Speaker biographies

In March 2014, Roy L. Austin, Jr. joined the White House Domestic Policy Council as Deputy Assistant to the President for the Office of Urban Affairs, Justice and Opportunity. In this position, Austin coordinates the formulation and implementation of policy covering criminal justice, civil rights, housing, labor, human services and initiatives such as Promise Zones. Austin is also a member of the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force.

Austin began his career as an Honors Trial Attorney with the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division investigating and prosecuting hate crime and police brutality cases around the country.  After approximately five years, he joined Keker & Van Nest LLP in San Francisco, as an associate working on complex civil and white-collar criminal cases, including a successful pro-bono civil lawsuit aimed at preventing racial profiling by the California Highway Patrol.  In 2002, he joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia where he prosecuted domestic violence, adult and child sexual assault, human trafficking, homicide and fraud and public corruption cases.  He left in 2007 to become a partner at McDermott, Will & Emery working primarily on white collar criminal cases.  In 2009, Austin returned to the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office as a Senior Assistant United States Attorney and Coordinator of the D.C. Human Trafficking Task Force. 

In January 2010, Austin was appointed Deputy Assistant Attorney General (DAAG), Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice. As a DAAG, Austin supervised the Criminal Section, and the Special Litigation Section’s law enforcement (police departments, corrections and juvenile justice) portfolio. In addition, he supervised work under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person Act (RLUIPA) and Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.  Among numerous other matters, Austin worked on cases involving the New Orleans Police Department, Missoula (MT) law enforcement and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. 

Ceja will work closely with the Latino community and the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics to implement the goals and deliverables under Executive Order 13555, by which President Barack Obama renewed the initiative, and better align the work of the initiative with the Department's cradle-to-career agenda.

Prior to assuming this position, Ceja served as the chief of staff to Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter. In that role, Ceja was instrumental in managing the under secretary's personnel, budget and associated operations, including the operations of six White House initiatives, to support the president's 2020 goal, what Secretary of Education Duncan calls the nation's "North Star": The US will attain the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020.

Prior to joining the Department, Ceja served as the senior budget and appropriations advisor for the House Committee on Education and Labor, chaired by Congressman George Miller. There, she drafted legislation in support of national service reauthorization—the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act—and worked on policy issues related to child nutrition, English language learners, migrants, Impact Aid and appropriations. From 1999 to 2007, Ceja was a program examiner for the White House Office of Management and Budget, where she helped formulate the federal budget for the Department of Labor and the Corporation for National and Community Service. Ceja has also worked for the Indianapolis Private Industry Council and with Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard in her Washington, D.C., office.

Ceja holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles, and a master's degree in public administration from Baruch College at the City University of New York. She is a graduate of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's Public Policy Fellowship, the Presidential Management Fellows program, the National Hispana Leadership Institute and the National Urban Fellows program.

Jan Cuny

National Science Foundation
Jan Cuny received her Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan. She spent the next 20 years as a faculty member, first at Purdue University, then at the University of Massachusetts, and finally at the University of Oregon. In 2004, Jan moved to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish the Broadening Participation in Computing program, which worked with the broad range of groups underrepresented in computing—women, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and indigenous peoples, and persons with disabilities. These efforts were later merged with NSF’s larger, CS Education programs. Most recently, Jan spearheaded NSF’s efforts to building the foundation for a nationwide effort to get inclusive, rigorous, academic computing courses taught by well-prepared teachers into America’s public schools. With this effort—called the CS 10K project because its initial target was 10,000 schools and 10,000 teachers—NSF has funded the development of two new CS courses (including a new AP course), course materials, assessments, models of scalable professional developed and an online community of practice for teachers. NSF is now partnering with private organizations around the country to pilot these courses in hundreds of schools.
For her efforts with underserved populations, Jan is a recipient of a 2006 ACM President’s Award, the 2007 CRA A. Nico Habermann Award, the 2009 Anita Borg Institute’s Woman of Vision Award for Social Impact, and the 2014 Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing.

Peter Edelman

Georgetown University Law Center
Peter Edelman is a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and poverty law and is faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality. On the faculty since 1982, he has also served in all three branches of government. During President Clinton’s first term he was Counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

Professor Edelman has been Associate Dean of the Law Center, Director of the New York State Division for Youth, and Vice President of the University of Massachusetts. He was a Legislative Assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Issues Director for Senator Edward Kennedy's 1980 Presidential campaign. Prior to working for RFK, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg and before that for Judge Henry J. Friendly on the U.S. Court of Appeals. He also served as Special Assistant to U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Douglas, and was a partner in the law firm of Foley & Lardner.

Mr. Edelman’s book, So Rich, So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America, was published by The New Press in 2012. A previous book, Searching for America’s Heart: RFK and the Renewal of Hope, is available in paperback from the Georgetown University Press. His article in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done,” received the Harry Chapin Media Award.

Mr. Edelman has been a United States-Japan Leadership Program Fellow, was the J. Skelly Wright Memorial Fellow at Yale Law School, and has received numerous honors and awards for his work, including the William J. Brennan, Jr. Award from the D.C. Bar in 2005. He grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

She was born in Brooklyn, NY, educated in the NYC public schools, and later in Cambridge, Ma. She received her B.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at the MIT. She received her Masters of Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Howard University (HU) with an Aerospace option. She has been a Guest researcher at Harvard/Radcliffe University.

Dr. Ericsson focus as a Technologist has been Advanced Manufacturing, Applied Nanotechnology, miniaturization of Technology for CubeSat and SmallSat space platforms.

Hudnell has held various management positions in community relations, government relations, charitable contributions, media outreach, employee volunteerism, and workforce development at the company. She is widely known for directing the implementation of the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network, a global award-winning program bringing leading-edge technology to underserved youth around the world.  Additionally she is the co-founder of the Intel Black Leadership Council and sponsored the development of Intel’s African American, Hispanic and Women’s Initiatives.

She is readily sought after to speak on issues of diversity and workforce development and has been interviewed by several outlets including Forbes, CNN, and MSNBC. Hudnell serves on the board of directors for the Center for Talent Innovation, the Human Rights Commission Diversity Advisory Council and was the Executive Vice President for the National GEM Consortium.   Hudnell was the co-author of the research report The Battle for Female Talent in China published in the Harvard Business Review and was recently selected as a Woman Helping the World by Forbes Magazine and 10x10. Hudnell completed her undergraduate studies in management at St. Mary's College, has done specific study at UCLA Anderson School of Management and is a Senior Fellow through the American Leadership Forum.
Françoise Jacobsohn

Equal Rights Advocates

Françoise Jacobsohn is a co-founder and co-chair of the National Task Force on Tradeswomen’s Issues. She is a Project Manager at Equal Rights Advocates (ERA), a nonprofit legal organization dedicated to protecting and expanding economic and educational access and opportunities for women and girls. Her work at ERA focuses on girls’ and women’s access to and retention in, high-wage non-traditional occupations. Prior to ERA, Françoise was the Project Director for Equality Works at Legal Momentum. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and is a Ford Foundation Public Voices Fellow.

 

Peterson is also Co-Principal Investigator for the Citizen SciGirls Transmedia and Research to Encourage Girls in STEM, SciGirls CONNECT – A Diffusion Scale Up Project, and STELAR, the ITEST Learning Resource Center.  Funded by the NSF, these projects all address gender, racial and socioeconomic underrepresentation in STEM fields. Many access the NGCP’s national network and dissemination tools to distribute, scale-up, and/or replicate project outcomes.  Peterson serves on the Board of Directors for True Child, an independent think tank which translates research and knowledge on the impact of gender stereotypes into a range of effective interventions, policies and other resources for the organizations and policy-makers. Peterson has published in The Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering and CBE Life Sciences Education, a journal published by the American Society for Cell Biology. In 2013, Peterson was profiled in STEMConnector’s™ 100 Women Leaders in STEM publication. A graduate of the University of Washington, Bothell campus, her Master’s thesis focused on gendered attitudes towards computer use in education. Peterson has led workshops focused on STEM and equity in a variety of international settings, including Egypt, Russia, South Africa, South America, and Scotland. 

Johan E. Uvin joined the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) in December 2009 as senior policy advisor to Assistant Secretary Brenda Dann-Messier. In 2011, Uvin was appointed to the position of deputy assistant secretary for policy and strategic initiatives. In that capacity, he coordinates all policy and strategy development for OCTAE. This office is responsible for the Department's adult education portfolio, including corrections and reentry education, secondary, postsecondary and adult career and technical education, and community colleges.

Prior to his appointments at the Department, Uvin led the Rhode Island state office that oversees adult education, career and technical education, and GED testing. He also held several leadership positions in education and workforce development in both the public and private sectors.