The Leadership Institute at Harvard College

Jennifer Choi is currently pursuing a dual degree at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as a Rubenstein Fellow. Jennifer graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005, where she was elected to four consecutive terms on the Undergraduate Assembly (UA), and served as Executive Treasurer managing a $1.4 million student activities budget.

After Penn, she went to work in New York as an Analyst and Assistant Vice President in the Higher Education and Not-for-Profit Public Finance Group at Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers. At Barclays and Lehman, she helped advise the leading institutions of higher education and world-renown cultural institutions in the US. Before Lehman, Jennifer worked as a management consultant at Marakon Associates.

While in New York, Jennifer was an active member in the Korean American community in New York. She served as Co-Fund Distribution Manager for the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF) a non-profit organization raising over $800,000 in funds to help other social service organizations in the greater New York area, and also was selected to serve as Secretary on the KACF Board of Directors. Most recently, Jennifer was elected to serve on the Harvard Graduate Council, the student government for all 11 Harvard graduate schools.

In her spare time Jennifer enjoys photography, tennis, scuba diving, traveling, fishing in Alaska where she was born and raised, and building awareness for Prader-WIlli Syndrome.

Originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Jake Cusack graduated magna cum laude from the University of Notre Dame’s Honors Program in 2004, where he majored in history. At Notre Dame, Cusack commanded the 110 midshipmen of the Naval ROTC program, was a member of the boxing team, and studied abroad in the Czech Republic and Australia. Subsequent to graduation, he entered the Marine Corps, and was the honor graduate of 188 Marine Officers from the six-month Basic Officer’s Course.

Cusack served as a Scout/Sniper Platoon Commander and Intelligence Officer in the Fallujah area of Iraq during 2005-06, and led in the capture of the kidnappers of American hostage Jill Carroll. He returned to Iraq in 2007-08 to serve as the senior intelligence advisor for the Iraqi border forces responsible for securing the Syrian, Jordanian, and Saudi Arabian borders. His military decorations include the Bronze Star, Navy Commendation Medal, and Combat Action Ribbon.

Cusack is currently a joint degree candidate pursuing an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School. He is a private pilot, rescue scuba diver, and has traveled independently to over 35 countries. He enjoys snowboarding, mountain biking, wakeboarding, and football.

Jonathan Doochin graduated Harvard College with a joint degree in psychology and economics. Before leaving college, Doochin had started and ran a motivational speaking program centered around children with learning disabilities, an international Ferrari brokerage, an office supply company and recycling company that focused on fundraising for not-for-profit, and worked to help found the Leadership Institute at Harvard College. After college, Doochin spent two years at McKinsey & Company consulting businesses on strategy. After McKinsey, Doochin moved to Clark Realty Capital where he was responsible for running a financial services company and co-founded and running a venture capital group as well as an energy services company focused on renewable generation and energy efficiency. In his spare time, he taught Positive Psychology at Harvard to 80 students. Currently, Doochin attends Harvard Business School where he has co-founded the Sales Club, worked with USAID to help change renewable energy policy Moroccan, and worked as a financial and energy consultant. Doochin enjoys rock climbing, running, skiing, spelunking, and the outdoors.

Jonathan currently serves LIHC as the Chairman of the Board of Advisors.

Anne Healy is currently in her second year of graduate school, pursuing a dual degree at Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School in the Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) program, where she is a Zuckerman Fellow. She is passionate about international development and international human rights law broadly, and more specifically, access to justice, governance, public sector reform, and children’s and women’s rights in developing and conflict-affected countries.

Prior to returning to school, Anne worked for two years in rural Kenya with the MIT Poverty Action Lab, managing randomized evaluations of development & interventions. She also spent a year in Washington, DC with ChildFund International, a child-focused international NGO, working on advocacy and communications, as well as a year in Tanzania working with several community-based organizations supporting vulnerable children and CARE International. Most recently, she returned to East Africa in the summer of 2009 to work with the International Rescue Committee in Northern Uganda in designing an access to justice program.

Anne graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 2004, where she was in the Woodrow Wilson School’s undergraduate program and studied domestic housing and education policy and metropolitan politics. Anne grew up in New Hampshire, loves fall in New England, and enjoys living in new places, running, and folk music.

Originally from a small town in New Jersey, Mark Gundersen graduated from Williams College in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a certificate in Spanish. During his time at Williams, Mark served as president of the Gospel Choir, studied abroad in Madrid and spent a summer working for a microfinance institution in Nicaragua.

After Williams, Mark did investment banking at JPMorgan and then private equity and mezzanine investing at Goldman Sachs. He was also an active member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and a volunteer at Operation Exodus, a weekly mentoring program in Washington Heights.

Mark is currently in his first year at Harvard Business School, where he is the Leadership & Values Representative for his section. Mark enjoys running, art and Minnesota sports teams.

Starla Kiser is currently a dual-degree student at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Kennedy School, where she is also a Zuckerman Fellow. Starla graduated summa cum laude from East Tennessee State University in 2006 with a Bachelor’s degree in biology and humanities and a certificate in Geographic Information Science as part of her program at NASA.

During college, she was an analyst at an engineering firm and a research associate and project manager at the NASA Astrobiology Academy and Develop programs, where she continues to work on various projects that apply NASA technology to benefit communities.

She has previously been involved in introducing math and science initiatives to high schools in rural Appalachia, and has worked on developing an organization that encourages youth in underprivileged regions to pursue careers in the sciences.

While in medical school, she has worked as a consultant to Space Medicine Associates and as a research manager for a clinical study in Tanzania. She has also served as director of a mentorship program for underprivileged Boston-area youth.

She ultimately hopes to continue her interest in advancing science and medicine, and improving healthcare quality and delivery in medically underserved areas across the globe. She enjoys traveling, discovering Boston, and trying to complete her pilot’s license.

Matt McKnight is currently a joint degree student at the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government where he is also a Zuckerman Fellow.

From 2005-2009, Matt served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps. During this period, Matt spent time working in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State Department and was deployed to western Iraq for 13-months with the 5th Marine Regiment. While in Iraq, Matt’s time was focused on facilitating transition of authority to the Iraqi government while also attempting to prevent a reemergence of insurgent elements that had largely been eliminated during the tribal awakening and the corresponding troop surge.

Matt is originally from Maine, he attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and he graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in History in 2005.

Seth Moulton graduated Harvard College with a degree in physics in 2001, and gave the undergraduate address at commencement.

He attended Marine OCS, and served as a rifle platoon commander for the invasion of Iraq, where he was in the first company of Marines to enter Baghdad. During the early reconstruction period, Lt Moulton worked with the new Iraqi media, helping start the first independent TV station, radio station, and newspaper in Babil Province. He returned to Iraq in July 2004 and fought in the Battle of Najaf, again as a platoon commander, and later focused on training the Iraqi Army. When his battalion returned to California in 2005, Moulton remained in Iraq to work for Lieutenant General Petraeus as a liaison with senior Iraqi military and political leaders south of Baghdad.

Moulton left active duty in February 2006, was accepted into a joint degree program at the Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and joined a Marine Reserve company.

In 2007, he returned to active duty to work again as a Special Assistant to General Petraeus, doing counter-insurgency advising and special projects for the general through the summer of 2008. Some of his small team’s work was profiled in an August 2008 article in the New York Times Magazine.

Seth is originally from Marblehead, Massachusetts, and attended Phillips Academy Andover. He currently lives in Cambridge while pursuing his joint masters degrees at Harvard.

Tiffany Niver graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 2008 with an A.B. in Psychology and Economics. In college, Tiffany served as the Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business President, among other positions. Tiffany was also a Founding Member of Smart Woman Securities (SWS), an intercollegiate investment fund. She also sat on three student advisory boards, worked as a Women’s Center Intern, served as Forte Foundation’s Boston Marketing Intern, and was an active member of Kappa Alpha Theta. Finally, Tiffany served as President of the Leadership Institute at Harvard College.

Tiffany currently works at the Parthenon Group, a strategy and management consulting firm, where she also worked as a summer intern in 2007. Her prior work experience includes a summer internship at Young & Successful Interactive, a sophomore rotational program at Lehman Brothers New York, and an internship at the Gallup Organization.

Tiffany will attend Harvard Business School in the fall of 2010.

Emily Slota is currently a dual degree candidate pursuing an MBA at the Harvard Business School and an MPA-ID at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she is a Zuckerman Fellow.

Emily grew up in California, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a dual degree in Human Biology and Economics. After college, Emily worked with McKinsey and Company in San Francisco and South Africa, focused on environmental issues and emerging markets.

Emily is passionate about sustainable poverty alleviation, and has worked in Tanzania with the Touch Foundation and the ministry of health to alleviate the health care worker shortage in Tanzania.

Shortly after the world economic downturn, she moved back to the US to play a part in the US economic recovery; she worked for the US Department of Energy, structuring the spending of $36 billion in Recovery Act funding to make a down payment on the country’s energy and environmental future. She enjoys traveling, backpacking, kayaking and dancing.

Jevan Soo is a joint MBA/MPP degree student at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Rubenstein Fellow, an HBS section Education Representative, a teaching assistant for Marshall Ganz’s leadership course in Public Narrative, a non-resident tutor in Business and Public Service at Lowell House, and a Leadership Team and Advisory Board member for the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference.

Before graduate school, Jevan worked at McKinsey & Company for nearly seven years in consulting and internal human capital roles, with his final three years based out of Shanghai leading the firm’s recruiting strategy and operations across twelve countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Most recently he spent his summer leading the redesign of Central Office recruiting for the District of Columbia Public Schools and advising Chancellor Rhee’s leadership team on key human capital issues. Jevan graduated cum laude in East Asian Studies from Harvard College in 2001, where he lived in Eliot House and was a member of the Harvard Opportunes a cappella group, the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club, and Writing Center tutor.

In his free time, Jevan can be found singing along to his iPod, reading celebrity gossip magazines, or wandering through foreign airports (often all three at the same time).

Anand Venkatesan is currently a joint-degree candidate at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School, where he is a Zuckerman Fellow.

Prior to graduate school, Anand worked for several years in the nonprofit world. Most recently, he was a communications and advocacy officer in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Development Program, which works to help reduce hunger and poverty in the developing world. Previously, he served in several positions at the United Nations Foundation, including leading its Internet team, writing speeches and articles for senior leadership, and helping develop public-private partnerships on behalf of UN causes.

Anand received a BA in philosophy and art history from Columbia University. While there, he founded a small design firm, started a national undergraduate philosophy review, and edited the campus monthly magazine. A Seattle native, Anand nevertheless prefers the great indoors to the great outdoors. He enjoys reading, volunteering, eating out, playing poker, and politics.

Paul hails from the Chicago suburbs and graduated from Harvard College in 2004 with a BA in Economics. After college, Paul worked for 2 years in Western Kenya for MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, where he learned how to eat with his hands, sneak across borders, and coordinate field-based randomized controlled trials.

After two years in the Kenyan bush, Paul jumped into the corporate jungle with McKinsey & Company. One and a half years with McKinsey introduced him to a variety of industries, including health care, uranium enrichment, steel processing and freight logistics. Paul also spent three months working for TechnoServe in the Kingdom of Swaziland where he designed a rural micro-finance arrangement for small farmers.

Currently, Paul is in the second year of the three-year joint MBA/MPAID program at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. When not studying, he acts as an officer for TAMTAM (Together Against Malaria), a non-profit focused on mosquito net distribution he helped build with other Harvard graduate students. Besides fighting malaria, Paul also enjoys all sports (especially soccer), camping, hiking and traveling.

Originally from McLean, Virginia, Laura Warren graduated magna cum laude from Yale in 2006 with a BA in History of Science, History of Medicine. While at Yale, she lead Safety Net, the umbrella organization for all student organizations engaged with student health and safety, and worked with the administration to formulate new university policies on alcohol and sexual violence. In the summers, Laura split her time between oncology research and work for the Road Less Traveled, a wilderness expeditioning company, focusing her time primarily on leadership development.

After Yale, Laura matriculated at Harvard Medical School. At HMS, she was the coordinator for FEAT, the student organization which organized and lead the pre-orientation backpacking trips, and was a member of the medical school admissions committee. She has also been involved in a number of research projects, most recently working with surgical oncologists at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to examine how breast cancer patients acquire information before making therapeutic decisions.

Laura is currently a dual-degree candidate at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she is a Zuckerman Fellow. She enjoys any activity in the wilderness, running, triathlons, and her Labradoodle, McKinley.

Larissa is currently in her first year at Harvard Business School. Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, Larissa West graduated summa cum laude from Duke University in 2005 with a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

At Duke, Larissa was elected Senior Class President of the Engineering Student Government, served as President of the Society of Women Engineers, and received the Dean’s Engineering Service award for greatest contribution to the engineering community.

After Duke, Larissa joined McKinsey & Company in Atlanta, where she consulted with multinational consumer goods, retail, media, and nonprofit clients. After McKinsey, Larissa joined Audax Group, a middle market Private Equity firm in Boston with over $4.5 bn. of assets under management. At Audax Group, Larissa executed several leveraged buy-out transactions in a variety of industries, including oil & gas and electronics.

In her free time, she enjoys painting, running, and investing.

Kate Bennett is currently in her final year of graduate school, pursuing a dual degree at HBS and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Prior to grad school, Kate worked primarily in consulting at Bain & Company and The Bridgespan Group. She is also passionate about education and has done internships with r3 school solutions, Green Dot Public Schools and Boston Public Schools. In her free time, Kate loves travel (Kenya, Japan and Italy are favorites so far!), baking and reading. She’s from South Florida originally and will take any chance she gets to visit her family and the FL sun J

John Coleman graduated summa cum laude from Berry College in 2004 with a BS in Economics. At Berry, Coleman was a full-tuition Presidential Scholar, a Governor’s Honors Scholar, a Communication Department Scholar, student commencement speaker, top graduate in economics, top graduate in business, top graduate overall, and president or chair or five student organizations. In 2004, he was named U.S. national college speech champion by National Forensics Association, and he was awarded “Top Column” by the Georgia Collegiate Newspaper Association for his writings in the campus newspaper.

Coleman has served several fellowships in policy and political philosophy, including an Honors Fellowship with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and both a Koch Fellowship and a Humane Studies Fellowship with the Institute for Humane Studies. As a freelance writer, he has won several awards and published more than 40 articles, essays, editorials, poems, and reviews in magazines, newspapers, and online publications. His first book was published by Crossway Books in January 2009.

Professionally, Coleman has served as an Assistant Director with the Charles G. Koch Fellowship Program, an analyst with DC Energy, a business analyst with McKinsey & Company, and, most recently, a Senior Investment Intern with Bridgewater Associated in Westport, CT. He is currently a dual degree candidate pursuing an MBA at the Harvard Business School and an MPA at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he is a Zuckerman Fellow. He is co-president of the HBS Business, Industry, and Government Club, a student senator, and a recipient of first year honors. He is married and lives with his wife, Jackie, in Boston.

After growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Esther went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Huntsman Program where she received degrees in International Studies from the College and a business degree from the Wharton School. She studied abroad in Beijing and spent summers in teaching English in Taiwan and as a marketing intern for the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta. After college, she joined Bain & Company’s Boston office (and later the New York office) where her management consulting escapades taught her about industries as diverse as paintball, debt financing, and premium denim.

While on leave from Bain, Esther launched a social enterprise with two friends. Shokay sources yak down from Tibetan herders and brings it to market as a luxury fiber. Today you can find Shokay in boutiques, yarn stores, and runways in cities as far flung as Tokyo and London (plus its flagship store in Shanghai).

Esther is concurrently studying towards an MBA at Harvard Business School and an MPA at Harvard Kennedy School. She spent last summer demonstrating that gooseberries could be a profitable venture for farmers in Swaziland, the last kingdom in Africa. She also likes running, playing Scrabble, and discovering new music.

Originally from Texas, Katie Laidlaw is a dual-degree student of Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, where she is a George Fellow and Zuckerman Fellow. At Harvard, Katie serves as Co-President of the HBS Social Enterprise Club. She spent her most recent summer with TechnoServe, an economic development NGO, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania working on a horticulture strategy for Tanzania’s Southern Highlands region. She spent her previous summer in the Strategy Planning Group of American Express in New York City.

Prior to graduate school, Katie was a senior associate with The Parthenon Group. She also served as Executive Director of Inspire, Inc., a national volunteer non-profit that provides consulting services to non-profits across five U.S. cities.

Katie graduated magna cum laude from Duke in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in French and European Studies, a minor in comparative area studies, and a certificate in Markets & Management. She served a three-year elected term on the Duke University Board of Trustees as the “Young Trustee” and was appointed as a member of the Presidential Council on Campus Culture.

Katie enjoys running along the Charles, watching college basketball, hiking in New Hampshire and Vermont, and trying out new Boston restaurants.

Matt Wilson is a decorated former naval intelligence officer and war veteran, having served during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He also holds three karate black belts and is an internationally ranked forms champion. Matt loves macroeconomics, investing, reading and finding new ways to understand the world. Originally from Northern California, he graduated Summa Cum Laude from Sacramento State University and is a first year student at Harvard Business School.