“A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,” Essence Magazine, May 2000
“There’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”
Dear friends,
We were “back” this year. Back on campus, back in person — but definitely not back to normal. There’s no question we live in a different world now, and that it will take time for us to understand all the ways in which a global pandemic changed (and is changing) us, as individuals and as a society. What’s more clear than ever, though, is that what we need, above all else, is each other. The key to our collective success lies in connection.
This year, we reaffirmed our commitment to fostering deep, meaningful connections between individuals and between ideas. Through SPARK, we showcased the links between efforts to drive change in a wide range of areas. To help students move from idea to action, we launched communities of practice built on synchronous learning and shared experience helping them unpack what it means to do what you can, with what you have, where you are. With the space, relationships, and resources we provided, they investigated radical solutions to some of our world’s most pressing challenges together.
And as ever, the Athena Film Festival was a site of possibility and power, reaching filmgoers on our campus as well as around the world through our hybrid festival.
I am so pleased to share this annual report with you. Inside, you’ll find proof that we can help Barnard students build the world they want to inhabit, through advocacy, entrepreneurship, policy, tech, and more.
I am deeply grateful to our community of supporters who make this work possible. Your loyalty to Barnard and your belief in our mission inspire me every day.
In a time of cultural crisis, our approach to leadership, as grounded in abundance and developed and sustained in community, gives me great hope. By centering multiplicity, creativity, and interdependence as strengths, we can inspire, educate, and activate the leaders we need now.
Onwards together, Umbreen Bhatti ’00
The Athena Center for Leadership is a hub for changemakers at Barnard College, itself a center for leadership for over 130 years.
Here, leadership is a practice, grounded in abundance and developed and sustained in community.
We bring aspiring, emerging, and experienced changemakers together to practice leading change through entrepreneurship, advocacy, policy and government, technology, research and scholarship, film, and more.
SPARK, our event and experience series, ignites thinking about how change happens and where each of us can begin — or continue.
Our Communities of Practice are a place for hands-on learning, risk-taking, action, and reflection; participants receive funding or support accessing funding, to allow them to dedicate the time.
The Athena Film Festival is our own way of leading change in and through media and entertainment, in partnership with Women and Hollywood.
Our approach to leadership development is rooted in the belief that a better world is possible, and the challenges that stand in the way of that world are all connected, as are we. These challenges present opportunities to lead positive change. But creating *lasting* change takes time.
Our approach to leadership development is also rooted in our reality: Today, we serve a racially diverse, gender diverse, and high achieving population that is far more accustomed to the pressure to succeed than the learning and transformation in thinking and action that comes from taking risks.
Students in the Class of 2026 who identify as women of color.
Students in the Class of 2026 who were president or copresident of a club or organization in high school.
Acceptance rate for the Class of 2026.
Members of Gen Z who personally know someone who prefers to go by gender-neutral pronouns.
Our approach resonates with our students — we hear that from them every day. In the coming pages, learn more about what, exactly, it looks like.
At Athena, we’re especially proud of our ability to make the connections others might not see or make and to take conversations to unusual but important places — something we do regularly through SPARK, a series generously funded by the Harnisch Foundation. We hosted nine SPARKs in 2021-2022, examining the racial wealth gap, the promise and impact of Black led news organizations, our changing relationship to our monuments, reproductive freedom in a post-Dobbs world, entrepreneurship during the pandemic, and more, reaching nearly 650 people.
An enormous thank you to all of our partners across campus who helped bring these SPARKs to life, including the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well Being, Barnard’s Design Center, and numerous academic departments.
What if we explored what reopening and a return to normal “post” COVID looked like through sleep?
What might our cities look like if we redesigned them taking our biological needs into account?
Our April 2022 SPARK with Dr. Marishka Brown, Director, National Center on Sleep Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health, was the result of a collaboration between neuroscientist and expert on circadian rhythms Maria de la Paz Fernandez and urban ecologist Elizabeth Cook, both members of Barnard’s faculty, pictured on the following page.
Maria de la Paz Fernandez Elizabeth Cook
Members, Athena Faculty Advisory Committee
Athena’s pre-college programs offer high school students the opportunity to explore what effective changemaking looks like, just like Barnard students do here at Athena.
In partnership with Barnard’s Office of Pre-College programs, we served over 350 students in our three summer institutes in 2022: Leadership in Action (as part of the Young Women’s Leadership Institute), the Athena Summer Innovation Institute, and Kode With Klossy Powered by Barnard.
Huge thanks to our friends at Kode with Klossy, Hanky Panky, Luminary, and The Giant Room, as well as LIA Program Director Lila Livingston, ASII Program Director Malla Haridat, and Lead Instructor Deepti Sharma (also Athena’s Entrepreneur in Residence), and KWK guest instructor Sarah Breen ’18 (joining Athena as our Tech Expert in Residence in 2022 2023).
“I’ve never experienced any program like Athena. I have met so many amazing girls that I still keep in contact with. It’s the people that I met through Athena that have impacted me in so many ways to feel more comfortable and confident with myself. The people, instructors, and community made it a positive experience for me. This experience has only made me more excited about college.”
2022 ASII StudentWho leaves college feeling prepared to take on complex challenges, and why?
In a recent study, researchers found that students who availed themselves of opportunities for co-curricular learning during college were nine (yes, nine!) times more likely to develop innovation capacities (e.g., the ability to persist after a setback, generate new ideas, work across difference).
File that under “things we’ve always known at Athena” (okay, maybe not the “nine times” part).
Co-curricular learning extends what happens in the classroom and complements it, without the pressure of grades or formal evaluation and unconstrained by the semester as the timeline for success two things we know our students need as they work to develop the skills and experiences necessary to lead change now and in the future. At Athena, co-curricular learning happens through our communities of practice which provide them a third key thing they need: each other.
“You don’t choose the times you live in, but you do choose who you want to be. And you do choose how you think.”
Grace Lee Boggs ’35
No challenge worth solving will be solved by a single person, through a single approach, or in a single try.
Communities of practice are our theory of change in action.
“There
Find it.”
adrienne maree brown
We’re incredibly intentional about how we build our communities. We believe every one of our students is capable of changing the world — but they can’t do it alone. We ask: What kinds of conversations and ideas might a particular mix of backgrounds, experiences, and interests yield? What collaborations might we see? What might emerge from all these collisions?
Some of our communities of practice help students explore a specific method of changemaking, like entrepreneurship, policymaking, advocacy, tech, or research. Others help students tackle specific challenges.
In 2021-2022, students participated in eight communities of practice.
2021-2022 Communities of Practice
The Athena Fellows Program (Fall, Spring) Williams Program for Women in Politics
Athena Policy and Changemaking
Athena Advocacy Institute
Athena Entrepreneurs
Athena Digital Design
L idl S h l P
is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have.Spring 2022 Fellows at their showcase in April 2022
“Participating in the Athena Fellows program has been the epitome of my Barnard education. I’ve had the freedom to creatively tackle my challenge and make incremental change. ... This learning experience has been transformative in my work, my personal development, and my post-graduation plans. It has really catalyzed my progress and helped me develop perseverance and problem-solving skills. There is nothing else like it at Barnard.”
Karen Jang ’23 Fall ’22 Athena FellowWhat do recycling bicycle inner tubes and helping pandemic affected Chinese restaurants have in common?
Both are a lot easier to accomplish when you work with city government.
That’s just one of the connections between seemingly unrelated challenges that our Fellows discovered this past year, as they tackled their individual challenges in community. Others found common learning in the process of winding down a project and the process of launching a new one. And still others found that despite geographic differences, the challenges they’d identified in their communities had many similarities.
In 2021 2022, we supported 21 Fellows, across all four class years and 15 majors, in their exploration of challenges of personal interest, from reducing pollution in space to adopting telemedicine in underserved communities, increasing access to justice through transparency in pricing, creating more fluid gender roles in ballet, and developing supports for neurodivergent students.
“At Athena, I have been encouraged to reach out to Barnard alumnae and government professionals that I might have always thought were inaccessible. Personally, I know I am more confident in pursuing policy and government now than ever before.”
Amalia Garcia ’23
Summer ’22 Williams Fellow Student Co-Lead Athena Policy & Changemaking
Our commitment to supporting students interested in changing the world through policy and government dates back to our founding. We took this work to a new level this year with our first-ever Policy and Government Expert in Residence, Emma Wolfe ’01, who joined Barnard in January 2022 as a senior advisor to President Beilock following her long tenure in New York City government, and who advised our summer Williams Fellows as well as the new student led Athena Policy and Changemaking (“APC”), an academic-year community of practice.
Summer 2022 fellows interned at the United States Mission to the United Nations (USUN), Office of Miami Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the office of NYC Mayor Eric Adams, the RI General Assembly, HeadCount, and Sister District. The many guests our APC students spent time with included Kiran Jain ’98, former Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Oakland and expert on smart cities; Lindsay Greene of the Brooklyn Navy Yard; and Julianna Goldman ’03, journalist and former White House correspondent for Bloomberg.
Our sincere thanks to Constance Hess Williams ’66 for her support for the Williams Program for Women in Politics and all our offerings for these students.
Amalia Garcia ’24 and Molly Leahy ’24 Student Leads, Athena Policy and Changemaking
“Athena taught me that leadership is not necessarily individual, nor that it should be.
Leadership is more effective, more fun, and more sustainable when it comes from a place of community and collaboration. ...
Knowing that someone else has my back or that I have someone else’s back that’s a powerful feeling. Collaboration has allowed me to take risks I otherwise wouldn’t as a single student lead, knowing that I have my partner and my team to fall back on and to regroup with.”
Molly Leahy ’24 Student Co-Lead Athena Policy & ChangemakingCan you do good *and* do well? Should we push on systems from the outside or the inside? How do we give to others through this work without giving up too much of ourselves? Our 11 Athena Advocacy Institute members grappled with these and other tensions in their 10 week summer, living together, working at a wide range of non-profit organizations, and learning from experienced changemakers and each other.
Our summer 2022 students interned at All In Together, the Center for Engaged Pedagogy at Barnard, Quinn Lab, The Bell, The Resolution Project, the League of Women Voters of the City of New York, the Public Rights Project, PCI Media, the Urban Justice Center’s Domestic Violence Project, and DREAM (formerly Harlem RBI).
The Athena Advocacy Institute is funded by the Francene Rodgers ’67 Athena Fellowship Fund, the Marina Weitzner Lewin ’80 Internship Fund, the Carol Krongold Silberstein ’69 and Alan Silberstein Public Service and Internship Fund, and the Daphne Fodor Philipson ’69 Fund for Women’s Leadership.
Athena Advocacy Institute ’22
“It’s difficult to sum up my experience in a few words. ... The biggest idea that I will hold with me in my future pursuits is that I have the agency to create change. Thank you for teaching me, welcoming me, trusting me, and pushing me to see hope under our realities.”Menasha Thomas ’24
We envision a world where women and nonbinary entrepreneurs have the confidence, support, and resources they need to build sustainable, equitable, and socially responsible businesses — and we support Barnard and Columbia women and nonbinary entrepreneurs at any stage in their journey with mentorship, support, and resources to help them advance their ventures.
“I’ve learned so much about entrepreneurship and the skills it takes to navigate this type of pursuit, such as taking up space, being bold, and taking calculated risks. It was empowering to hear about entrepreneurship and the business world from a woman-centered space. It becomes special and creates a welcoming sort of intimacy in women led spaces.”
In 2021 22, we hosted 24 community of practice meetups for Athena Entrepreneurs, all facilitated by our inaugural Entrepreneur in Residence, Deepti Sharma. We were joined by incredible guest speakers, including Jennifer Perusini ’10, Ph.D., co founder and CEO of Neurovation Labs, Inc., who discussed embracing risk, Azadeh Jamalian, Ph.D., founder and CEO of The GIANT Room, who shared insights on how to develop a compelling value proposition, and more.
Students also met 1:1 with Deepti for office hours to get advice on various things from specific venture support to broader questions about entrepreneurship. Deepti held more than 100 office hours this year alone. Hats off to her!
Sreya Nandanampati ’25
Deepti Sharma, Entrepreneur in Residence, with Karen Jang ’23, Student Lead, Entrepreneurship
“Many of our students have never really considered entrepreneurship before as a viable career option. For some especially immigrant and BIPOC students the risk associated with entrepreneurship presents family or cultural issues, holding them back from fully exploring the path. For others, they lack the personal confidence to believe that their idea can be a reality, regardless of family circumstances.
But it’s long been my view that all you really need to get started is someone to believe in you. That’s me, along with all of us here at Athena and in Athena’s broader network. It's a privilege to be their guide.”
Deepti Sharma Entrepreneur in Residence“I have developed numerous coding, communication, and organizational skills, and most importantly, grown confidence in my abilities since joining ADDA. I believe possessing that confidence is imperative for women, especially women of color, to succeed in the workforce today.”
Elise St. Amant ’23The Athena Digital Design Agency+Academy (ADDA) exists as an academic-year community of practice for students who wish to explore technology as a tool for social change, in collaboration with the Vagelos Computational Science Center here at Barnard.
In 2022-2023, 53 students learned HTML/CSS in ADDA’s no-credit web design immersive supported by the CSC’s Computing Fellows. Twelve students (five in the fall and seven in the spring) met regularly to apply their skills to a realworld project without the pressure of grades.
Mentored by Marko Krkeljas of the CSC, Maggie Zhu '25 and Andrea Lopez '25 developed a natural language processing project, collecting data points from social media platforms to train an algorithm to identify whether a sentence related to COVID 19 is true or misinformation.
Maggie Zhu ’25 and Andrea Lopez ’25 Members, Athena Digital Design
In spring 2022, together with Beyond Barnard, we launched the first cohort of the Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program at Barnard, thanks to a generous gift from the Laidlaw Foundation. Comprised of 25 rising sophomores and juniors, this community of practice gathered weekly in summer 2022 to strengthen their identities, bonds, and skills as researchers committed to leading positive change.
“Researching in community opened up the possibilities I could explore in my own research because every conversation I had about the work with my peers felt earnest and generative. I loved being able to think together, occasionally procrastinate together, and commit to an idea worth exploring together.
Batya Koenigsberg: “The Role of ROCK Inhibitor in the Polarization of Human Natural Killer Cells”; mentor Dr. Emily Mace
...
I feel more certain now about pursuing an academic career path as well as conducting my own research.”
Tapiwa Gambura ’25
Isabella Whitney: “The Political and Social Context and Consequences of Militarized Rape in the Kosovo War (1998-1999)”; mentor Dr. Tanya Domi
Jenniffer Koita: “Erasure, Gatekeeping, and Resilience: The History and Current Status of (Black) Midwifery in the U.S.”; mentor Dr. Rebecca JordanYoung
Founded in 2011, the Athena Film Festival is the premier showcase for narrative, documentary, and short films that investigate, explore, and celebrate women’s leadership.
Each year, thousands of attendees gather on the Barnard College campus to be inspired, challenged and together advance a new narrative around all that women can be and do.
The Athena Film Festival is a joint project of Barnard College’s Athena Center for Leadership and Women and Hollywood.
2022 marked our 12th year and our first ever hybrid festival, with 3,000+ attendees participating in in person screenings of 35 films, 10 Q&As with filmmakers, and eight panel conversations.
We kicked off the festival with “Master,” coming off an incredible run at Sundance. We were thrilled to be joined by writer/director Mariama Diallo for a Q&A after the screening. Diallo discussed her use of the horror genre to communicate the emotional experience of the Black protagonists in her story, who become alienated at an elite, predominantly white college.
To kick off the virtual festival, Athena’s Women in Science Virtual Showcase convened scientists and writers to discuss the lack of representation of women scientists in popular media and to generate momentum in the industry to bring more of these stories to life. We are grateful to our friends at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for their ongoing support of our work and to all of our writers, judges, and panelists.
Our Breakthrough Film was “Kili Big,” which follows a group of plus size women who provide each other the support they need in order to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and challenge the common narrative of their physical limitations.
The house was full (and emotional!) for our Centerpiece Film, “The Janes,” which tells the story of women who took part in an underground operation in the 1960s and ’70s to provide safe abortions to women in need. Abigail J. Pariser ’67, one of the “Janes” in the film, attended the Q&A with directors Emma Pildes and Tia Lessin.
“My movie was on the verge of falling apart when I received the Athena List Sloan Development Grant. The grant enabled my producer and I to save the picture by re-upping the book option for the underlying material.
It also gave me the gift of time time to dive back into the script and do one final, necessary rewrite before taking it out to find financial partners.”
Cherien Dabis Writer, “What the Eyes Don’tSee”
Over the past few years, we’ve expanded our efforts to transform the film industry — today, in addition to running the only film festival of its kind, Athena runs a Creative Development Program for women and nonbinary storytellers to hone their craft and make meaningful connections that help them advance their projects and succeed in a difficult industry.
In 2021 2022, we awarded $65,000 to women filmmakers and writers through our multiple grant programs, The Athena Writers Lab, Works In Progress Pitch Forum, and The Athena List, helping them advance their projects to the next stage of development.
Works in Progress program participants like Patricia pitched their documentary projects to a virtual room full of media professionals and producers from over 30 organizations. The filmmakers trained with award winning documentary filmmaker Judith Helfand to refine their presentations and hone their pitches. The films’ topics included journalism, outdoor education, politics, activism, and more.
Sponsored by Secret Sauce Media, our Works in Progress program is a launchpad for women and nonbinary documentary filmmakers who have gone on to complete their projects, win additional funding, and even screen their films at the Athena Film Festival.
“The Athena Works In Progress program was like rocket fuel for my project.”
Patricia Gillespie, Director
Umbreen Bhatti ’00
Constance Hess Williams ’66 Director
Victoria Lesourd
Chief of Staff
Elizabeth Werbe
Director of Applied Learning & Entrepreneurship
Erika Guzman
Program Manager, Applied Learning & Entrepreneurship
Alisa Tchernigova
Senior Programs Assistant
Kristin Molloy
Operations Manager, Athena Film Festival
Genesis Quito, Post-Baccalaureate Fellow, Athena Film Festival
Faridah Gbadamosi
Senior Programmer, Athena Film Festival
Deepti Sharma
Entrepreneur in Residence
Emma Wolfe '01
Senior Advisor to the President for Leadership Development and External Relations
2021-2022 Interns
Anna Kohlasch ’22, Cindy Espinosa ’22, Molly Leahy ’23, Camilla Marchese Gonzalez ’23, Karen Jang ’23, Anjali Ramakrishnan ’23, Flavie de Germay de Cirfontaine ’23, Bridget Hughes ’24, Izzy Lapidus ’24
Elizabeth Cook
Assistant Professor of Environmental Science
Alexander Cooley
Tow Professor of Political Science
Margaret Ellsberg
Senior Lecturer in English
Maria de la Paz Fernandez
Assistant Professor of Neuroscience
Sandra Goldmark
Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Theatre and Director of Campus Sustainability and Climate Action
Rebecca Jordan Young
Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Premilla Nadasen
Professor of History
Debra Minkoff
Professor of Sociology
J.C. Salyer
Director of the Human Rights Program and Assistant Professor of Practice, Anthropology and Human Rights
Rae Silver
Professor of Natural and Physical Sciences
Joan Snitzer
Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Art
Rebecca Wright
Director of the Vagelos Computational Science Center and Druckenmiller Professor of Computer Science
Our success would not be possible without the generous support of our donors, the wisdom of our advisors, and the dedication of our staff and our community. We remain thankful to our founding donors, Francene Sussner Rodgers ’67, Constance Hess Williams ’66, and Lucille Zanghi and James Dow P’10, who enabled us to start the Center, to Amy Crate ’94 and Darrell Crate who enabled us to move into our next chapter, and to Constance Hess Williams ’66 for her decision in 2011 to endow the Directorship.
A sincere thank you to our active and dedicated Leadership Council, co-chaired by Claire Newman and Dr. Rochelle Cooper ’84. Members of this incredible group provide guidance to Athena Fellows, serve as guest speakers and mentors to our current students and pre college students, and support Athena in countless additional ways. We are stronger because of the time and talent they donate, and we remain deeply grateful for their loyal support.
Dr. Rochelle Cooper ’84, P’12 (Co-Chair)
Claire Newman (Co-Chair)
Pooja Badlani ’01
Beth Bloomfield ’73
Jessica S. Desjardins ’10
Leah Dunaief ’62
Gabrielle Ferrara ’12
Julianna Goldman Gottlieb ’03
Eve Halimi ’19
Patricia Hong
Bronwyn Hughes ’87*
Kiran Jain ’98* Anam Lakhani ’19
Julie Melwani ’09
Patricia Harrigan Nadosy ’68
Lida Orzeck ’68
Daphne Fodor Philipson ’69
Jennifer Perusini ’10*
Melissa Marrus Polinsky ’00
Jenny Raymond ’93*
Francene Sussner Rodgers ’67
Ariella Salimpour ’17
Robyn Price Stonehill
Jamienne Studley ’72
Eva Helene Yazhari ’06
Lucille Zanghi P’10
Jacki Zehner P’23
Anonymous
* indicates new member
