Kathryn Kolbert is the Constance Hess Williams ’66 Director of the Athena Center. A public-interest attorney, journalist, and executive in the not-for-profit world, Kathryn brings to Barnard an extraordinary depth of experience in collaborative leadership, educational programming, and civil-rights advocacy. She has been recognized by The National Law Journal as one of the "100 Most Influential Lawyers in America,” and by The American Lawyer as one of 45 public- interest lawyers “whose vision and commitment are changing lives." In 1992, Kolbert argued the landmark case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey before the U.S. Supreme Court and has been credited with saving Roe v. Wade with what CNN’s Legal Correspondent Jeffrey Toobin has called "one of the most audacious litigation strategies in Supreme Court history.”
Before joining Barnard, Kolbert was the President and CEO of People for the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation, two of the nation’s premier civil rights organizations. During her tenure, People For the American Way's Political Action Committee was cited by the National Journal as the most successful advocacy group of the 2008 election cycle.
For ten years, Kolbert oversaw a program on law and American life at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. She was the executive producer of Justice Talking, an award-winning public radio program distributed by NPR, and also directed an educational website called JusticeLearning.org, which received a Webby Award in 2005. Before she became a journalist, Kathryn enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a public interest attorney specializing in women’s reproductive rights. From 1992 to 1997, she directed domestic litigation and public policy programs for the Center for Reproductive Rights, where she was a co-founder and vice president. She has also served as the State Coordinating Counsel of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project in New York and as a Staff Attorney with the Women's Law Project and Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. A graduate of Cornell University School of Arts and Science and Temple University School of Law, Kolbert has lectured at colleges and universities across the nation and is a frequent commentator on leadership, constitutional and women’s rights issues in the national media.
Sasha Hill is the Administrative Assistant of the Athena Center. A recent graduate of Wellesley College, where she majored in Psychology and minored in English, Hill has continually tried to find ways to exercise her passion for education and helping others throughout her college career and into her professional one; through her partnership with United Way during the summers of 2011 and 2012, Hill developed and helped implement a mentorship program for under-served youth in New York.
Abigail Sara Lewis is the Associate Director of the Athena Center, as well as Program Director of the Athena Scholars Program. In addition to advising all the students in the Program, Lewis runs the Athena Mentoring Program, oversees the summer fellowship programs. Lewis teaches Women and Leadership and co-teaches the Athena the Senior Seminar (with Kathryn Kolbert), the two courses required by Athena.
Prior to Athena, Lewis was Assistant Director of Pathways Advising at Douglass Residential College, Rutgers University. She taught in both the History and Women's Studies departments at Rutgers, and worked at New York University, the CUNY Graduate Center, and the NYC Department of Education. Lewis received her B.A. and M.A. in African American Studies from Columbia and U.C.L.A. respectively and completed her Ph.D. in History at Rutgers in 2008. Her work on the YWCA's Multiracial Activism in the immediate post WWII era was recently published in the anthology, Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement, (University of Kentucky Press: 2012).
Maria Perez-Martinez is the Operations Coordinator for the Athena Film Festival. She holds a Master's degree in Publishing from New York University and a Bachelor's degree in English/Drama from Northwestern University. Perez-Martinez is also co-founder of GoodChoiceReading.com, a book-reviewing and promotional website. Previously, she worked as the Administrative Assistant for the Athena Center. In her spare time, Perez-Martinez is an avid reader and writer; currently finishing an adapted screenplay as well as a young-adult novel. In 2013, her short story entitled My Dearest Valentine we be published in the anthology, "Holiday Magick: 20 Holiday Stories With a Twist" (Spencer Hill Press: May, 2013) Perez-Martinez resides in CT with her husband and two children.
Tomika Rodriguez joined the Athena Center in 2012 as our Leadership Development Training Manager. Her primary responsibility is managing the Leadership Labs and supporting students in developing their personal and professional leadership capacity. She also contributes to the Athena Center’s customized leadership development programs by assisting in the development and launch of Athena’s offerings.
Rodriguez joined the Athena Center from DePaul University where she created and managed successful academic retention, leadership and empowerment programs for underrepresented students including, Women Empowered, one of the few national identity-based programs for college-aged women of color. Rodriguez earned her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication/PR from Wright State University in Dayton, OH and her Master of Education from North Carolina State University. She has also served as a Residence Hall Director and as a diversity educator, advocate, and facilitator both nationally and abroad.
Erin Vilardi is the program director of leadership development at the Athena Center. Her work focuses on developing Athena's CORE10 - a innovate set of leadership competencies for 21st century women leaders - as well as professional education programs and strategic partnerships. She spent the last 18 months traveling to a dozen international cities teaching leadership, from Cairo to Dublin to Mexico City. Formerly Vice President of Program and Communications at The White House Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to advance U.S. women’s leadership, she created Vote, Run, Lead - the largest national political training program readying women for public office and civic life - training over 14,000 women since 2004.
Vilardi serves on the Advisory Boards of Girl Meets World, fostering girls' leadership through career exploration, and the New American Leaders Project, working to increase the number of immigrants participating in U.S. democracy. She is an Executive Producer of Ann Richards' Texas, an award-winning documentary about the late pioneering governor. Since 2008, Vilardi has served as the New York Delegate for Vision2020, a 50-state initiative to increase women in leadership by the year 2020. Vilardi has appeared on CNN, BBC, Fox News and in numerous articles on women and politics, was featured on "Spotlight 25," a Lifetime Television special on young women, and in O, The Oprah Magazine.
A resident of New York City, Vilardi graduated from New York University with a BA in Politics and Gender Studies.
A resident of New York City, Vilardi graduated from New York University with a BA in Politics and Gender Studies.
Consultants
Sara Angevine taught the Women and Leadership course during the Spring Semester 2013 and helped coordinate the Athena Scholar program, Athena Mentoring program, and Athena Summer Fellows program while Abigail Lewis was out on maternity leave.
Angevine is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University, specializing in Women and Politics. Her research specializes in women’s rights, U.S. Congress, and American foreign policy. She also is trained in both quantitative and qualitative research methods and is interested in assessing the impact of collegiate women’s leadership programs on women’s economic, political, and social ambition.
Currently, Angevine is the Director of the Douglass Mission Course, Issues in Women’s Leadership, Knowledge and Power (25 sections per year), and the Director of the Barbara Voorhees Mentor Program at Douglass Residential College for Women, Rutgers University. Prior to this, she was the Public Leadership Education Network (PLEN) Coordinator at Douglass. Sara has taught in the Department of Political Science, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, and with the Civic Engagement and Service Education Partnership (CESEP) Program at Rutgers. She received her B.A. in Political Science, Communications, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Hamline University, Saint Paul, MN; her M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa; and she has an International Gender Studies Certificate from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Nathalie Molina Niño is spearheading the creation of Entrepreneurship@Athena at the Athena Center. A business consultant and playwright, Molina Niño is a consummate entrepreneur who launched her first tech startup at the age of 20. She also was involved in launching and growing a multinational business within Lionbridge (NASDAQ: LIOX) into a nearly $100M operation within 6 years. Prior to her role as business consultant, Nathalie spent 14+ years advising industry leaders in both the for and non-profit sector ranging from multinationals (Disney, Microsoft, MTV, The Discovery Channel, Mattel), early stage startups (Cranium, Onvia) and non-profits (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, World Affairs Council, Seattle International Film Festival, Hedgebrook). She's passionate about supporting women entrepreneurs and believes that the single most important skill in business is storytelling.
Melissa Silverstein is the founder and editor of Women and Hollywood, one of the most respected sites for issues related to women and film as well as other areas of pop culture as well as the Artistic Director and co-founder of the Athena Film Festival -- A Celebration of Women and Leadership – a joint project of the Athena Center and Women and Hollywood. Silverstein recently published the first book, In Her Voice: Women Directors Talk Directing, which is a compilation of over 40 interviews that have appeared on Women and Hollywood. Her work has been featured on CNN, the BBC as well as in Newsweek, Salon, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, The New York Times, and many other publications. Silverstein has conducted social media marketing campaigns and events for a variety of films including: My Week With Marilyn, The Iron Lady, Gloria Steinem: In Her Own Words, Dancing Across Borders, and more. Formerly, the founding project director for The White House Project and the chief of Staff at the Ms. Foundation for Women, Silverstein also has worked on several high profile public education campaigns including Take Our Daughters to Work Day and the Pro Choice Public Education Project. She is on the advisory boards of the Women’s Media Center and Women, Action & Media (WAM!) and is a member of NY Women in Film and TV.
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