Andy Buchsbaum

Andy Buchsbaum: Regional Executive Director, Great Lakes Regional Center

Andy Buchsbaum directs the National Wildlife Federation’s regional Great Lakes office. Andy and the 20-person staff use media, litigation, lobbying, and research to fight for the health of the Great Lakes. Projects include cleaning up toxic hotspots in the Great Lakes, stopping Asian carp from invading the lakes, preventing the diversion and unwise use of Great Lakes water, protecting the Great Lakes from climate change, stopping a mine from leaking acid drainage into Lake Superior, and reforming education institutions to enable kids to spend more time outdoors.

An attorney, Andy has testified on a wide range of Great Lakes issues before Congressional committees and state legislatures. Recently, much of Andy’s time has been spent as co-chair of the 110-member “Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition,” the primary coalition championing Great Lakes restoration. Andy also was one of the lead negotiators on the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact to protect the Great Lakes from diversions and unwise water use. He also is a Trustee for the Great Lakes Fishery Trust and a Board member of the Leslie Science and Nature Center.

Andy got his undergraduate degree from Harvard College, his law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Laws from Georgetown University Law Center. For the past fifteen years he has taught environmental law courses at the University of Michigan Law School.

Prior to joining NWF in 1998, Andy was the senior attorney for the Midwest office of the National Environmental Law Center and the Program Director for the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan. He has published numerous reports and studies on environmental policy, law and science.

Professor Martin Katz

"Martin Katz must surely be considered the dean of collaborative pianists,” said the Los Angeles Times last season. In 1999 Musical America created a new award for him: Accompanist of the Year. One of the world's busiest collaborators, he has been in constant demand by the world’s most celebrated vocal soloists for more than a quarter-century. He has appeared and recorded regularly with Marilyn Horne, Frederica von Stade, Jose Carreras, Cecilia Bartoli, Kiri Te Kanawa, Kathleen Battle, David Daniels, and Karita Mattila, just to name a few. Season after season, the world's musical capitals figure prominently in his schedule. Throughout his long career he has been fortunate to partner some of the world's most esteemed voices: Renata Tebaldi, Cesare Siepi, Katia Ricciarelli, Tatiana Troyanos, Lucia Valentini, Nicolai Gedda, Regine Crespin, Grace Bumbry, Monserrat Caballe and many others have invited him to share the stage in recitals on five continents.
Mr. Katz is a native of Los Angeles, where he began piano studies at the age of five. He attended the University of Southern California as a scholarship student and studied the specialized field of accompanying with its pioneer teacher, Gwendolyn Koldofsky. While yet a student, he was given the unique opportunity of accompanying the master classes and lessons of such luminaries as Lotte Lehmann, Jascha Heifetz, Pierre Bernac, and Gregor Piatigorsky. Following his formal education, he held the position of pianist for the US Army Chorus in Washington, D.C. for three years, before moving to New York where his busy international career began in earnest in 1969.
In more recent years, invitations to conduct orchestral evenings have come with increasing frequency. Mr. Katz has partnered several of his soloists on the podium for orchestras of the B.B.C., Houston, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, New Haven and Miami. His editions of works by Handel and Rossini have been presented by the Metropolitan, Houston Grand Opera and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He has also been pleased to conduct several staged productions for the University of Michigan’s Opera Theatre and the Music Academy of the West.
Finally, the professional profile of Martin Katz is completed with his commitment to teaching. Since 1983, Ann Arbor has been his home, where he has been happy to chair the School of Music's program in accompanying and chamber music, and play an active part in operatic productions. He has been a pivotal figure in the training of countless young artists, both singers and pianists, who are working all over the world. The University of Michigan has recognized this important work, making him the first Arthur Schnabel Professor of Music. Mr. Katz is the author of a textbook which covers all the facet of his art, “The Complete Collaborator,” published by Oxford University Press.

Susan J. Ashford

Sue Ashford has enjoyed a 27 year career as a professor. She studied to do this work at Northwestern University, earning a PhD in Organizational Behavior. She studies all the funny things that happen in organizations as people try to work together to achieve important outcomes. She both teaches and does research on this topic. She taught for 8 years at Dartmouth College before becoming a Wolverine in 1991. She teaches leadership and negotiation at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Her research focus is on how individuals can maximize their effectiveness in organizations, whether it is by being proactive, seeking feedback, selling issues up the organization, negotiating with others, or leading well; and whether the individual is a new hire just entering the organization or the top manager in a division or firm.

Sue has held leadership positions herself, serving as an Associate Dean for the University of Michigan Business School from 1994-1995, as the school’s Senior Associate Dean from 1998 – 2002, and as the Associate Dean of Leadership Programming and the EMBA from 2007-2010. She continues to run the school’s Executive MBA program.

Sue holds the Michael and Susan Jandernoa Professorship in Management and Organization, an honorary title recognizing her performance in both teaching and research. She teaches regularly in Michigan’s Executive MBA programs and for various companies and organizations. Her calling lies in helping others to achieve what they want to achieve in their careers by being more aware of and skillful in their interpersonal and organizational behaviors.

John Whittier-Ferguson

John Whittier-Ferguson is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1990. He attended Kenyon College (graduating in 1977), and did his graduate work at Princeton University (1985-1990). In the years between 1977 and 1985, he played music professionally, waited tables, did a good deal of bike touring and bike racing, lived in a couple of fairly primitive (and wonderful) houses in the North Carolina piedmont, spent lots of time outdoors and also taught English at two different Quaker High Schools (three years at Baltimore Friends School; two at Carolina Friends School). His research interests center around literary modernism: works written from the end of the 19th century up through the Second World War, with particular focus on the poetry of T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, and the prose of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

Elaine Chottiner

We are pleased to introduce one of our speakers, Elaine Chottiner. Here we provide a biography of Dr. Chottiner, in her own words:

"I grew up in McKeesport, a small steel town near Pittsburgh. Bullwinkle and Rocky got stuck in McKeesport several times. Fortunately, I didn't. I came of age in the late sixties and arrived at the University of Michigan in 1967. I graduated with a B.A. in Russian literature and went to California where I worked on a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature at Berkeley for two years. I spent three years working as an affirmative action analyst at the University of California, completed the pre-medical requirements and returned to Michigan in 1976 to attend medical school. I graduated in 1980, completed my internal medicine residency in 1983 and my fellowship in hematology and oncology in 1986. I remained at the University as junior faculty from 1986-1991 - teaching, seeing patients and doing basic laboratory research in molecular genetics. In 1991 I decided to focus upon patient care and joined a private practice at Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital where I have been a hematologist/oncologist for twenty years. I specialize in breast cancer and blood disorders. I have been a member of the Committees on Practice and Communication for the American Society of Hematology for 12 years. I'm leaving my practice at the end of the year to return to the University of Michigan as a hematologist. I've come full circle (or maybe that's not true -- I hope I don't end up back in McKeesport)."

Dr. Chottiner is the first of the many speakers that we are excited to introduce to you. Here, you will have access to the profiles of all of our speakers. This year, we have a range of fascinating and personable speakers that we hope you are excited to meet and learn from!

Keynote Speaker: Michael Oneal

We are pleased to introduce you to this year's Annual Day keynote speaker. Mr. Oneal will give the morning address, which will be followed by the breakout sessions. We will be providing biographies, throughout the coming weeks, of all the speakers so that students have as much information about the fascinating professional they will have a chance to hear on January 25th.

Michael Oneal is a senior business writer for the Chicago Tribune covering a broad array of subjects ranging from global economics to child-product safety. He has led a number of award-winning projects for the business section and was a member of the six-person reporting team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Journalism for a series of stories on unsafe toys that helped focus public awareness on the issue, leading to major changes at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. He has reported in China, India, Europe and throughout the United States.

Oneal was Tribune’s lead reporter on the global economic crisis, reporting in Washington and Chicago, and was responsible for chronicling the bankruptcies of both his own employer, Tribune Co., and its chief rival, Sun-Times Media Group. Other notable projects have included a multi-part, front-page series telling the story of how Boeing Co. pulled itself back from the brink against Airbus, which Tribune nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and a series of stories on the Sears takeover, which won the breaking news award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Another front-page series on how one American company’s fateful outsourcing decisions changed lives forever in India and Indiana received an honorable mention from the Overseas Press Club and was a finalist for the Scripts Howard Foundation National Journalism Award.

Prior to joining the Tribune, Mr. Oneal was co-founder and executive editor of a financial Website called SmartMoney.com, which won several major awards including the 2001 National Magazine Award for New Media Design. Oneal spent nine years prior to that writing and editing for BusinessWeek magazine in New York and Chicago. He began his career with American City Business Journals as part of a start-up team that launched highly profitable weekly papers in San Jose, Sacramento and Milwaukee.

Mr. Oneal was a 2001-2002 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan and earned his B.A. from Stanford University. His freelance articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, SmartMoney, Golf Digest and Italy’s Corriere della Sera. He grew up in Ann Arbor, MI., where he graduated from Greenhills School in 1978. He currently lives with his wife, Anne, and five-year-old son, Charlie, in Chicago.

Finding Your Calling

The Annual Day Committee has finalized our theme for the day. We have entitled the theme, "Find Your Calling" and we summarize the idea below:
As Greenhills students we are given innumerable opportunities to excel. Our vision for Annual Day is that speakers can share how they became successful by doing what they love. With this information, we hope students will see their opportunities in a new light and discover how to use their education to build a life filled with purpose and success. As speakers lecture on their own personal experiences they can also provide helpful information on excelling professionally in a field that they are dedicated to. Through listening to driven and passionate speakers we hope Greenhills students will be motivated to pursue their own passions and use them to build a life of meaning. We don’t expect students to decide their future immediately. We only hope to show that a career can be more than a way to make money, but instead a way to live a purposeful life.