• Executive Committee
• Board Members
• Associate Members
• Board Committees

Executive Committee

Rudy Brioché MPP 2000, Chair

Rudy Brioché is Legal Advisor for Media Issues for the Federal Communications Commission. He most recently served as legislative counsel to Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ). In the Senate, his portfolio included business, communications, judiciary and labor. His prior experience includes serving as counsel to the NAACP Washington Bureau, law clerk to U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis and to Chief Judge Robert M. Bell of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, and practicing commercial litigation in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and New York. Rudy has served as an international monitor of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Rudy received his Master in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, where he worked for the late Judge A. Leon Higginbotham and served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy. Rudy also earned his J.D. from the University of Maryland Law School, where he was student body president and editor of the ABA's business law journal, The Business Lawyer. Rudy, a native of Brooklyn, received his B.A. from Rutgers College.

Committees: Executive Committee, Chair; Fundraising, Chair

Rosario “Chato” Calderon MPA 1988, Vice-Chair

Rosario Calderon is a principal of Lawin Energy LLC in San Francisco that addresses the global energy and climate change crises with clean and sustainable energy development. Chato forms strategic alliances for the development of power projects in solar, wind, small hydro and biomass; and for promoting energy efficient and alternative vehicle fuels projects in the United States and emerging economies of Asia. She pursues research, development and commercialization of cutting edge technologies that will revolutionize and make competitive renewable energy and energy efficiency. She provides consulting services on business, project and policy development on clean energy and carbon trading.

Passion drives Chato. Having spent her professional life in both the private and public sectors, Chato is passionate in dealing with the challenges of reform and governance in corporations and in government, with the benefits of public-private partnerships in leveraging resources, and with the goals of corporate social responsibility in putting a human face in technology and reducing poverty. Her faith in God has influenced her lifestyle in the market place and public square. As Vice-President of Business Development and Government Relations for CalEnergy International, she was involved in the power production from $1.4 billion geothermal and hydro electric plants in the Philippines. Chato managed multi-million dollar grant programs to the Philippine Department of Energy on energy independence, climate change and rural electrification as the Senior Technical Advisor of the United Agency for International Development (USAID) in Manila. At USAID, Chato emphasized the critical collaboration with US Departments of State, Energy, Commerce, and Environment; with Federal and State Regulatory Commissions; and multilateral donor agencies like World Bank, Asian Development Bank and United Nations Development Program in achieving sustainable economic development. In the US East and Gulf Coasts, Chato worked on natural gas production, transmission and cogeneration; clean coal technology for power generation; and alternative vehicle fuels.

Chato’s professional career in energy has opened opportunities to travel in Asia and the United States where she had the chance to have a proactive outreach to the HKS Alumni. While in the Philippines, she was President of the HKS Alumni Foundation (www.ksgphil.org). She is a founding and a current Board Director of the Association of Harvard University Alumni Clubs of Asia (AHUACA). As Board Director of HKSAA, Chato takes seriously the role of Ambassador to bring mutually beneficial relationships among the Dean, the school and students with over 20,000 degree and 15,000 non-degree alumni.

Chato has a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of the Philippines, a Masters in Business Administration from Syracuse University in New York and a Master in Public Administration from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.

Committees: Executive Committee, Vice-Chair; Alumni Awards, Chair

Janet Thompson MPA 1987, Secretary

I hold a deep passion for education. I received my MPA from the Kennedy School in 1987. I have an MA in speech pathology from the University of Kansas and a BA in communication from the University of Massachusetts.

For over 20 years, I worked in local and state governments in California, Washington and the City of Bellevue. In 2002, I was the Executive Director of the Lake City Chamber of Commerce in Seattle. Between 2003 and 2006 I served as managing editor the Academy of Management Journal (AMJ, which is among the most prestigious academic journals on management in the world)) and as a conference organizer for the Academy of Management (AOM, which is the largest academic association of professors of management in the world with almost 18,000 members worldwide). As managing editor, I corresponded with faculty and graduate students in universities and colleges across the global. I assisted in the bimonthly publication of AMJ. In 2005, I organized the Professional Development Workshops for the AOM’s annual conference in Honolulu, which had approximately 350 workshops and over 3000 participants. In 2006, I organized the scholarly program for the AOM’s annual conference in Atlanta, with approximately 7,000 scholars from around the world attending.

In the 90’s, I began working with glass beads to fabricate jewelry. In 2004, I started a jewelry design business. I am a member of the Northwest Bead Society. Additionally, I have or currently serve on the boards for the Sierra Club, Washington Environmental Council, PTA and the Metropolitan Democratic Club of Seattle. My family and I enjoy traveling, skiing/snowboarding, theater, music and reading.

Committees: Executive Committee, Secretary; Alumni Awards; Marketing and Branding

Jackie Weatherspoon MPA 1991, Treasurer

The Honorable Jackie K. Weatherspoon served six years in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. She served as a Minority House Whip and served on the Election Law Committee, holding the position as 3rd from the Chair of the opposition party. Jackie was the chief sponsor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, the last state in the United States to adopt the holiday. She co-sponsored Banning the Death Penalty Bill. She served a total (2 ½) seconded to the State Department to OSCE, Organizational for Security and Cooperation in Europe to Implement the Dayton Agreement. UN Secretariat, since 2004, EAD, Electoral Assistance Division, United Nations, New York. Jackie also worked on the Presidential Election Team, Vice President Al Gore for President, Senator John Kerry for President, and was a member of the Women for Hillary Clinton Team for President.

Jackie has supervised elections, in Bosnia I Hercegovina, Malawi and Nigeria, working for OSCE and UN/UNDP respectively. She most recently served at the Technical Advisor of the 2007 Presidential elections in Nigeria for the UN/UNDP. She has been on a number of US Delegations, the Northern Initiative preparing the Baltic Countries of Estonia and Lithuania for their entry into the EU. And, she accompanied First Lady Hillary Clinton to Iceland for "Vital Voices."

The Honorable Jackie Weatherspoon has her Masters degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is presently serving on the Harvard Kennedy School Alumni Association Board of Directors and has served as a Development Officer at the Harvard School of Public Health and as the Associate Director of the Reebok Foundation, and as their representative at the signing of the trade agreement between the US and South Africa. She has served on the Advisory Council at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Endowment for Health of New Hampshire. She is presently serving on the Board of Trustees at New Hampshire Public Radio. She started her own NGO, "Decisions In Democracy International," training programs for those seeking to run for public office. She is married to Russell D. Weatherspoon, Class of '81 Harvard Ed. School, who is presently serving as Dean of Residential Life at Phillips Exeter Academy. They have 4 adult children and 6 grandchildren.

Committees: Executive Committee, Treasurer; Fundraising

Shannon Christian MPP 1987, At-Large Member

Shannon Christian is a consultant on children’s issues in the broader context of human capital development, social policy and work-family balance with a practice that builds on earlier work both in and out of government on a wide range of social service and workforce development issues. Most recently, she served as Associate Commissioner for the Child Care Bureau in the Administration for Children and Families at the US Dept. of Health and Human Services (2002-06), managing the $5 billion federal child care subsidy program and spearheading major pieces of the Administration’s early learning initiative. Previously, Shannon was part of former Governor Tommy Thompson’s nationally renowned welfare reform team in Wisconsin, serving first as Director of Planning for the Department of Health and Social Services, and then as Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Workforce Development. Earlier in her career, she held several staff positions at the US Dept. of Labor serving under Secretaries Ann McLaughlin, Elizabeth Dole and Lynn Martin. Prior to her post at HHS, she was a consultant to the Hudson Institute and others in the non-profit and communications fields, working on a variety of child care, welfare reform, responsible fatherhood, distance learning and multimedia projects. Shannon participates in volunteer activities related to children’s healthy development, and last year, presented at a 2-day Action Tank exploring strategies to better help the orphans of AIDS victims in Sub-Saharan Africa and other countries at the World Child Care Forum in Malaysia.

Committees: Executive Committee, At-Large; Marketing and Branding; Virtual Connections, Co-Chair

Richard “Giles” Whiting MPP 2005, At-Large Member

Giles Whiting attended Harvard Kennedy School after graduating as a Distinguished Graduate from the United States Air Force Academy where he majored in physics and mathematics.

While at the Kennedy School, Giles was active in Student Government, wrote on the staff of The Citizen, and captained the Harvard Crew and Triathlon Teams.

Immediately following the MPP program, Giles returned to the Air Force where he served as a physicist. His service complete, he accepted a consulting position with McKinsey & Company focusing on economic development and emerging markets. In that position, Giles has worked on projects throughout the world and is a firm expert in economic development and infrastructure.

Giles currently resides in New York where he is a founding member of the New York Kennedy School Alumni Steering Committee; his focus is strengthening the connectivity of the chapter. Giles is also a member of the Harvard Clubs of New York and Boston.

Committees: Executive Committee, At-Large; Fundraising; Virtual Connections

Paul Hodge MPA 2000, Ex-Officio

In addition to being awarded two HKS Service Awards for his “exceptional commitment to community and public service,” Paul Hodge has been committed to volunteering his support to the Kennedy School and Harvard as an HKS Alumni Board member, KSG New England Alumni Board member, HKS Dean’s Alumni Leadership Council Founding Chair, HKS Dean’s Council Executive Committee member and Harvard University Board of Overseers, Committee on University Resources member. Paul recently published a book “Baby Boomer Women: Secure Futures or Not?” He is Founding Chair of the Global Generations Policy Institute, Board member of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, Director of the Harvard Generations Policy Project, Research Fellow at HKS’s Hauser Center, Founding Editor of the Harvard Generations Policy Journal and a recent Distinguished Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford. Paul is a recognized authority on policy issues dealing with the country’s elder citizens and baby boomers. He has led ground breaking public service initiatives to improve the quality of life and care of women, minorities, baby boomers, youth, the elderly, and other vulnerable citizens. As a public advocate, Paul has led ventures to protect our environment, advised the White House and the U.S. Congress, appeared on or been quoted/published in various national news media and received national awards, commendations and recognition for his work. Paul holds a JD from Boston University’s School of Law, an MBA from Columbia University Business School, and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University. In 2000, as a John B. Pickett Fellow in Criminal Justice Management, Paul earned an MPA from HKS, graduating in the top of his class and being awarded Harvard’s prestigious Lucius N. Littauer Fellowship for academic excellence and public service achievement.

Committees: Executive Committee, Ex-Officio; Fundraising