of science interact, exchange ideas and collaborate, and by providing new Fellowship and grant opportunities for both young scholars and for those engaged in more advanced research. | |
| 2 | Name: | Mr. Michael R. Bloomberg | | | Institution: | Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | 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? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1942 | | | | | | |
Michael R. Bloomberg is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who served three terms as Mayor of the City of New York.
Born in Boston on February 14, 1942 and raised in a middle class home in Medford, Massachusetts, Michael Bloomberg attended Johns Hopkins University, where he paid his tuition by taking out loans and working as a parking lot attendant. After college, he attended Harvard Business School and in 1966 was hired by a Wall Street firm, Salomon Brothers, for an entry-level job.
Bloomberg quickly rose through the ranks at Salomon, overseeing equity trading and sales before heading up the firm's information systems. When Salomon was acquired in 1981, he was let go from the firm. With a vision of an information technology company that would bring transparency and efficiency to the buying and selling of financial securities, he launched a small startup in a one room office. Today, Bloomberg LP is a global company that has more than 15,500 employees and offices in 73 countries around the world.
During his tenure as mayor, from 2002 through 2013, Bloomberg brought his innovation-driven approach to city government. He turned around a broken public school system by raising standards and holding schools accountable for success. He spurred economic growth and record levels of job creation by revitalizing old industrial areas, spurring entrepreneurship, supporting small businesses, and strengthening key industries, including new media, film and television, bio-science, technology, and tourism. Mayor Bloomberg’s economic policies helped New York City experience record-levels of private-sector job growth often in formerly depressed neighborhoods, even in the wake of the deep national recession.
His passion for public health led to ambitious new strategies that became national models, including a ban on smoking in all indoor workplaces, as well as at parks and beaches. Life expectancy grew by 36 months during Mayor Bloomberg’s twelve years in office. He launched cutting-edge anti-poverty efforts, including the Young Men’s Initiative and the Center for Economic Opportunity, whose ground-breaking programs have been replicated across the country. As a result, New York City’s welfare rolls fell 25 percent, and New York was the only big city in the country not to experience an increase in poverty between the 2000 Census and 2012. He also created innovative plans to fight climate change and promote sustainable development, which helped cut the city’s carbon footprint by 19 percent. His belief that America's mayors and business leaders can help effect change in Washington led him to launch national bi-partisan coalitions to combat illegal guns, reform immigration, and invest in infrastructure. He was a strong champion of the city's cultural community, expanding support for artists and arts organizations and helping to bring more than 100 permanent public art commissions to all five boroughs.
Upon leaving City Hall, Michael Bloomberg returned to the company he founded while also devoting more time to philanthropy, which has been a top priority for him throughout his career. Today, Bloomberg Philanthropies employs a unique data-driven approach to global change that grows out of his experiences as an entrepreneur and mayor. In addition to Bloomberg Philanthropies' five areas of focus - public health, arts and culture, the environment, education, and government innovation - Bloomberg has continued to support projects of great importance to him, including his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, where he served as the chairman of the board of trustees from 1996-2001. The university's School of Hygiene and Public Health - the largest public health facility in the U.S. - is named the Bloomberg School of Public Health in recognition of his commitment and support. Bloomberg has donated more than $3.3 billion to a wide variety of causes and organizations. As chair of the C40 Climate Leadership Group from 2010 to 2013, he drew international attention to cities’ leading role in the fight against climate change. In 2014, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Bloomberg to be U.N. Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change where he is focusing on helping cities and countries set and achieve more ambitious climate change goals.
Michael Bloomberg is the father of two daughters, Emma and Georgina. | |
| 3 | Name: | Dr. Jonathan F. Fanton | | | Institution: | American Academy of Arts & Sciences | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | 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? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1943 | | | | | | |
Jonathan Fanton has made important contributions to higher education. He served as Associate Provost at Yale, Vice President for Planning at the University of Chicago, and ultimately for a decade as the very effective President of the New School in New York. In philanthropy, he had an extraordinarily successful, decade-long term as President of the MacArthur Foundation and has served as a Board member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Jonathan Fanton was President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences from 2014 to 2019. | |
| 4 | Name: | Mr. David Haas | | | Institution: | Wyncote Foundation; William Penn Foundation | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | 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? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1955 | | | | | | |
David Haas is a philanthropist working with a number of foundations that were created by his grandparents, Otto and Phoebe Haas, and parents, John and Chara Haas. From 1999-2009, he served on the board of directors of the Rohm & Haas Company, founded by Otto Haas and chemist Otto Rohm in 1909, which grew to become a global Fortune 500 company. Haas has a history of supporting public media and journalism locally and nationally, and arts, culture and green space efforts in Philadelphia. He has served on the board of the William Penn Foundation since 1982, and as board chair since 1993 for all but four of those years. WPF, founded in 1945 by his grandparents, makes grants in the Greater Philadelphia region, in the program areas: Great Learning, Watershed Protection, and Creative Communities. Now one of the 40 largest foundations in the country, its current annual grant budget is $105 million and has an endowment of about $2 billion. Haas also serves on the board of the Wyncote Foundation, which was created in 2009 by John C. Haas. Wyncote supports efforts in culture, community and the natural environment. Since 2002, He has served as board chair of Media Impact Funders, a network of funders supporting and a wide public service media and digital technology efforts that strengthen communities. From 1989-1997, he ran the Philadelphia Independent Film/Video Association, a service organization for independent film, video and audio makers based in the Philadelphia area. Born in 1955, Haas grew up in the area suburbs, is the father of three sons and has been a resident of the City of Philadelphia since 1981. In 2015 he was awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. | |
| 5 | Name: | Dr. John P. Holdren | | | Institution: | Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President of the United States | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | 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? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1944 | | | | | | |
Dr. John P. Holdren was President Obama’s Science and Technology Advisor and the Senate-confirmed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, 2009-2017. He was also the Chair (on behalf of the President) of the interagency National Science and Technology Council, Chair of the Arctic Executive Steering Committee, Co-Chair of the National Oceans Council, Co-Chair of the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). He has returned to Harvard University as the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of Environmental Science and Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
Trained in aerospace engineering and theoretical plasma physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, he is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a foreign member of the Royal Society of London and a former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
His awards include one of the first MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowships (1981), the Volvo International Environment Prize (1993), the Tyler Prize for Environment (2000), the Heinz Prize for Public Policy (2001), and the Moynihan Prize (2018). In 1995 he gave the acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an international organization of scientists and public figures in which he served in leadership positions from 1982 to 1997.
Prior to joining the Obama administration, Dr. Holdren was a professor in both the Kennedy School of Government and the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, as well as Director of the independent, non-profit Woods Hole Research Center. From 1973 to 1996 he was on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he co-founded and co-led the interdisciplinary graduate-degree program in energy and resources.
He served from 1991 to 2005 as a member of the Board of Trustees of the MacArthur Foundation and from 1994 to 2005 as Chairman of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Sciences. During the Clinton Administration he served for both terms on PCAST, leading studies on nuclear-materials protection, fusion-energy research, strengthening Federal investments in energy R&D, and international cooperation on energy-technology innovation.
Dr. Holdren has been married since 1966 to Dr. Cheryl E. Holdren, a biologist. They have a son, a daughter, and five grandchildren. John and Cheryl have a home in Falmouth, Massachusetts. | |
| 6 | Name: | Mr. Richard Ovenden | | | Institution: | Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 502. Physicians, Theologians, Lawyers, Jurists, Architects, and Members of Other Professions | | | Residency: | International | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1964 | | | | | | |
Richard Ovenden is Bodley’s Librarian, the 25th person to hold the title, which is the senior executive position of the Bodleian Libraries. His previous roles include positions at the House of Lords Library, the National Library of Scotland and at the University of Edinburgh, where he was Director of Collections, responsible for integrating the Library, the University Museums and Art Gallery. In 2003 he became Keeper of Special Collections and Western Manuscripts, followed by Associate Director, and latterly (from 2011) Deputy Librarian, at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. At the Bodleian he is also Director of the Bodleian's Centre for the Study of the Book and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College. He is professionally active in the sphere of libraries, archives and information science, being a member of the Board of the Legal Deposit Libraries, the Board of Research Libraries UK, and serves as President of the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) 2009- 13. He is a Trustee of Chawton House Library, and of the Kraszna Kraus Foundation. Richard is author of John Thomson (1837-1921): photographer (1997), a major study of the Scottish photographer, and writes on the history of libraries, the history of the book, and the history of photography. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. | |
| 7 | Name: | Ms. Twyla Tharp | | | Institution: | Twyla Tharp Dance | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1941 | | | | | | |
Since graduating from Barnard College in 1963, Ms. Tharp has choreographed more than one hundred sixty works: one hundred twenty-nine dances, twelve television specials, six Hollywood movies, four full-length ballets, four Broadway shows and two figure skating routines. She received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President's Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the 2008 Jerome Robbins Prize, and a 2008 Kennedy Center Honor. Her many grants include the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1965, Ms. Tharp founded her dance company, Twyla Tharp Dance. Her dances are known for creativity, wit and technical precision coupled with a streetwise nonchalance. By combining different forms of movement - such as jazz, ballet, boxing and inventions of her own making - Ms. Tharp’s work expands the boundaries of ballet and modern dance. In addition to choreographing for her own company, she has created dances for The Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, The Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet, The Boston Ballet, The Australian Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, The Martha Graham Dance Company, Miami City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Atlanta Ballet and Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Today, ballet and dance companies around the world continue to perform Ms. Tharp’s works.
In 1992, Ms. Tharp published her autobiography PUSH COMES TO SHOVE. She went on to write THE CREATIVE HABIT: Learn it and Use it for Life, followed by THE
COLLABORATIVE HABIT: Life Lessons for Working Together.
Today, Ms. Tharp continues to create. | |
| 8 | Name: | Ms. Rosanna Warren | | | Institution: | Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago | | | Year Elected: | 2015 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
Rosanna Warren is the Hanna Holborn Gray Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Her book of criticism, Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry, came out in 2008. Her most recent books of poems are Departure (2003) and Ghost in a Red Hat (2011). In 2020 she wrote Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters. She is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, The American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Lila Wallace Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the New England Poetry Club, among others. She was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. | |
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