Common Hour

Friday, February 16
Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center

“The Asian Century: Myth and Reality”
Susan Thornton '85 has been the acting assistant secretary of state since March 9, 2017. She served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary since February 2016, after a year and a half as Deputy Assistant Secretary for China, Mongolia, and Taiwan.

A career member of the United States Foreign Service, Thornton joined the State Department in 1991 and has spent the last twenty years working on US policy in Eurasia, focused on the countries of the former Soviet Union and East Asia. Previous Foreign Service assignments include deputy chief of mission to the US Embassy in Turkmenistan, deputy director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs at the State Department in Washington, economic unit chief in the Office of Korean Affairs, and overseas postings in Beijing, Chengdu, Yerevan and Almaty.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Thornton worked at the Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, DC, where she researched and wrote about Soviet bureaucratic politics and contemporary Russia. She speaks Russian and Mandarin Chinese.

Sponsored by the Department of Government and Legal Studies with support from the John C. Donovan Lecture Fund and by the Office of the President.

Friday, February 23
Main Lounge, Moulton Union

“Pay for Success: Building Uncommon Partnerships to Take on Society’s Toughest Challenges”
Bowdoin alumni Brace Young '77 and Leah Greenberg '13 discuss how Social Finance, Inc., a Boston-based nonprofit organization dedicated to mobilizing investment capital to drive social change, is building a new model for change in the United States. Their talk will focus on Pay for Success, a program which establishes uncommon partnerships across the public, private, and social sectors to measurably improve lives in our most vulnerable communities. Less than a decade in, Pay for Success is using private sector financing to tackle homelessness, recidivism, substance use disorders, workforce opportunities for immigrants and refugees, and more.

Bracebridge H. Young, Jr. '77
Brace Young is currently a partner with Arabesque Partners. Prior to joining the firm in 2017, he was Chief Executive Officer at Eclat Impact in 2016 and Chief Executive Officer and a Partner at Mariner Investment group from 2000-2015. He joined Mariner directly from Goldman Sachs, where he retired as a Partner after a 20-year career in Fixed Income in New York, Tokyo, and London. He serves as Board Chair of GWAVE, a wave-based renewable energy company and is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a coeducational day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A founding member of the Social Finance Board of Directors, Brace has been with Social Finance US since its inception in 2011. As current Board Chair, Brace collaborates closely with the Social Finance executive team across the firm on business development, firm strategy, finance, and general operations. Brace graduated cum laude from Bowdoin with a double major in Government and Mathematics and earned an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Leah Greenberg '13
Leah Greenberg is an Associate Director at Social Finance, Inc., supporting the Advisory Services and Social Investment teams. At Social Finance, she leads active performance management services for the Connecticut Family Stability Project and has worked on projects to address the current opioid crisis, reduce recidivism, expand access to benefits for seniors, and improve post-secondary outcomes for opportunity youth. Prior to joining Social Finance, Leah worked as a Senior Associate at Carlisle & Company, a boutique management and strategy consulting firm serving the motor vehicle industry globally. While at Carlisle & Company, she also consulted for several non-profit organizations in the Greater Boston Area. Leah graduated cum laude from Bowdoin College with a major in Mathematics and a minor in Government.

Friday, March 2
Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center

"Love and Information: Contemporary Performance in Digital Culture"
Professor Bay-Cheng teaches theater history and theory, dramatic literature, and digital media performance. Her research focuses on the intersections among performance and media, including histories of cinema, social media, and computer technology in contemporary performance. Recent publications include Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (2015) and Mapping Intermediality in Performance (2010), as well as essays in Theatre Journal, Theater, Contemporary Theatre Review, and Performance Research, among others. Her current monograph project explores digital historiography and performance. Bay-Cheng frequently lectures internationally and in 2015 was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She co-edits the book series Avant-Gardes in Performance (Palgrave) and is an associate editor for the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and Contemporary Theatre Review. Previously, she served on the governing boards of Performance Studies international and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and she currently administers the ASTR members group for Digital Research and Scholarship. Since 2016, Bay-Cheng can be heard monthly as a co-host for the podcast, On TAP (Theatre and Performance) with Pannill Camp and Harvey Young. She occasionally gets to work as a director and dramaturg with particular interest in intermedial collaborations and a fondness for puppetry.