| | 1 | Name: | Dr. Tomiko Brown-Nagin | | | Institution: | Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | 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: | 1970 | | | | | | |
Tomiko Brown-Nagin is an award-winning legal historian, an expert in constitutional law and education law and policy, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Law Institute, a member of the American Philosophical Society, a fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She has published articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics, including the Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence, civil rights law and history, the Affordable Care Act, and education reform. Her 2011 book, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford), won six awards, including the Bancroft Prize in U.S. History. In her new book, Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Pantheon, forthcoming January 2022), Brown-Nagin explores the life and times of Constance Baker Motley, the pathbreaking lawyer, politician, and judge.
In 2019, Brown-Nagin was appointed chair of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, which is anchored at the Radcliffe Institute. Brown-Nagin has previously served as faculty director of Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston Institute and as codirector of Harvard Law School’s law and history program, among other leadership roles.
She earned a law degree from Yale University, where she served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal; a doctorate in history from Duke University; and a BA in history, summa cum laude, from Furman University.
Brown-Nagin held the 2016–2017 Joy Foundation Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and became dean of the Institute on July 1, 2018. | |
| 2 | Name: | Ms. Lydia Davis | | | Institution: | SUNY Albany | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1947 | | | | | | |
Lydia Davis is a short story writer, novelist, essayist, translator, and Professor of English Emerita at the State University of New York, Albany. She earned her B.A. at Barnard College in 1968. She was a Lillian Vernon Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University in 2012.
One of the most original writers in English today, Lydia Davis is often credited with having reinvented the modern short story. Some of her stories are a page long, some a paragraph, some a single sentence–a poetry of the everyday. She has translated French classics, including works by Proust and Flaubert. Her MacArthur Fellowship and Man Booker International Prize attest to the literary world's esteem. A sui generis artist of language, Davis surprises with every phrase, every sentence, and because her prose is so concentrated, it trains the reader to be alert to each linguistic detail. At the same time, her stories reveal human motivation so masterfully, they can be read as much for their psychological and moral penetration as for their brilliance of style. She is an internationally renowned radical writer, of the stature of Samuel Beckett.
Davis's bibliography includes: The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories, 1976; Sketches for a Life of Wassily, 1981; Story and Other Stories, 1985; Break It Down (a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award), 1986; The End of the Story, 1994; Almost No Memory, 1997; Samuel Johnson Is Indignant, 2001; Varieties of Disturbance (a finalist for the National Book Award), 2007; Proust, Blanchot, and a Woman in Red, 2007; The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2009; The Cows, 2011; Can't and Won't: Stories, 2014; Essays One, 2019. Of contemporary authors, only Davis, Stuart Dybek, and Alice Fulton share the distinction of appearing in both The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Poetry series. She received the 1988 Whiting Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1998 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003, the American Academy of Arts and Letters's Award of Merit Medal in 2013, the Philolexian Society Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement, the Man Booker International Prize, and the 2020 PEN/Malamud Award. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences since 2005. Davis was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |
| 3 | Name: | Ms. Denyce Graves | | | Institution: | Denyce Graves Foundation; Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1964 | | | | | | |
Recognized worldwide as one of today's most exciting vocal stars, mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves continues to gather unparalleled popular and critical acclaim in performances on four continents. USA Today identifies her as "an operatic superstar of the 21st Century," and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution exclaims, "if the human voice has the power to move you, you will be touched by Denyce Graves."
Her career has taken her to the world's great opera houses and concert halls. The combination of her expressive, rich vocalism, elegant stage presence and exciting theatrical abilities allows her to pursue a wide breadth of operatic portrayals and to delight audiences in concert and recital appearances. Denyce Graves has become particularly well-known to operatic audiences for her portrayals of the title roles in Carmen and Samson et Dalila. These signature roles have brought Ms. Graves to the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, Royal Opera - Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, Opéra National de Paris, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Arena di Verona, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Opernhaus Zürich, Teatro Real in Madrid, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Los Angeles Opera and the Festival Maggio Musi- cale in Florence.
Ms. Graves’s 2012-2013 season includes two world premieres; she creates the roles of Mrs. Miller in Minnesota Opera’s New Works Initiative commission of Doubt, composed by Douglas J. Cuomo and directed by Kevin Newbury, and of Emelda in Cham- pion by Terence Blanchard at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis. The season also marks two role debuts for Ms. Graves as Herodias in Strauss’ Salome at Palm Beach Opera, and Katisha in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado with the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. Ms. Graves makes numerous concert and recital performances including at Opera Carolina, Arizona Musicfest, National Philhar- monic, San Diego Symphony and several prestigious universities throughout the nation. As Ms. Graves’s dedication to teaching the singers of the next generation continues to be an important part of her career, she joins the voice faculty of the Peabody Con- servatory of Music in Baltimore.
Denyce Graves made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in the 1995–1996 season in the title role of Carmen. She returned the following season to lead the new Franco Zeffirelli production of this work, conducted by James Levine, and she sang the opening night performance of the Metropolitan Opera's 1997–1998 season as Carmen opposite Plácido Domingo. She was seen again that season as Bizet's gypsy on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera for Domingo's 30th Anniversary Gala, and she made her debut in Japan as Carmen, opposite the Don José of Roberto Alagna. Ms. Graves appeared in a new production of Samson et Dalila opposite Plácido Domingo at the Metropolitan Opera, and she performed Act III of this work opposite Mr. Domingo to open the Met’s season in 2005. She was partnered again with Mr. Domingo in the 1999 season-opening performances of this work for Los Angeles Opera. She was seen as Saint-Saëns’ seductress with Royal Opera – Covent Garden and Washington Opera, both opposite José Cura, the latter under the baton of Maestro Domingo, as well as with Houston Grand Opera. Her debut in this sig- nature role came in 1992 with the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival under the direction of James Levine and opposite Mr. Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, and she made a return engagement to the Festival in this same role in 1997.
Ms. Graves appears continually in a broad range of repertoire with leading theaters in North America, Europe and Asia. Highlights have included a Robert Lepage production of The Rake’s Progress at San Francisco Opera, the title role in Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner in the world premiere performances at Michigan Opera Theatre with further performances at Cincinnati Opera, Opera Carolina and the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the role of Charlotte in Werther for Michigan Opera Theatre opposite the Werther of Andrea Bocelli in his first staged operatic performances and Judith in a William Friedkin production of Bartok’s Blue- beard’s Castle in her return to Los Angeles Opera: she also has sung Judith at the Washington National Opera and for the Dallas Opera. Highlights of the mezzo-soprano’s other recent appearances include Azucena in Il trovatore, Nicklausse in Les contes d’Hoffmann and Dulcinée in Massenet's Don Quichotte with Washington Opera; Giovanna Seymour in a new production of Anna Bolena for Dallas Opera; the title role in La Périchole with the Opera Company of Philadelphia; a rare double-bill of El amor brujo and La vida breve specifically mounted for her by Dallas Opera; Federica in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Luisa Miller, led by James Levine; and Amneris in Aida with Cincinnati Opera. Ms. Graves’s debut with the Théâtre Musical de Paris – Chatelet was as Baba the Turk in a Peter Sellars/Esa-Pekka Salonen production of The Rake's Progress, and she returned to Covent Garden as Cuniza in Verdi's Oberto after her debut performances as Carmen. Her debut at Teatro alla Scala was as the High Priestess in La vestale led by Riccardo Muti, and she soon returned as Giulietta in a new production of Les contes d'Hoff- mann and as Mère Marie in the Robert Carsen production of Dialogues des Carmélites. She appeared at Teatro Bellini in Catania in the title role of La favorita, and audi- ences in Genoa saw her first performances of Charlotte soon after her debut there as Carmen. Her debut in Austria came as Carmen with the Vienna Staatsoper, and she has also been seen in this role with Grand Théâtre de Genève, Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice, the Bregenz Festival and festivals in Macerata, Italy and San Sebastian, Spain. Ms. Graves gave her first performances of Adalgisa in Norma for Opernhaus Zürich.
Denyce Graves has worked with leading symphony orchestras and conductors throughout the world in a wide range of repertoire. She has performed with Riccardo Chailly, Myung-Whun Chung, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, James Levine, Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti and Mstislav Rostropovich. Ms. Graves has appeared with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and National Symphony Orchestra among a host of others.
One of the music world's most sought-after recitalists, Ms. Graves combines her expressive vocalism and exceptional gifts for communication with her dynamic stage presence, enriching audiences around the world. Her programs include classical repertoire of German lieder, French mélodie and English art song, as well as the popular music of Broadway musicals, crossover and jazz together with American spirituals. For her New York recital debut, The New York Times wrote, "[h]er voice is dusky and earthy. She is a strikingly attractive stage presence and a communicative artist who had the audience with her through four encores."
In 2001, Ms. Graves gave a series of appearances in response to the tragic events in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001. Ms. Graves was invited by President Bush to participate in the National Prayer Service in Washington's National Cathedral in which she sang “America, the Beauti- ful” and “The Lord’s Prayer.” This event was televised worldwide and was followed by Ms. Graves’ appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in a live musical program of “Healing through Gospel Music.” Ms. Graves has since participated in numerous other benefit concerts, and RCA Records released a recording of patriotic songs by Denyce Graves, the proceeds of which benefit various groups who have been affected by the events of September 11. Ms. Graves recently continued her patriotic activi- ties when she sang for President and Mrs. Bush, among other dignitaries, at “An American Celebration at Ford’s Theatre” to benefit U.S. soldiers in Iraq. This concert was taped for television and aired on the ABC network on July 4, 2005. In 2003, Denyce Graves was appointed as a Cultural Ambassador for the United States, and she now travels around the world under the auspices of the State Department appearing in good-will missions of musical performances, lectures, and seminars. Her first trips in 2003 brought her to Poland, Romania and Venezuela.
Ms. Graves appears regularly on radio and television as a musical performer, celebrity guest, and as the subject of documentaries and other special programming. In 1997 PBS Productions released a video and audio recording titled, Denyce Graves: A Cathedral Christmas, featuring Ms. Graves in a program of Christmas music from Washington's National Cathedral. This celebration of music including chorus and orchestra is shown each year on PBS during the Christmas season. She was seen on the Emmy-award winning BBC special “The Royal Opera House,” highlighting Ms. Graves’s debut performances there, and in a program of crossover repertoire with the Boston Pops, which was taped for national television broadcast. In December 1999 Ms. Graves participated in a concert given at the Nobel Peace Prize Awards in Oslo, Norway, which was televised throughout Europe. As the only classical music artist to be invited for this event, she performed selections from her RCA Red Seal release alongside performances by Sting, Paul Simon, Tina Turner and others. She has been a frequent guest on television shows including Sesame Street, The Charlie Rose Show and Larry King Live. In 1996, she was the subject of an Emmy-award winning profile on CBS's 60 Minutes.
In 1999, Denyce Graves began a relationship with BMG Classics/RCA Red Seal. That same year Voce di Donna, a solo recording of opera arias, was released on RCA Red Seal. The Lost Days, a recording with jazz musicians of Latin songs in the Spanish and Portuguese languages, was released in January 2003. In June 2003, Church was released – this recording, developed by Denyce Graves, brings together African-American divas from various forms of music, all of whom were first exposed to music through their upbringing in church. Participants recorded music of their choice and include Dr. Maya Angelou, Dionne Warwick, En Vogue, Patti LaBelle and others. Other recordings of Ms. Graves include NPR Classics’ release of a recording of spirituals, Angels Watching Over Me, featuring the mezzo-soprano in performance with her fre- quent partner, Warren Jones and an album of French arias, Héroïnes de l'Opéra romantique Français, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo under Marc Soustrot. Her full opera recordings include Gran Vestale in La vestale, recorded live from La Scala with Riccardo Muti for Sony Classical; Queen Gertrude in Thomas’s Hamlet for EMI Classics; Maddalena in Rigoletto with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James Levine; and Emilia in Otello with Plácido Domingo and the Opéra de Paris, Bastille Orchestra under Myung-Whun Chung, both for Deutsche Grammophon.
Denyce Graves is a native of Washington, D.C., where she attended the Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts. She continued her education at Oberlin Col- lege Conservatory of Music and the New England Conservatory. In 1998, Ms. Graves received an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. She was named one of the "50 Leaders of Tomorrow" by Ebony magazine and was one of Glamour magazine's 1997 "Women of the Year." In 1999, WQXR Radio in New York named her as one of classical music's "Standard Bearers for the 21st Century." Denyce Graves has been invited on several occasions to perform in recital at the White House, and she provides many benefit performances for various causes special to her throughout each season.
Denyce Graves has been the recipient of many awards, including the Grand Prix du Concours International de Chant de Paris, the Eleanor Steber Music Award in the Opera Columbus Vocal Competition and a Jacobson Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Music Foundation. In 1991, she received the Grand Prix Lyrique, awarded once every three years by the Association des amis de l’opéra de Monte-Carlo, and the Marian Anderson Award, presented to her by Miss Anderson. In addition, Ms. Graves has received honorary doctorates from Oberlin College, College of Saint Mary and Centre College. | |
| 4 | Name: | Ms. Joy Harjo | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | | | Subdivision: | 501. Creative Artists | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
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| | | Birth Date: | 1951 | | | | | | |
Joy Harjo is a poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate and has since been reappointed twice. She has been a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets since 2019, is Board Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and directs For Girls Becoming–an arts mentorship program for young Mvskoke women. She earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1978.
Harjo (Mvskoke) was the first Native American Poet Laureate. About Harjo, American Academy of Poets Chancellor Alicia Ostiker has written, "… Harjo has worked to expand our American language, culture, and soul…Harjo is rooted simultaneously in the natural world, in earth—especially the landscape of the American southwest—and in the spirit world. Aided by these redemptive forces of nature and spirit, incorporating native traditions of prayer and myth into a powerfully contemporary idiom, her visionary justice-seeking art transforms personal and collective bitterness to beauty, fragmentation to wholeness, and trauma to healing." Also a performer, Harjo plays saxophone and flutes with the Arrow Dynamics Band and solo, and previously with the band Poetic Justice. She has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, in venues across the U.S. and internationally, and has released seven award-winning albums.
Harjo's bibliography is extensive. Books of poetry include: The Last Song (1975), What Moon Drove Me to This? (1979), She Had Some Horses (1983), Secrets from the Center of the World (1989), In Mad Love and War (1990), The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (1994), A Map to the Next World: Poems (2000), How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems (2002), Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), and the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise (2019). Her prose includes: The Spiral of Memory: Interviews (Poets on Poetry) (1995), For a Girl Becoming (2009), Soul Talk, Soul Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo (2011), and Crazy Brave (2012). Plays include: Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light: A Play by Joy Harjo and a Circle of Responses (2019). She has received numerous awards and honors including the American Book Award, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement, the Poetry Foundation's Wallace Stevens Award, the Jackson Poetry Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the William Carlos Williams Award, the Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2009 Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist, two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Harjo was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |
| 5 | Name: | Ms. Indra K. Nooyi | | | Institution: | Preetara LLC | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | 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 | | | | | | |
Indra Nooyi is Former Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo and serves on the Board of Directors of Amazon and AdvanceCT (Co-Chair of the Board; Connecticut Economic Resource Center). She is also Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point. She earned her M.B.A. at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta in 1976 and a Master of Public and Private Management at Yale University in 1980. Prior to PepsiCo, she has held positions at Johnson & Johnson, India, The Boston Consulting Group, Motorola, and Asea Brown Boveri.
Indra Nooyi is a highly effective and principled business leader whose work has advanced the interests of her company as well as society. She is known for leading with courage, compassion and a strong moral compass. As the CEO of Pepsico and the President of GMA, the trade organization for her industry, she led the industry in a groundbreaking effort to take empty calories out of packaged food products and to have the results independently evaluated. The result was an overall reduction of approximately 4 Trillion calories which has the potential to positively impact population health. She took her stand on empty calories against the opposition of many in her industry. The importance of Indra Nooyi’s influence in this accomplishment cannot be overstated.
Her honors include: 2nd on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women List, 2015; Bower Award for Business Leadership, Franklin Institute, 2019; Outstanding Woman in Business Award, League of Women Voters of Connecticut. 2020. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2008). She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2021. | |
| 6 | Name: | Mr. Darren Walker | | | Institution: | Ford Foundation | | | Year Elected: | 2021 | | | 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: | 1959 | | | | | | |
Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, a $13 billion international social justice philanthropy. He is a member of Governor Cuomo’s Reimagining New York Commission and co-chair of NYC Census 2020. He chaired the philanthropy committee that brought a resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy. Under his leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first non-profit in US history to issue a $1 billion designated social bond in US capital markets for proceeds to strengthen and stabilize non-profit organizations in the wake of COVID-19.
Before joining Ford, Darren was vice president at Rockefeller Foundation, overseeing global and domestic programs. In the 1990s, he was COO of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, Harlem’s largest community development organization.
Darren co-chairs New York City’s Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, and has served on the Independent Commission on New York City Criminal Justice and Incarceration Reform and the UN International Labour Organization Global Commission on the Future of Work. He co-founded both the US Impact Investing Alliance and the Presidents’ Council on Disability Inclusion in Philanthropy. He serves on many boards, including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the National Gallery of Art, Carnegie Hall, the High Line, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. In the summer of 2020, he was appointed to the boards of Square and Ralph Lauren. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the recipient of 16 honorary degrees and university awards, including Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal.
Educated exclusively in public schools, Darren was a member of the first Head Start class in 1965 and received BA, BS, and JD degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been included on numerous leadership lists: Time’s annual 100 Most Influential People, Rolling Stone’s 25 People Shaping the Future, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Ebony's Power 100, and Out magazine’s Power 50. Most recently, Darren was named Wall Street Journal’s 2020 Philanthropy Innovator. | |
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