Art Bardige
Art Bardige has wanted to revolutionize education since he started graduate school. A graduate of the University of Chicago in physics, he taught physics, developed education films, taught and developed a new curriculum for middle school mathematics, started his first company, Learningways in 1980 becoming the premier independent educational software developer, designed MathProcessor in 1990, EnableMath in 2004, and What if Math in 2014. Art is a trustee at Lesley University and a longtime resident of Cambridge, MA. Art’s personal website is artifacts.com.
Nikhil Bhojwani
Nikhil Bhojwani is a Managing Partner at Recon where he focuses on strategy and innovation topics for payers, providers, and population health firms. Prior to co-founding Recon, Nikhil spent 8 years at the Boston Consulting Group where he was a core member of the strategy and healthcare practice areas. Experienced in working with health plans, biotech and pharma companies, med-devices, and health care services, Nikhil has helped his clients innovate and execute solutions, develop strategy, make critical business decisions and plan and enable executive level and organization-wide change. Prior to BCG, Nikhil co-founded and ran media businesses in India and was a guest columnist and author. He is a graduate of St. Stephen’s College and The Wharton School.
Felicia Escobar Carrillo
Felicia is a distinguished policymaker and coalition-builder with extensive experience working in the government, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors. Most recently, she served as Chief of Staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency responsible for administering the legal immigration system, including naturalization, family- and employment-based immigration, and our humanitarian programs.
Prior to this, Felicia worked with national and local philanthropic organizations. As Director of Immigration, she helped to launch the Beacon Fund, a social impact fund focused on expanding opportunities for immigrants and refugee communities to thrive using a mixed capital approach.
Felicia was the Principal Consultant for the L.A. Justice Fund, a public-private partnership that seeks to enhance legal representation for immigrants in removal proceedings. She also advised the California Community Foundation and the Weingart Foundation on their immigration grantmaking portfolio.
From 2009 – 2017, Felicia was the lead immigration staffer at the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama. As Special Assistant to the President for Immigration Policy, she played a pivotal role in advancing legislative and administrative reforms, including the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals process. She also managed the Administration’s efforts to enact bipartisan immigration reform in 2013 and led the White House Task Force on New Americans.
Her experience on Capitol Hill includes serving as a Senior Legislative Assistant for Senator Ken Salazar and as Associate Director of the Democratic Steering and Outreach Committee under former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle. She started her career at UnidosUS working to advance state policies on behalf of Texas’s Latino community.
A native of San Antonio, Texas, Felicia received a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University, a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law. She resides in Maryland with her husband and two sons.
Bintou Kunjo
Bintou Kunjo is a recent Masters of Global Management (International MBA) graduate at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, AZ. She is currently participating in BASF’s Leadership Development Program. Prior to pursuing her master’s degree, Bintou founded a tea company, Taaling Tea, while working as the operations manager at Impact Hub Boston. At Impact Hub, Bintou launched an Arts for Social Change project to provide a platform for raising awareness on social issues through the arts. Bintou graduated from Bowdoin College, with a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry and pre-medicine concentration. While at Bowdoin, Bintou served as site director for Let’s Get Ready. She worked primarily with refugee and asylee students in Maine, to help reduce barriers in their efforts to pursue higher education. A native of The Gambia, Bintou’s family sought political asylum in the USA in 2003. She is passionate about issues of migration and plans to leverage business and entrepreneurship to drive change within this area.
Jeff Lande
Jeff Lande is President of the Lande Group and a Senior Advisor at Conlon Public Strategies where he advises global clients from both the commercial and public sectors on public policy and politics as well as geopolitical considerations. Prior to launching the Lande Group, Jeff served as Executive Vice President of TechAmerica and before this, Senior Vice President of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). During the 1990s, Jeff served as the national Legislative Director and Washington Office Associate Director for the Jewish Federation system. He also held legislative and committee staff positions in the U.S. House of Representatives; lectured and served as a researcher at the University of Virginia, and owned several small businesses.
Kristen Lucken
Kristen Lucken chairs the Religious Studies program at Brandeis University and serves on the faculties of Sociology, International and Global Studies, and Religious Studies. Her research explores global migration, American immigration, ethnic and religious pluralism, social inclusion and nationalism. Living and working in the Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia during a time of major historical change (1990-1998), Dr. Lucken witnessed the unexpected dissolution of multicultural states and investigated the rise of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans. Her research project on Bosnian refugees in New England investigated how religious and ethnic identities are maintained and transformed through the process of migration. Dr. Lucken’s published works address Bosnian refugee settlement in New England, the transnational religious lives of second-generation Indian-Americans, and the roles played by religious institutions in immigrant ethnic identity maintenance. A collaborative, cross-national project investigates how religion and spirituality present themselves within public institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe following a time of unprecedented refugee flows and rising levels of religious pluralism.
Farah Pandith
FARAH PANDITH is a foreign policy strategist and former diplomat. A world-leading expert and pioneer in countering violent extremism, she is the author of How We Win: How Cutting-Edge Entrepreneurs, Political Visionaries, Enlightened Business Leaders, and Social Media Mavens Can Defeat the Extremist Threat. She is a frequent media commentator and public speaker, and has written for publications including The Economist, The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Farah served as a political appointee under three presidents – most recently as the first-ever Special Representative to Muslim Communities, serving both Secretary Clinton and Kerry. She has served on the National Security Council, at the U.S. Department of State, and at the U.S. Agency for International Development in various senior roles. She was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council, chairing its countering violent extremism task force. She is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. In 2020 the Muhammad Ali Center named Farah the first-ever Muhammad Ali Global Peace Laureate for her proven track record of and commitment to promoting humanitarian values; she is the creator and catalyst for the Muhammad Ali Index on Compassion launched in January 2025.
She serves on leadership or advisory boards of organizations including We Are Family Foundation, America Abroad Media, The Asian American Foundation, USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Over the last decade she has been a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, a senior advisor with the Anti-Defamation League, and a senior advisor at the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream.
Farah was born in India and raised in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Alejandra Vázquez Baur
Alejandra Vázquez Baur is a Fellow at The Century Foundation, where she leads TCF's newcomer and school integration portfolios. In 2022, she co-founded the National Newcomer Network, a coalition that brings together nearly 400 educators, researchers, and advocates in 42 states who are invested in developing systemic solutions to address newcomer student inequity in K-12 schools. An inaugural Obama USA Leader and former teacher, her work has been featured in several media outlets, including Chalkbeat, the 74 Million, Education Week, NPR, Axios, the Guardian, and POLITICO. Alejandra is a proud granddaughter of Mexican farmworkers and holds degrees from Claremont McKenna College and Columbia University.