Joan Abrahamson

Last updated
Joan Abrahamson
NationalityAmerican
Education Yale University (B.A.)
Stanford University (M.A.)
Harvard University (Ph.D.)
University of California, Berkeley (J.D.)
OccupationPresident of the Jefferson Institute
Known forPrevious positions as:
Notable work

Joan Abrahamson (born Los Angeles, California, United States) is an attorney, artist, former government appointee, and activist who is founder and president of the Jefferson Institute. She also worked in international security and economics, health, and the study of the creative process. Jonas Salk, a family friend, [1] was a mentor to Abrahamson. [2]

Contents

Career

Prior to her founding the Jefferson Institute, Abrahamson was Assistant Chief of Staff to Vice President George H. W. Bush. As a White House Fellow, she served as Special Assistant and Associate Counsel to Vice Presidents Walter Mondale and George Bush. Prior to this, she worked for the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva and for UNESCO’s Division of Human Rights and Peace in Paris. She planned and implemented the Vienna International Congress on the Teaching of Human Rights and the International Symposium on the Political Participation of Women. She served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1990 to 1994. [3]

From 1973 to 1976, Abrahamson redesigned the Fort Mason Pier Area in San Francisco, converting an army base for use as a community-based Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. Fort Mason has since been designated a model urban park by the National Park Service. She is currently involved with the transformation of the Presidio of San Francisco from an Army base to a National Park. [4]

In 1985, she founded the Jefferson Institute, a non-partisan 501c3 think tank and public policy institute. [4] The institute seeks to identify innovative private-sector approaches to remedy government policy issues, which it then works to implement, with emphasis on the future of cities.

Boards of Directors

She became the founding chair of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy in 1989, [5] then president of the Jonas Salk Foundation in 1995. [6] Abrahamson was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., on February 22, 1990 for a four-year term. [7] She also serves on the boards of: the National Geographic Society, the American Architectural Foundation, the California Institute for the Arts, and UNICEF, among others. [8] [9] [10]

She has been a consultant to many organizations, including the Harvard University Center for Urban Affairs, the Rockefeller Commission on the Arts and Education in America, the National Endowment for the Arts, the United Nations University, the Executive Office of the President, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Education

Abrahamson earned a B.A. from Yale in 1972, M.A. from Stanford in 1977, a doctorate in Learning Environments from Harvard and a J.D. from the Berkeley in 1980. [6] She also served as a law clerk for the Supreme Court of California. In June 1985, Abrahamson was named a MacArthur Prize Fellow. [11]

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Salk Institute for Biological Studies</span> Scientific research institute in San Diego, US

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute located in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, U.S. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski and Francis Crick. Construction of the research facilities began in spring of 1962. The Salk Institute consistently ranks among the top institutions in the US in terms of research output and quality in the life sciences. In 2004, the Times Higher Education Supplement ranked Salk as the world's top biomedicine research institute, and in 2009 it was ranked number one globally by ScienceWatch in the neuroscience and behavior areas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MacArthur Foundation</span> American private foundation

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 117 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.6 billion and provides approximately $260 million annually in grants and impact investments. It is based in Chicago, and in 2014 it was the 12th-largest private foundation in the United States. It has awarded more than US$7.92 billion since its first grants in 1978.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White House Fellows</span> Staff of the U.S. president

The White House Fellows program is a non-partisan federal fellowship established via executive order by President Lyndon B. Johnson in October 1964. The fellowship is one of America’s most prestigious programs for leadership and public service, offering exceptional Americans first-hand experience working at the highest levels of the federal government. The fellowship was founded based upon a suggestion from John W. Gardner, then the president of Carnegie Corporation and later the sixth secretary of health, education, and welfare.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patricia Churchland</span> Canadian-American analytic philosopher

Patricia Smith Churchland is a Canadian-American analytic philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has taught since 1984. She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989. She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, Moscow State University. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and Somerville College, Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984 and is married to the philosopher Paul Churchland. Larissa MacFarquhar, writing for The New Yorker, observed of the philosophical couple that: "Their work is so similar that they are sometimes discussed, in journals and books, as one person."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Beschloss</span> American historian and author

Michael Richard Beschloss is an American historian specializing in the United States presidency. He is the author of nine books on the presidency.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dov S. Zakheim</span> United States Department of Defense official

Dov S. Zakheim is an American businessman, writer, and former official of the United States government. In the Reagan administration, he held various Department of Defense positions. In 2000, Zakheim was a member of "The Vulcans", a group of foreign policy advisors assisting George W. Bush's presidential campaign. From 2001 to 2004 he was Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer of the Department of Defense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Blackburn</span> Australian-born American biological researcher

Elizabeth Helen Blackburn, is an Australian-American Nobel laureate who is the former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1984, Blackburn co-discovered telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes the telomere, with Carol W. Greider. For this work, she was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, sharing it with Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak, becoming the first Australian woman Nobel laureate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James C. Miller III</span> American politician

James Clifford Miller III is an American economist and former government official who served as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) between 1981 and 1985 and as Budget Director for President Ronald Reagan between 1985 and 1988. Miller was the first member of the FTC with a background as a career economist, as opposed to a legal background as is common.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology</span> White House advisory board

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a council, chartered in each administration with a broad mandate to advise the president of the United States on science and technology. The current PCAST was established by Executive Order 13226 on September 30, 2001, by George W. Bush, was re-chartered by Barack Obama's April 21, 2010, Executive Order 13539, by Donald Trump's October 22, 2019, Executive Order 13895, and by Joe Biden's February 1, 2021, Executive Order 14007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gerald Joyce</span>

Gerald Francis "Jerry" Joyce is president and professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and was previously the director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation. He is best known for his work on in vitro evolution, for the discovery of the first DNA enzyme (deoxyribozyme), for his work in discovering potential RNA world ribozymes, and more in general for his work on the origin of life.

Raven Chacon is a Diné composer, musician and artist. Born in Fort Defiance, Arizona within the Navajo Nation, Chacon became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music, for his Voiceless Mass in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kay Coles James</span> American public official (born 1949)

Kay Coles James is an American public official who served as secretary of the Commonwealth of Virginia from January 2022 to August 2023, and as the director for the United States Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. Previous to the OPM appointment, she served as Virginia secretary of health and human resources under then-Governor George Allen and was the dean of Regent University's government school. She is the president and founder of the Gloucester Institute, a leadership training center for young African Americans.

The Santa Monica College of Design, Art and Architecture existed in Santa Monica, California from 1990 until 2000. The director of the school was Joan Abrahamson who is a MacArthur Fellow and the founder and president of the Jefferson Institute. The school hosted an all professional faculty of working artists, designers and architects, among them Alison Saar, Laddie John Dill, George Herms, Jill Giegerich, Lisa Adams, Peter Alexander, Robert Wilhite and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annette Gordon-Reed</span> American historian

Annette Gordon-Reed is an American historian and law professor. She is currently the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University and a professor of history in the university's Faculty of Arts & Sciences. She is formerly the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Gordon-Reed is noted for changing scholarship on Thomas Jefferson regarding his relationship with Sally Hemings and her children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Design Futures Council</span>

The Design Futures Council is an interdisciplinary network of design, product, and construction leaders exploring global trends, challenges, and opportunities to advance innovation and shape the future of the industry and environment. Members include architecture and design firms, building product manufacturers, service providers, and forward-thinking AEC firms of all sizes that take an active interest in their future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonas Salk</span> American inventor of the polio vaccine (1914–1995)

Jonas Edward Salk was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York and New York University School of Medicine.

Suresh V. Shenoy is an Indian-American engineer, senior business executive and philanthropist.

Joyce J. Scott is an African-American artist, sculptor, quilter, performance artist, installation artist, print-maker, lecturer and educator. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016, and a Smithsonian Visionary Artist in 2019, Scott is best known for her figurative sculptures and jewelry using free form, off-loom beadweaving techniques, similar to a peyote stitch. Each piece is often constructed using thousands of glass seed beads or pony beads, and sometimes other found objects or materials such as glass, quilting and leather. In 2018, she was hailed for working in new medium — a mixture of soil, clay, straw, and cement — for a sculpture meant to disintegrate and return to the earth. Scott is influenced by a variety of diverse cultures, including Native American and African traditions, Mexican, Czech, and Russian beadwork, illustration and comic books, and pop culture.

Cecilia Ann Conrad is the CEO of Lever for Change, emeritus professor of economics at Pomona College, and a senior advisor to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She formerly served as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Pomona College and previously oversaw the foundation's MacArthur Fellows and 100&Change programs as managing director. Her research focuses on the effects of race and gender on economic status.

Charles Henry Atherton, FAIA, was an American architect and former secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1960 to 2004.

References

  1. "Death of Child Sparks 'Grieving Album'". voanews.com. Voice of America. 29 October 2009. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  2. Kollman, Robin Smith (21 January 2003). "Lawyer gets through her grief with songwriting". chicagotribune.com. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 8 August 2022.
  3. Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p. 539.
  4. 1 2 Riley, John (3 November 1985). "In Perfect Balance : Joan Abrahamson's Remarkable Life, So Far". lattices.com. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 6 August 2022.
  5. Lawrence, Jill (9 March 1989). "Barbara Bush Begins Family Literacy Foundation". Associated Press. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
  6. 1 2 "Joan Abrahamson". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 25 January 2022.
  7. Administration of George Bush, 1990, Book 1. Washington, DC: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration. 1991. p. 901.
  8. "CalArts Board of Trustees | REDCAT". Archived from the original on April 20, 2010. Retrieved April 1, 2010.
  9. "Joan Abrahamson: Executive Profile & Biography - Businessweek". businessweek.com. Retrieved 24 June 2016.[ dead link ]
  10. "National Geographic Society". nationalgeographic.com. Archived from the original on November 20, 2004. Retrieved 24 June 2016.
  11. "The MacArthur Truffle Hunt", The New York Times, Anne Matthews, June 7, 1992