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Thomas Stapleford, Class of '85
Thomas Stapleford is a 1985 graduate of Penn State and the University Scholars Program. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the College of the Liberal Arts majoring in philosophy and religious studies. He is an active Penn Stater and Scholar alumnus having served as an invited member of the College of Education’s Alumni Board. He currently serves as Coordinator of Graduate Education Programs and Clinical Assistant Professor for Temple University's Harrisburg Campus.
As an undergraduate, Tom was a Rhodes Scholarship finalist and a member of Phi Beta Kappa before earning honors in 1985. Today he is a professional member of the American Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, and a member of the graduate faculty at Walden University. In addition, he is a member of the board of trustees of the Penn State University Mont Alto Campus and is on the board of directors for the Manito Foundation. In 1995, Tom was named to “Who’s Who in American Education" and “Who’s Who in the World” in 1997.
Tom and his wife, Lisa, and three children, Benjamin, Daniel, and Peter, reside in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.
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Douglas Evans, Class of '87
(Immediate Past President)
Douglas Evans is chief operating officer at Kensey Nash Corporation. Kensey Nash, a medical device company, is a leader in biomaterials-based devices for cardiology and orthopedic procedures. The company also developed the top-selling cardiac catheterization puncture closure device, known as Angio-Seal™, which is used to close holes in arteries after interventional cardiology procedures.
He graduated from Penn State as a University Scholar in 1986 with a bachelor of science degree in Engineering Science and an honors diploma in Bioengineering. He continued his education at the University of Pennsylvania where he earned his master's degree in electrical engineering in 1989. He also received a master's degree in Business Management from Penn State in 1993.
Douglas currently serves on the board of directors of Kensey Nash Corporation as well as the Lionville Community and Upper Main Line YMCAs. He is active in the Society of Plastics Engineers, the Professional Society of Professional Engineers, the American Management Society, and the Society for Biomaterials. In addition to thirty-three U.S. patents, Douglas has written several articles for publication in a variety of journals.
Douglas was recognized by the Scholar Alumni Society Board for his service and support of honors education with the inaugural Outstanding Scholar Alumni Award.
Douglas, his wife and three children reside in Downingtown, Pennsylvania.
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Jack Yoskowitz, Esq., Class of '89
Jack Yoskowitz is a partner in Seward & Kissel’s litigation group. Jack has been practicing law since 1992 and joined the firm in 1996.
Jack focuses his practice on complex commercial and corporate litigation, including securities litigation, civil, RICO, and fraud claims, and project finance and asset securitization litigation. He has tried cases in both federal and state courts and has been involved in arbitrations before various tribunals, including the NASD and NYSE. He also has experience in cross-border and multi-jurisdictional disputes.
Jack received a bachelor's degree in Psychology, with distinction and with honors, from Penn State in 1989. Jack's University Honors Thesis, entitled "Chess v. Quasi-chess: The Role of Knowledge of Legal Rules" was published in the American Journal of Psychology. In 1992, he received a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. While at Columbia, Jack was a staff member and contributor to the Journal of Law and Social Problems and authored the article entitled "The War on the Poor: Civil Forfeiture of Public Housing."
Jack and his wife, Libby, and their three children, Noah, Justin and Katie, reside in Huntington, New York.
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Lauren Young, Class of '89
(Chair, Alumni Engagement and Outreach Committee)
Lauren Young is a department editor for BusinessWeek’s Personal Business section. She joined BusinessWeek in October 2003 after working as a senior writer for SmartMoney. Lauren also wrote about mutual funds for the Dow Jones Newswires and was a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal. At Dow Jones, she was a union leader and led a fight to have the health plan cover contraceptives. Her articles have also been published in The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Houston Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal Europe, USA Today, The Mexico City News, T. Rowe Price Investor, and other publications. Lauren contributes to BusinessWeek’s Working Parents blog as well as its Investing Insights blog. She is a frequent guest on television as well as numerous radio programs throughout the country. She appears every Thursday morning on Comcast’s CN8 to discuss personal finance topics.
Lauren started her journalism career at age 9 as a writer for Children's Express, a national magazine and syndicated news service for kids. She worked for The Daily Collegian during her four years at Penn State--first as a reporter, and later as managing editor, campus editor and style editor. After college, she worked for National Parks magazine. She also worked in advertising as a copywriter and account executive at McCann-Erickson in Budapest.
She is a 1989 honors graduate of Penn State and received her master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 1993. She is a 1996 recipient of the Penn State English department’s Outstanding Young Alumni Award.
Lauren is president of the Medill Club of Greater New York, and she also serves on Choice USA’s board of directors.
She resides near New York's West Village with her husband, Jon Gordon, and her son, Leo.
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Sven Bilén, Ph. D., Class of '91
(Scholar Alumni Society Faculty Representative)
Sven Bilén is a 1991 graduate of Penn State and the University Scholars Program. He received his M.S.E. and doctorate degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan. He is currently an Associate Professor of Engineering Design and Graphics and Electrical Engineering at Penn State. His research interests include ProSEDS mission, Spacecraft-Plasma Interactions, Electrodynamic Tethers, and Plasma Probes and Measurement Techniques. Sven is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Sigma Xi, the American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the International Union of Radio Science.
During his undergraduate career, Sven served as a founding member of the Honors College literary publication, Problem Child.
Sven has contributed to several NASA electrodynamic tether missions and is developing plasma diagnostic instruments for future missions. He acts as faculty adviser to the Penn State Get Away Special team, which has recently delivered a small payload that flew on the space shuttle in November 2001, and to the Flyin' Lions, a team of students that flies experiments on NASA's KC-135 microgravity simulation aircraft.
Sven and his wife, Carmen, are State College residents.
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Lisa Todd, Class of '97
Lisa Todd earned a bachelor of science degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Penn State in 1997. Upon graduation, she worked for Proctor & Gamble and earned an MBA from Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. In 2007, Lisa became a vice president at Wells Fargo Bank in Pittsburgh where she works in the Real Estate Group as a relationship manager. Prior to her job at Wells Fargo, Lisa worked at KeyBanc Capital Markets and National City Bank, both in Cleveland.
Lisa and her fiancé Mike reside in Pittsburgh. She is a member of the Pittsburgh Chapter of Commercial Real Estate for Women. She also serves on the executive board for the Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business Pittsburgh Alumni Chapter. Lisa and several other Penn Staters are forming a Scholar alumni group in the Pittsburgh area.
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Atif Ghauri, Class of '00
(Chair, Mentoring Committee)
Atif Ghauri is a graduate of the Schreyer Honors College with a bachelor of science degree in Management Science and Information Systems (MSIS). During his undergraduate career, Atif served as a teaching assistant for an international public policy research think tank in Washington, D.C., president of Penn State’s Multicultural Business Society, student president of Beta Gamma Sigma Honors Society, and he was a participant in the Schreyer Scholar Distinguished Alumni Mentoring Program. In addition, he was recognized internationally among the top 150 student business leaders by the Foundation of Student Communications at Princeton University and was publicly recognized for his entrepreneurial efforts with acceptance into the “National Register’s Who’s Who Among Executives and Professionals.”
Today, Atif is an emerging professional with the Security and Privacy Services Practice of IBM Global Services. His current specialty is developing security architectures for enterprise networks. In addition to his experience with PKI component design, he has done web development for large pharmaceutical corporations, research at an international think tank, and he is the founder of two Internet startup companies.
He has traveled on-site to offices across the country with technical support and business solutions. He resides in Newtown, Pennsylvania.
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Robert Myers, III, Class of '00
(Scholar Alumni Society President)
Robert Myers is a graduate of the Schreyer Honors College with undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Economics. During his undergraduate career he was invited by then- Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge to serve as a student trustee on Penn State's Board of Trustees. He also served as the chair of the senior class gift committee. He is a 2007 graduate of the Harvard Business School, where he received second year honors.
Robert hails from Lansdale, Pennsylvania, and currently resides in London in the United Kingdom. He is an associate at Credit Suisse in its market-leading leveraged finance origination practice. Robert has served as president of the Scholar Alumni Society since fall 2006.
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Jerusha Achterberg, Class of '01
Jerusha Achterberg graduated from the Schreyer Honors College as the student marshal for the College of Liberal Arts, with a bachelor's degree in Anthropology with Honors in Anthropology and Mathematics, and minors in Mathematics and Education Policy Studies.
Jerusha is currently a graduate student at the University of Washington (UW), where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Biocultural Anthropology, and a master's degree in public health (MPH) in epidemiology. She received her master’s degree in Biocultural Anthropology from UW in 2006. At UW, Jerusha has served as a fellow for the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, completed research assistantships in biological anthropology, and has served as an instructor and teaching assistant. In 2007, she received the prestigious UW Excellence in Teaching Award, presented to only two graduate students per year. Jerusha’s research primarily emphasizes the role that infectious disease has played in human evolution, with an emphasis on tuberculosis as a means to explore transmission dynamics.
Currently, Jerusha is a Professional Support Specialist at the Statistical Center for HIV/AIDS Research and Prevention. As such, she is researching and building mathematical models of tuberculosis transmission and spread. Previously, Jerusha worked in the Abshire-Inamori Leadership Academy and the Science and Security Initiatives, both at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. In these roles respectively, she was responsible for management of interns and leadership programming, and researching national and international bioterrorism and biodefense.
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Mohit Bhende, Class of '01
(Chair, Membership Committee)
Mo Bhende is co-founder and executive director of Topic Magazine LLC and a strategy consultant with Mercer Management Consulting. At Mercer, Mo consults on issues related to corporate strategy and operations in a variety of industries. Previously, Mo worked at Bates White in Washington D.C., where he advised companies on asbestos-related concerns. In addition to this advisory work, he functioned as an investment analyst supporting proprietary trades. As an undergraduate at Penn State, he completed a number of business- and policy-related internships. He worked in mergers and acquisitions with Lazard in London, in European equity indices with the FTSE Group, in economic policy making with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and in construction project management in Bombay.
As a Gates Scholar, Mo launched Topic magazine in the summer of 2002 while earning his M.Phil. in Economics at Cambridge University. Each issue of Topic explores a single theme through real first-person stories. Past topics have included "Food,""Prison," and "Cities," and contributors have ranged from diplomats to professional athletes to prisoners. Topic is currently run by a staff of more than 20 individuals in New York City, is carried in Barnes & Noble stores across the U.S., and is now exploring opportunities in radio and film.
While at Penn State, Mo was an active member of the Glee Club and an executive director of Project Growth, a campus organization dedicated to expanding multicultural programs at Penn State. Through the support of the Schreyer Honors College, Mo was able to travel extensively. He did his junior year abroad at the London School of Economics and studied/worked in India, Mexico, Ecuador, and Trinidad & Tobago. His undergraduate thesis, which was selected as the "Top Economics Thesis" for the 2001 academic year, focused on funding strategies available to nonprofits.
Mo resides in New York City.
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Erika Bocknek, Class of '01
Erika Bocknek is a 2001 Penn State graduate, earning a bachelor's degree and graduating Phi Beta Kappa. She also holds an M.A. in Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of Connecticut. Erika is a member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, the National Council of Family Relations, the Society for Research in Child Development, and the World Association for Infant Mental Health.
Erika is a family therapist in private practice at The Relationship Institute in Royal Oak, Michigan (outside of Detroit) and a Ph.D. candidate in child development in the Department of Family and Child Ecology at Michigan State University. She has worked with a number of research projects studying outcomes for children related to risk and protective factors in the parent-child relationship in various contexts.
Currently, Erika is an investigator with a research team funded by the Federal Healthy Marriages Initiative. Erika’s scholarly work has been published in scientific journals and presented at national conferences. She also trains volunteers and develops programming for local community organizations including the National Council for Jewish Women and the B’nai Brith Youth Organization.
Erika formerly served on the board of directors of the Penn State Alumni Association Professional Women’s Network of New York. While a student at Penn State, Erika served in a number of student leadership capacities including president and vice president of the Panhellenic Council and the chairperson of the Senior Class Gift Campaign 2001. She was active throughout the State College community and served as a founding member of the State College chapter of Stand for Children. Erika and her husband, Andrew, reside in the Detroit suburbs.
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