Breakthrough's advisory board includes:
Jane Bennett teaches political theory, and is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. She is also a founding member of the journal
theory & event, and the author of
The Enchantment of Modern Life (2001),
Thoreau's Nature (2002), and
Unthinking Faith and Enlightenment (1987).
Her current book project is
Vital Material: The Political Force of Things, seeks to bear witness to the active participation of "things" such as stem-cells, edible fat, electricity, and trash -- in public life. Its thesis is that the figure of "inert matter" still haunts our thinking, and it serves as an impediment to the emergence of more ecological, more sustainable modes of production and consumption.
Christopher Foreman is professor and director of the social policy program at the University of Maryland 's School of Public Policy where he teaches courses on political institutions and the politics of inequality. Professor Foreman came to the school in 2000 after more than a decade at the Brookings Institution, where he continues as a non-resident senior fellow in the governance studies program. His book
Signals from the Hill: Congressional Oversight and the Challenge of Social Regulation (Yale University Press, 1988) won the 1989 D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on Congress.
Foreman is also the author of
Plagues, Products and Politics: Emergent Public Health Hazards and National Policymaking (Brookings, 1994). In
The Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice (Brookings, 1998) Professor Foreman addresses the opportunities and constraints facing advocates and policymakers in the search for environmental equity. He is also the editor of
The African American Predicament (Brookings, 1999). His interests include the politics of health, race, regulation, and government reform. Professor Foreman taught previously at American University. He served on the board of governors of The Nature Conservancy from 1999 to 2005.
Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist, inventor, and engineer whose work focuses on the design and analysis of tangible digital media. She is professor at the Center for Advanced Technology, New York University. Her work bridges the gap between the technical worlds and the art world. Jeremijenko's mission is to reclaim technology from the idealized, abstract concept of 'cyberspace' and apply it to the messy complexities of the real world, often with disquieting results. Her project Stump, a software program that 'rewards' the user with a single tree ring every time a tree's worth of paper is used, building up to an entire tree stump, comments on our shared illusion that the digital world is somehow clean and 'paperless'.
Neatly using technology to explore social realities, Natalie shot a documentary of Silicon Valley from a remote-controlled spy plane, concealed cameras in teddy bears to record children's expressions and installed a motion detector near Golden Gate Bridge to count the number of suicides. Born in Australia, she is director of Yale University Engineering Design Lab and was recently named one of the MIT Technology Review's top 100 young innovators. She has worked in research and development at Xerox Park, the Advanced Computer Graphic Centre and the Centre for Advanced Technology, New York University. Her current projects include One Tree, which will feature the planting of 2,000 walnut trees in sensor-equipped planters around the San Francisco Bay Area next year. The condition of the growing trees will reflect the region's surprising discrepancies in climatic, environmental and socio-economic conditions reminding us that Silicone Valley is home to a large concentration of toxic waste sites, and has one of the USA's biggest gaps between rich and poor. Her work has been included in media festivals, and Museums throughout Europe and America including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Museum Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, the Whitney Biennial '97, Documenta '97 and Ars Electronic prix '96.
Felix Kramer is co-founder of the California Car Initiative (CalCars.org), a non-profit group combining advocacy and technology development, and was part of the team that converted the Toyota Prius into a plug-in, hybrid-electric vehicle. It is now known as the "hack heard round the world." Today, PHEVs are broadly supported by elected officials across the political spectrum, corporations, government, media and citizens groups. And automakers have said they're a good idea but have not yet committed to mass production timetables. Kramer has worked as a legislative aide in Congress and worked on energy and environmental issues his whole life. He has worked on Internet ventures since 1994, becoming a online marketing pioneer. In 1997, he founded eConstructors.com, the marketplace for web development services and sold the company in 2001. A graduate of Cornell University, he lives with his wife and son in Silicon Valley.
Celinda Lake is one of the Democratic Party's leading political strategists and President of Lake Research Partners, the national opinion research firm. Lake and her firm are known for cutting edge research on issues including the economy, health care, the environment and education, and have worked for a number of institutions including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Governor's Association (DGA), The White House Project, AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, IAFF, Sierra Club, NARAL, Human Rights Campaign, Emily's List and the Kaiser Foundation. American Politics calls Lake a "super-strategist or, better yet, the Godmother," and
Working Woman says she is "arguably the most influential woman in her field."
She is renowned for her groundbreaking research on single women voters in conjunction with Women's Voices Women Vote and has helped elect numerous female candidates, including Barbara Mikulski, the "Dean" of Women Senators, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, Blanche Lincoln, U.S. Senator from Arkansas, Mary Landrieu, the first woman Senator from the South elected in her own right, Patricia Madrid the first Hispanic woman Attorney General in New Mexico, and Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House.
In 2006, Lake served as pollster for Jon Tester, who won an upset primary win and went on to defeat incumbent Senator Conrad Burns. This built on a long record of defeating incumbents, including Jerry McNerney who beat Richard Pombo, Tim Walz who defeated Gil Gutknecht, and previously Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow and West Virginia Governor Bob Wise, both of whom beat incumbents. Celinda is credited with identifying key voter groups, including NASCAR dads, waitress moms, and the marriage gap. In 2005 she published with Kellyanne Conway What Women Really Want by Free Press.
Neesha Mirchandani is a business and marketing strategist, author, and change agent. She is the founder of Universal by Design, LLC and Niya. Neesha spent the first part of her career helping clients make business and marketing decisions. On nights and weekends, she incubated an interactive solutions practice within the marketing agency where she worked. The experiment contributed to the firm's sale for $175 million to Young & Rubicam. Neesha's experience spans telecommunications, media, energy, banking, and nonprofit. Her executive roles include Vice President, Business Development at Wunderman/Young & Rubicam, and Strategy Principal at IBM. Neesha has since spent much of her time raising awareness and funds for schools, orphanages, hospitals, and human rights work in Afghanistan and India. She is the author of
Wisdom Song: the Life of Baba Amte (Roli Books) about a legendary civil rights leader from India. She has a Bachelor of Arts in French Literature, and a Master of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications (Northwestern University). At the moment, Neesha is investigating the feasibility of a permission platform that enables consumers to control their personal information and marketing access.
Lawrence Wallack is Dean, College of Urban and Public Affairs Portland State University. From 1999 - 2004 he was Professor and Director, School of Community Health, Portland State University. He is also Emeritus Professor of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley and was a founding senior fellow and first President of the Rockridge Institute, a California-based think tank. He is now a senior fellow at the Longview Institute.
He was the founding director of the Prevention Research Center (1983-86), the first federally funded national alcohol research center with a primary emphasis on prevention. From 1986 to 1995 he was the principal investigator for the California site of the Community Intervention Trial to Reduce Smoking (COMMIT). This project funded by the National Cancer Institute was the largest randomized community trial ever developed for the prevention of smoking.
In 1993 he was the founding director of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, an organization conducting research and training in the use of media to promote healthy public policies. Dr. Wallack is one of the primary architects of media advocacy -- an innovative approach to working with mass media to advance social and public health issues. He has published extensively and lectures frequently on the news media and public health policy issues. He is the principal author of News for a Change: An Advocate's Guide to Working with the Media, (Sage, 1999) and Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention (Sage, 1993). He is also co-editor of Mass Media and Public Health: Complexities and Conflicts (Sage, 1990).
Adam Werbach is one of the world's experts in sustainability. At age 23, he was elected as the youngest president ever of the Sierra Club, the oldest and largest environmental organization in the United States. Under his leadership, the Sierra Club helped create the largest new national park in the country and protect over 3 million acres of public land. Adam left the Sierra Club and created Act Now to engage the corporate and media world in sustainability. By 2004, Adam had become critical of the pace of change of the environmental movement and delivered the landmark speech "Is Environmentalism Dead?" Adam has appeared on TV shows such as
The O'Reilly Factor and
Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. He is a contributing editor to
In These Times magazine and author of
Act Now, Apologize Later, published by Harper Collins in 1997. Adam currently serves on the six-member International Board of Greenpeace and as Public Utilities Commissioner of San Francisco.
