Community Advisory Board

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The Institute for Global Engagement Community Advisory Board (CAB) is a dynamic team of leaders working creatively and collaboratively to execute the vision and mission of the IGE, which is to open up the classroom to the world.

The CAB designs and facilitates the high-impact Community Engagement Program, which offers high impact Student Engagement and Directed Research opportunities. Through these, students work with faculty and network partners on community-relevant research projects, while gaining the practical skills and executive relationships necessary for success after graduation. Board members and community partners also facilitate:

  • Mentorships
  • Internships
  • Site visits
  • Distinguished Speaker Series
  • Global Classroom panels
  • Events sponsorship
  • Student scholarships
  • Study abroad
  • Conference grants

Community Advisory Board Members

The CAB meets at least once a quarter. Current CAB members include:

Co-Chairs:

Divya McMillin, PhD

Executive Director, UW Tacoma Institute for Global Engagement & Global Honors Program

Professor of Global Media Studies, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

Divya McMillin (PhD 1998, Indiana University Bloomington) is Executive Director of the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) and the Global Honors Program at the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT). She is Professor of Global Media Studies in the UWT School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Affiliate Faculty of the Center for Global Studies, and Associate Faculty of the South Asia Center in the UW Seattle Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Tacoma City Chamber of Commerce and on Mayor Marilyn Strickland’s International Relations Commission.

Divya is committed to building the common ground, a creative shared space where the best thinking comes together for innovative and long-lasting solutions. She founded UWT’s high-demand Communication Major in 2001 that integrates professional skills with research, and served as its faculty coordinator before taking on the role of Executive Director of the Global Honors Program in Spring 2009. Leading a cross-campus team in the Global Honors Faculty Council, she created pathways in Global Leadership and Global Citizenship as well as a Minor in Global Engagement, moving the program from a fledgling unit to a nationally-recognized signature Program for the university. In 2014, she founded the Institute for Global Engagement, to extend the high impact global learning practices of the Honors program to all UWT students. The Program is currently rolling out major-integrated global honors pathways across campus. Divya’s innovations in teaching and curriculum building have been profiled in the UW Provost’s Report and UW Columns magazine. Her community-engaged honors model has been extremely well-received at the Association for American Colleges and Universities and Western Regional Honors Council conferences.

Divya is author of two books: International Media Studies (Blackwell 2007) and Mediated Identities: Youth, Agency, and Globalization (Peter Lang, 2009), and co-editor of Place, Power, Media (forthcoming), as well as numerous top-tiered journal articles and book chapters. She has received highest recognition by her peers in the 2012 Distinguished Research Award and 2017 Distinguished Teaching Award. Divya is an engaging and highly sought-after speaker and consultant, presenting on media globalization most recently at the Geomedia Conference (Karlstad, 2017), Australia/New Zealand Communication Association Conference (Queenstown, 2015) and Soft Power Conference (London, 2013). She was the 2013 Robert Pockrass Lecturer at Penn State. She served as moderator for UWT’s first Views on the Pacific (YouTube video), and has hosted high profile community leaders in the IGE’s Global Classroom and Distinguished Speaker Series, respectively.

Drew Bamford

Head, HTC Creative Labs

Drew Bamford brings a broad background in product development, as well as deep knowledge of user experience design to HTC Creative Labs. When he started at HTC in 2006, Drew had the opportunity to help drive the transformation of HTC from ODM to global consumer brand by creating a branded user experience for HTC products with TouchFLO on Windows Mobile and then HTC Sense on Android. More recently, Drew has been instrumental in the success of the BlinkFeed and the Zoe video highlights experiences. Today, Drew and his team are creating the experience infrastructure that will power HTC's VR platform business in the future.

Before joining HTC, Drew founded the user experience design practice at Teague, a product design consultancy in Seattle, where he and his team designed interactive products for such varied clients as Microsoft, Panasonic, Palm, Nike, Starbucks, and Boeing. Previously, Drew was responsible for the end-to-end user experience of a Web-based financial transaction platform at SparkCharge. While at Microsoft's Hardware Design Group, Drew led the hardware/software interaction design for a wide range of consumer products, from children's toys and game devices to wireless telephones. Drew's earlier experience includes pioneering intranet design work at IDEO and user interface design for a tablet device at Silicon Graphics.

At Stanford, Drew studied Product Design, which is a multidisciplinary program, combining mechanical engineering and design. In addition, he studied Human-Computer Interaction design under Terry Winograd.

Members:

Brian Ebersole

Former Tacoma Mayor & WA State Speaker of the House

Brian Ebersole served in the Washington State House of Representatives between 1983 and 1997, during which he was House Speaker between 1993 and 1995. He served as Tacoma Mayor between 1996 and 2000,  and was Bates Technical College President between 2000 and 2003. With more than 30 years of public service, he is a longstanding community leader who has been instrumental to the continuing revitalization of Tacoma.

Deneen Grant, SPHR

Managing Partner & Leadership Strategist, Progressive Leadership Group

Deneen Grant has witnessed firsthand the impact leadership has on business outcomes. Her experience and observations motivated her to develop a solution that marries leadership strategy with business strategy. Progressive Leadership Group was created to help CEOs and senior executives develop the leadership teams and culture that drive growth and long-term success.

Deneen is on a mission to equip companies, so they’ll have the right leaders, with the right skills, in the right roles. These leaders are able to create and maintain a mission-driven and high performance culture. Deneen knows how much culture drives business performance, so she works with clients to create alignment around the company’s mission, vision, values and strategic goals.

Deneen has an extensive background, with close to 20 years of HR business partnership, leadership development, and organizational effectiveness experience. She has held key roles with Wells Fargo Bank, KeyBank, Kitsap Bank, Russell Investments, and Meracord. Her work in these companies was heavily focused on organizational effectiveness, leadership development, and organizational design.

Deneen is a certified John Maxwell coach, teacher, trainer, and speaker. She has training in Organizational & Relationship Systems Coaching, Problem Solving through Action Learning, and Management/Leadership Styles.

Deneen holds certifications through the Human Resource Certification Institute as a Senior Professional in HR (SPHR), and The Society for Human Resource Management as a Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP).

Jeremy Gregory

Owner and Artist, Candy Teeth Creative

Jeremy Gregory is an experienced artist and a creative force of many talents. He is a muralist, illustrator, cartoonist, puppeteer, juggler and storyteller.

Jeremy's  multi-layered painting style employs a variety of media that is delightfully untraditional. One may feel like they have entered a different world. Take a look, peel it back layer-by-layer, and enter.

His  murals are fresh and thought provoking. Having an eye for the unusual, he tends to incorporate a creative spin on everything. Jeremy prides himself on the ability to blend distinctive personal style and input to create a mural that is imaginative, innovative and embodies the area.

Lt. General Stephen Lanza

Lieutenant General, United States Army

Lt. General Stephen Lanza assumed command of I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord on February 6, 2014. I Corps is a globally responsive and regionally aligned force that supports the Pacific region. Through military-to-military engagements, partnership capacity building exercises, and security force assistance operations, America’s Corps provides agile mission command and trained forces to support the Army’s Prevent, Shape, and Win Strategy.

Lanza was commissioned into the Field Artillery in 1980 after graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is a graduate of the United States Army Command and General Staff College and the School for Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has a bachelor of science degree from the United States Military Academy, a Master of Science in Administration from Central Michigan University and a Master of Science in National Security and Strategic Studies from the National War College at Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington D.C. He has also served as a National Security Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.  

Enrique Leon, MD

Faculty Physician, Tacoma Family Medicine, Multicare

Enrique Leon, MD is a faculty physician at Tacoma Family Medicine (TFM), Multicare and part of the University of Washington Family Medicine Network.  The mission of his current residency is to educate family physicians and medical students to work in rural, urban, underserved, and international regions of high need. He has been at TFM for 4 years and is Clinical Instructor in the University of Washington Medical School. Prior to this he cared for underserved patients for 12 years in the mostly Latino Community Health Care, Eastside, Tanbara office in the Salishan neighborhood of Tacoma. 

Dr. Leon is guided by principles of social justice and inter-denominational liberation theology in his use of social determinants of health to help individual and regional health decision-making and in his work promoting work-life-family balance and preventing poverty. He enjoys stimulating problem-solving around health needs through active learning and mentoring. He is committed to spreading awareness that global issues have local roots that can be studied and acted upon at many levels.

Born in Peru to American and Peruvian parents who met in the Peace Corps, Dr. Leon has maintained relationships and collaborations through family and volunteer medical education and service projects in his home country.  He has served and led in the following: Washington Academy of Family Physicians Public Health (committee member); Pierce County Chapter of Washington Academy of Family Physicians (President); Salishan Housing Project Revitalization Hope 6 Grant (committee member); Eastside Clinic Medical (Director); Multicare Adult Medical Services (committee member); American Academy of Family Physicians; and Peruvian-American Medical Society.

Dr. Leon’s educational background began in public schools in Maryland, then to a BS in Biology from James Madison University, Virginia. He went on to medical school at Howard University, followed by residency training at Swedish Medical Center Seattle (First Hill campus, University of Washington) and most recently a Faculty Development Fellowship at the University of Washington.

He is married, with 2 children ages 14 and 9. He enjoys getting to the outdoors with his family to camp, hike, fish, and ski.  At home they like to dance, cook and tell jokes.

John Wolfe

CEO, The Northwest Seaport Alliance

John Wolfe is chief executive officer of The Northwest Seaport Alliance. He sets the organization’s vision and strategy, and guides the NWSA’s unique customer-focused culture.

Wolfe also serves as the CEO of the Port of Tacoma, a position he was named to in 2010. Before being named CEO, he had served as the Port of Tacoma’s deputy executive director since June 2005.

Prior to joining the Port of Tacoma, Wolfe served for two years as the executive director of the Port of Olympia, and before that as Olympia's director of operations and marine terminal general manager.

Wolfe also spent 10 years with Maersk Sealand/APM Terminals in Tacoma, most recently as the terminal's operations manager.

He is on the boards of the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA), Executive Council for a Greater Tacoma, Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce, the Washington State Fair Board, Federal Maritime Commission’s Export Innovation Team and Maritime Innovation Advisory Council for the Department of Commerce. Wolfe is also an executive board member of the Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County.

Wolfe earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from Pacific Lutheran University.

Non-Voting Members:

Joanne Clarke Dillman

Faculty Coordinator, UW Tacoma Institute for Global Engagement & Global Honors Program

Senior Lecturer in Culture, Arts and Communication, Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

Dr. Joanne Clarke Dillman teaches a variety of film classes, from Introduction to Film Studies, to Feminist Perspectives, Media Genres and Film Theory and Aesthetics, among others. She also teaches an Introduction to Screenwriting class. She has taught in both the Core Program and continues to teach in Global Honors. Her focus and home program is in Arts, Media, and Culture. Dr. Clarke Dillman’s degrees include a bachelors from Brown University, MFA in Film from Columbia University, and PhD from George Mason University, with areas of specialization in Visual Culture and Feminist Media Studies. Joanne's PhD's work is on the intersection of issues of gender, class and power in American visual culture, with an emphasis on film. Her book, "Women and Death in Film, Television and News: Dead But Not Gone," was published in November, 2014.

As the Global Honors Faculty Coordinator, Joanne supports the Executive Director, faculty, staff, and students in the development and execution of several Program initiatives, including Integrated Global Honors and the annual Global Engagement Conference.

Lynn Hermanson, MED

Assistant Director, UW Tacoma Institute for Global Engagement & Global Honors Program

Lynn Hermanson is Assistant Director of the Institute for Global Engagement and Global Honors Program, serving as principle program operations administrator, student counselor and admissions advisor. Her work includes management of program budgets, disbursement of student grants and awards, publicity and event planning.

Alexis Wheeler, JD

Program Coordinator, UW Tacoma Institute for Global Engagement & Global Honors Program

Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Alexis Wheeler studied History and Political Science as an Honors student at the University of Washington, before earning a JD at Harvard Law School and an MSc at the University of Westminster (London, UK). Funding her UW education through merit and need-based aid, Alexis learned early to seek out educational opportunities, from summer research fellowships at Princeton and the University of Illinois to study abroad programs in Italy and South Africa. These experiences inspired a lasting commitment to global learning and exploration.

During law school, Alexis gained international legal experience as a summer associate at White & Case's London office and as a Harvard Asia Law delegate to South Korea.  Returning to Seattle in 2010, she counseled international clients as an attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and served as Secretary of Hostelling International’s Washington State Council, organizing and delivering talks on educational travel. Seeking additional international experience, Alexis went abroad in 2012 to backpack across Europe and pursue further studies in London. She returned eager to build a globally-focused career in education.

Student Representatives

 Six student representatives provide input and support the work of the Board sub-committee.