DEI&B Council

Jane Carroll is a second-year Masters in Public Policy candidate at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, where she is focusing on the role of social policy as a mechanism for reducing inequity and enabling economic development. During her time at Yale, Jane has explored her interest in global health through an internship with Evidence Action in its Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation Strategy team, and in education policy, through work with the Centre for Girls’ Education. Jane’s interest in social policy developed at the University of Melbourne, where she graduated as a Chancellor’s Scholar in 2018 after majoring in economics and actuarial studies. Jane’s honours thesis sat at the intersection of environmental and development economics, exploring whether labour regulations in Indian brick kilns generated environmental spill-over costs. After graduation, Jane joined McKinsey & Company’s Melbourne office, where she worked predominantly with public and social sector organisations. After Yale, Jane plans to work in the delivery of education and health policy.

James Levinsohn is the Charles W. Goodyear Professor in Global Affairs at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and professor of economics and management at the Yale School of Management. Professor Levinsohn is the founding director of the Jackson Institute and in that capacity he oversees the Global Affairs major in Yale College, the Global Affairs MA programs, and the Yale World Fellows program. Outside of Yale, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has consulted for many government and non-governmental organizations as well as many multinational corporations. Professor Levinsohn has served on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review, the Journal of International Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Economic Literature. His research has been recognized with major grants and his teaching has been recognized by “Best Professor” awards at both Yale and the University of Michigan where he was on the faculty for 20 years. Professor Levinsohn’s fields of expertise are international economics, industrial organization, economic development, and applied econometrics. His current academic research is focused on estimating the impacts of internal migration on household well-being in South Africa and estimating the demand for sanitation in Bangladesh.

My name is Catherine Panter-Brick. I was raised by a French mother and an English father and grew up as a French speaker in London.  I first went to school, for two years, in Zaria, Nigeria; looking back, this was a formative experience for me. After high school at a Lycée and a semester at a university in Zimbabwe, I switched my education to the UK because I was given the chance to study at Oxford University. I became an anthropologist, and learnt to speak Arabic, Nepali, Spanish, and basic Tamang for my fieldwork.  My brain is attuned to diverse languages, cultures, and social connections.

I work on global health, especially mental health, with communities who live in humanitarian crises, especially those who live in the wake of war.  At the Jackson, I think of all the ways we can connect people with policy.  This means conducting research in ways that will actively recognize human dignity and social inclusion, as well as informing humanitarian practice and policy in ways that will generate new insights and transformational change.

I grew up in New Orleans, LA (USA) in a family with 3 girls – I was the middle child.  I also had the benefit of being in a multi-generational household with my maternal grandparents; and spent many a summer in Bunkie, LA on my father’s parents’ farm.  New Orleans is a medium-sized city and during my formative years (1960s-1970s) was probably +/- 500,000.  But its reputation for food, music and great cultural lore and diversity far outweigh its actual size.  NOLA is known the world over.

I am an African-American woman – just turned 60!  I now live in Washington, DC; but have lived in Poughkeepsie, NY (Vassar College undergrad); New Haven, CT – Yale IR program); Dakar, Senegal twice (summer of junior year abroad then as a professional for 3 years in the late 1980s; and Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire for the decade of the 90s to 2001, when I returned to the US.  I speak fluent French and have some Portuguese proficiency.

It’s more of an institutional relationship which has led to a lifetime of friendships around the world and especially across the African continent.  The African Development Bank is a microcosm of the world, with staff and leaders from every part of the globe.  My decade spent there fostered personal and professional relationships that allow me to feel comfortable virtually anywhere in the world – whether visiting or working.  It also provided me rich cross-cultural connections as well as an unparalleled, global network of friends and colleagues.

My professional experiences have all included working with diverse populations world-wide.  This has required me to have a keen understanding of the value of DEI.  By virtue of personal and professional experiences, I understand the complexities, challenges and opportunities that characterize DEI.  This includes practical programmatic/operations applications, recruiting and working with multicultural and multi-ethnic staff in international contexts, institutional policy formulation, and advocacy work.  DEI issues have always been a part of my experiences inherently and specifically, and I have always understood that cultural and racial diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are significant in any arena that hopes to achieve substantive, sustainable and concrete results.

My name is Viraj Shukla, and I am a junior at Yale studying Global Affairs and Computer Science. I grew up in Glendale, Arizona, a suburb in the northwest of Phoenix. I am Asian Indian, and I am a native English speaker and fluent in Spanish. Some of my most important relationships are with my mentors, many of them Yale alumni, who have helped me leverage my unique social and academic background into fulfilling, impactful experiences both during and after my time at Yale. My most impactful Jackson experiences so far have come from my Global Affairs coursework. Despite their virtual environment, I have been able to use these classes to connect with individuals from all around the world and all walks of life, all of whom are excited to tackle our most pressing global challenges. As part of Jackson’s DEI Council, I hope to ensure that as many of these voices are heard as possible, from the classroom to speaker events to Senior and Visiting Fellows who can share their diverse experiences with Yale students and the larger academic community. I also wish to ensure that faculty, students, and staff are aware of the importance of an inclusive academic culture and the steps we must take to create one.

My name is Olivia Summons and I’m a senior at Yale majoring in Global Affairs with a Certificate in French; I identify as a mixed race woman, black and white. Growing up in Baltimore in a two-person household with my mother, a single parent inner-city school teacher, she instilled in me a personal commitment for equitable and accessible education. The Jackson Institute and its extensive programming initiatives have been a formative part of my Yale experience. Jackson actively prioritizes bringing together professionals from diverse and international backgrounds. From the Senior Fellows to the World Fellows Program, my most impactful Jackson experiences have been derived from my engagements with the Jackson professional community, passionate about promoting global understanding and interconnectivity.

As part of Jackson’s DEI Council, I am proud and committed to the elevation of minority voices within Jackson’s student body and programming. I look forward to the opportunity to elevate accessibility as a key pillar within the Jackson undergraduate student community, especially given that historically marginalized communities stand to benefit most from the diverse perspectives held amongst Jackson Professors, Senior and World Fellows. I speak from personal experience, that students can only feel as prepared to tackle the world’s challenges as they feel supported by the institutions surrounding them.

I’m Lily, director of student affairs here at the Jackson School. I grew up in New York City in a family of musicians (including myself on violin) and a mother who taught opera students from across the world out of our one-bedroom apartment.  From childhood through my early professional career, my community was comprised of musicians and students from across the world, from a diversity of backgrounds, cultures, and languages. I’m inspired and motivated by music’s ability to bring people together across boundaries and differences and musicians’ ability to communicate social problems in a way no other discipline can do. Jackson shares this incredible convening power in its interdisciplinary approach to educating leaders, in the conversations we nurture, in the diverse community we build. I’m very excited to be part of this first convening of a committee whose focus is diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. The work of this committee will strengthen our community, expand voices and perspectives in our work, and better prepare our students to be the most effective leaders in global affairs.

I am Diego Tituaña and I belong to the Kichwa-Otavalo nation. I grew up in an indigenous family in a small town called Otavalo in Ecuador. The handicraft trade has been a fundamental part of my development. In my community we recognize ourselves as Mindalaes: an ancient group of indigenous people specialized in the art of trade and commerce. Due to this activity, my family and I have traveled to different parts of the world and we have learned closely the difficulties that migration entails.

As a 2019 World Fellow, it was impacted knowing the incredible work that other members of the program were doing in different parts of the world. I learned a lot from the unique perspectives and profiles of my colleagues for their effort to have a better place to live for all of us. I believe that this exclusive diversity of thought and experience enriched the academic development of Yale University and benefited the New Haven community. I consider that my experience of life as an indigenous, migrant, and diplomat also contributed to a better understanding of global affairs from a perspective that included the challenges faced by minorities and my work from the field.

To strengthen and achieve full diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is important to promote and encourage the search for new profiles that include the work and worldview of indigenous peoples from different parts of the world. It is crucial to support their academic and professional development and promote mechanisms that seek to redress our historical inequalities and exclusions.

I’m a first-generation daughter of refugees from Vietnam who were lucky to escape to the US a few years after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Having grown up in San Diego, CA in a neighborhood with very little diversity, I spent much of my adolescence and early adulthood in conflict with my Asian-American identity. After I learned about the Vietnam War—or as novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen corrects us, the American War in Vietnam—I grappled with a lot of dissonance about my existence and identity. A war that should never have been waged was the reason behind the opportunity I had to be born and raised in the US. This dissonance sparked my desire to study global affairs, to better understand how geopolitical dynamics impact the lives, trajectories, and identities of ordinary people.

My experience as an MA student at Jackson was formative, in no small part due to the diverse community of peers I met, many of whom are now lifelong friends. Despite Yale’s vibrant student community, I think the Global Affairs program at Jackson (based on my experience from 2009-2011) can better reflect issues of diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion in its curricula, culture, and teaching composition. With ten years of work experience in global affairs since graduating from Jackson, I’ve observed first-hand how a failure to understand the world around us through the lens of DEI can perpetuate systemic racism and undermine good intentions to make a difference. Through my participation on the DEI Council, I hope to contribute these perspectives to help strengthen Jackson’s preeminent role as a pipeline for the world’s future leaders who will work to create a truly more representative and equitable society.

I’m Sara Wilhelm, and I serve as Assistant Director of Finance and Administration at the Jackson School. I am a musician, a visual artist, a martial artist, I’m queer, I am married to a green card holder from Germany, and am a mother of one human, two dogs, and two cats. I come from a blue-collar family of Italian immigrants who struggled to make a life for themselves in CT. When my parents divorced when I was 10, we frequently had to move between small apartments while my mom struggled to make ends meet to take care of my brother and me. She is my inspiration, because no matter how much she struggled, she always treated everyone she met with love, compassion, and respect.

I am a first-generation college student – I exhausted myself to pay my own way, working full time while going to school full time. When I received my acceptance letter to Yale for graduate school, I cried for a full week because I was so relieved that they would cover all tuition expenses. I had deep impostor syndrome as a grad student at Yale because I thought I didn’t belong at a university where I was surrounded by talented, affluent, white men. I was the only female student in my graduate program my first year, and the only one who didn’t come from money. It was a definite culture shock, and I very much felt out of place.

After graduation, and subsequently teaching for a few years at a few universities in CT and NY, I settled down to work in higher education administration at Yale. Yale has given me so much – it is at Yale that I did my graduate study, a vehicle through which I was able to make connections to climb to an economic status above the poverty line, where I have been working now for nearly a decade, and also where I met my husband. However, I am acutely aware that we at Yale still have much work to do. I firmly believe that Yale has the resources and the people to make deep and meaningful change, which is why I’m delighted to be a part of Jackson’s DEI Council to create these changes together. I’m excited to follow in my mother’s footsteps towards building an ethos and a practice of universal empathy and community, and to work with the Jackson DEI Council to make it so – in our corner of Yale and beyond.

Chris Ka-keung Wong, born in Vancouver, Canada, and raised in Hong Kong, is a MPP student focused on human rights, specifically sexual minority rights and China region-wise. He is keen to study the dynamic forces that are forging the future of Hong Kong and China and aspires to contribute to youth, gender and LGBTQIA+ affairs there. He is also interested in diversity, equity and inclusion issues. Over the summer of 2022, Chris interned with the Atlantic Council on human rights research and volunteered for Freedom to Marry Global. He is attending Yale as a Kwok scholar.

Chris graduated from the University of Hong Kong in 2018 with a business degree, where he developed an interest in public affairs, as well as the intersection between business and human rights. He joined the Hong Kong SAR Government upon graduation and was appointed to policymaking roles in the Innovation and Technology Bureau and thereafter Home Affairs Bureau. After Yale, Chris is looking for human rights and China-related opportunities.