Our Team

Division Staff

  • Rita Charon, MD, PhD

    • Chief, Division of Narrative Medicine

    Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who originated the field of narrative medicine. She is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. She completed the MD at Harvard in 1978 and the PhD in English at Columbia in 1999, concentrating on narratology and the works of Henry James. Her research focuses on the consequences of narrative medicine practice, narrative medicine pedagogy, and health care team effectiveness. At Columbia, she directs the Foundations of Clinical Practice faculty seminar, the Virginia Apgar Academy for Medical Educators, the Narrative and Social Medicine Scholarly Projects Concentration Track, the required and elective Narrative Medicine curriculum for the medical school, and Columbia Commons: Collaborating Across Professions, a medical-center-wide partnership devoted to health care team effectiveness.  She inaugurated and teaches in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program at Columbia. She has lectured and served as Visiting Professor at many medical schools and universities in the US and abroad, teaching narrative medicine theory and practice. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio residency, and research funding from the NIH, the NEH, the American Board of Internal Medicine, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, and several additional private foundations. She was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the 2018 Jefferson Lecture, “the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.” Dr. Charon has published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Narrative, Henry James Review, Poetics Today, The Drama Review, Partial Answers, and Literature and Medicine. She is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (Oxford University Press, 2006) and co-author of Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017). She is co-editor of Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (Routledge, 2002) and Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine (SUNY Press, 2008).

    Headshot of Rita Charon
  • Cindy Smalletz, MS, MA, OTR/L, BCB

    • Associate Faculty & Program Director

    Cindy Smalletz, MS, MA, OTR/L, BCB is an Associate Faculty member of the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the Program Director of the Certification of Professional Achievement program at the School of Professional Studies. She joined the Division with and MS in Narrative Medicine and an MA in Instructional Design and Technology, bringing together a career working in learning design in the corporate sector and in education and technology at the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University. She is the creator, designer, and director of the first online Certificate Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, which she envisioned as an accessible way to connect practitioners around the world to deepen their study and application of narrative medicine. She also lectures on narrative medicine and directs programming at the medical center, including the most recent Virtual Group Sessions which were created for connection, stress-reduction, and to remedy isolation in response to the COVID-19  pandemic. Most recently, she became a registered occupational therapist and is integrating narrative medicine with clinical care, burnout prevention, and education, with the hopes of changing healthcare through improving advocacy, education, communication and action.

    Headshot of Cindy Smalletz, MS, MA, OTR/L, BCB
  • Joseph Eveld, MS, MFA

    • Program Manager

    Joseph Eveld, MS, MFA, joined the Narrative Medicine program with a background in publishing and creative writing. As an adolescent he survived over two years of treatment for an aggressive form of bone cancer. Having turned to writing as a means to cope with this experience, as well as developing a passion for caregiving from both the patient and provider perspective, he felt as if he’d found “home” when he discovered Narrative Medicine practice. While completing his MS in the program, he studied Narrative Therapy and creative writing as applied in counseling for patients coping with trauma and terminal illness, as well as healthcare and social justice inequities represented in the literature and activism of indigenous cultures in the United States. He also has a BA in English from Northeastern University, and completed his MFA in Fiction at the Creative Writing program at Boston University. He was a finalist for Glimmer Train Magazine’s Short Story Award for New Writers, he has poetry published in the Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and is currently working on his first novel.

    Headshot of Joseph Eveld, MS, MFA
  • Renée Russas, MM

    • Administrative Manager

    Renée Russas, MM, is excited to be integrating her performance experience along the Eastern seacoast and her knack for administrative organization into her work here at Columbia Narrative Medicine. Known for enchanting audiences and critics alike with her "gorgeous voice" (Boston Art Review), Renée has sung with a variety of sacred and secular choirs around Boston including The Landmark Symphony Orchestra's One City Choir and in other such regional award winning ensembles. Renee has also had the privilege to travel for operatic debuts with the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival and the Intermezzo Foundation. Administratively, Renee has served as Company Manager to the Key West Symphony Young Artist Program and coordinated distribution for Academy Award nominated documentarian Frederick Wiseman's film La Danse. After her IRNE-nominated portrayal of Lily in The Longwood Players' The Secret Garden (2011) Renée served as their Development Director during Seasons 15 and 16. Prior to joining the Columbia Narrative Medicine team, Renee also served as Sr. Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) at MIT in Cambridge, MA and Office Manager to Reviewed.com, a division of USA Today Tech. Additionally, Renee serves on the Board of The Poor Mouth Theatre Company based in the Bronx. Renée holds a BA in Music and a BS in Theater from Murray State University; a Masters of Music Theater from Oklahoma City University and a Graduate Performance Diploma in Opera from the Longy School of Music of Bard College.

    Headshot of Renée Saindon, MM
  • Rishi Goyal

    • Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine
    Headshot of Rishi Goyal
  • Kristen Magnatta

    • Project Assistant

    Kristen Magnatta is the Project Assistant for the Division of Narrative Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a BA in Psychology. At CU, she worked as an undergraduate Research Assistant in Columbia Couples Lab. She also volunteered as a Peer Mentor, providing support to new students as they acclimated to the Columbia community. Her prior work experience is in the field of early education. For six years, Kristen taught Preschool and directed a Summer Day Camp program in New Jersey. She enjoys serving her local community and has engaged in volunteerism with different populations spanning from kindergarten classrooms to veteran organizations.

    Headshot of Kristen Magnatta

Directors of Columbia Narrative Medicine

  • Rita Charon, MD, PhD

    • Executive Director

    Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who originated the field of narrative medicine. She is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. She completed the MD at Harvard in 1978 and the PhD in English at Columbia in 1999, concentrating on narratology and the works of Henry James. Her research focuses on the consequences of narrative medicine practice, narrative medicine pedagogy, and health care team effectiveness. At Columbia, she directs the Foundations of Clinical Practice faculty seminar, the Virginia Apgar Academy for Medical Educators, the Narrative and Social Medicine Scholarly Projects Concentration Track, the required and elective Narrative Medicine curriculum for the medical school, and Columbia Commons: Collaborating Across Professions, a medical-center-wide partnership devoted to health care team effectiveness.  She inaugurated and teaches in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program at Columbia. She has lectured and served as Visiting Professor at many medical schools and universities in the US and abroad, teaching narrative medicine theory and practice. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio residency, and research funding from the NIH, the NEH, the American Board of Internal Medicine, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, and several additional private foundations. She was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the 2018 Jefferson Lecture, “the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.” Dr. Charon has published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Narrative, Henry James Review, Poetics Today, The Drama Review, Partial Answers, and Literature and Medicine. She is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (Oxford University Press, 2006) and co-author of Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017). She is co-editor of Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (Routledge, 2002) and Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine (SUNY Press, 2008). View a list of Rita's publications.

    Headshot of Rita Charon
  • Craig Irvine, PhD

    • Co-Director

    Craig Irvine, PhD, is a founder and Co-Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. He holds a doctorate in philosophy. For more than 15 years, he has been designing and teaching cultural competency, ethics, Narrative Medicine, and Humanities and Medicine curricula for residents, medical students, physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, dentists, and other health professionals. He has over 20 years of experience researching the history of philosophy, phenomenology, and narrative ethics, and over 25 years of experience teaching ethics, humanities, the history of philosophy, logic, and narrative medicine at the graduate, undergraduate, and preparatory school levels. He has published articles in the areas of ethics, residency education, and literature and medicine and has presented at numerous national and international conferences on these and other topics. View a list of Craig's publications.

    Headshot of Craig Irvine
  • Nellie Hermann, MFA

    • Creative Director

    Nellie Hermann, Creative Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, is a graduate of Brown University and the MFA program at Columbia University. She has published two novels, The Cure for Grief and The Season of Migration, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice. Her non-fiction has appeared in an anthology about siblings, Freud’s Blindspot (Free Press: 2010), as well as in Academic Medicine. She has been an invited resident to numerous artist residencies such as The Millay Colony, The UCross Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation of the Arts. Over the last ten years, she has taught fiction and narrative medicine to undergraduates, medical students, graduate students, and clinicians of all sorts, and has given conference addresses in Iowa, California, Seoul, Korea, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2016 NEA Literature fellowship and was recently awarded a 2017 Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. View a list of Nellie's publications.

    Headshot of Nellie Hermann
  • Maura Spiegel, PhD

    • Co-Director

    Maura Spiegel, PhD, is Senior Lecturer of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she teaches courses on fiction and film, and is a founding Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine. She is the co-author of The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying and Living On (Anchor/Doubleday), The Breast Book: An Intimate and Curious History (Workman), which was a Book-of-the-Month Club Quality Paperbacks selection. She co-edited the journal Literature and Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press) with Rita Charon, MD, PhD, for seven years. She has written for The New York Times, and has published essays on the history of the emotions, Charles Dickens, diamonds in the movies, among many other topics. She is currently writing a book about the life and films of Sidney Lumet for St. Martin’s Press. View a list of Maura's publications.

    Headshot of Maura Spiegel
  • Cindy Smalletz, MS, MA, OTR/L, BCB

    • Program Director & Associate Faculty

    Cindy Smalletz, MS, MA, OTR/L, BCB is an Associate Faculty member of the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the Program Director of the Certification of Professional Achievement program at the School of Professional Studies. She joined the Division with and MS in Narrative Medicine and an MA in Instructional Design and Technology, bringing together a career working in learning design in the corporate sector and in education and technology at the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University. She is the creator, designer, and director of the first online Certificate Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, which she envisioned as an accessible way to connect practitioners around the world to deepen their study and application of narrative medicine. She also lectures on narrative medicine and directs programming at the medical center, including the most recent Virtual Group Sessions which were created for connection, stress-reduction, and to remedy isolation in response to the COVID-19  pandemic. Most recently, she became a registered occupational therapist and is integrating narrative medicine with clinical care, burnout prevention, and education, with the hopes of changing healthcare through improving advocacy, education, communication and action.

    Headshot of Cindy Smalletz, MS, MA, OTR/L, BCB
  • Deepthiman Gowda, MD, MPH, MS

    • Director of Clinical Practice

    Deepthiman Gowda, MD, MPH, MS, is Director of Clinical Practice of the Program in Narrative Medicine and is the first Assistant Dean for Medical Education at the newly founded Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, where he is working to introduce Narrative Medicine into the curriculum. To date, Dr. Gowda’s efforts have focused on care to underserved communities, clinical skills education, interprofessional education, and narrative medicine. Dr. Gowda is a general internist, photographer, and researcher looking at the use of visual art in health care settings. He has also conducted research on the effects of introducing narrative medicine methods into primary care clinics in Manhattan on team function and is a former Macy Scholar. 

    Headshot of Deepthiman Gowda
  • Mario de la Cruz, MS

    • Associate Director

    Mario de la Cruz  is one of the Founding Editors of Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.  As an Associate Director for the Division of Narrative Medicine at Columbia University's Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics, de la Cruz is involved in the development of programmatic advancements and innovative teaching strategies for their Masters of Science in Narrative Medicine program.  He lectures at Columbia University, CUNY School of Medicine and Sarah Lawrence College on illness and disability narratives, social justice in healthcare, narrative in population health and graphic medicine.  His previous work includes the development and oversight of HIV/AIDS prevention programs and sexual health education programs for both healthcare institutions and non-profit organizations, with an emphasis on supporting under-resourced youth groups. Mario de la Cruz is also a contributing author to the book, The Uncharted Path from Clinic-Based to Community-Based Research, and an editor of the collection of LGBTQ+ writing, Fictions, Nonfictions, and Imaginings.  His current work is focused on visual, oral and performance-based narratives as vehicles for empowering marginalized voices and identities to address health inequity and social injustice.

    Headshot of Mario De La Cruz
  • Catherine Rogers, MS, MFA

    • Associate Director

    Catherine Rogers is an Associate Director and lecturer in the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She has facilitated Narrative Medicine seminars at Mt. Sinai, Brooklyn Lutheran, and Columbia Presbyterian hospitals and at Aristotle University Thessaloniki Schools of English and Medicine. A writer and performer, her plays have been seen at Dixon Place, Manhattan Theatre Source, Salvage Vanguard, and Cleveland Public Theatre. She was Fulbright Specialist and Senior Scholar in Greece (2013, 2009) and serves as a Fulbright peer reviewer. Her work is published in the Gettysburg Review, Voices Made Flesh: Performing Women’s Autobiography (U Wisconsin), Our Changing Journey to the End: Reshaping Death (Praeger). As Assistant Professor Humanities, she taught creative and expository writing at NYU. Catherine was a James A. Michener Fellow at the University of Texas where she earned the MFA in Playwriting. She holds the MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia. Catherine is a member of the Dramatists Guild. View a list of Catherine's publications.

    Headshot of Catherine Rogers

Core Collaborators at VP&S

  • Owen Lewis, MD

    • Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

    Owen Lewis is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. He is the recipient of the 2016 International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine (U.K.) and the 2016 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize from the New England Poetry Club and a finalist for the 2017 Pablo Neruda Award.  He is the author of Marriage Map, best man, Sometimes Full of Daylight, March in San Miguel, and Field Light (May 1, 2020.)

  • David Hellerstein, Ph.D.

    • Professor of Clinical Psychiatry

    Dr. David Hellerstein is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia, a research psychiatrist at the NY State Psychiatric Institute, where he is director of the Depression Evaluation Service, and a practicing clinician. Hellerstein is author of books including Battles of Life and Death (essays), A Family of Doctors (memoir), and Heal Your Brain (nonfiction). His writing has appeared in the NY Times, Harper’s, Esquire, North American Review, and The Huffington Post, and has been awarded the Pushcart Prize best essay award.

  • Ben Schwartz, MD

    • Assistant Professor of Medicine, Surgery

    Benjamin Schwartz is a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine and an Assistant Professor of Medicine (in Surgery) at Columbia University Medical Center, working with both the Departments of Surgery and Medicine on educational material geared towards patients, students and teachers. He received his B.A. and M.D. from Columbia University.

  • Rita Charon, MD, PHD

    • Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics

    Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who originated the field of narrative medicine. She is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. She completed the MD at Harvard in 1978 and the PhD in English at Columbia in 1999, concentrating on narratology and the works of Henry James. Her research focuses on the consequences of narrative medicine practice, narrative medicine pedagogy, and health care team effectiveness. At Columbia, she directs the Foundations of Clinical Practice faculty seminar, the Virginia Apgar Academy for Medical Educators, the Narrative and Social Medicine Scholarly Projects Concentration Track, the required and elective Narrative Medicine curriculum for the medical school, and Columbia Commons: Collaborating Across Professions, a medical-center-wide partnership devoted to health care team effectiveness.  She inaugurated and teaches in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program at Columbia. She has lectured and served as Visiting Professor at many medical schools and universities in the US and abroad, teaching narrative medicine theory and practice. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio residency, and research funding from the NIH, the NEH, the American Board of Internal Medicine, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, and several additional private foundations. She was chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the 2018 Jefferson Lecture, “the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.” Dr. Charon has published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, Narrative, Henry James Review, Poetics Today, The Drama Review, Partial Answers, and Literature and Medicine. She is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (Oxford University Press, 2006) and co-author of Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2017). She is co-editor of Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (Routledge, 2002) and Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine (SUNY Press, 2008). View a list of Rita's publications.

    Headshot of Rita Charon
  • Gail Halaban, MFA

    • Fine Art & Commercial Photographer

    Gail Albert Halaban holds an MFA from Yale University and is represented by the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York as well as galleries in Paris, Los Angeles, Istanbul and Atlanta.  She has photographed for many international publications including the New Yorker and the New York Times and has published two monographs: Out My Window, and Vis-à-Vis.

  • Joseph Eveld, MS, MFA

    • Lecturer, VP&S Narrative Medicine Seminars

    Joseph Eveld, MS, MFA, is a graduate of the Narrative Medicine program, as well as the creative writing MFA at Boston University, where he was a Robert Pinksy Fellow and taught fiction at the Boston Arts Academy. His poetry has been featured in the Intercollegiate Poetry Festival in Boston and published in the Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. His short story “If Your Uncle Says Something Crazy” was a finalist for Glimmer Train Magazine’s Short Story Award for New Writers. He has taught as Faculty Associate for the MS in Narrative Medicine program and currently teaches Writing Creatively for the Narrative Medicine Certificate of Professional Achievement. He is also working on his first novel.

    Headshot of Joseph Eveld, MS, MFA
  • Adele Tutter, MD (NYSPI)

    • Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

    Adele Tutter, MD PhD is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University and faculty, Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.  Her interdisciplinary scholarship focuses largely on the interface of culture and psychoanalysis and the arts, and has been honored by the Leibert, Hartmann, CORST, Menninger, and Ticho Prizes. She is author of Dream House: An Intimate Portrait of the Philip Johnson Glass House, co-editor, with Léon Wurmser, of Grief and its Transcendence: Memory, Identity, Creativity, and editor of The Muse: Psychoanalytic Explorations of Creative Inspiration. A regular contributor of art criticism to the Brooklyn Rail, she is in private practice in Manhattan.

  • Jane Bogart, EdD, MCHES

    • Associate Professor

    Jane Bogart, EdD is the Director of the Center for Student Wellness at CUIMC and an Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences in the Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Bogart also taught at Teachers College, Columbia University, from which she earned both Masters and Doctoral degrees in Health and Behavior Studies. She has appeared as a "Sexpert" on MTV’s The First National Sex Quiz and you can find her "Howcast" videos about Understanding STIs on YouTube. Her first book, Sexploration: The Ultimate Guide to Feeling Truly Great in Bed (link is external) (Penguin, 2006) was reviewed positively by both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

  • Michael Devlin, MD

    • Professor of Clinical Psychiatry

    Dr. Devlin is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Associate Director of the Eating Disorders Research Unit at New York State Psychiatric Institute. He attended medical school at Columbia and completed his psychiatry residency at New York State Psychiatric Institute/Columbia-Presbyterian. Following his residency, he joined the Eating Disorders Research Unit at NYSPI under the direction of Dr.Tim Walsh, and he has worked with patients with eating disorders and conducted clinical research there since that time.

    His major academic interest is in the treatment of patients with eating disorders, and he recently completed work on an NIMH-funded study of psychotherapy and medication treatment for overweight patients with binge eating disorder. An additional area of interest is in the relationship between eating disorders and the outcome of surgery for obesity. In addition to research, he is active in medical student education and in training and supervision of psychiatry residents, particularly in cognitive behavioral therapy. He served on the American Psychiatric Association Practice Guideline Work Group on Eating Disorders. He is an active member of the Academy for Eating Disorders and is a past President of that organization.

  • Jonathan Amiel, MD

    • Senior Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs

    Jonathan Amiel, MD is the Senior Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs at VP&S. He has a strong interest in medical education and humanism in medicine and he works closely with the AAMC and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. He is particularly delighted to teach part of the narrative medicine course in which he took part as a fourth-year VP&S student.

  • Benjamin Lebwohl, MD

    • Director of Clinical Research at the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University

    Benjamin Lebwohl, MD, MS is a gastroenterologist, epidemiologist, and cellist with an undergraduate degree in music. He is the Director of Clinical Research at the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University and a member of the St. Thomas Orchestra.

  • Maura Spiegel, PhD

    • Senior Lecturer of English and Comparative Literature

    Maura Spiegel, PhD, is Senior Lecturer of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she teaches courses on fiction and film, and is a founder and Associate Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine. She is the co-author of The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying and Living On (Anchor/Doubleday), The Breast Book: An Intimate and Curious History (Workman), which was a Book-of-the-Month Club Quality Paperbacks selection. She co-edited the journal Literature and Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press) with Rita Charon, MD, PhD, for seven years. She has written for The New York Times, and has published essays on the history of the emotions, Charles Dickens, diamonds in the movies, among many other topics. She is currently writing a book about the life and films of Sidney Lumet for St. Martin’s Press. View a list of Maura's publications.

    Headshot of Maura Spiegel
  • Craig Irvine, PhD

    • Lecturer, VP&S Narrative Medicine Seminars

    Craig Irvine, PhD, is a founder and Co-Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. He holds a doctorate in philosophy. For more than 15 years, he has been designing and teaching cultural competency, ethics, Narrative Medicine, and Humanities and Medicine curricula for residents, medical students, physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, dentists, and other health professionals. He has over 20 years of experience researching the history of philosophy, phenomenology, and narrative ethics, and over 25 years of experience teaching ethics, humanities, the history of philosophy, logic, and narrative medicine at the graduate, undergraduate, and preparatory school levels. He has published articles in the areas of ethics, residency education, and literature and medicine and has presented at numerous national and international conferences on these and other topics. View a list of Craig's publications.

    Headshot of Craig Irvine
  • Nicole Furlonge, MA, PhD

    • Professor and Director of the Klingenstein Center

    Nicole Brittingham Furlonge, Professor and Director of the Klingenstein Center, Teachers College Columbia University earned her Ph.D. and BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her M.A. from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Teachers College, Dr. Furlonge served as Director of Teaching and Learning at the Holderness School, where she facilitated professional learning for faculty and developed LEARNS, a framework for formative professional learning. She has taught English and served as English Department Chair and Director of Diversity at several independent schools, including St. Andrew's School (Delaware), The Lawrenceville School, and Princeton Day School. Dr. Furlonge is the author of Race Sounds: The Art of Listening in African American Literature, published by the University of Iowa Press. Her book demonstrates listening as an interpretive and civic act that leads to deeper engagement with others. Dr. Furlonge has previously served on the boards of People and Stories/Gente y Cuentos and Village Charter School in Trenton, NJ. Currently, Dr. Furlonge’s research examines the intersections between listening, cognitive neuroscience, social justice, and school leadership. She lives in Yonkers, NY with her spouse and their three children.

  • Rika Burnham, DFA

    • Lecturer, VP&S Narrative Medicine Seminars

    Rika Burnham teaches Works of Art and Wide Awakeness to the World in the Program of Narrative Medicine, Columbia University. Previously, she was Head of Education at The Frick Collection, a museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University. Publications include Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience (Getty) and a catalogue essay in Pierre Bonnard: The Late Still Lifes and Interiors (Metropolitan Museum). Ms. Burnham earned a degree in art history from Harvard University and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2014.

    Headshot of Rika Burnham
  • David Leventhal, BA

    • Program Director with the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG)

    David Leventhal has performed with the Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) from 1997-2011, appearing in principal roles in some of Mark Morris' most acclaimed works. He received a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) for his performing career with Mark Morris. David is Program Director and one of the founding teachers of MMDG's Dance for PD® program, a collaboration with the Brooklyn Parkinson Group that offers weekly classes for people with Parkinson's at the Mark Morris Dance Center and fosters similar classes in more than 250 communities in 25 countries around the world, and presents regular training workshops for teachers interested in leading Dance for PD® classes. He received the 2016 World Parkinson Congress Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Parkinson's community and is the co-recipient of the Alan Bonander Humanitarian Award for his efforts to make the Dance for PD® program widely available.  He has written and lectured extensively about the program. ​David has co-produced three volumes of a successful At Home DVD series for the program and has been instrumental in initiating and designing innovative projects involving live streaming and Moving Through Glass, a dance-based Google Glass App for people with Parkinson's.

    He serves on the boards of the Davis Phinney Foundation and the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center​'s Arts and Humanities Program.

  • Marjorie Korn, MA

    • Senior Editor, Men's Journal

    Marjorie Korn is a senior editor at Men's Journal covering health, science, nutrition and more. She is an award-winning journalist who has been published in the Associated Press, Sunday Times (UK), Dallas Morning News, GQ, and more. She is a freelance book editor and graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

  • Aubrie-Ann Jones, MS, MFA

    • Lecturer, VP&S Narrative Medicine Seminars

    Aubrie-Ann Jones is a graduate of Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine master's program. She has taught at Rutgers University in the Doctorate in Social Work program, and is currently leading Narrative Medicine workshops with residents and fellows at NYU Langone Medical Center. She is an editor at The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine and a member of Children of Bellevue’s Board of Directors.  Aubrie also holds a BA in Anthropology from Fordham University and an MFA in Fiction from The New School.

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