Speaker Bios

	Roslyn Bernstein teaches a range of courses in journalism and creative writing at Baruch College, and is also on the faculty of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. During more than three decades at Baruch, she served as the director of the undergraduate journalism program, founded and is now the publisher of the prize-winning Dollars & Sense online magazine, and currently serves as director of the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program, a unique literary salon that brings a different distinguished writer to campus each semester. A recipient of Baruch’s Distinguished Teaching and Service Awards as well as the Faculty Service Award from the Baruch College Alumni Association, Bernstein earned a B.A. in political science from Brandeis University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from New York University. During her career as a journalist, Bernstein has published news and feature articles, catalogue essays and opinion pieces on education, neighborhood development, media, culture and the arts. Her published work includes stories on corporate art collections, nonprofits and startups, as well as profiles of individual artists, educators and business leaders for publications including The New York Times, Newsday, The Village Voice, New York, Parents, Columbia Journalism Review and The Huffington Post. Her latest book, Illegal Living: 80 Wooster Street and the Evolution of SoHo, is the biography of the first artists’ live-work building in SoHo created by Fluxus visionary George Maciunas. In 2009, she published Boardwalk Stories, a collection of 14 linked tales spanning the decades 1950 to 1970.
	Suresh Canagarajah is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics and English at Pennsylvania State University, where he also directs the Migration Studies Project. He has done research on English/Tamil bilingualism in Sri Lanka, exploring how local people develop code alternation strategies and mixed codes to negotiate the conflicts inherent in identity and community membership. His 1999 book, Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching, considers the social and educational prospects in English for periphery communities. Canagarajah also explores the challenges for multilingual scholars in English academic communication, which he wrote about in A Geopolitics of Academic Writing (2002). His latest book, Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations, introduces a new way of looking at the use of English within a global context. In it, he argues that multilinguals merge their own languages and values into English, which opens up various negotiation strategies that help them decode other unique varieties of English and construct new norms. He has served as editor of TESOL Quarterly — a peer-reviewed research journal on Teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages, and his books have won the MLA’s Mina Shaughnessy Award and the Gary Olson Award from the Association for the Teachers of Advanced Composition.
	Barbara Ganley founded Community Expressions, LLC in 2008 to help small communities bring storytelling to civic engagement and change efforts. Previously, she was a member of the writing faculty at Middlebury College, where she co-founded and directed the Project for Integrated Expression and pioneered the integration of digital storytelling and blogging in the liberal arts and use of social media in service learning. Her experience with social media, community mapping, dialogue, facilitation and storytelling to engage citizens and to effect change has brought her to work with small towns in the Northeast and the Rocky Mountain West as well as foundations, academic institutions and nonprofits on local, national and international levels. Barbara gives interactive talks and workshops around the world, and writes widely about storytelling and communities, including the forward to the 2012 edition of Joe Lambert’s Digital Storytelling, Capturing Lives, Creating Community. In 2010 Orton Family Foundation published her essay, Re-Weaving Community, Creating the Future Storytelling at the Heart and Soul of Healthy Communities. She collaborates with and advises nonprofits and sits on various boards dedicated to community and storytelling, including the Children’s Radio Foundation’s Advisory Board, the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana’s Ethnography of the University Initiative External Advisory Board and The Young Writers Project as Creative and Strategic Advisor.
	Alan Levine is principal of cogdog.it and a leader in the application of new technologies to education. A pioneer on the web in the 1990s and an early proponent of blogs and RSS, he shares his ideas and discoveries at CogDogBlog. Among his recent interests are new forms of web storytelling (including 50+ Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story, pechaflickr, and the StoryBox), as well as leading and teaching the open digital storytelling class, ds106. Most recently he was instructional technology specialist at the University of Mary Washington, following leadership positions at the New Media Consortium and the Maricopa Community Colleges. Currently he is exploring new options under the banner of his own creation CogDog.it. When possible, he enjoys the peace of a little cabin in Strawberry, Arizona. His interests include digital photography, bending WordPress to his whims, and randomly dipping into the infinite river of the internet.
	Catherine J. Mathis was named Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services in September 2009. Catherine’s responsibilities include global branding, public relations and employee communications. She is a member of the Standard & Poor’s Executive Committee. Previously, Catherine had been Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications for The New York Times Company since 2007. Before that, Catherine had been Vice President of Corporate Communications for The New York Times Company since 2000 and Director, Investor Relations since 1997. From 1992 to 1997, Catherine was Vice President of Corporate Relations at the Overseas Shipholding Group, Inc. where she was responsible for investor relations, media relations, public relations, employee communications and event planning. Previously, she held various management positions at International Paper Company. In 2006, Catherine was named Communicator of the Year by the New York chapter of International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). The award is the chapter’s highest award, recognizing integrity and excellence in everyday communications or in response to specific crises or challenges. In 2002, the YWCA of New York City selected her as one of its Women Achievers. Catherine graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and a master’s degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems.
	Bernard L. Schwartz is chairman and CEO of BLS Investments, LLC, a private investment firm. He also manages the investments of the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, which mainly supports higher education, medical research and New York City-based cultural organizations. He promotes the development of U.S. economic policy initiatives through investment in educational institutions, think tanks and advocacy organizations. Mr. Schwartz is also an active supporter of the Democratic Party. Prior to establishing BLS Investments in March 2006, Mr. Schwartz served for 34 years as chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Loral Space & Communications and its predecessor company, Loral Corporation.
	Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His second novel, Absurdistan, was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as a best book of the year by Time, The Washington Post Book World, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and many other publications. He has been selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, and Travel + Leisure and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City.
	Dr. Mitchel B. Wallerstein became the President of Baruch College of the City University of New York on August 2, 2010. Prior to his appointment as president of Baruch College, Wallerstein was the Dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University from 2003-2010, where he also held an appointment as a tenured professor of political science and public administration. Baruch College is home to the nation’s largest collegiate business school as well as prominent Schools of Arts and Sciences and Public Affairs. It is known as one of the most diverse schools in the United States with a total student population, undergraduate and graduate, of approximately 18,000.