Our Past Programs
2024 – 2025 Program Series
Women’s Board September Luncheon
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
Why do disagreements in Great Britain end in fist fights whereas in the United States they end with people in body bags? In this insightful discussion, Professor Jens Ludwig argues that the origins of gun violence in the U.S. are not what you have been led to believe, and that instead, we can better understand gun violence through the lens of behavioral economics.
Jen Ludwig’s current work focuses on how behavioral science and data science can help solve social problems. He is a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor, the Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, the codirector of the Education Lab, and the codirector of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s working group on the economics of crime.
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Women’s Board ISAC Tour with Curator Marc Maillot
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
ISAC Museum
1155 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL
10:30 am – 12:00 pm
(with optional lunch afterwards)
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Women’s Board October Luncheon
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Do the Humanities Still Matter?
There is an existential crisis facing classic liberal arts programs nationwide. Some argue that traditional liberal arts study has become the quaint province of a privileged, elite students who don’t require a return on their tuition investment and can afford to spend time on unremunerative pursuits. To address budget deficits, some universities are cutting programs from world languages to creative writing, and some smaller colleges that face enrollment challenges are eliminating less-popular majors, often in the humanities, to stay afloat. Join Dean Deborah L. Nelson as she shares her views on the future of the humanities and their role in society and higher education–on what lies ahead and what matters most.
Deborah L. Nelson is Dean of the Division of the Humanities and the Helen B. and Frank L. Sulzberger Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and the College. Her research focuses on late 20th-century U.S. culture and politics.
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Women’s Board Annual Dinner
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
The Casino Club
Israel, Palestine, and Free Speech on University Campuses
Universities were already facing a difficult environment on the issue of free expression when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Beyond the horrors of the war itself, there have been collateral consequences for speech in the United States. These include the cancelling of Palestine-related speakers, Congressional hearings and investigations into antisemitism, protests and encampments on college campuses, and debates about academic boycotts. How these issues are handled may determine the health of higher education for the next generation. Professor Tom Ginsburg will evaluate the national situation and discuss how universities, including the University of Chicago, have navigated the various challenges.
Professor Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Distinguished Service Professor of international law, inaugural faculty director of the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf research scholar, professor of Political Science, and the faculty director of the Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity.
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Women’s Board Holiday Event
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
An Evening of Music with Professor and Composer Augusta Read Thomas
Join us for an evening of music, cocktails, and appetizers with one of the most active composers in the world, Augusta Read Thomas. Performing one of her original compositions will be violinist MingHuan Xu and pianist Winston Choi, who are Duo Diorama. Professor Thomas’s music, which is regularly performed worldwide and has been commissioned by leading ensembles and organizations around the world, is referred to as “nuanced, majestic, elegant, capricious, lyrical, and colorful.” The American Academy of Arts and Letters described Thomas as “one of the most recognizable and widely loved figures in American Music.”
An influential teacher and musical composer, Augusta Read Thomas is a University of Chicago University Professor of Composition, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music, and her compositions were featured on a Grammy winning CD by Chanticleer. She is only the 16th person to be designated University Professor at UChicago. Professor Thomas founded and directs the Center for Contemporary Composition and the Grossman Ensemble. Her compositions are released on over 94 commercial recordings. Selected recent commissions include those from New York Philharmonic, BBC Proms, Boston Symphony, Philharmonie de Paris, Sejong Soloists, Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, and Tanglewood. Her work has been performed more than almost any other living composer. In 2016, she was named “Chicagoan of the Year” by the Chicago Tribune.
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Women’s Board February Luncheon
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Breakthrough Concepts in Renewable Energy
Renewable energy can only be generated when or the sun is shining, the wind is blowing or water is flowing, making it unable to satisfy society’s constant demand for electricity. Fossil fuels and nuclear energy have to compensate unless there’s a way to stockpile renewable energy for later use. The solution to this dilemma could be new sodium-ion batteries. Join us for a discussion with Professor Y. Shirley Meng to learn how her team—supported by a $62.5 million federal grant—is working to make sodium-ion batteries commercially viable. “The world is depending on battery scientists to give us a less expensive energy storage,” says climate economist Michael Greenstone, faculty director for the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. “The world is counting on Shirley to make it happen.”
Y. Shirley Meng is Professor of Molecular Engineering at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, and the founding faculty director for the Energy Technologies Initiative at the University of Chicago’s Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Growth. She serves as the chief scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS) at the Argonne National Laboratory, where she is also director of the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA).
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Women’s Board March Luncheon
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Shaping Positive Outcomes for Chicago’s Youth
Education and mental health are deeply interconnected in shaping the outcomes of youth living in high burden urban neighborhoods, where systemic challenges like poverty, community violence, and the absence of resources exacerbate the challenges of healthy development. Please join us for a panel discussion led by Deborah Gorman-Smith, Emily Klein Gidwitz Professor and Dean of the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice. Dean Gorman-Smith will provide an overview of her own research on risk and prevention of youth violence. She will be joined in conversation with Professors Ming-Te Wang, faculty director of the Urban Education Institute (UEI), discussing his research to address educational inequities in urban communities and Janelle Goodwill, discussing her research on the crisis of Black youth suicide in our city and around the country.
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Women’s Board April Luncheon
Tuesday, April 8, 2025
Rethinking Work: Seismic Changes for the Good
Work is central to the human experience and is in the midst of its greatest transformation ever. Due to a confluence of forces from AI, to the demographic changes of aging and declining populations, to the rise of the gig economy and the impact of Covid-19 on people’s mindsets as to who they work for and where they work, the future of work is undergoing seismic shifts.
Rishad Tobaccowala, the author of Rethinking Work, Seismic Changes in the Where, When and Why, will share key learnings and research that went into his book and share perspectives on how organizations will be redesigned, a new type of employee who is neither full time or freelance will arise, how leadership and management will change and why everyone will need to be retrained. The good news is that the future of work will be more meaningful, purposeful and rewarding in every way!
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Women’s Board May Luncheon
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Healthy Hearts for a Lifetime
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, affecting one in three women across all age groups, and most cardiovascular disease can still be prevented with education and healthy lifestyle changes. But women also experience unique life events that can impact their risk, including pregnancy and menopause. Furthermore, research shows that stress may impact health, making it important for women to understand the mind-body connection and how to focus on improving both their physical health and mental well-being.
Doctors Tamar Polonsky, Hena Patel, Jeanne DeCara and Rishi Arora, leading researchers and practitioners at UChicago Medicine, provide well-rounded insights on women’s heart health across the lifespan.
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2023 – 2024 Program Series
Women’s Board September Luncheon
Wednesday, September 27, 2023
The Future of Human Computer Interaction
Pedro Lopes, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, will present on the Human Computer Integration Lab, a research group focused on developing interactive devices that integrate directly with the user’s body. These devices are the natural succession to wearables and are intentionally designed to borrow parts of the user’s body for inputs and outputs, allowing computers to be more directly interwoven in our body’s senses and movements. This work has all kinds of applications, including developing therapeutic exoskeletons, and giving users new physical abilities such as smell.
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Women’s Board October Luncheon
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Russian Media and the War in Ukraine: How the Power and Perspectives of the Media Influence and Shape Thinking on the Conflict
William Nickell, Associate Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, regularly teaches a course on Russian Media and Power, and will discuss how the war has been characterized by Russian and Western media. He will also offer a set of alternative perspectives that, though rarely considered, are proving increasingly relevant as the war has continued.
Ania Aizman, Assistant Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, is completing a book on Russian anarchism, and will present material from her research on Russian groups that attempt to sabotage their own government’s war on Ukraine––and on the media narratives that surround them.
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Women’s Board Annual Dinner
Thursday, November 16, 2023
Impacting Millions of Lives with Economic Innovation: A Discussion with Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer
Michael Kremer is the University Professor in the Kenneth C. Griffin Department of Economics and the 2019 co-recipient of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Professor Kremer’s research examines how experimentation and innovation can be used to improve lives around the world. Covering areas including education, health, water, agriculture, and climate change, Professor Kremer will share the challenges and some new approaches to obtaining reliable answers about the best way to fight global poverty.
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Women’s Board Holiday Cocktails
Thursday, December 7, 2023
Love It or Hate It: The Paradox of the 20th Century American Musical
The American Musical has been an integral part of the entertainment landscape for decades. In this enlightening presentation, Professor Thomas Christensen, Avalon Foundation Professor of Music and the Humanities, will discuss the making and meaning of the American Musical. Dismissed by some critics as a light genre of entertainment and escapism, the American Musical has also served as a vehicle of serious social criticism at important points in our country’s history. Taking several examples from various musicals ranging from Show Boat to Hamilton, Professor Christensen will explore — at the podium and the piano — the paradoxical position of the musical in American culture.
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Women’s Board Curatorial Walkthrough
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Ruth Duckworth: Life as a Unity
Ruth Duckworth was a renowned and innovative sculptor who was deeply engaged in the UChicago and Hyde Park communities of the 1960’s and 70’s. Please join us for a special, private tour of “Ruth Duckworth: Life as a Unity,” which features dozens of spectacular pieces, many on display from the private collections of Hyde Park residents, and never before publicly shown. A refugee from Germany, via London, Duckworth came to Chicago to teach ceramics at Midway Studios in 1964 and remained in Chicago until her death in 2009. She is best known for her abstract and anthropomorphic forms derived from nature. Her work is featured in the collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum in D.C., the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The tour will be led by exhibition curator, Laura Steward, followed by an optional lunch at Nella Pizza e Pasta.
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Women’s Board Evening Event
Wednesday, February 28, 2024
Health System Reform: Where Do We Go from Here?
Appointed in 2023, Katherine Baicker serves as the 15th Provost of the University of Chicago. As Provost, she is responsible for academic and research programs across the University and oversees the University’s budget. A leading scholar in the economic analysis of health care policy, she is the Emmett Dedmon Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, where she served as Dean for five years prior to being appointed Provost.
Baicker’s research focuses on the effectiveness of public and private health insurance, including the effect of reforms on the distribution and quality of care. Her large-scale research projects include the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, and randomized evaluation of the effects of Medicaid coverage. Her research has been published in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Health Affairs, JAMA, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
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Women’s Board March Luncheon
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Back by popular demand! Selwyn O. Rogers, Jr. M.D., M.P.H., returns to talk to the Women’s Board after six years “on the job” as the inaugural Director of the UC Medicine Trauma Center. Now Dr. Roger’s story will be much enriched and expansive, as he shares his successes and challenges. He will also discuss the impact of the Violence Recovery Program (VRP) and the effect of a new cadre of hired surgeons.
A widely respected surgeon and public health expert, Dr. Rogers is building an interdisciplinary team of specialists to treat patients who suffer injury from life-threatening events, such as car crashes, serious falls and gun violence. His team works with leaders in the city’s trauma network to expand trauma care on the South Side. He holds a B.A. and an M.D. from Harvard, an M.P.H. from Vanderbilt, and completed his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
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Women’s Board March Luncheon
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Spiderweb Capitalism: How the Ultra-Rich Hide Their Money
In this insightful and intriguing “behind the scenes” exploration, Professor Kimberly Kay Hoang dives into the shadow economy that facilitates the illicit movement of wealth across borders and around the globe. She uncovers the mechanics behind the invisible, mundane networks of lawyers, accountants, company secretaries, and fixers who make it all happen in this in-depth analysis. Her book, Spiderweb Capitalism, was published in 2022.
Kimberly Kay Hoang is Professor of Sociology and the College and the Director of Global Studies at the University of Chicago. Her research examines deal making in frontier and emerging economies.
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Women’s Board May Luncheon
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Election Preview:
War, Indictments, and Women’s Choice—How Will They Impact the Election?
Mary Kathryn “Heidi” Heitkamp is an American politician who served as a United States senator from North Dakota from 2013 to 2019. A member of the North Dakota Democratic–Nonpartisan League Party, she was the first woman elected to the US Senate from North Dakota. After leaving the Senate, Heitkamp became a CNBC contributor and visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. In April 2019, with Senator Joe Donnelly of Indiana (who also lost reelection in 2018), she launched One Country Project, an organization aimed at helping Democrats reconnect with rural voters. In January 2023, Heitkamp became the director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
Jennifer Steinhauer is the senior director of Speaker Series and Pritzker Fellows at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. She programs the IOP’s large public events and assembles a cohort of Pritzker Fellows each quarter, drawing from a broad array of political figures, activists, journalists and policy experts. Prior to this role, Jennifer was a long-time reporter at the New York Times and has written two cookbooks, a novel and a chronicle of the first year of the largest female Congressional class.
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Women’s Board Walking Tour
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
A Historical and Architectural Walking Tour of Campus
Curious about why UChicago’s campus developed the way it did? Ever wonder about the people whose names came to adorn its stately buildings, or how its beautiful quadrangles took their distinctive form? How has the institution grown and changed in dialogue with the city around it? In this unique and special offering, join Chris Skrable, Assistant Dean of the College and Executive Director of the Chicago Studies program for an intimate walk through our campus and its histories. Known for his unvarnished takes on the highs, lows, and often-weird middles of Chicago history, Skrable promises critical insight into the people and forces that shaped our campus environment. Selected Campus Highlights.
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2022 – 2023 Program Series
Women’s Board Annual Dinner
Thursday, September 29, 2022
The Supreme Court and the Overturning of Roe v. Wade
The Rubenstein Forum Professor Geoffrey R. Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law, will discuss the history of Abortion, the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v Wade, and its recent decision in the Dobbs case, which overruled Roe. He will also comment briefly on a few of the Court’s other recent decisions to give a sense of where the current Court is headed.
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Women’s Board October Luncheon
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
January 6 and the Rise of Violent American Populism
Robert A. Pape, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), will present research findings on the demographics, attitudes and social connections of those who participated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, and the emergence of a new force in American politics – a mass political movement that has violence at its core. Pape will discuss implications of this movement on the 2022 midterm elections and on American democracy at large.
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Women’s Board November Luncheon
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
The James Webb Space Telescope and a Sharper View of Life and the Universe
Wendy L. Freedman, the John and Marion Sullivan University Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and the College will discuss the development and deployment of NASA’s new flagship telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), what astronomers are learning from its images, and how the JWST enhances knowledge about the history of the universe and origins of life.
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Women’s Board February Luncheon
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
From Science Fiction to Reality in Organ Transplantation
Rolf N. Barth, Professor of Surgery and Director of Kidney, Pancreas, and Liver Transplantation at the University of Chicago Medicine Transplant Institute will speak about remarkable advances in organ transplantation including hand and face transplantation, uterus transplantation, and experimental use of animal organs for human transplantation. He will additionally discuss the historic and current unique roles that the University of Chicago has played in surgical advances in living donor transplantation.
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Women’s Board March Luncheon
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
PME’s Second Decade: Leading the Way in Engineering Sustainability and Health
The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering has developed a powerful new interdisciplinary approach to engineering from the molecular level up. This model can lead to transformative new technologies, which Dean Matthew Tirrell will illustrate using examples of new therapies for cardiovascular disease and the development of powerful batteries for heavy transit and grid applications. He will also discuss the way that PME’s research efforts can benefit both Chicago and the larger Midwest, including the creation of the new the Chan-Zuckerberg BioHub in Chicago and PME’s efforts to secure the next DOE hub in Energy Storage at Argonne National Lab.
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Women’s Board April Luncheon
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Psychoactive Drugs in Psychiatry
Harriet De Wit, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, will present on the Human Behavioral Pharmacology Laboratory (HBPL) and her work on the medical and therapeutic impact of psychoactive drugs. Dr. de Wit investigates the subjective, behavioral, and physiological effects of drugs of abuse in healthy human volunteers. She will present on the need for psychiatric medications, what we can learn from the use of nonmedical psychoactive drugs such as ketamine, MDMA and psychedelics, and address big questions such as whether mystical or psychedelic experiences are necessary to therapeutic benefits.
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Women’s Board May Luncheon
Wednesday, May 17, 2023
A Winning Pitch: The Story Behind UChicago’s 2022 Men’s Soccer NCAA Championship
Julianne Sitch, Head Coach of Men’s Soccer at the University of Chicago, will share her journey to being the first woman to lead a men’s soccer team to an NCAA championship. She will also describe the application and interview process to be Head Coach, biases she has encountered and overcome throughout her career, and her approach to leadership.
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Women’s Board June Luncheon
Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Through the Looking Glass: Reimagining the UChicago Library
If the University of Chicago is going to remain at the forefront as an intellectual destination, the Library must be more than a shrine to books and a space for contemplative study. The future of the Library involves actively engaging with the complex knowledge environment transforming society. Torsten Reimer, University Librarian and Dean of the University Library, is re-defining what the UChicago Library can be. This program will be an exciting opportunity to learn about his vision for the future.