Ms. Virginia Gray Henry-Blakemore

Ms. Virginia Gray Henry–Blakemore is the director of the interfaith publishing houses Fons Vitae and Quinta Essentia, a writer and video producer under contract with the Book Foundation, U.S. director of photography and children’s book publisher Dar Nun, and co-founder and trustee of the Islamic Texts Society of Cambridge, England.  She is an accomplished lecturer of art history, world religions, and film-making who has taught at Dalton and Fordham University, the Cairo American College, Cambridge University, and Centre College.  She is a frequent speaker at Spalding University, the Abbey of Gethsemani, and other noteworthy venues, such as the 1995 Conference of World Spiritual Art in Tehran.  She is also a founding member of the Thomas Merton Center Foundation, coordinated the 1994 visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Louisville, worked in Bosnian refugee camps in 1993, has organized a number of conferences focused on the work of Thomas Merton at Bellarmine University, and is a leader in the Interfaith Paths to Peace Institute and the Cathedral Heritage Foundation.  Ms. Henry received her B.A. at Sarah Lawrence College, studied at the American and al-Azhar University in Cairo, earned her M.A. in Education at the University of Michigan, served as research fellow at Cambridge University from 1983-1990, and is scheduled to receive her Ph.D. from Canterbury, Kent in 2008.

Mr. Richard Lewis

Mr. Richard Lewis is a retired executive from General Electric Company. Mr Lewis, a graduate of Northwestern University, had 36 years of experience with General Electric. During retirement Mr. Lewis continues to serve as an arbitrator for the National Association of Security Dealers. In addition, he works with local organizations in the resettlement of immigrants to the Louisville area. Mr. Lewis is active in organizations promoting a better understanding of international issues and their effect on the United States. Mr. Lewis and his wife Connie are strong supporters of Latin American studies at the University of Louisville.

Hon. Romano Mazzoli

Romano L. Mazzoli, former Third District Congressman, serves as the president of the University of Louisville Alumni Association.  He also presently serves the university by sitting on the Board of Overseers. Mazzoli earned his baccalaureate degree in business administration at the University of Notre Dame in 1954 and served in the U.S. Army before he began attending U of L School of Law. He served in the House of Representatives for 24 years before returning to Louisville to practice law with the firm of Stites and Harbison. He was recognized in 1994 by the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law as their Alumni Fellow. Since assuming the mantle of leadership of the Alumni Association, Mazzoli has presided over the Golden Alumni Reunion Luncheon, the Alumni Leadership Weekend, and the Homecoming 1997 activities. He also recently represented the interests of the alumni constituency in the search for a new athletic director.

Judge Angela McCormick Bisig

Angela McCormick Bisig has been Jefferson District Court Judge from January 2002 to the present. Her duties include civil and criminal dockets involving a wide variety of issues, from juvenile crime to felonies, probate and ecology. Before her election as District Court Judge, she was a prosecutor with the Jefferson County Attorney's Office (1995-2002), where she specialized in the prosecution of domestic violence and sex offence cases. Prior to her criminal practice, Judge Bisig was an associate attorney
with Brown, Todd & Heyburn (1990-1992) and then with Greenebaum Doll & McDonald (1992-1995). In her civil practice, Angela worked in general business litigation, handled insurance defense work, products liability, class action lawsuits, as well as mass disaster litigation. From 1988 to 1990 she served as Law Clerk for Division Eight of the Jefferson Circuit Court. In 2003 Judge Bisig was listed in Business First as a "40 under 40" honoree. Judge Angela McCormick Bisig is a graduate of the University of Louisville Department of Political Science (BA with Honors, 1987) and the Brandeis School of Law (JD, 1990). She served on the University's Board of Trustees from 2003 to 2005.

Dr. James Clay Moltz

Dr. James Clay Moltz is Deputy Director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and Professor of International Policy Studies, both at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. From 1998-2003, he directed the Newly Independent States Nonproliferation Program at CNS. He is a specialist in U.S. and Russian nuclear issues, U.S. space weapons/missile defense policies, nuclear submarines, and Northeast Asian proliferation problems. From 1993-98 he was the Founding Editor of The Nonproliferation Review and from 1996-2000 also of the web-based DPRK Report (on North Korean issues). Dr. Moltz is co-author of the book Nuclear Weapons and Nonproliferation (ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2002) and co-editor of Preventing Nuclear Meltdown: Managing Decentralization of Russia's Nuclear Complex (Ashgate, 2004) and The North Korean Nuclear Program: Security, Strategy and New Perspectives from Russia (Routledge, 2000). He has authored numerous articles in such journals as Arms Control Today, Asian Survey, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Journal of East Asian Studies, and World Politics. His Op-Eds have appeared in The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. Dr. Moltz received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley. He also holds an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies and a B.A. in International Relations (with Distinction) from Stanford University.  Dr. Moltz worked previously as a staff member in the U.S. Senate and held prior academic positions at Duke University and the University of California at San Diego. He has served as a consultant to the U.S. Departments of Energy (National Nuclear Security Administration) and Defense (Office of Net Assessment). Recently, he has lectured on U.S. aircraft carriers and other ships in the Pacific as part of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School's Regional Security Education Program.

Dr. Blair A. Ruble

Dr. Blair A. Ruble is Director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, a leading organization for the study of Russia and the former communist states. Dr. Ruble also serves as Co-Coordinator for Comparative Urban Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center. A native of New York, Dr. Ruble worked previously at the Social Science Research Council in New York City and the National Council for Soviet and East European Research in Washington, D.C. Dr. Ruble received his MA and PhD degrees in Political Science from the University of Toronto (1973, 1977), and an AB degree with Highest Honors in Political
Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1971). He has written a number of books, including Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City (1990, Money Sings: The Politics of Urban Space in Post-Soviet Yaroslavl (1995), and Second Metropolis: The Politics of Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age: Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka (2001). His most recent edited works are Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities (2003); Fragmented Space in the Russian Federation (2002); Urban Governance around the World (2001); Preparing for the Urban Future; Global Pressures and Local Forces (1996), and Russian Housing in the Modern Age (1993). Dr. Ruble's articles have appeared in the American publications Urban Anthropology and Journal of Urban History, as well as in France's Annales, Economies, Societies, Civilisations, Japan's Ima Naze Toshika, Britain's Planning Perspectives and Urban Studies, Russia's Chelovek, Arkhitekton, Moskovskii zhurnal, Zvezda, and the Soviet-era Leningradskaia panorama. In addition, Dr. Ruble has published in the opinion pages of The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. His media appearances include ABC Evening News, BBC International News, CBC Morning News, CBS Evening News, NBC's Today Show, Russian NTV's news magazine "Itogi," Japanese NHK's morning news on television, as well as The Larry King Show, The Charlie Rose Show, and several Voice of America broadcasts on radio. Dr. Ruble has lectured widely and has taught at The George Washington University (1986). He also has been a scholar-in-residence at the Juridical Faculty of Leningrad State University (1974-75), the Soviet Academy of Sciences (1979, 1981, 1984, 1986), the Laboratoire de Geographie at the University of Paris (Nanterre, 2001-02), and the Law Faculty of Kyoto University (1996, 2002). Dr. Ruble's honors and commendations include election to the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society at the University of North Carolina (1971), selection as Cultural Correspondent of the Japan Foundation (1989-90), and receipt of the United States Vice-President's Hammer Award for Reinventing Government (1999), as well as numerous academic grants.

Ms. Jill Cooper

Ms. Jill Cooper is Vice President for Personal Banking at Stockyards Bank, She has worked with Citibank in New York and Brussels, with PNC BANK, and Stock Yards Bank in International,  Retail, and Private Banking. Ms. Cooper holds a BA in French from the University of Louisville, and has done graduate work in Education (University of the Americas in Mexico City and Boston College Program in Brasilia, Brazil), Old Testament Studies (Sydney University in Australia) and the MBA program at Bellarmine University.  She has also studied Graphology in London. Ms. Cooper has edited the monthly publications of the American Women's Clubs in Brussels and Paris, taught Economics and European History in American and British schools in Brazil, and directed the largest art show in Brazil. She speak several languages and has a particular interest in art, architecture and world religions. She is a member of the Fons Vitae Board.

Mr. Tom Payette

President of Tom Payette Auto Center. Mr. Payette graduated from General Motors Institute with a BIE in 1962, spent several years with Cadillac Motor Car Division of GM as a field representative, and possesses over 50 yrs of experience in the automotive industry. In 1972 Tom bought his first Buick dealership in Elmira NY and moved to Louisville in 1980 to purchase the Koster-Swope Buick/Jaguar dealership. From 1980 to 2002 he owned the Tom Payette automotive dealerships in Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. Payette is currently a member of the University of Louisville Board of Overseers. He is married to Kathleen Reno and has three children and 5 grandchildren in Louisville. His daughter Patricia is the Executive Director of the U of L "Ideas to Action" program in the Delphi Center. Mr. Payette's retirement consists of active grand parenting, flying his airplane and playing bridge.