Philanthropedia's Experts

Barbara A. Soniat, PhD, MSW, is an associate professor at the Catholic University of America’s National Catholic School of Social Service (NCSSS) and director of its Center on Global Aging. She teaches MSW practice courses and a course on clinical social work practice with older adults, and she is co-principal investigator for a Council on Social Work Education gero-ed project. Dr. Soniat also serves as a commissioner for the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging. She has worked in the fields of social work and gerontology for over 30 years. For over 20 years, her career effectively integrated clinical practice, research, teaching, and interdisciplinary field-based education of professional students. Dr. Soniat is the former long-time director of the George Washington University (GWU) and IONA Senior Services geriatric assessment and case management programs, where for over two decades she implemented collaborative partnerships between a university medical center (GWU), a public agency (the Washington, DC, Office on Aging), a private agency (IONA Senior Services), and several schools of social work (NCSSS, Howard University, University of Maryland, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Alabama) and departments of psychiatry (GWU and Georgetown University). Through these endeavors, she has worked with many social workers, case managers, student learners, and colleagues to develop, test, modify, and refine models and tools for education, research, and practice with vulnerable older adults. Dr. Soniat has a strong interest in pursuing answers to practice-generated research questions. She is a featured speaker at national, international, regional, and local conferences.

Gail Spangenberg is the President and Founder of the Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL) is a national nonprofit public charity. Its broad mission is to help advance adult education and literacy in the United States – to move adult literacy out of the shadows into the mainstream of American education, as required by the nation’s 21st century needs.

David Sparkman is a Program Analyst at Water for People, a nonprofit organization which works with people and partners to develop innovative and long-lasting solutions to the water, sanitation, and hygiene problems in the developing world. David Sparkman worked for more than two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Huaraz region of Peru, an experience giving him valuable knowledge of sustainable project partnerships, design, management, and implementation in Peru. He also led a project with the University of Colorado chapter of Engineers Without Borders, working on providing basic water and sanitation systems in rural Peruvian communities. He is a Doctoral Candidate at the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities at the University of Colorado Boulder.

J. Joseph Speidel, MD, MPH, joined UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health as a professor in 2003. Dr. Speidel is a cum laude graduate of Harvard College in chemistry and physics and a graduate of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. Between 1995 and 2003, he directed the population grants program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation—a program that in 2002 provided $35 million for more than 200 active grants for population training, services, research, and advocacy. Between 1983 and 1995, Dr. Speidel served as vice president and president of Population Action International. Previously, Dr. Speidel served as chief of the Research Division and acting director of the Office of Population at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he directed USAID's $125 million annual program of population and family planning assistance. He is a recipient of the Arthur S. Flemming Award for outstanding young men in government, the Carl S. Schulz Award of the American Public Health Association for significant contributions to international population work and the Family Planning Visionary Award of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. He also was awarded the Allan Rosenfield Award for Lifetime Contributions to International Family Planning at the Reproductive Health 2009 conference. Dr. Speidel recently served on the board of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, and as founding co-chair and member of the board of the Funders Network on Population, Reproductive Health & Rights. He currently serves on the board of directors of, Ipas, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, and the Pacific Institute for Women’s Health. He is the author of more that 95 articles and chapters and editor or author of 12 books and monographs on issues relating to family planning, contraception, and population.

Harry Spence served from December 2001 until June 2007 as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, where he was responsible for the Commonwealth's child welfare program, supervising 3,400 employees, with an annual budget of $750 million. He developed the next generation child welfare practice model, which involved the teaming of social workers, a national innovation that won the Kennedy School Innovations in Government Award in 2006. He served from 1995 to 2000 as the Deputy Chancellor for Operations for the New York City Board of Education, and from 1991 to 1995 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance as the Receiver for the City of Chelsea, where his responsibilities included the rebuilding of the city school system and enactment of municipal charter reform. He has provided consulting services to major national organizations with a focus on education, and held a Lecturer appointment at the Kennedy School of Government from 1988 to 1991. Mr. Spence holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School (1974).

Mary Anne Staniszewski investigates art, media, and culture in relation to political and social perspectives.  Her work takes the form of writing, editing, collaborative curatorial practices, and, more frequently in the past, collaborative artists projects.  Her major research and writing projects form a "trilogy" of interdisciplinary investigations of modern art and culture as articulations of the modern self. Staniszewski is currently working on the third area of investigation, a multi-volume work, which is an analysis of the historical and contemporary sense of self in the United States, featuring three key themes: race; sex (gender); and life and death.The first book, Believing Is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art (Penguin USA, 1995; Korean editions, Hyunsil Cultural Studies, Hyun Sil Moon Hwayonju, 2000 and 2007) frames art as we know it--that is art for art's sake--as an "invention" of the modern era and a manifestation of the age of the individual and the liberal, democratic, capitalist state. In the second book, The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art (The MIT Press, 1998; paperback 2001; Korean translation, designLocus, 2007), installations are not only analyzed as contexts for works of art--but for those who view them. Museums are portrayed as sites for collective rituals that enhance particular notions of subjecthood--in MoMA's case, a U.S. liberal, democratic, capitalist one. The book is also a critique of the discipline of art history and the emphasis on the autonomy of the individual artwork. The Power of Display is intended to frame exhibition design as a discipline and integrate the installations of the international avant-gardes within the discourse of modern art. These installations are key to understanding what develops later in the century as multimedia and installation-base art.Staniszewski is also the Director of a "Curatorial Incubator" at Exit Art, New York, which gives young and emerging curators, artists, and scholars opportunities to produce exhibitions dealing with critical issues not being adequately addressed by the mainstream art world. The first exhibition, Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now, curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee, was presented at Exit Art from September 20 to December 6, 2008, http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/exhibition_programs/signs_of_change/index.html and The Arts Center of the Capital Region, co-sponsored by iEAR Presents! and Humanites@Rensselaer (April 5 to June 5, 2009). http://www.arts.rpi.edu/pl/iear-events/signs-change-social-movement-cultures-1960s. A catalogue is forthcoming co-published by Exit Art and AK Press. The second exhibition, Corpus Extremus (LIFE+), was curated by Boryana Rossa. This exhibition deals with issues of biotechnology and questions of life and death and was presented at Exit Art from February to April 18, 2009. http://www.exitart.org/site/pub/exhibition_programs/corpus_extremus/index.html. In addition to the Curatorial Incubator projects, Staniszewski is currently collaborating with Exit Art's directors and staff on an exhibition and symposium dealing with contemporary slavery that will be held in 2011.Staniszewski has written for a diverse range of academic, art world, and general interest publications for more than twenty-five years. For relatively recent articles that are available on-line, see: "Denial, Delusion and Curating in the U.S.: Interview with Mary Anne Staniszewski, Oslo, May 2009," Gerd Elise Morland and Heidi Bale Amundsen, OnCURATING: The Political Potential of Curatorial Practice, ISSUE 04, Office for Contemporary Art and University of Zurich, Spring 2010, http://www.on-curating.org/issue_04.html and "Intimacy, Barbarism and Delusion," for the inaugural issue, of Where We Are Now (WWAN), issue 1, Summer 2009, is available at wherewearenow.org/06/intimacy/intimacy-barbarism-and-delusion