Student Advisory Board
The Student Advisory Board of NPM is dedicated to ensuring that the Center meets the needs of Business, Public Policy and Social Work students. If you are interested in learning more about the Student Advisory Board and how to apply, please click here.
Our current Student Advisory Board members include:
Elizabeth Stamberger, Board President, Ford School of Public Policy/Ross School of Business
Cara Orfield, Board Secretary, Ford School of Public Policy
Jennie Bartlett, Ross School of Business
Anita Bhat, Ross School of Business
Natalie De Sole, School of Social Work
Jennifer Hong, Ford School of Public Policy
Rachel Lieberman, Ross School of Business/School of Public Health
Stockton Reece, Ross School of Business
Laura Rosen, Ford School of Public Policy
Mironda Ross, Ross School of Business
Christina Sylvester, Ford School of Public Policy
Shannon Saksewski, Ross School of Business
Elizabeth Talbert, Ford School of Public Policy/School of Social Work
Ryan Whisnant, Ross School of Business/School of Natural Resources and Environment
David Yeung, Ross School of Business
S. Olivia Wilson, School of Social Work
Elizabeth Stamberger, Board President, 2nd year MPP/MBA
Elizabeth is pursuing a dual degree at the Ford School of Public Policy and the Ross School of Business. She is interested in analyzing and developing new models for nonprofits, including private/public/nonprofit hybrids, and improving efficiency in the sector. Elizabeth graduated from Miami University (OH) with majors in Business Economics and Marketing. As a Strategy & Operations Consultant at Deloitte, she worked on a range of projects for the private and public sectors, including an analysis of the economic development strategies for the state of Ohio. She then became the Director of Operations of a start-up education company in Chicago, which specialized in K-8 classroom curriculum paired with hands-on simulations. Elizabeth served as a Board Fellow for Growing Hope, a local nonprofit focused on gardening as a tool for education and economic development. She also enjoys volunteering at 826michigan.
Cara Orfield 2nd year MPP
Cara is a second-year public policy student interested in international development through coordinated public-nonprofit partnerships, specifically related to education and women's health. Cara graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2005 with majors in economics and sociology. Upon graduation, she moved to the Republic of the Marshall Islands to join the ranks of WorldTeach volunteers. She taught third grade Math and English classes and coordinated an after-school reading club at Uliga Elementary School. Upon returning from tropical paradise, she worked in the business department of HousingLink, an affordable housing nonprofit organization, before returning to school. She currently serves as secretary on the board of directors for MMORE, an organization dedicated to fundraising and advocacy for multiple myeloma research. As an SAB member, Cara is interested in improving the visibility of NPM at the Ford School as well as lending an international NGO/nonprofit perspective to the group's planning and programming.
Jennie Bartlett 2nd year MBA
Jennie comes to the Ross School of Business with over four years of experience developing urban communities on both the national and local levels. Nationally, Jennie shaped corporate strategy and built new public-private partnerships at LISC, the nation’s largest nonprofit community development intermediary. Locally, Jennie co-founded the Washington, D.C. chapter of StreetWise Partners, Inc., an originally all-volunteer nonprofit mentorship program providing corporate computer and networking skills to low-income and under-employed DC-area residents. Jennie received her BA from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. where she designed her own major in International City Studies. When not at the business school she can be found logging in practice hours at the swimming pool or learning more about green real estate development.
Anita Bhat 1st year MBA
Anita joins the Ross School of Business pursuing a passion to promote sustainable businesses with a social mission. She is particularly interested in serving the poor in developing countries and spent the last three years living in India. Anita’s focus on the development sector grew in UC Berkeley, where she graduated with dual degrees in Business Administration and Political Economics. She then managed the opening of Wells Fargo’s first international operations in Hyderabad and moved on to apply lessons of corporate efficiencies to the social sector. Anita learned the value of holistic livelihoods services by working for the United Nations Development Program in Jaipur, where she developed social enterprises in the rural employment and tourism sectors. Most recently she worked directly for the Chief Minister of Rajasthan (India) and led financial inclusion/livelihoods reforms for the state of 60 million citizens. At Ross, she is a member of the nation’s first student-run social investment fund (Social Venture Fund) and is working with student engineers at M-Heal to resolve healthcare challenges in emerging markets. She is also an avid dance choreographer, certified yoga instructor, and a public speaking coach.
Natalie De Sole 1st year MSW
Natalie is a first year MSW student. She grew up in Burking Faso and Zimbabwe, and came to the states at 14. After getting her B.A. in history at Grinnell College, she worked for a year and half with Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. as a community organizer. During which she worked on five different projects in four different cities and rose from an assistant director and assistant project organizer to directing an office and organizing a project. Afterwards, Natalie interned with Save the Children UK's South African Program where she piloted two monitoring and evaluation projects in their Caring Schools Program. Currently, Natalie is intern with American Indian Health and Family Services in Detroit. Her professional aspiration is to work in international sustainable development programs that focus on women, children, health, and education. She is very excited to join the NPM SAB this year, and her personal goal is to increase the amount of social work students who get involved in NPMs activities, and to strengthen inter-department ties between the Social Work, Business and Public Policy Schools. Natalie loves travelling, hiking, cooking, and potlucks.
Jennifer Hong 1st year MPP
Jennifer K. Hong came to University of Michigan in 2009 to begin her study at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, focusing on nonprofit management. During her studies at UC Berkeley (B.A. Legal Studies, 2008) she became interested in working with human trafficked victims from East Asian countries. She has worked at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in 2006 interpreting for women who have been identified as trafficked victims in the 2004 Operation Guilded Cage, has conducted self-initiated (fully funded by UC Berkeley Undergraduate Research Fellowship) field research in South Korea doing a preliminary inquiry on the increasing number of human trafficking, and has volunteered at the Asian Women Shelter working as a domestic violence counselor and multi-lingual access model interpreter. She is currently serving as the Ford School Student Affairs Committee Class of 2011 representative, Board Fellow at the Home of New Vision, and Social Committee Chair for Women and Gender in Public Policy. She is absolutely thrilled to be part of the NPM Student Advisory Board and she hopes to increase the center's visibility across the entire university so that NPM can become the go-to place for all the nonprofit and public management resources. During her free time, she likes to travel, play the piano and snowboard--as much as she can.
Rachel Lieberman 2nd year MBA
Rachel Lieberman is a second-year MBA student who came to Ross after completing her Masters in Public Health at theUniversity of Michigan. Rachel brings five years of professional experience in the public and nonprofit sectors both internationally and domestically. Combining public health and business, she hopes to utilize social marketing and entrepreneurship to improve the health of individuals and communities. At the School of Public Health, she focused on program evaluation, adolescent health and homelessness and served for two years as co-chair of her department’s student association. One of her public health internships gave her the opportunity to design and teach a summer-long workshop for homeless youth through 826michigan, a local nonprofit where she continues to lead orientations and volunteer regularly. Prior to returning to school, she directed a regional fundraising office for a national political campaign and worked as a volunteer coordinator for a large nonprofit organization. She also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya, where she created support systems for Kenyans with HIV/AIDS, taught HIV prevention and organized local youth groups' HIV prevention outreach activities. During her service, she co-edited the Peace Corps Kenya HIV/AIDS manual and was elected to leadership roles in a number of Peace Corps volunteer organizations, including the Diversity and Peer Support Group. She received her BA degree from Grinnell College in Iowa. In 2009, Rachel completed a Domestic Corps internship with the Greyston Foundation’s bakery in Yonkers, NY.
Stockton Reece 2nd year MBA
Stockton graduated from Colgate University in 2001 with a degree in English Literature. He began his career working for the New England Sports Network where he was responsible for coverage of the NHL’s Boston Bruins and MLB’s Boston Red Sox. Stockton worked closely with the charitable foundations of both teams to promote their programs through NESN platforms and raise money for their partner organizations. Realizing that his passion resided more with this kind of work than the world of sports television production, Stockton came to the Ross School to pursue an MBA degree and transition to the field of nonprofit management. Stockton has served as a team lead for the Ross Community Consulting Club and worked this summer with Teach For America in New York City as part of the NPM’s Domestic Corps internship program.
Laura Rosen 2nd year MPP
Laura is a second-year public policy student interested in policies that support asset building in low-income communities and in international development using market-based approaches. Laura graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004 with majors in finance and political science. Upon graduation she spent a year in Peru as a Fulbright Scholar conducting research on village banking. She then worked as a relationship manager in international banking at The Wells Fargo HSBC Trade Bank. This year Laura is coordinating the Emerging Market Club’s Jamaica Project, in which a team of graduate students are providing economic development consulting services to the community of Hagley Gap, Jamaica. Laura looks forward to promoting NPM Center’s great programming in the Ford School and offering her ideas on how NPM can support students interested in pursuing careers in non-profit and public management.
Mironda Ross 1st year MBA
Mironda is a first year MBA student at the Ross School of Business. Prior to business school she worked as a business analyst solving complex problems like improving existing workflow processes or creating new ones to improve the way her organization did business. However, after 6 years of working in the corporate america, she realized that applying her skills in her volunteer endeavors gave her the greatest excitement. Mironda then decided to return to school to find how she should best leverage her current and soon to be acquired skills in urban education reform. Currently, Mironda is working with Ross Community Consulting Club at Community Action Network and is serving as a Board Fellow for SOS Community Services. Mironda is really excited about working with the SAB to expose students to the opportunities that exist within the nonprofit sector while debunking some of the myths that people have about nonprofits.
Christina Sylvester 2nd year MPP
Christina is pursuing a Master of Public Policy with a focus on linkages between nonprofit organizations and the federal government. She served as a Board Fellow at The Arts Alliance and as Co-Chair of Students of Color in Public Policy (SCPP). After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2006 with a BA in History and a minor in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Christina served an AmeriCorps VISTA year in North Philadelphia. The year prior to graduate school, she worked as the executive assistant at City Year Greater Philadelphia.
Shannon Saksewski Evening MBA
Shannon is an Evening MBA student at the Ross School of Business, and has worked in the nonprofit sector for approximately a decade. Her nonprofit and public management interests generally focus upon small, local organizations. Specifically, she is concerned with organizational life cycle transitions, staff retention and development, and sustainable management support through nonprofit co-locations. Shannon graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in Psychology and Studies in Religion, and an MSW with a concentration in Interpersonal Practice. Currently, she acts as Michigan Program Director/Development Director for Telluride Association, a nonprofit organization that provides a range of educational opportunities, including summer programs for high schoolers and room and board scholarships to students at UM and Cornell. Prior to that, she was employed as development director for an organization that serves women in recovery from chemical dependency. Through her work with the NPM SAB, Shannon hopes to facilitate Evening MBA students' access to, and participation with, the Center.
Elizabeth Talbert 2nd year MPP/MSW
Elizabeth is a dual degree student in the Ford School of Public Policy and School of Social Work. She is interested poverty alleviation and women's economic empowerment, both domestically and internationally. Following graduation from Yale in 2005 with a degree in film studies and psychology, Elizabeth joined Teach for America in New York City and taught fourth grade in the South Bronx for two years. Elizabeth spent a year at the University of Iowa pursuing and MFA in film studies, before returning to Michigan. At the Ford School, Elizabeth has focused on poverty and welfare policy, as well as international economic development. She went with the International Economic Development Program (IEDP) on a research trip to Senegal and studied the community impact of women's economic empowerment. Elizabeth is very excited about joining the NPM SAB, and looks forward to trying to increase the visibility of NPM in the School of Social Work and working to make information about NPM and nonprofit careers and internships more accessible to all students at U of M. This summer, Elizabeth served as a Domestic Corps intern with Women Employed Institute in Chicago.
Ryan Whisnant 3rd year MBA/MS
Ryan graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in Environmental Engineering and a certificate in the Business Institutions Program, and he is currently a third-year dual degree student with the Ross School of Business and the School of Natural Resources and Environment. His interests include sustainability strategy and behavior. Prior to graduate school, he founded a consulting company providing project management, communications, and strategic planning services to Microsoft and other clients in the Seattle area. His career experience includes working in the public sector with the National Park Service in Alaska, as well as technology startups including an energy systems software company and an environmental information portal. Ryan has also enjoyed leading adventure camping tours throughout the U.S., and spent two years pursuing naturalist training and wilderness studies. Ryan's first interaction with NPM was as a Domestic Corps intern at the Urban Ecology Institute in Boston. As an SAB member, Ryan is interested in the importance of the public and nonprofit sectors in creating more sustainable and socially responsible enterprise, and he hopes to further strengthen the role of sustainability within the institute.
David Yeung 2nd year MBA
David is a second-year MBA student with emphases in social entrepreneurship and corporate strategy. His studies have focused on the intersection of non-profit and for-profit organizations. The Zell Lurie Institute awarded him a grant to study the feasibility for building business-planning software for non-profits. Prior to joining the Ross School of Business, he served as a consultant to numerous Federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Education. His experience includes portfolio management, budgeting, financial management, and technology. In Washington, DC, David co-founded a non-profit that provided support to disadvantaged populations. He is also an avid photographer and has donated works to several charities.
S. Olivia Wilson 1st year MSW
Olivia is currently pursuing her Master's Degree in Social Work and hopes to apply for the dual degree program in Public Health and Social Work this winter. Olivia is determined to eliminate racial disparities in the health care and child welfare system. She is interested in program development and the management of health systems. Olivia graduated from Michigan State University in 2006 with a Bachelors of Science degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with a concentration in Sociology and cognate in Health Studies. She has actively volunteered for Wayne County Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), Karmanos Institute, and is a student member of the National Association of Health Care Services Executives (NAHSE). She began working in the field of Public Health in 2007 as the Health Coordinator Specialist for the Department of Health and Wellness Promotion's School-Based Health Centers. From there Olivia worked as the Project Coordinator for the non- profit, Detroit Recovery Project, Inc. She was responsible for managing the organizations anti-drug coalition and the media campaign Love Detroit Youth. Before entering the MSW program, Olivia worked for the Vaccines for Children program as a Quality Assurance Specialist providing technical assistance and vaccine administration education to Detroit medical providers to protect children from vaccine preventable diseases. Currently, she is the Team Lead/Research Assistant for the newly created Center of the Study of Black Youth in Context in the School of Education. Olivia hopes to increase the presence of Social Work students in the Nonprofit and Public Management Center by helping them understand that macro and micro practices go hand in hand.
