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James J. Linksz (President) is President Emeritus of Bucks County Community College. Previously, he was Chief Academic Officer at Catonsville Community College near Baltimore, and the founding Chief Academic Officer at Rappahannock Community College. He completed his bachelor's degree at Dartmouth College, and earned his master's and doctoral degrees at Columbia University. At Columbia he was a W. K. Kellogg Fellow in community college management. He also completed Harvard University's Institute for Educational Management. Dr. Linksz is a former President of the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, and Chair of the Council of Community College Presidents, and founding Chairman of the Pennsylvania Virtual Community College Coordinating Board. In addition to his Board membership at the David Library, his community activities include service as Treasurer of the Federal Lands Reuse Authority, memberships on the Lower Bucks Chamber Leadership Board, St. Mary Hospital Foundation Advisory Board and the YWCA Advisory Board. He is an Honorary Trustee of Pearl S. Buck International. |
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Francine Lida Stone (Vice President) holds a B. A. from Harvard University, a M. A. from University of London in English Literature, and a Ph. D. from University of Manchester in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies specializing in the medieval geography of the lower Red Sea coast of Arabia. In 2002 she convened an international conference at the British Museum, Trade and Travel in the Red Sea, attended by the general public and scholars from around the world. Since then, five volumes of the conference proceedings have been published, and have transformed the scholarship of the region. Francine Stone is the granddaughter of the founder of the David Library, Sol Feinstone, and daughter of the Library’s first President and Director, Ezra Stone. In 2001 she herself was called to fill the dual roles of Acting Director and President of the David Library. A Bucks County native, she now divides her time between Pennsylvania and Oxfordshire, England. |
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Norval D. Reece (Treasurer) is an international cable television entrepreneur. He is a former Secretary of Commerce of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and founder and Chairman of Pennsylvania’s first Small Business Commission, and its first Film Commission. He is a former Chairman of the National Governors' Association Task Force on Commerce, Transportation and Technology. President Jimmy Carter appointed Norval Reece to White House conferences on economic and small business development, and President George H. W. Bush named him a delegate to Eastern Europe Business Opportunities. He has led trade missions to Europe and Asia, and served on over 40 boards. He is a graduate of DePauw University and Yale Divinity School. |
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Yvette E. Taylor-Hachoose (Secretary) is an attorney who spent 22 years in the corporate world, as Vice-President with Prudential Insurance Company and Assistant General Counsel with both Prudential and CIGNA Corporation, before establishing her own practice in Bucks County, PA that focuses on estate planning, probate and estate administration, guardianship, business planning and contracts. She is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association and National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. She serves as Chair of the Bucks County Bar Association Orphans’ Court/Estate Planning & Probate law section and Vice-President of the Bucks County Estate Planning Counsel. She is the author of “Stop! What Are You Waiting For? Your Step-By-Step Guide to Estate Planning.” In 2008, she made a diplomatic mission to Ghana and in 2011 to Jamaica through the U. S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs, providing legal advice to women entrepreneurs on wealth transfer. |
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Brendan McConville is Professor of History at Boston University. His many books on American History include “The King's Three Faces,” “The American Revolution, 1763-1789,” and “These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace.” He was educated at Brown University and Reed College, Portland. His research focuses on the intersection of politics and social developments in Early America, and his interests include colonial history and the English Reformation. He previously taught at SUNY-Binghamton from 1992 to 2004, and was chair of the department there 2003 to 2004. |
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Tina Packer is the founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. She has directed most of Shakespeare’s plays (some of them several times), acted in seven of them (never when directing) and taught the whole canon one way or another at over thirty colleges in the U.S., including Harvard, M.I.T. and NYU. At Columbia, she taught in the M.B.A. program for four years, resulting in the publication of her book, Power Plays: Shakespeare’s Lessons in Leadership and Management, co-authored with John Whitney. She also wrote Tales from Shakespeare, an award-winning children’s book, and Women of Will, an exploration of the women in the plays of Shakespeare. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she began her career in England as an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. For BBC Television, she played Dora to Ian McKellen’s David Copperfield, and appeared on Doctor Who. After appearing in repertory throughout England, she came to the U.S. in 1974 when the Ford Foundation funded an eleven-month project for her to research the visceral roots of Elizabethan theatre. Out of that work emerged the aesthetic and practical methods that Shakespeare and Company is based on, and still practices to this day. Tina Packer received additional Ford grants to travel the world, looking at the relationship of mind, body, sacred texts, stand-up comedy, voice, and actor–audience relationship in her studies. She has received the state of Massachusetts’ highest honor, The Commonwealth Award, and has been awarded six honorary degrees. |
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