Who We Are

Jac joined Duke and the Kenan team in August 2022.

As a Program Coordinator, they support programs including the Prison Engagement Initiative, Democracy and the Politics of American Higher Education, The Ethics of Now, and Focus.

Jac holds a BA in Comparative Literature from Barnard College. They have a commitment to and background in anti-carceral work and have worked for organizations focusing on prison education and criminal legal system reform.

jac.arnade-colwill@duke.edu

John Biewen is a longtime audio journalist, documentary maker, and educator. He is the producer and host of the award-winning podcast, "Scene on Radio."

"Scene on Radio’s" 2017 series exploring the history of white supremacy, "Seeing White," and its 2020 series on American democracy, "The Land That Never Has Been Yet," were each nominated for a Peabody Award. Biewen is also a two-time winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for outstanding coverage of the disadvantaged.

Before joining Kenan, he directed the audio program at the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University. Previously, John reported for NPR News, American Public Media, and Minnesota Public Radio. John is co-editor of the book, "Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound," published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Alexandra Cooper serves as Associate Director for Evaluation and Assessment within the Purpose Project.  She supports the Project in making question of character, purpose and meaning signature features of the Duke community by gathering evidence about the Project's programs and their effects and by working with Project team members to examine and understand what that evidence shows us about what the Project does and can accomplish.

Prior to joining the Purpose Project she worked at Duke's Social Science Research Institute, first as its Administrative Director and subsequently as its Associate Director for Education and Training.  She has guided and directed a wide range of collaborative educational programming and services and devoted  effort to a wide range of research projects, supporting both quantitative and qualitative data collection, management, analysis, and reporting.  Prior to coming to Duke, she held faculty positions at Lafayette College and the University of North Carolina - Charlotte.  She holds a B.A. in Political and Social Thought and in French from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

Kimberly Dorman is the Administrative Coordinator for the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.  She is a graduate of North Carolina Central University with 10 + years of experience in Program/Administrative Coordination; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coordination; and Financial Management.  In her spare time, she likes to participate in community activities, watch sports, and spend time with her family.  She is excited to bring her talents to the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Dagny Edison joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics in May 2024 as a Program Coordinator. In this role she supports a variety of undergraduate initiatives including the What Now? program, the Ethics and Society Certificate, and the Ethics and Global Citizenship LLC.

Before joining the Kenan team, Dagny worked as a Project Director for the Project Change orientation program at Duke, and she worked as a K-12 tutor for over four years. She earned her BA from Duke University in Political Science with a minor in Classical Civilizations, and is originally from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Brooks Emanuel has backgrounds in both (1) dance and choreography and (2) civil rights law, policy advocacy, and legislative and political work. He obtained his J.D. from NYU Law and his MFA in Dance from Duke University and has both performed at Symphony Space in New York City and drafted petitions to the United States Supreme Court. Among other roles, Brooks has had the great fortune to work for both Stacey Abrams (Georgia House Democratic Caucus) and Bryan Stevenson (Equal Justice Initiative), as well as serving as public policy director for Planned Parenthood Southeast. A large portion of his work in these realms focused particularly on challenging the injustices of the criminal legal system and protecting voting rights. In the dance world, he has performed with Michael Mao Dance, PearsonWidrig Dance, Beacon Dance, and Several Dancers Core, among others. In his current work, he seeks to bring all of these experiences to bear.

At the Kenan Institute for Ethics, Brooks creates and implements both curricular and cocurricular programming for undergraduates around radical imagination, expansive thinking, and strategies—including embodied and artistic—for changing the world. In addition to his work at Kenan, Brooks facilitates embodied movement workshops for social justice practitioners and creates performance works that investigate humans’ relationships to each other and the rest of the natural world.

Christian Ferney oversees university-wide ethics initiatives, ethics curriculum development, and the KIE alumni network. In a previous role, he managed many of the Institute’s co-curricular programs, such as Team Kenan and Project Change. A native of Portland, Oregon, he has lived in Durham since 2003. He holds a BA in sociology from Linfield College and an MA (2005) and PhD (2009) in sociology from Duke University.

christian.ferney@duke.edu
919-660-3096

Ada Gregory develops a variety of KIE programs related to student life and community engagement, runs the DukeEngage in New York program, and facilitates faculty involvement in projects across the Institute's portfolio. Ada graduated from Duke (BA/MA) and went on to work at the state and local levels for 20 years influencing policy and practice related to victims' rights, violence against women, and criminal justice reform. She returned to Duke in 2006 and worked in several capacities, including as director of the Duke Women’s Center and chief administrator for the university’s signature institutes and initiatives, before joining the Kenan Institute for Ethics in 2018.

ada.gregory@duke.edu
919-660-2444

Elena joined the Kenan team in November 2024. She is a Program Coordinator for DukeEngage helping manage the Gateway, Brodhead, Decaminada, and Group programs. She previously worked for DukeEngage as a Site Coordinator (SC) in Brazil and Uganda, and currently supports SC training and student recruitment.

Her background is in Engineering Physics, Spanish, Mathematics, and Music. Prior to working for Duke, she was a two-time Fulbright Scholarship recipient and worked with Universities in Bucaramanga and Tunja, Colombia.

As Associate Director of Student Engagement, Shannan develops and oversees several undergraduate co-curricular programs at Kenan. She brings with her an emphasis on “practice,” embodied thinking-feeling, historical materialism, and a healthy skepticism toward the framework of “ethics” when exploring lived questions about what personal, interpersonal, social, and institutional ethics might entail. As a person, Shannan enjoys techno raving, film, and trying to learn to surf! Her dog Krewe is often in the office. 😉

Shannan comes to Kenan having worked with undergraduates in the interdisciplinary humanities classroom since 2006. She was most recently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford College, teaching critical theory across the departments of Political Science, Peace, Justice & Human Rights, Writing, and Visual Studies. She has also taught in the Stern School of Business at NYU, in the Studio Art and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies departments at Stony Brook University, and in Writing, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, and Global Culture & Theory at Duke. Shannan returns to Duke having received a PhD from the Literature Department and Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies in 2019. She remains connected to Philly (from where she recently came) and NYC through various DIY political-aesthetics endeavors, while nesting now in Durham.

Her publications appear in the journals differences, Camera Obscura, Women & Performance, Feminist Formations, and The Journal of Visual Culture, with invited keywords entries in Finance Aesthetics: A Critical Glossary and The John Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory.

Shannan received a Neurosomatic Intelligence Certification in 2023 and has practiced Zen and Mindfulness meditation for 3+ years. She is enrolled to receive a Mindfulness teaching certification through MIEA this summer, and is dedicated to developing trauma-informed, mindfulness-based undergraduate pedagogy and programing.

Katherine Jo works with The Purpose Project, developing courses, programs, and pedagogy that engage students in questions of meaning, purpose, and character. In addition to teaching undergraduate courses, she leads programming for graduate and professional school students, including Teaching on Purpose, which prepares doctoral students for their future roles as educators, and is an instructor in the Program in Education. Katherine also serves on the Advisory Board of The Project on the Good Surgeon at Duke Medical School and is on the Project Leadership Team of Yale University’s Life Worth Living Network. Her scholarly interests include philosophies of liberal learning, the place of leisure in education, and faculty vocational identity. She has previously worked in career development, undergraduate advising, and faculty development. She holds a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University, an M.A. in Philosophy of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Christine Mayer-Patel, Program Coordinator for DukeEngage, joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics team in September 2023. She manages the DukeEngage application and registration processes, including travel and visas, as well as supporting DukeEngage events and programming.

Christine has a Master’s in Nonprofit Administration and a Bachelor’s in Political Economy of Industrial Societies. She has 17 years of experience at Duke, during which time her work has focused on stewardship/donor relations and financial management. Prior to coming to Duke, Christine worked at the Volunteer Center of Durham and other nonprofits in North Carolina and California.

Inga Peterson is the Associate Director of Operations for DukeEngage. She has been developing and managing programs and cross-functional teams at Duke for the majority of the past eleven years, five of which she spent as an assistant director for programs with DukeEngage. Most recently, she served as the Vice President for Campus Engagement for the Duke Alumni Association, where she was the senior administrator responsible for the campus-facing programs and functions of the 175,000-member Association. Prior to coming to Duke, Inga working in academic advising and student affairs at the University of Chicago, Harvard, and Boston University, and developed and managed international community development programs with the Academy for Educational Development, the Harvard Institute for International Development, and the United States Peace Corps. Inga lives in Durham with her son and Yorkie mix.

Laura joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics in November 2023.

As Research Associate, she supports new institute collaborations at Duke University, particularly with the Native American Studies Initiative (NASI), and provides event support. She also serves as editorial assistant for Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, which as of 2023 has its editorial home at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.

Previously, Laura spent nine years at UNC-Chapel Hill, the last six of which she worked on the development team at Carolina Performing Arts (CPA), one of the nation’s Major University Presenters. Laura is a graduate of Davidson College, and she lives in Durham.

Sarah Rogers joined the Kenan Institute for Ethics as Assistant Director for Communications in December 2021. A storyteller at heart, she is passionate about writing and creating digital content that shares the transformative experiences that people have at the institute.

Sarah attended Duke University as an undergraduate, earning a BA with a double major in English and Medieval and Renaissance Studies. She studied abroad with the Duke in Berlin program, and, after graduating, she won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant to Germany, and worked in a secondary school in Berlin. After returning to the United States, she continued her studies as a graduate student in the English Department at Duke University, where she TAed, taught undergraduate courses in academic writing and literature, and earned an MA. She earned a Certificate in Digital Communication from the UNC Hussman School of Media and Journalism in 2020.

Jesse Summers is the Associate Director of the Purpose Project and an adjunct Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. Previously, he was an Academic Dean in Trinity College.

He received his PhD in Philosophy from UCLA, his MPhil in philosophy from University College London, his BA in philosophy, political science, and French from the University of Kansas, and his sense of humor from a latchkey childhood watching age-inappropriate comedy.

His book Clean Hands? Philosophical Reflections on Scrupulosity, co-authored with fellow Fellow Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, came out from Oxford University Press in 2019.

dtoole@div.duke.edu

Hillary Train is program director at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. She oversees program implementation across the institute’s priority areas and is responsible for the planning and successful execution of KIE’s major events.

Hillary worked previously as the interim director of DukeCreate in 2022, a program offering free arts enrichment activities for students and staff. She has also coordinated research colloquia, concerts, and major conferences for Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts and has worked closely with Jeremy Begbie, Distinguished Research Professor at Duke Divinity School, to coordinate multi-year research projects and public-facing events. Prior to moving to Durham, Hillary was a program coordinator for Baylor University’s Interdisciplinary Core, an Honors College program serving over 700 students. In this role, Hillary recruited and advised students, coordinated program events, and liaised with faculty, administration, and students on all facets of university life – including assessment and retention; course development and curriculum equivalencies; and co-curricular enrichment opportunities.  She also taught a course for first-year students called “The Examined Life.”

Kristin serves as a point person for faculty-led DukeEngage group programs, supporting faculty and staff in program development and implementation. She also directs and organizes the DukeEngage Academy, as well as faculty and staff development and training.

Kristin has a background in education and worked in admissions and program evaluation at the University of British Columbia for several years before returning to NC to coordinate faculty support and student development efforts for Duke’s academic service-learning program. She lives in Durham, and amidst herding the people and animals in her life, tries to squeeze in a few minutes reading and connecting with nature.