Speaker Bios

Ann Hackler is the Executive Director and cofounder of the Institute for the Musical Arts (IMA), a nonprofit teaching, performing and recording facility dedicated to the support of women and girls in the field of music and music-related business. Hackler came to the founding of IMA from her position as  Co-ordinator of the Hampshire College Women’s Center, a position she held for six years upon graduating from the college. As part of IMA’s work to support women in music it offers “Rockin’ the Summer” residential performance and recording  programs for girls and young women ages 9-22.

Emily Ryan graduated from Hampshire in 2011, where she studied public health and medical ethics. In 2009, Emily began designing a portable gynecological examination table which became the basis for her Division III. Emily continues to oversee the project, which is moving toward more wide-scale fundraising and production. Interest in medicine, health disparities, and women’s health has led Emily to involvement and leadership within community organizations including the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program at Hampshire, Vermont Access to Reproductive Freedom (Vermont’s abortion fund), and Spectrum Youth and Family Services and the RU12? Community Center, both in Burlington, Vermont. She completed her post-baccalaureate pre-medical studies at the University of Vermont in 2013 and is currently applying to medical school.

Samuel I. Bloom is a Division I undergraduate student at Hampshire College. He focuses his studies in international social entrepreneurship, innovative design and technology, and acting for stage and film. As an active social entrepreneur and performing artist, Samuel has learned first hand the testing nature of “misadventures,” and the fruitful paths they often lead to.

Thomas H. Stoner, Jr. is a graduate of Hampshire College and the London School of Economics, both in the 1980s. Over the past 30 years, Mr. Stoner has run three companies in the clean technology space. These include one of the original CleanTech venture funds backed by international development banks, such as the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), part of the Inter-American Development Bank headquartered in Washington, D.C. Two of the companies were publicly traded: Econergy International PLC, traded on the London AIM market; and Evergreen Energy, traded on the NYSE Arca Exchange. Econergy was a renewable energy independent power producer (IPP) and Evergreen was a clean coal technology company. He is an expert in energy systems and their implementation, having raised more than $300 million for global clean energy initiatives.

Aaron Cantrell designs and builds physical systems through a variety of methods and fabrication techniques. He is a recent Hampshire grad and founder of Co Fab Design, a multidisciplinary product and machine design company based out of the Pioneer Valley. Aaron continues to experiment with new mediums and processes while striving to create projects that have a meaningful impact on people and our environment. He is currently in the process of setting up a collaborative studio and shop space with a group of designers, artists, and engineers in Holyoke, MA. He enjoys riding bikes, working with his hands, and furthering his understanding of how things work.

Sofía Gallisá Muriente is a Puerto Rican multimedia artist turned relief worker, an active participant in the Occupy Wall Street movement and a founding editor of IndigNación, OWS’s only Spanish language publication. She is engaged with Occupy Sandy relief operations in the Rockaways as one of the coordinators at YANA (You Are Never Alone) a community center dedicated to sustainable job training that was devastated in the storm and re-emerged as an important relief hub. She’s also one of the founding members of Restore the Rock, a people-powered relief organization dedicated to long-term sustainable recovery in the Rockaways.

Julie Pedtke questions the relevance of architecture as she becomes more engaged in the field and more aware of the diverse challenges facing communities here in the US and abroad. Throughout her time at Hampshire, Julie has worked for nonprofits of varying shapes and sizes including Arcosanti in Arizona, Architecture for Humanity in San Francisco, TECHO in Santiago, Chile, the International Design Clinic in La Paz, Bolivia, and Nuestras Raíces in Holyoke, MA. She is now a Division III student creating a participatory design ethnography with residents of Holyoke, MA to see if a dose of critical social theory, qualitative research, and grounded fieldwork can help the practice of architecture better serve community needs.

Gaines Parker is a Division III Hampshire Student and Queer Studies concentrator. He has spent the past two summers working in San Francisco with TRANS:THRIVE, an HIV prevention organization, and at Eros: The Center For Safe Sex. His work explores questions of the body, technology, access, and labor in the presence of sexuality in social networks.

Katie Coupe graduated from Hampshire in 2012 and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. For the past three years Katie has worked with a team of students, faculty, and healthcare professionals to design and test portable gynecological examination table prototypes. She enjoys fostering and participating in collaborative group work environments. She is a founding member of Co-cycle and has since been involved in the planning, logistics, and coast-to-coast biking of the first national bicycle tour of cooperatives.

Donna Cohn has worked with assistive technology and universal design over the past 25 years, first designing customized devices with the Boston Center for Independent Living, and later working as a product designer for AliMed, a medical product manufacturing and distribution company. She is a visiting assistant professor of applied design at Hampshire College where her course offerings present applied design topics in the context of social and environmental issues. She received a B.S. from the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University, and a Master of Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her other interests include appropriate technology, kinetic sculpture, gardening, and collecting useful things from dumpsters.