UMass Cornerstone Initiative Presents Alumni Panel on "Narrative Leadership: Skills for Success"
Content
UMass Cornerstone Initiative will present a panel on "Narrative Leadership: Skills for Success" featuring six UMass alumni on Thursday, May 2, from 10 a.m. to noon in Herter 301. Panelists will discuss the dynamic interactions between the humanities and other fields. Topics include:
- Why training in the humanities contributes to innovation in tech, science, business and academia
- How we develop narrative leadership skills in our Cornerstone gateway courses
- What current research and teaching in literary STEM can contribute.
This event is supported by the UMass Community, Democracy and Dialogue (CDD) Initiative.
Panel Participants
Shastri Akella will serve as moderator for today’s panel. Shastri holds an MFA and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UMass Amherst. Before joining UMass in 2012 he worked for five years at Google in Delhi, Dublin and San Francisco. His debut novel The Sea Elephants was published in 2023 by Flatiron Books in the US and Penguin in India. The book was named one of the most anticipated debuts by Good Morning America. His writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Fairy Tale Review, Guernica, LitHub, The Masters Review, Electric Literature, and CRAFT, among others. He is currently assistant professor of creative writing at Michigan State University where he was presented this year with the Dickson Outstanding Faculty Award.
Heidi Bailey received a BBA from Isenberg and MBA from Western New England University. Her specialty in Consumer Relationship Marketing and Brand Management at the LEGO Group provided opportunities to "Inspire and Develop the Builders of Tomorrow" working with colleagues around the world, and to partner with respected brands like Disney. She is currently an Instructor-in-Residence at the UCONN School of Business, and also enjoys reconnecting with UMASS friends, mentoring Isenberg students, and has taught marketing classes at the Isenberg School of Management.
Madeleine Noland received her Bachelor of Arts in Music from UMass Amherst in 1989. She began her career in the television industry in 2004 with Backchannelmedia, Inc. In early 2013, Noland joined LG Electronics with a focus on development of industry standards and guidelines. She participates in a variety of industry organizations on behalf of LG Electronics, and currently services as TG3 Chair for ATSC 3.0. Noland also serves as Chair of the Guidelines Work Group within the Ultra HD Forum and Chair of the ATSC Advanced Emergency Information Implementation Team. She was the 2016 recipient of the prestigious ATSC Lechner Award. She was named one of Dealerscope's "Powerful Women in Consumer Technology" for 2018 and is a recipient of the 2019 Women In Technology "Futurist" award.
Nick Nyhan received his Bachelor of Arts in English from UMass Amherst. He has been working in the data, insights and analytics space for over 25 years, building businesses and solutions to assist publishers as the digital ecosystem has evolved. Today, Nick works with a mix of clients on different data / analytics projects that require context from his experience with mixed method and operational scale. At Upside Analytics, a company Nick co-founded, the focus is to help local news publishers harvest 1st party data and easily apply analytics to grow their revenue. Projects include audience revenue strategy, analytics, segmentation, and newsletter research for companies such as Arc XP, Piano, Poool, SimpleCirc, NewsRevenueHub and publishers such as The Forward, Peekskill Herald, Oaklandside, Noozhawk, Maynard Institute, San Antonio Report, Jackson Advocate, Cleveland Observer, Denver Urban Spectrum, Tri-State Defender. As a strategic advisor to Pulse Labs and Glimpse, Nick works on UXR, AI training, qual/quant surveys with clients that include Google, Amazon, Nissan, and Hubspot.
Michael Partridge received his Bachelor of Arts in English from UMass Amherst. He is a biotech leader and executive with deep experience in setting communications strategy and advising management teams through periods of exceptional growth. During his 25-year career at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, including 15 years as Head of Investor Relations, Michael enabled Vertex to navigate through a series of critical financings, CEO transitions and changes in strategy, and ultimately the launch of four cystic fibrosis medicines which collectively represent one of the most profitable and long-duration therapeutic franchises in the history of the industry. Michael has helped steer Vertex from its early days as a public company to its current status as the most valuable biotech company in Massachusetts. Michael’s instinctive feel for corporate narrative, his ability to distill the most compelling and value-driving components of a company’s story, and his success in building lasting relationships with the investment community made him an indispensable member of Vertex’s senior leadership team. As Principal of Macpherson Capital Advisors, Michael has become a sought-after advisor to development-stage companies in biotech.
Rhona Trauvitch holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UMass Amherst. She is an associate teaching professor at Florida International University where she directs its Science & Fiction Lab, recipient of a 2023 Humanities Initiatives award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her introduction to the analytical framework of fiction-science pattern mapping appears in the Narratologies of Science special issue of the Journal of Narrative Theory (2023); her monograph on this subject is under advance contract with the Ohio State University Press. Dr. Trauvitch specializes in literary STEM, focusing on intersections of literature and science—those that manifest in science fiction, and those that enable fiction-science (or, ‘fi-sci’) pattern mapping. In her research and teaching she aims to show that fictionality has the rhetorical power to make science more accessible to any audience.