Theme: Cosmopolitan

As rational, thinking human beings, we have a moral obligation to those around us. Not just our friends and family, but those around the nation, and the world. Think of this theme as a series of concentric circles with you at the center. We are citizens of not only our local circle, but our regional, societal, and global circles as well. The globalization of our world binds us in more ways than ever before, we must act to preserve our global community. This year’s theme is dedicated to those ideas that have the capacity to transcend all facets of societies.

Corbett Auditorium
339 Calhoun Street
Cincinnati, Ohio, 45221
United States

Brian Eiler

Graduate Research Assistant

Brian Eiler is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati, where he also received a Bachelor and a Masters degree, both in Psychology. Brian’s research combines several areas of behavioral science (social, cognitive, and ecological) with other disciplines (physics, complexity, and biology), in his search to discover the principles that underlie the social behavior humans display. Brian’s goal is to ground the theory and description of behavior in natural law—to understand why we behave the way we do, in terms of universal principles that transcend spatial and temporal scale.

Christina Brown

Non-Profit Young Professional

Christina D. Brown is a self-described freedom fighter from Columbus, Ohio. She serves in a full-time role with the Cincinnati Human Relations Commis-sion, utilizing community engagement to increase understanding across identities. Brown is best known for her for social justice activism, lecturing and organizing for social justice causes and racial equity. Her leadership also extends to non profit boards, including the Martin Luther King Coalition, Cincinnati Young Black Professionals, and Affordable Housing Advocates, among others. You can find her blog at www.Christinathinks.com.

Christine O'Dea

Family Medicine Physician

Christine O’Dea, MD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the UC College of Medicine. After spending five years in rural family practice in Wisconsin, she moved with her family to rural Honduras, where she spent two years as a volunteer family physician with the nongovernmental organization Shoulder to Shoulder. Christy returned from Honduras to join the faculty at UC, and, additionally, is the medical director at Crossroad Health Center and a member of the Latino Health Collaborative.

David Coleman

The Dating Doctor

David Coleman, known worldwide as “The Dating Doctor,” is a speaker, author, and media personality. He has been honored 14 times as the National Speaker of the Year and has spoken live to over 2.5 million people, in addition to millions more through radio, television, internet and print. David is filled with strategies to help relationships and leadership, and approaches his topics humorously and candidly. His examinations of the complexities surrounding dating, relationships, romance and sex are known worldwide, and even earned him a National Service Citation from President George H.W. Bush.

Deepika Andavarapu

Doctoral Candidate

Deepika Andavarapu is a doctoral candidate in the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. She hails from Visakhapat-nam, India, where she observed the ingenuity and adaptability of the Pedda-jalaripeta slum dwellers to survive multiple challenges. Deep-ika is a certified planner and is a board member of URB-net (Urban Resilience Young Researchers network). She is currently writing a book chapter and is training for her first marathon.

E. James Barnett

Partner and Human Resource Consultant

James Barnett is a founding partner at Azure Coaching and Consulting, LLC, a firm dedicated to facilitating performance in the competitive arena of today’s educational landscape. Leveraging diverse professional experiences and graduate level training in applied psychology, James partners with individuals and organizations to provide research-based solutions to academic and organizational challenges. Additionally, he helped cultivate the We Speak Math initiative and was nominated in 2014 for CLRA’s Peer Mentor of the Year award for his work with at-risk student populations.

Frank Russell

Architect and Director of the UC DAAP Community Design Center and the UC Niehoff Urban Studio

Frank Russell is the Director of the UC Community Design Center and the Niehoff Urban Studio, an Instructor in Urban Design, and a Registered Architect and Urban Designer with a Harvard degree. He has engaged with the Cincinnati community since 1990 through the Community Design Center to address their most pressing issues. Recognizing the need to bring that same engagement to the classroom, in 2002 he started the Niehoff Urban Studio, which promotes the interdisciplinary collaboration of students and faculty with community stakeholders in a shared problem solving process.

Frank Wood

Founder and CEO of Thriving with Stress

Dr. Frank Wood is the Founder and CEO of Thriving with Stress, an innova-tive cutting-edge training course designed to manage and mitigate stress in the workplace, school and home. An invited speaker, author, trainer and innovative thinker on stress, Dr. Frank has a PhD in Clinical Psychology. His broad experience has resulted in a deep understanding on the way that stress intersects with resilience and burnout. He recently authored his first book Thriving with Stress and is currently developing the first digital format of his training Thriving with Stress: Your Resilient Divorce.

James Canfield

Assistant Professor of Social Work

Dr. James P. Canfield, assistant professor at the UC School of Social Work, is an expert on child homelessness, poverty and school social work. He has authored the only book on how to work with homeless children and youth, School-based Practice with Children and Youth Experiencing Homelessness, and he has published numerous articles on the impact of poverty and homelessness on childhood outcomes. His accolades include developing a federal policy evaluation scale used in ten states and the 2013 SAGE/Council on Social Work Innovative Teaching Award.

Puneet Sharma

University of Cincinnati Medical Student

Puneet received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern Univer-sity and is now a second-year student at UC College of Medicine. He spent many years studying and teaching the Arabic language and Middle Eastern geopolitics under a State Department grant. He hopes to combine his interests in science and politics to create a unique dialogue about the challenges of creating a sense of identity in a globalized society. In his abundant free time from medical school, he enjoys playing basketball, watching movies, and everything Cleveland.

Rajiv Satyal

Comedian/Host/Speaker

Rajiv Satyal is a Cincinnati-born, Los Angeles-based comedian, host, and speaker. His TV-clean act has made him one of the most versatile per-formers working today. Some of his most interesting claims-to-fame include opening for the Indian Prime Minister, a viral video viewed over 50 million times, hosting David Chappelle’s very first show after his much-publicized hiatus, co-creating a tour that mad it into the U.S. Congressional Record, and is even the mastermind behind the name of UC’s online radio station, Bearcast. Follow him on Twitter at @funnyindian.

Sean Connell

Founder and Principal Member, The Connell Group

After working in a variety of positions, including stints at Procter & Gamble, the Peace Corps, and a short time in politics, University of Cincinnati alumnus Sean Connell founded the Connell Group in 2000, a market research and brand strategy consultancy dedicated to integrating research and marketing at a time when most companies treated them as different functions. The Connell Group focuses primarily on health care and business-to-business clients, with an emphasis on complex business and research questions.