Palo Alto Rotary - Past Speakers - Archive 1/07

The ancient concept of "trust" is grounded in our human heritage of face-to-face communications, tangible artifacts, and practices that change only gradually over time. These foundations of trust have been swiftly eroded by information technology that substitutes devices, networks and intangible bits for direct human interactions. In this talk I will sketch some of the principles that can help restore trust in digital products and services, and illustrate these with familiar examples.

Dr. Peter E. Hart is the Founder, Chairman, and President of Ricoh Innovations, Inc. He also serves as Director of Research of the Company. Peter Hart founded Ricoh Innovations, Inc. in 1997 to create new technology and business opportunities for the worldwide Ricoh Group based on a Silicon Valley perspective. Prior to founding Ricoh Innovations, Hart was Senior Vice President of Ricoh Corporation, where he led a broad research program that resulted in new Ricoh product and service offerings. He is also a Group Senior Vice President of Ricoh Company, Ltd. (Japan), one of a very few Westerners to serve as an executive officer of a major Japanese corporation. He holds a B.E.E degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University.

January 15 - Dark - Martin Luther King Day

January 22 - Imtiaz Ali will discuss the Tribal Areas of Pakistan which have emerged as the "fault line" in the US led global war on terrorism.

Imtiaz Ali Yahoo! International Fellow imtiaza@stanford.edu reporter BBC Pashto Service Peshawar, Pakistan

Ali was born in Mardan, Pakistan and earned a bachelor degree in law and master's degrees in journalism and political science from the University of Peshawar in Pakistan. Ali got his start in journalism as an education reporter for the Daily Khabrain in Pakistan in 1993. He has worked for Pakistan's largest selling English daily, The News International, the country's most prestigious daily Dawn, and the Peshawar-based daily Khyber Mail. He joined the BBC Pashto Service in 2001, reporting on the Taliban in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

He also produces a weekly radio feature called "The Frontier Report", which focuses on the daily emerging political, economic and social issues in Pakistan and its adjoining tribal areas along Afghan boarder, also known as Pakistan's Wild West. His work also appears in newspapers outside of Pakistan, including the Daily Telegraph in London and the Globe and Mail in Toronto. His coverage of terrorism-related news has included reporting on the Pakistani madrassa system of religious schools, and in the Pakistani tribal belt, widely speculated as a possible hide out of Osama Bin Laden.

January 29 - Michael Zielenziger ~ Benchmarking the Prospects for

Japan in 2007

Michael Zielenziger is a visiting scholar at the Institute of East Asian Studies, U. C. Berkeley, and was the Tokyo-based bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers for seven years, until May 2003. He has written extensively about social, economic, and political trends in Japan, Korea, China, and Southeast Asia. After September 11, 2001, Zielenziger also spent long periods in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Israel, covering the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

Before moving to Tokyo, Zielenziger served as the first Pacific Rim correspondent for The San Jose Mercury News, and was a finalist for a 1995 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on China. He was also a contributor to two other Pulitzer Prizes awarded to the Mercury News.

Zielenziger was a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 1991, where he studied in the Asia-Pacific Research Center and Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He is a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is a 2003 recipient of an Abe Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council of New York.

Twenty years ago Silicon Valley feared a Japan that had bought Pebble Beach and Manhattan and seemed to own the market for semiconductor and memory chips. Could Japan put the Valley out of business?

Today, Japan no longer poses the same threat. In fact, it has been the slowest growing among the world's wealthiest nations for the past fifteen years, and has yet to recovery broadly from the collapse of its "bubble economy" in 1990.

What happened to Japan, what are its prospects, and what are the implications for Silicon Valley business and U.S. Asian policy?

Our speaker, Michael Zielenziger, former Tokyo bureau chief and business columnist for the San Jose Mercury News is the author of Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created its own Lost Generation recently published by Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday.

February 2007 Programs

February 5, 2007: Dr. Jim Sweeney ~ Energy Efficiency

James (Jim) Sweeney is Professor of Management Science and Engineering,
and Director, Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency, Stanford University, Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and
Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. His
professional activities focus on economic policy and analysis, particularly
in energy, natural resources, and the environment.

At Stanford he has served as chairman of the Department of
Engineering-Economic Systems, chairman of the Department of
Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research, Director of the Energy Modeling Forum, Chairman of the Institute for Energy Studies, and Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research (now the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research). In the early 1970's he was Director of the Office of Energy Systems Modeling and Forecasting of the U.S. Federal Energy Administration.

He was a founding member of the International Association for Energy
Economics, co-editor of the Journal Resource and Energy Economics, and
vice-president for publications of the International Association for Energy
Economics. He is a Senior Fellow of the U.S. Association for Energy
Economics and a Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology.

He is on the National Advisory Council of the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory and a member of Governor Schwarzenegger's Council of Economic Advisors.

He holds a B.S. degree from MIT in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D. from
Stanford University in Engineering-Economic Systems.

February 12, 2007: Dr. Seth Shostak ~ SETI Institute Senior Astronomer ~ Looking for ET

Aliens may be a familiar staple of Hollywood, and late-night talk radio, but could there really be any intelligent life in the vast voids of space? Most scientists would opine that the likely answer is "yes," and a small group of researchers in Mountain View are busy constructing a massive new radio telescope whose job it is to eavesdrop on signals that might be coming from cosmic companions. What are the chances they will succeed, and what would it mean to humanity if they do?

Seth is an astronomer with a BA in physics from Princeton and a PhD in astronomy from Caltech, and is involved with the Institute's SETI research. But he's also responsible for much of the outreach activities of the Institute. He is science editor for "The Explorer", gives more than 50 talks annually for both academic and general audiences, and writes magazine articles (and books) about SETI. He also teaches informal education classes on astronomy and other topics in the Bay Area, and is the inventor of the electrical banana, a circumstance he claims has had little positive effect on his life. He is the host for the SETI Institute's weekly radio program Are We Alone?

Before coming to SETI, Seth did research work on galaxies using radio telescopes at observatories and universities in America and Europe. His avocations include photography, filmmaking, and electronics.

Seth has produced a series of lectures on tape and video on the subject of SETI. For more information visit the Teaching Company website.

Seth Shostak is Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, and has been an observer for Project Phoenix as well as an active participant in various international forums for SETI research. He is a frequent presenter of the Institute’s work in the media, through lectue host. Each Sunday night, Shostak interviews guests who are on the bleeding edge of science discovery and technological advance. The show gives callers the opportunity to ask questions of the world’s foremost experts in astrobiology and space exploration.

Shostak readily translates the most complex scientific discoveries into terms accessible to the non-scientist. He has written hundreds of articles for newspapers, magazines, and the SPACE.com web site, as well as three books, including a popular textbook on astrobiology. Recently awarded the Klumpke-Roberts Award by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy, Shostak is also Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics SETI Permanent Study Group. As a practicing scientist personally engaged in SETI observations, his technical expertise—combined with his quick wit and engaging personality—make him a sought-after speaker and writer.

February 19, 2007: No Meeting ~ President's Day Observed

February 26, 2007: Patricia Mercado Sánchez ~ “Mexico, with a new government – the current situation in Mexico and the polarization of the country after the last Presidential election”

Patricia Mercado Sánchez International Fellow pmercado@stanford.edu editor-in-chief Periódico El Economista Mexico City Study focus: Ethics and social responsibility in Latin American journalism.

Mercado Sánchez was born in Fresnillo, Mexico in the state of Zacatecas and earned her bachelor's degree in communications science, majoring in journalism and advertising, at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, in Guadalajara, Mexico.

She has worked at El Economista in Mexico City, Mexico's leading business and finance newspaper, since 1991. She began as an industry and commerce reporter, covering meetings that led to the North American Free Trade Agreement; then, as a finance reporter she wrote about Mexico's impending recession. Next she led El Economista and Mexico's first fax news service in English before becoming editor of the newspaper's Industry and Commerce Section. As editor of the Politics and Society section, she led coverage leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the first time in 72 years when the opposition parties in Mexico stood a chance of winning.

Since 1998, she has been editor-in-chief - one of very few women editors running a major newspaper in Mexico. She was a Ford Foundation Visiting Media Fellow at Duke University in North Carolina in 1995, was selected as Best Professor at the Carlos Septien Garcia Journalism School in Mexico City in 2001 and has led workshops on the role of women in the news media and crisis management. Her interest in the correct use of Spanish by the news media has spurred her to participate in three World Congresses held by the Academy of the Spanish Language.

March 2007 Programs

March 5: New Member Talks - Rob Lyman, Steve Madsen, and Kelly Morariu

Rob Lyman

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, but traveled across the country to attend college at Princeton University. I knew I wanted to return to California, and chose the Bay Area where I received a master's degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. After graduation, I worked for 15 years in high tech in Silicon Valley, doing control system and software design work at companies such as Measurex, Wonderware and NextPage.

In 2002, feeling that I needed a change, I shifted gears to follow a long-held passion of mine - that of helping people as a financial planner. I joined Johnson Marotta, an independent, fee-only financial planning and wealth management firm in Palo Alto. In November of 2005, I satisfied the requirements for becoming a Certified Financial Planner® practitioner. I now serve as Vice President at Johnson Marotta and have the pleasure of helping people create fabulous lives for themselves.

Professionally, I belong to a number of financial planning organizations, including the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the Financial Planning Association (FPA). I have served my profession by volunteering to teach comprehensive financial planning to others entering the field at several NAPFA conferences, including the West Region Conference at Jackson Hole in 2005, and two South Region Conferences in 2005 and 2006. In addition, I have made one of my financial planning case studies available for training students in the capstone course in financial planning at the University of Georgia.

Currently, I'm serving on the council of my church, helping with the planting of a progressive Christian community (United Church of Christ) on the peninsula. Also, as a long-time advocate of good public schools, I am serving as Vice President of the Woodside High School Foundation, working with parents, the school administration, and other stakeholders to support the public high school where my children attended.
I live in Redwood City with my wife Catherine and two teenage children, both of whom are now going off to college. I've coached many little league baseball, youth soccer, and basketball teams - both in Redwood City and Palo Alto (where both of my children have played in youth basketball programs). I enjoy running with my wife, and hiking, backpacking, skiing and boarding with my whole family.

Steve Madsen

I was born and raised in Holstein, Iowa where my father was in the oil business, but unfortunately, he did not own an oil well. After high school I went to college at Iowa State University getting a BS in Electrical Engineering. A year later I readily accepted a job offer to move to Southern California because I was eager to live in a more moderate climate. Several months later I took a job with a start-up called IBM which was the beginning of a 38-year career. While in Southern California, I continued studying part-time to earn a Masters degree in Business from the University of Southern California and met my wife Nancy in a ski club. In 1973 IBM offered me a transfer to Palo Alto. I didn't know how lucky I was to be moving to the best place in the world. Since then I have worked for IBM as a software engineer in various cities in the Bay area including Palo Alto, Menlo Park, San Francisco, Los Gatos, and San Jose. I retired in 2004

We have two adult children. Our son, his wife, and our new grandson live in Tucson. Our daughter lives in Los Angeles. My hobbies are skiing, bird watching, and traveling.

Kelly Morariu

My name is Kelly Morariu and I am currently working as the Assistant to the City Manager for the City of Palo Alto. I've been working for the City since September 2006. Prior to that, I worked for the City of Fremont for 7 years following completion of my Masters degree in Public Administration from the University of Kansas. I also received my Bachelors degree from the University of Kansas in Political Science, Economics and International Studies.

I grew up in New Jersey but consider myself from Kansas, having spent most summers and holidays on my family's farm there. My husband, Sergio, and I currently live in Fremont with his daughter and son (Daniella - 17 and Alex - 13) and our daughter (Sophia - 18 months). We were married in 2003 at Wente Vineyards in Livermore. We enjoy traveling and our favorite trips to date have been to Uruguay (where Sergio's family lived) and France. I also enjoy running with my greatest accomplishment to date being completion of the St. George, Utah, marathon in 1994, placing eleventh in my age group.

                                                                                                                     March 12: Ed Demeo - Electricity from Wind Power: Contributions to the Economy, the Environment, and Energy Security

Dr. Edgar A. DeMeo, President ~ Renewable Energy Consulting Services, Inc.
For twenty-two years, Dr. Edgar (Ed) DeMeo exercised increasingly broad responsibility for research and development programs in utility-scale renewable power at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Operating through a consulting firm he formed in February of 1999, he now provides program-management and technology-development support to national and state renewable energy programs. He serves as a strategic advisor to the DOE-NREL Wind Energy Program, the Utility Wind Interest Group, and the National Wind Coordinating Committee. He recently received the Wind Energy Program's 2004 Outstanding Program Leadership Award.
Ed is author or co-author of more than fifty publications on wind power, photovoltaics, solar-thermal power and utility applications of renewables. He is an electrical engineering graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and holds Masters and PhD degrees in electrical engineering science from Brown University. Prior to joining EPRI in 1976, he served as an associate professor (research) on the engineering faculty at Brown. He is also a 1980 graduate of Northeastern University's Management Development Program

March 19: Margarita Akhvledian - The Conflict in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia - resolution of ethnic conflicts and differences

Margarita Akhvlediani International Fellow akhvledi@stanford.edu Caucasus program director and regional editor Institute for War and Peace Reporting Tbilisi, Georgia

Akhvlediani was born in Bishkek, Kyrgystan, but has lived most of her life in the Republic of Georgia and earned her bachelor's degree in journalism at the State University of Georgia. She started her journalism career in 1985 as a reporter for Youth of Georgia newspaper in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 1994, she was named editor-in-chief for Black Sea Press news service in Tbilisi. She spent three years as a broadcast reporter and editor, first with the Russian television company RTR and later as editor-in-chief of the bilingual station "Radio Sakartvelo" in Tbilisi. Since 2002, she has worked as the Caucasus Program director and regional Editor in Tbilisi for the British Institute for War and Peace Reporting, based in London. She manages 150 journalists from the Caucasus regions, editing articles for the world weekly bulletin of IWPR Caucasus Reporting Service (www.iwpr.net). She also conducts trainings for local journalists in the post-Soviet Republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and the North Caucasian regions of Russia including Chechnya to teach them international standards of journalism.

March 26: Dr. John Bunzel - The Presidential Race in 2008: A survey of the Political Landscape

John H. Bunzel, a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializes in current political and educational problems and frequently writes and lectures on issues of public policy. He is a former commissioner of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

He is an expert in the field of civil rights, race relations, higher education, U.S. politics, and elections. His current research centers on race and race relations in U.S. society, with a focus on affirmative action, multiculturalism, and diversity in higher education as well as U.S. politics and elections.

From 1970 to 1978, when he joined the Hoover Institution, he was president of San Jose State University.

Bunzel's most recent book is Race Relations on Campus: Stanford Students Speak. He has also published Political Passages: Journeys of Change through Two Decades, 1968-1988; The American Small Businessman; Issues of American Public Policy; Anti-Politics in America; New Force on the Left: Tom Hayden and the Campaign against Corporate America; and Challenge to American Schools: The Case for Standards and Values.

In 1990, he received from the Policies Studies Organization the eighth annual Hubert Humphrey Award for his years of service as "an outstanding public policy practitioner."

He holds an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Santa Clara and in 1969 received the Presidential Award from the Northern California Political Science Association. In 1974, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors awarded him its Certificate of Honor for "unswerving devotion to the highest ideals of brotherhood and service to mankind and dedicated efforts looking to the elimination of racial and religious bigotry and discrimination."

He is past president of the Northern California Political Science Association, past director of the Northern California Citizenship Clearing House, and a member of the American Political Science Association. In the last three presidential elections, he has served as a political analyst for CBS radio in San Francisco.

He also has written numerous articles on trade unions and collective bargaining, discrimination and affirmative action, and the relationship between quality and equality in education. Bunzel was a member of the California Attorney General's Advisory Committee on Constitutional Rights from 1960 to 1962. He was a delegate from California to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.

He has taught at San Francisco State College (1953-56, 1965-70), Michigan State University (1956-57), and Stanford University (1956-63). The American Voter, his 1964 weekly television program on KPIX (CBS affiliate) in San Francisco, won a national award.

He received an A.B. in political science from Princeton University, an M.A. in sociology from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. From 1943 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Army. (2002)

April 2007 Programs

April 2 - Steve Staiger - Palo Alto in Time and Pictures, A Visual Walk Through Our Town's History

No Photo is available at this time.

Steve Staiger, Historian, Palo Alto Historic Society

Steve is a native Californian, born in San Francisco and raised in Marin. He received a BA in History from UC Davis, and a Masters in Library Science from UC Berkeley. For 24 years prior to retirement Steve was a Reference Librarian for the Palo Alto library. Steve now manages the Guy Miller (named after the city's first historian) archives which contains the historical documents and pictures of Palo Alto. The archives, while owned by the city, are maintained by the historical society and Steve is the curator for the collection.

Steve is an avid golfer (on his way to becoming addicted!), gardens a 2 acre plot in Portola Valley, and collects kayaks and canoes (has his own boat house) as well as putters and antique umbrella stands. With what time is left he is working to help establish the Palo Alto History Museum at the Birge Clark designed Roth building, the original home of the Palo Alto clinic.

Steve presents this talk to groups ranging from professional historian to kindergardners so he should be able to find the right level of presentation for us!

April 9 - Jean McCown, Hospital Renewal and Expansion Project

Jean McCown has been Director of Community Relations at Stanford University since May 17, 2004. She previously had consulted for the University on land use issues for five years.

McCown was a member of the Palo Alto City Council from 1990 to 1998 and served as Mayor in 1993. She served on the Palo Alto Planning Commission from 1979 to 1987 and chaired the Commission from 1981 to 1983. She also served on government transportation committees including the Santa Clara County Congestion Management Agency and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

She has a long background as an environmentalist, serving briefly on the board of the Committee for Green Foothills and for many years on the board of the Green Foothills Foundation. She is a current board member of the Greenbelt Alliance.

She received a bachelor's degree in history, with honors and high distinction and a Phi Beta Kappa membership from the University of Michigan in 1971, and received a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin, with an emphasis on the history of modern China, in 1973. She was “articles editor” for the Ecology Law Quarterly in 1977 when she completed her law studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

In 1994 she received the John Gardner Leadership Award from the American Leadership Forum.

April 16 - Luis Fraga -Demographic Change and the Future of America

Luis Fraga is associate professor of political science at Stanford. He received his A.B., cum laude, from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Rice University. His primary interests are urban politics, politics of race and ethnicity, educational politics, and voting rights policy. In 1989-90 he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, and in 2003-04 he was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, where he worked on a study entitled "Gender and Ethnicity: The Political Incorporation of Latina and Latino State Legislators," based on the first-ever nationwide survey of Latina/o state legislators in the U.S.

Luis Ricardo Fraga is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and School of Education (by courtesy) at Stanford University. He received his A.B., cum laude, from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Rice University. His primary interests are urban politics, education politics, voting rights policy, and the politics of race and ethnicity. He is co-editor of Ethnic and Racial Minorities in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Greenwood 1992). He was a member of the APSA standing committee on Civic Engagement and Education that co-authored the recently published Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Brookings Institution Press 2005) . He is also co-author of the recently published Multiethnic Moments: The Politics of Urban Education Reform (Temple University Press 2006).

He served as president of the Western Political Science Association in 1997-98. He served on the Executive Council of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1998-2000. He has recently been elected the Secretary of the American Political Science Association for 2006-07.

In 1989-90 he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. In 2003-04 he was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, where he worked on a study entitled "Gender and Ethnicity: The Political Incorporation of Latina and Latino State Legislators," based on the first-ever nationwide survey of Latina/o state legislators in the U.S.

Fraga has received a number of teaching and advising awards at Stanford including the Rhodes Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1993), the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education (1995), the Allan V. Cox Medal for Faculty Excellence Fostering Undergraduate Research (1997), the Faculty Award from the Chicano/Latino Graduating Class (1993, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001), the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor of the Year Award (2001), and the Associated Students of Stanford University Teaching Award (2003). He was also given the Adaljiza Sosa-Riddell Award for Exemplary Mentoring of Graduate Latina/o Students by the Committee on the Status of Latinos in the Profession of the American Political Science Association (2001) and this same award for mentoring junior faculty (2004).

He is married to Charlene L. Aguilar, Director of College Counseling, Castilleja School, Palo Alto, CA. They have three children: Bernard, 20, a junior at Stanford University with double majors in political science and linguistics, Isabel, 18, who is a first-year student at the University of Notre Dame, and Tomás, 5, who is in kindergarten.

April 23 -- Dorothy Drummond - Holy Land, Whose Land? Modern Dilemma, Ancient Roots

No man, and no nation, is an island, says Dorothy Drummond, whose travels have taken her to some seventy countries. She brings a geographer's viewpoint, and an abiding love for history, to first-hand observation wherever she is traveling. She looks always for relationships -- between people and the land they live on, between nations, and between the past and the present.

Dorothy Drummond has spent most of her life as a freelance writer for geographical publications. She began her professional career as assistant to the editor of the Geographical Review, published by the American Geographical Society in New York City. She has authored or co-authored four world cultures textbooks, has written articles for professional journals and scores of encyclopedia articles, and has been an advisor in the making of educational films.

Drummond was born in San Diego, spent her childhood in Oxnard, California, and her education years in the Mid-West -- at Valparaiso University in Indiana and at Northwestern University, where she earned a masters degree in geography. Following her marriage, she moved from New York City to Indiana, where her husband was a professor of geography at Indiana State University.

Drummond taught World Geography for more than thirty years as an adjunct on the faculties of Indiana State University and Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College.
Awarded Fulbright scholarships, Drummond and her husband spent a year doing research in Burma. At the time they met four Israeli agricultural experts, who later invited them to spend time in Israel as their guests. Drummond's intense interest in Israel and Palestine began with this experience. Holy Land, Whose Land? Modern Dilemma, Ancient Roots is the outgrowth of extensive travel in the Middle East, as well as research to uncover the causes of conflict plaguing the region.

A mother of three, and grandmother of two, Dorothy Drummond makes her home in Terre Haute, Indiana. She is listed in Who's Who in America. Now retired from teaching, she divides her time between writing, traveling, and occasional guest lecturing.

April 30 – A Capsule View into the History of the Palo Alto Rotary Club – A panel of our longest term members will discuss the highlights and evolution of our Club.