Task Force Members

Task Force Chairs

Samantha Guerry ’88 (Trustee)

Samantha Guerry (SLU ’88) is an entrepreneur and corporate marketing strategist with expertise in distinctive brand, market, and communications challenges that face growing corporate and non-profit organizations. She founded the TurnFirst Foundation, an online healthcare resource for people newly diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which is now part of the Georgetown Medstar Hospital. Ms. Guerry also founded and led Sightline Marketing – an award-winning Inc. 5000 Company that was voted one of the “Best Places to Work” by the Washington Business Journal. Over her career, she aided numerous companies and nonprofits with shaping and growing their organizations and served as the lead communications director for a national NYSE engineering firm. She has been a guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business, St. Lawrence University, the University of Maryland, and the Georgetown University School of Medicine. Her writing was recently included in Houghton Mifflin’s anthology of “The Best American Nonrequired Reading of 2019”. In 2018, Ms. Guerry played a national media role in publicly supporting her friend Dr. Christine Blasey Ford in the weeks leading up to and following Dr. Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Samantha graduated from St. Lawrence University cum laude with a B.A. in English and Philosophy, and holds an M.B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, with a concentration in marketing.

Erin McCarthy (Faculty)

Dr. Erin McCarthy came to St. Lawrence in 2000. She is a Professor of Philosophy and also teaches in the Asian Studies Program. A comparative feminist philosopher, in her work and teaching she brings together Japanese philosophy, ethics, feminist and continental philosophy. Author of the book “Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhood through Continental, Japanese and Feminist Philosophies” (Lexington, 2010), her work has been published in several anthologies and journals in both French and English. Her current research looks at medieval Japanese philosopher Dōgen as a resource for contemporary feminist philosophy and another strand integrates feminist and contemplative pedagogies. In 2016, Dr. McCarthy was the recipient of St. Lawrence's J. Calvin Keene Award. She was an inaugural recipient of the Frederick P. Lenz Foundation Residential Fellowship for Buddhist Studies and American Culture and Values at Naropa University in 2009. She sits on the editorial boards of the journals ”Comparative and Continental Philosophy,” “The Journal of Japanese Philosophy” and “Body and Religion,” and served as co-editor of the ”ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies and the Liberal Arts” from 2011-2017. She has also served as Chair of the Board of Directors of ASIANetwork and in 2017 was honored with the Van J. Symons Award for Service to the organization. She is a founding member of CoZen, a group dedicated to the cooperative integration of contemplative practice and academic study. In addition, Dr. McCarthy is a trained teacher of Mindfulness for stress management and Mindful Self-Compassion, modalities which she brings to her teaching, the campus community as a whole, and the community in which she lives. For more on Dr. McCarthy's mindfulness teaching, see https://www.erinmccarthymindfulness.com. She was Co-Chair of the 2018 International Symposium for Contemplative Research, the premier academic conference in the field of Contemplative Studies (https://www.iscr2018.org). She is the Co-Chair of the St. Lawrence University Task Force on the Causes and Prevention of Sexual Misconduct.

Heather McCauley ’06 (Trustee)

Dr. Heather McCauley (SLU ’06) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Michigan State University. A scholar trained in global health and social epidemiology at Harvard University, Dr. McCauley’s research portfolio spans sexual violence, intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion, and sex trafficking. She has published more than 75 journal articles and book chapters on these topics in outlets spanning a variety of health and social science disciplines. At Michigan State, she chairs the President’s Sexual Violence Advisory Committee. Nationally, she is Associate Editor of the multidisciplinary research journal Psychology of Violence and serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Family Violence. She graduated from St. Lawrence University cum laude with a BA in Sociology. As a student, she was an Advocate and a sister of Kappa Delta Sigma. Dr. McCauley lives in Okemos, Michigan with her wife, Renee.

Task Force Members

Rance Davis (Staff)

 

Audrey DeBritz '20 (Student)

Audrey DeBritz (SLU ’20) currently serves as the President of the St. Lawrence University Advocates Program. Audrey is majoring in Psychology with minors in Public Health, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Biology. She also serves as a teaching assistant for the Psychology Department. She hopes to pursue further education in the field of public health. She is interested in a career focusing on adolescent health and community health education. Audrey enjoys reading and making art. She loves spending summers in Cape Cod and camping on Lake George with her family. Audrey is from Niskayuna, NY.

Kimberly Flint-Hamilton (Staff)

Kimberly Flint-Hamilton joined St. Lawrence as its first Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion in January of 2017.

Flint-Hamilton was previously Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, where she worked for the 17 years. There, she was appointed by the university president to serve on its Diversity Inclusion Task Force, trained faculty and administrators on Intergroup Dialogue Pedagogy, and co-chaired an annual daylong symposium, titled “Inclusive Excellence in Teaching.”

Flint-Hamilton launched her academic career in 1990 as a visiting instructor of history at St. Mary’s College in Indiana. A year later, she became the assistant dean of arts and letters at the University of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters, where student academic advising was her primary responsibility. Flint-Hamilton joined Stetson University in 1999 as an assistant professor, becoming an associate professor in 2002 and full professor in 2012. She has chaired Stetson’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology from 2007-2010 and again since 2013, chaired Stetson’s College of Arts and Sciences Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and served as a coordinator for the school’s Intergroup Dialogue Institute Planning Group.

Scott Giles ’82, P’16 (Alumni)

 

Jamie Moorby ’04 (Alumni)

Jamie Moorby (SLU '04) was a Sociology Major and Outdoor Studies minor who participated in both the Adirondack Semester and Kenya Semester programs. Her senior year she was among the first groups of students to go through the Advocates training. Jamie is a queer, transgender woman who currently resides in her home town of Calais, VT and is a home care provider who dedicates most of her time to community projects. Among others she is Chair of the Board of the Sexual Assault Crisis Team of Washington County. She is honored to be an alumni representative to this important Task Force.

Placido Ramallo ’21 (Student)

Placido Ramallo (SLU ‘21) is President of the Thelomathesian Society and majoring in Philosophy and International Economics-Spanish combined. He is the former Co-President of SLU Republicans, a member of the Outing Club, and a frequent attendee of the Java Barn. Placido hails from Fairport, New York.

Karl Schonberg (Staff)

Karl Schonberg holds a PhD in international relations from the University of Virginia. He came to St. Lawrence in 1999 after holding a doctoral fellowship at the Brookings Institution and teaching in a visiting position at Dickinson College. He teaches courses in international security, international law and organization, and U.S. foreign policy, as well as a First Year Program course in globalization and identity. He is the author of two books and numerous articles on the intellectual history of U.S. foreign relations, constitutional war powers, and international relations theory. His most recent book, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2009, described the process by which a set of ideas about the identity of the United States and other international actors gave rise to the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq from 2003-2007.

Mara Sears ’20 (Student)

Mara Sears (SLU ’20) is the current Vice President of The Advocates Program on campus. Mara is a Biology major with a Gender and Sexuality Studies minor. She is planning to pursue a career in the medical field concentrated in women’s health. Mara is from Adams, NY and enjoys working in the vivarium as a TA and spending time outdoors with her family and many animals.

Sydney Siefert ’04 (Alumni)

Syd Seifert (SLU ‘04) currently lives in New York City and is a psychotherapist with a focused practice around issues related to gender and sexuality. Syd coordinates and implements prevention programs at High Schools in NYC, which include: trauma-informed counseling, educational workshops for students, parents and staff, and the development of a peer leadership program to promote healthy relationships in the school community. Syd is Latina, cisgender, white and identifies as queer. In her free time, she enjoys learning to watercolor, cooking on the weekends and taking her dog, Henry Marie Elizabeth to the beach.

Jennifer Thomas (Faculty)

Jennifer Thomas is an associate professor in the Performance and Communication Arts department at St. Lawrence. She works to engage in conversations that bring voice and power to those that are often unheard—bringing whispers to full voice in the classroom, on the stage, and in her scholarship. She is committed to engaging in challenging conversations across the St. Lawrence campus. She is raising three fierce daughters.