Serving our country / on the front lines: Col. Jack Jacobs, Dr. Lisa Goddard, Dr. Allen Keller

Thursday, April 26, 2018  from 6pm to 9:30pm
The Madison Hotel, Morristown, NJ (directions)
Seats are $250 each

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Lisa Goddard, PhD. Columbia University – Director & Senior Research Scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI); Global expert on El Niño, La Niña & near-term climate change.

Beginning in graduate school with the study of El Niño, Goddard’s keen interest in math and science led her to research climate variability and prediction. In the mid-1990s, she joined the IRI, when El Niño prediction was very new and climate prediction was experimental. The potential to make that science meaningful to real-world decisions and vulnerable populations was a tremendous motivation, and is what keeps her at IRI. Since then, year-to-year climate prediction has become a regular part of ‘Climate Services,’ and the expressed needs of society have expanded to both shorter and longer timescales, motivating more research. For the last 10 years, Lisa has led IRI’s research efforts on decadal timescales. In 2012, she became IRI’s first woman director, and the youngest director of any Columbia University centers. A globally recognized expert on El Niño and La Niña, decadal prediction and near-term climate change, Goddard serves on multiple national and international scientific advisory panels, co-chairs CLIVAR (advising/coordinating international research on climate and the oceans) and developed PACE (Postdocs Applying Climate Expertise), a national post-doctoral program that explicitly links recent climate PhDs with decision-making institutions. Goddard holds a PhD in atmospheric and oceanic sciences (Princeton) and a BA in physics (University of California at Berkeley).

 

Colonel Jack Jacobs (Retired). Medal of Honor recipient for service in Vietnam; NBC News military analyst
Recipient of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award, for gallantry “above and beyond the call of duty” during his service in Vietnam, Col. Jacobs also earned three Bronze Stars, two Silver Stars, among multiple other military honors. With Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Rutgers, he entered the U.S. Army in 1966 and retired in 1987. Jacobs was a founder of AutoFinance Group Inc, one of the firms to pioneer the securitization of debt instruments. He was also a Managing Director of Bankers Trust, where he ran foreign exchange options worldwide and was a partner in the institutional hedge fund business, raising more than $2 billion. Jacobs is a principal of The Fitzroy Group, a firm specializing in the development of residential real estate in London and investing for its own account and in joint ventures with other institutions. He holds the Melcher Chair of Humanities and Public Affairs at the US Military Academy (West Point) and also taught at the National War College. An on-air analyst for MSNBC and NBC News, Jacobs co-authored the Colby Award–winning memoir, If Not Now, When? (Penguin, 2010) and published his second nonfiction work, Basic (St. Martin’s Press) in 2012. He and his wife have three grown children.

Allen Keller, MD. NYU School of Medicine – Associate Professor of Medicine & Director of Center for Health and Human Rights; Director – Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture
Whether caring for a torture survivor, advocating for more humane immigration policies, or addressing a bioethical dilemma, Keller does so with boundless passion and compassion. An international expert in the documentation, evaluation and treatment of victims of torture and other human rights abuses, he has conducted ground-breaking research and advocacy – domestically and internationally – on a variety of health and human rights concerns including the medical/ social consequences of landmines, prisoner access to healthcare, effective care for victims of human rights abuses and medical ethics.  Keller co-chairs the Bellevue Hospital Bioethics Committee and teaches seminars on health and human rights.  Among the numerous awards for his work are the Barbara Chester Award from the Hopi Foundation, the Eclipse Award from the Center for Victims of Torture, The Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award from the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and The Humanism in Medicine Award from NYU School of Medicine. The love of his life, Keller’s wife Suzy, is Director of the Rachel Coalition, an attorney and leading advocate for domestic violence victims. When not trying to heal the world, they spend time with their daughter, Rachel (20), a rising improvisation comedy writer/performer and their son, Jake (17), a passionate social activist and future entrepreneur.