2022 Schedule
1/14/22 VIDEO CONFERENCE Joseph Lee, Vice President and General Manager of NJ PBS, New Jersey’s only public media station, and the home of NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi, will discuss the important role public media plays in the state. Wendy McNeil, the individual gifts officer, will introduce Mr. Lee. At a time when major news sources are polarizing more than ever, and cries of “fake news” have become the norm, NJ PBS, with its well-written, sophisticated, balanced, and most importantly truthful news stories is needed more than ever.
During long hours in quarantine, NJ PBS entertained audiences and kept them engaged by showcasing PBS favorites like Masterpiece Theater, Nature, and This Old House. When schools were closed due to Covid-19, children stayed current on their schoolwork by watching NJ PBS-produced education shows like Learning Live and nationally produced programs like Sesame Street and the Wild Kratts.
Joseph Lee, an experienced leader in public media and a pioneer in community engagement, will update you on NJ PBS programs and share his vision for the future of the station. Wendy McNeil, a 30-plus year resident of Montclair, who loves her community and her work as a fundraiser is delighted to be able to share her passion for public media with the members of Dunworkin Club of Montclair.
1/28/22 VIDEO CONFERENCE Buddy Evans, President and CEO of the Montclair YMCA. His topic is the YMCA of Montclair, its history, plans for the future, work to develop diversity and inclusion, the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and plans for a new summer camp experience.
Buddy Evans took over as head of the Montclair YMCA in 2019, after a 26-year career in leadership positions in various Florida and Georgia YMCAs. In his first year in Montclair the Y saw a 10% increase in membership and a 7% increase in funding. Under his leadership the Montclair Y has become a “Charity of Choice” and was upgraded to “Mid Major” level in the YMCA hierarchy. He was instrumental in shoring up the Montclair Y’s financial situation at the time of his arrival. He is now Chair of NJ YMCA State Alliance Board.
Buddy and his wife Eileen have been active members of YMCAs in the communities where they lived engaging in Y activities and volunteering to coach youth sports teams. Buddy earned a B.S from the University of Rhode Island and a Masters in Science from the U.S. Sports Academy. He and Eileen have two adult children, a daughter who is a 4th grade teacher and a son who is a professional baseball player.
Buddy is aware that Montclair is a diverse community, and he has overseen the establishment of a 10-member Diversity, Equity, and inclusion Committee which focuses on operationalizing equity inside the Y and he believes that he has positioned the Y to be a leader in issues of social justice in our community.
2/11/22 VIDEO CONFERENCE Kathleen Carroll, internationally known journalist.
In the last decade, 278 journalists around the world have been murdered for doing their jobs. And in 81 percent of those cases, no one has been prosecuted, convicted or held accountable for those deaths in any way. With the rise of autocracies around the world and sometimes violent polarization here in the United States, it has never been a more dangerous time to be a journalist. The climate is getting more dangerous. If it’s easy to shrug off those sobering statistics, think about what is lost when citizens don’t have access to facts. If society allows suppression of journalists, what profession will be next?
Kathleen Carroll is a veteran journalism leader and press freedom advocate. Since 2017, she has chaired the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a global organization that helps endangered journalists and advocates for press freedoms.
From 2002 through 2016, Carroll was executive editor and senior vice president of The Associated Press. As the top news executive of the world’s largest independent news agency, she was responsible for coverage from journalists in more than 100 countries, including groundbreaking new bureaus in North Korea and Myanmar.
Under her leadership, AP journalists won numerous awards, among them five Pulitzer Prizes – including the 2016 Pulitzer for Public Service – six George Polk Awards and 15 Overseas Press Club Awards. She is a fierce advocate for a robust and independent press, especially in hostile environments, was the first journalist to address the UN Security Council on the topic. She appears as contest judge, consultant on ethical and standards issues, and from 2003 to 2012 was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the final year as co-chair.
Carroll is a fierce advocate for a robust independent press and a frequent speaker on the threats to journalistic access. She also is a leader on vital security issues for journalists working in hostile environments and was the first journalist ever to address the United Nations Security Council on the topic. She is a frequent contest judge and consultant on ethical and standards issues. From 2003 to 2012, she was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, the last year as co-chair.
Earlier affiliations include leading the Knight Ridder Washington bureau, the AP in Washington, Los Angeles, and Dallas, the International Herald Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, and the Dallas Morning News.
She and her husband, author Steve Twomey, have lived in Montclair since 2002 and are the parents of an adult son.
2/25/22 VIDEO CONFERENCE Lisa Simone Kingstone, a journalist and academic who writes about the complexities of gender, race and identity in our modern world. With the growing acceptance of multiracial marriage, gender fluidity and multiple identities, especially among millennials, older notions of stability with regard to these categories are coming into question. As we begin to see the way these categories divide and separate us, we can shift our understanding of them to develop a richer, mutual understanding of each other.
Dr. Kingstone is a Visiting Scholar at the New School for Social Research and an Associate Professor at Montclair State University. Previously she taught at the University of Connecticut and Kings College, London. Her book “Fading Out Black and White” explores the topic of racial ambiguity in American culture, and her latest research is studying the impact of bussing on the social integration that has occurred across racial lines.
3/11/22 VIDEO CONFERENCE Jane Eliasof, Executive Director for the Montclair History Center for over 10 years, will talk about how the Montclair History Center did more than just change its name. The 2017 rebranding reflects a deep, fundamental change in the way the History Center approaches the history of the house built in 1796 by Israel Crane and, more generally, the history of the town and region. These changes are reflected in the museum’s interpretation, tours, and programming. The Montclair History Center is not alone. Across the country, more and more museums are looking for ways to tell more inclusive histories. Eliasof will also outline some of the programs the Center plans for the future, including one taking place during the month of March.
3/25/22 VIDEO CONFERENCE Ann Lippel, President of Montclair Gateway to Aging in Place, will discuss decision points seniors are likely to face if they decide to remain living in the Montclair area after retirement. Ms. Lippel has lived in Montclair for forty-five years and after her retirement from a career in academic administration served three terms as chair of the Montclair Senior Citizens Advisory Committee and also served on both the Montclair Housing Commission and the Montclair COVID Task Force. During this time, she has found that skills she acquired over her four decade career have served her well in identifying the opportunities and challenges the “third age” generation is likely to encounter.
4/8/22 VIDEO CONFERENCE Dr. Cortni Borgerson, anthropologist, conservation biologist, and National Geographic Explorer. Her work explores why people hunt endangered species and looks at how this hunting affects human health and wildlife conservation. She will be discussing her work and her recent trip to Madagascar this December.
Dr. Borgerson is fluent in Malagasy, the language of Madagascar where she manages an active field team of 15 research staff and conducts numerous interventions to improve food security and reduce unsustainable hunting. She serves as a board member for the NGO MAHERY (Madagascar Health and Environmental Research) and is a commission member for the Madagascar Section of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
4/22/22 Spring Luncheon
5/13/22 IN PERSON Harvey Araton is a journalist, author and adjunct college professor based in Montclair, N.J. He worked for four daily newspapers in the New York City area, including the Staten Island Advance, New York Post, Daily News and New York Times, where he served as a Sports of the Times columnist for 15 years, 25 overall and still contributes on a freelance basis.
He has covered all sports and some non-sports, with a specialty in basketball. In 2017, he was the recipient of the Curt Gowdy Award at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA., given annually to print/digital and broadcasting members of the media. He has covered 10 Olympics, many Wimbledon the U.S. Open tennis tournaments, the French Open and the Davis Cup in Spain and Zimbabwe. He has also covered many N.B.A. finals, World Series, Super Bowls and men’s and women’s Final Fours in college basketball.
From August 2009 to May 2010, Mr. Araton served as a reporter for the features group at The Times, where he wrote for Sunday Real Estate, Styles, Home and Dining. He has also written for the Times Magazine, Book Review and Culture sections. Araton is the author, co-author and editor of eight books, including “Driving Mr. Yogi,” about the poignant relationship between Yogi Berra and Ron Guidry–a New York Times bestseller–and “When the Garden Was Eden,” on the Knicks’ championship teams of the early 1970s. The book was adapted for an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, which Araton co-produced. His first novel, “Cold Type,” was published in 2014. Mr. Araton teaches media and writing courses at Montclair State University.
He was nominated by The Times for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994; was named 1998 Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association; won first place in 1994 for Best News Story from the Associated Press Sports Editors; won first place in 2005 for Column Writing from the New York State Associated Press Association; and was honored in 1997 and 2007 for Column Writing by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In 1986, he received the Feature Writing Award from the Associated Press Sports Editors.
Born in New York City on May 17, 1952, Mr. Araton earned a B.A. in English from the City University of New York in 1975.
5/27/22 Luncheon, putting is optional.
7/15/22 Summer Luncheon
9/9/22 Dr. Kesha Moore, PhD, is a Senior Researcher and Development Specialist with Legal Defense Fund’s (LDF) Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) which released her report on racially just bail reform in 2022. In this article, she details the inequities in the current system and “recommends an alternative reform framework to reduce the number of people in jail awaiting trial while also lessening racial disparities in pretrial incarceration.”
Prior to joining LDF, Dr. Moore was an Associate Professor at Drew University, where she taught Sociology of Race & Ethnicity, Urban Sociology, Engendering Prisons and Social Movements as well as created numerous campus-community connections that engaged faculty, students, and community-based organizations in meaningful collaborations for social justice. Her research focused on exploring the role of structural racism in creating and replicating the social problems of mass incarceration, gentrification, and homelessness. She has extensive experience working with marginalized communities in the design of innovative solutions to the problems of racial and economic inequality.
Dr. Moore received her BA in Cross-Cultural Psychology from Franklin & Marshall College, her Master of Social Work in Community Organizing from the University of Michigan, and her PhD in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.
9/23/22 Leslie Wilson PhD, Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Montclair State University. He holds a BA from Cornell, two master’s degrees (an MPS from Cornell, and an MA from Hunter College), and a PhD from CUNY. He also serves as a scholar and facilitator for the Montclair History Center’s “Price of Liberty” film series. Believing “that diseases, especially at the pandemic stage, are the greatest threats to human life,” Dr. Wilson explores how the Black Death in the 14th century and its impact on the history of the world, should have prepared us for our current pandemics: COVID and Monkeypox. He argues that “instead of learning from the past, we did almost everything that our ancestors did and what they did was wrong. And there is a good chance that we are bound to do the same things again when the next pandemic begins.” He predicts “that we will see more pandemics in the 21st century than we did in the 20th, and that we will be less prepared to handle them.”
10/14/22 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina are pending affirmative action cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Dr. Pereira will discuss the impact of these cases on higher education and our nation
Rachel Pereira, EdD, Esq., the inaugural Vice President of Equity and Inclusion at St. John’s University in Queens, NY. Dr. Pereira has a background and experience in the education and legal industries having served as a teacher, school principal, prosecutor, legal counsel to educational institutions, and as an adjunct professor at three graduate schools. Prior to her position at St. John’s, she served as a senior legal and policy advisor for EdCounsel of Nelson Mullins, LLC; as Assistant Vice President for Institutional Equity of Vassar College; Assistant District Attorney at the Office of the Philadelphia District Attorney; as a federal law clerk in the Southern District of New York for the Hon. George Daniels; and as an intern in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals for the Hon. Julio Fuentes and Hon. Theodore McKee.
After completing her undergraduate studies at Hunter College, Dr. Pereira earned her master’s and doctoral degrees at Rutgers University and her Juris Doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. A trained mediator, she is admitted to practice law in the states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
10/28/22 Ali Boak is the Director of the Global Center on Human Trafficking at Montclair State University. For more than 25 years, she has worked to develop innovative, survivor-driven approaches to prevent and address human trafficking across the United States, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
As a Peace Corps volunteer and Fulbright Scholar in the Baltic States, she discovered that traffickers were recruiting children and youth out of the schools, universities, and orphanages. As a result, she worked to create several organizations, networks, and coalitions at the forefront of the anti-trafficking field today including the International Organization for Adolescents (IOFA), Freedom Network USA, the Westchester County Anti-Trafficking Task Force, and the National Human Trafficking and Disabilities Working Group.
An expert in child and adolescent trafficking and exploitation, she has provided training, technical assistance, and capacity building support to hundreds of criminal justice, social service, and community organizations in more than 12 countries.
The title of her talk is “Human Trafficking: A Local as well as a Global Problem.”
11/18/22 Janet Torsney, she became director of the Library in August, 2022, after six months as interim director. Previously, she was director of Bradley Beach, Keyport, and Brielle Libraries, and Assistant Director of the Montclair Library.
She is a New Jersey native, and earned a B.A. degree in Political Theory and Medieval Literature from Georgetown, and a Master of Library Science from Rutgers.
Prior to her library career in 2008, she had a distinguished career in communications with leading non-profits and UN agencies. She specialized in issues related to families, equity, education, and refugees. Highlights include the passage in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and reporting on programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Her library career includes expansion and restoration of a historic library, designing programs in and out of libraries, and improving library/community relations.
She is a resident of Asbury Park, with her husband and two daughters.
12/2/22 Holiday Luncheon