Mark Lawson, Ph.D., is Professor in Residence in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. He earned his BS in Microbiology from San Diego State University and his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences (Virology) at UC Irvine. He undertook postdoctoral training at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies and UC San Diego. He was both a Ford Foundation and UC President’s Postdoctoral fellow. As a Research Scientist, he developed steroid hormone receptor modulators prior to joining the UC San Diego faculty in 2000. He is Co-Director of the NIH-funded UCSD-MARC program supporting undergraduate students pursuing careers in biomedical sciences. Since 1996, he has served on multiple peer review panels for the National Institutes of Health and as a principal investigator on multiple research and training. He served on the Minority Affairs and Training and Career Development Core Committee for The Endocrine Society, and on the Oversight Board and Planning Committee for the NIH/NIDDK Network of Minority Health Research Investigators. He also serves as Chair of the Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee and was the inaugural Faculty Director of Postdoctoral Training and Education at UC San Diego from 2015 to 2020. Since 2015 he has been the Director of the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

If elected, his goals as president would be 1) to establish a consistent schedule for annual meetings to provide stability and develop appropriate programming for members, 2) to solidify our relationship with outside partners such as the University of California and other foundations or funding agencies which will facilitate our independent growth, and 3) to review our current structure and provide recommendations for modification of our membership requirements.

An educator for over 37 years, Valerie H. Hunt has mentored hundreds of scholars, community cultural custodians, activists and public (policy) service professionals. This includes a special devotion to mentoring early-career Fordies. She was in the room when we Senior Fordies decided to forge ahead in becoming an independent society. Trained as a policy analyst, her scholarship and public-facing national/international work is devoted to addressing racism and citizenship, health inequities, the politics of being and belonging, Black Diasporic Political Cultures and Histories, and social movements for collective liberation. She is the co-founder and President of the Center for Equitable Policy in a Changing World. Valerie works closely with “Le Sens de l’Elite Africaine” (SEA) of Ouidah City, Benin Republic (Danxome), and she is a co-founder of Path to the Root, an African Diaspora cultural exchange program. Valerie earned her bachelor’s and master’s degree in international studies/Middle East Affairs and her doctorate in Political Science/Public Policy.

Valerie is currently professor in the Applied Behavioral Science Program at Seattle Central College, she served as the college’s first Associate Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and she helped create the State Commission of Diversity and Equity Officers in the State of Washington. She wants 1) to help Fordies become more increasingly intentional in supporting our community, 2) to seek out and find our sibling Fordies and bring them into the fold, and 3) to build out our support and mentoring of early-career Fordies who are the future of our Society and our nation.

Keivan Stassun holds the Stevenson chair in Astrophysics at Vanderbilt University, where he was previously the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, a Cottrell Scholar award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, an HHMI Professor award from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. An elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Astronomical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi, and an elected Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, his research on stars and exoplanets has appeared in more than 600 peer-reviewed journal articles, with an emphasis on developing new data-driven methods for making precise measurements of the fundamental physical properties of stars and planets. From 2004 to 2015, he served as founding director of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-PhD Bridge Program, which has become one of the nation’s top producers of PhDs to underrepresented minorities in the physical sciences. He has served on NSF’s Committee for Equal Opportunity in Science and Engineering, chaired the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on Minorities, is a recipient of the American Physical Society’s Nicholson Medal for Human Outreach, and has been named Mentor of the Year by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Stassun is founding director of the Frist Center for Autism & Innovation in Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering. In 2023, Stassun was appointed to a six-year term on the National Science Board by President Joseph R. Biden, and in 2024 was named a MacArthur Genius Fellow.

Mark Broomfield, PhD, MFA, Associate Professor of English, Founder and Director of Performance as Social Change at SUNY Geneseo, is a London-born award-winning scholar, artist and performer of Jamaican heritage. I am 2006 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship recipient. As a Ford Fellow, I have benefited from the best of our community of scholars whose mentoring, nurturance, advice, and institutional knowledge represent those performing at the highest levels in their respective fields. The Ford Fellow community has played an indispensable role in shaping and supporting my career. I would be honored to serve in the capacity of Secretary for the Society of Senior Ford Fellows Board and contribute to its ongoing mission and values.

Kimberly Blockett earned her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and is currently Chair and Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Delaware. She is a literary historian who writes about cultural geography, travel, and recovering the lives and labors of 19^th-century Black women creatives. Blockett’s archival work was supported by the Ford Foundation, Harvard Divinity School, Smithsonian, and the NEH. Her publications include Race, Religion and Rebellion in the Travels of Zilpha Elaw (Duke UP, forthcoming), a scholarly edition of the Memoirs of Zilpha Elaw (West Virginia UP Regenerations series, 2021), the edited volume Mapping Black Women’s Geographies (Routledge 2024), and chapters/articles in Cambridge History of African American Literature, MLA Approaches to Teaching Hurston, 19^th-century American Women Writers and Theologies of the Afterlife, MELUS, African American Review, a/b: Autobiography Studies, and Legacy. Blockett has also served as a certified professional coach for the National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development since 2016. Blockett, an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society, also serves on the editorial board of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and on the Board of the Society of Senior Ford Fellows.