Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Aslı Ü. Bâli is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Her teaching and scholarship focus on public international law, particularly human rights law, and comparative constitutional law, with a regional focus on the Middle East.

Before joining Yale, Bâli was a professor of law at UCLA, where she was the founding faculty director of the Promise Institute for Human Rights and director of the university-wide Center for Near Eastern Studies. She has published widely in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed social science journals and is co-editor of two volumes on comparative law published by Cambridge University Press. She has also written essays and op-eds for such venues as The Boston Review, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, Jadaliyya, MERIP, and The Law and Political Economy Blog. 

Bâli served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America from 2023 to 2025. She is co-chair of the advisory board for the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and a member of the editorial board of the American Journal of International Law.

Professor Bali's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at CMC.

Jud Campbell became a Stanford Law faculty in 2023. He is a legal historian whose scholarship explores American constitutional thought, with particular attention to the history of rights. Before joining the Stanford Law faculty in 2023, Campbell was a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, and the University of Chicago Law School. Earlier in his career, he served as Executive Director of the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.

He earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School and subsequently clerked for Judge Diane S. Sykes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Judge Jose A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He holds a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and two master's degrees from the London School of Economics, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar.

Campbell's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by The Salvatori Center and Open Academy, both at CMC.

Ryan Patel is a Global Business Executive, Board Director, and Host and Executive Producer of Yahoo's original series “How They Run with Ryan Patel”. A globally recognized expert on business, innovation, and the future of industries, he has advised startups, Fortune 500 companies, and governments. Patel is a LinkedIn Top Voice and frequent national media commentator on business, technology, and the global economy.

Nicole Turner, M.S. is the Senior Vice President and Head of Workplace Experience at Mastercard. A seasoned corporate executive with a 20-year tenure at the global payments company, Nicole spearheads the strategic operations, engagement, and employee infrastructure across Mastercard's corporate headquarters and its primary global Technology Hubs—spanning major epicenters like London, Singapore, New York, and Atlanta.

Ryan Patel and Nicole Turner’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Financial Economic Institute at CMC.

Dr. Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir (JAM) is an Associate Professor and Antimicrobial Resistance Researcher at the University of California, San Diego, with appointments in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences as well as the Division of the Black Diaspora and African American Studies.

She uses a translational research approach, integrating laboratory and clinical methods to investigate the syndemic relationship between noncommunicable diseases and antimicrobial-resistant infections and to develop community-based interventions that improve treatment outcomes. She has authored more than 90 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and scientific abstracts that present her findings. Her contributions have influenced national and international policies to mitigate inequities in antimicrobial resistance. She was invited to present at the 25th Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (PACCARB) Public Meeting and now serves on the council as the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) designated representative. She also served as an inaugural member of the CVS Health Equity National Advisory Board and, in 2026, was the first PharmD elected to the Infectious Diseases Society of America Executive Board. 

Dr. Abdul-Mutakabbir has earned both national and international recognition for her work in antimicrobial resistance research and health equity. In 2020, she was recognized as a Top Scientist Under 30 by the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. She received the 2021 Gita Patel Best Practice Award from the Society of Infectious Diseases Pharmacists, the 2023 Clinical Practice Innovation Award from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the 2024 New Clinical Practitioner Award from the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. In 2026, she was named a finalist for the Nancy Jamison Fund for Social Justice Award, presented by Catalyst of San Diego and Imperial Counties, and elected as a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Dr. Abdul-Mutakabbir's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Berger Institute for Individual and Social Development at CMC.

He will then turn to his other Claremont McKenna connection: the Rose Institute of State and Local Government, where he worked as a student and now serves on its Board of Governors. The Rose’s 2023 report on San Francisco's government design diagnosed a City Hall structurally unable to govern itself. Elsbernd traces how that diagnosis shaped SPUR’s 2025 report, “Charter for Change,” and how both reports converged in Mayor Daniel Lurie's three charter reform measures now before San Francisco voters.

Sean Elsbernd is the President and CEO of SPUR, where he leads the organization’s efforts to advance equity-centered, data-driven public policy across San Francisco, San José, and Oakland. He brings more than 25 years of public service experience at the local, regional, and federal levels. Before joining SPUR, he served as chief of staff to San Francisco Mayor London Breed, where he oversaw citywide operations, regional partnerships, and state legislative affairs.

Sean previously served as state director for U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where he represented District 7. He has also held key regional transit leadership roles, including as chair of the Caltrain Board of Directors and director of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District. A fourth-generation San Franciscan, he and his wife are raising the fifth generation. Sean is passionate about building a more sustainable, inclusive and resilient Bay Area. He holds a BA from Claremont McKenna College and a JD from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (formerly UC Hastings).

Sean’s talk is co-sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government and Open Academy, both at CMC.

James Anderson is the director of the RAND Institute for Civil Justice and a senior behavioral scientist at RAND. He has been the principal investigator on a wide range of projects, ranging from policy implications of autonomous vehicle technology to understanding the effects of indigent defense systems. He is widely published and has been funded by the National Institute of Justice, the National Institutes of Health, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the State of Pennsylvania, the Institute for Civil Justice, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation. 

Anderson's work has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Journal of Law and Economics, the Oxford University Press, and in numerous RAND publications. He has presented to a wide variety of academic and professional audiences. He is a member of the American Law Institute. Before joining RAND, Anderson clerked for the Honorable Morton Greenberg of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and practiced law for ten years as an assistant federal defender representing death-sentenced prisoners. He received a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. in ethics, politics, and economics from Yale University. 

James Anderson's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at CMC.

Dawn Tripp's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies.

Steven Powell is president and CEO of Southern California Edison (SCE), one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving more than 15 million people across Central, Coastal and Southern California. In over 25 years with SCE, he has held leadership roles spanning operations, strategy, resource planning, energy procurement and electric transportation. Prior to becoming CEO, he served as executive vice president of Operations, overseeing transmission and distribution, customer service, safety, security, business resiliency and operational services. Powell serves on the board of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), chairs EPRI’s Climate READi Committee, and co-chairs the Edison Electric Institute Wildfire Task Force. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and an MBA from UCLA.

Powell’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Roberts Environmental Center at CMC.

John K. Roth is the Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, where he taught for forty years. He is the author or editor of more than sixty books, including most recently Saving the American Dream: Meditations for Dark Times. 

During his CMC tenure, he joined Gordon Bjork and the late Ward Elliott to found the College’s PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) Program. The founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights), Roth was named the 1988 US National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 

Roth’s CMC honors include the George C. S. Benson Distinguished Service Award, the highest bestowed by the Claremont McKenna College Alumni Association; the Donald C. McKenna Humanitarian Award; and induction into the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Athletics Hall of Fame. 

Professor Roth’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights.