List of 6 items.

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  Friday, October 17: Laurie Santos

  Afternoon Assembly, Athletic Center, 1:45 pm
  Dr. Laurie Santos is a psychologist and an expert on human cognition, its origins, and the evolutionary biases that influence our all-too imperfect life choices. Her work centers around how behavioral change through positive psychology can lead to a happier and more fulfilling life.
  
  

   
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  Dr. Santos is the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology and the former Head of Silliman College at Yale University. Her course, Psychology and the Good Life, teaches what the science of psychology says about how to make wiser choices for a better life. The class is Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years and has been adapted into a free Coursera program that has been taken by over 4 million people to date.
  
  Dr. Santos is the host of the podcast, The Happiness Lab. She makes the case that humans are drastically wrong about what makes us happy and often do the exact opposite of what will make our lives better. Based on her incredibly popular course at Yale, she presents the latest scientific research in an effort to help listeners rethink happiness and guide them toward their best lives. Launched in 2019, the podcast has been downloaded over 100 million times.
  
  Using evidence from the animal kingdom to help explain our sometimes illogical behaviors, she provides advice on how to engage our uniquely human faculties to counteract evolution and lead better lives. Dr. Santos has been featured in numerous news outlets including the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, CBS This Morning, NPR, GQ Magazine, Slate, CNN, and Oprah Magazine. Dr. Santos is a winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching from institutions such as Yale and the American Psychological Association. She has been featured as one of Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” and was named TIME’s “Leading Campus Celebrity.”
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  Friday, November 7: Andy Huszar '91

  Morning Assembly, Athletic Center, 8:00 am

  
  Andy Huszar is the Co-founder and CEO of Marcella, the impact designer fashion brand for women ranked by the Inc. 5000 as one of America’s fastest-growing companies, overall, and no less than America’s 7th fast-growing fashion company three years running (2025, 2024, 2023).

   
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  Previously a long-time economic development expert, Andy built and ran two major trading start-ups on and around Wall Street, including leading America's then largest-ever economic recovery program (the centerpiece of “Quantitative Easing,” the U.S. Federal Reserve's $1.25 Trillion response to the 2008 Financial Crisis). Earning a J.D./M.B.A from Columbia University, with a Bachelors from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Andy later joined his partner, Siyana, with the goal of together creating Marcella, a global fashion brand advancing women and girls globally across every aspect (across design, production approach, sustainability and social impact). Advancing human progress being a primary focus of his life's work, Andy likes to say proudly that this same mission is the lifeblood of Marcella.
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  Monday, December 1: Ben Rubenstein '01

  Morning Assembly, Athletic Center, 8:00 am
  
  Ben Rubenstein from the Hopkins Class of 2001, has a long career of entrepreneurship, building large tech companies, and job creation.

   
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  He first founded Yodle in 2005, where he grew the company to over 1,500 employees and 60,000 small business customers, resulting in a $342 million exit to Web.com. He next founded Opcity to connect consumers and residential real estate agents, and as CEO scaled the organization to over 500 employees, over 100,000 agents, and a $210 million exit to Realtor.com. At Realtor.com, Ben was named Chief Revenue Officer and grew the business to over $700M in revenue. In 2021, Ben started Setpoint, which provides capital and technology to originators and lenders in asset-backed lending. Ben has been recognized as a member of the INC 30 under 30, the Empact 100, Austin Inno's 50 on Fire, Austin Business Journal’s Best CEOs, and is proud of leading Setpoint, Realtor.com, Opcity and Yodle to be named “Top Workplaces.” He was also named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, was an "Austin Under 40" award winner, was named "Austinite of the Year," and won Opportunity Austin's "C-Suite Executive of the Year" in 2024.
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  Tuesday, January 27, 2026: Mark Gorenberg '72 and Jon Levin '90

  Evening Talk, Academic & Performing Arts Center, 7:00 pm
  
  AI and the Future of Education: Two Hopkins Grads, Two Top Universities, One Big Question
  
  Two Hopkins alumni are now leading two of the world’s most tech-savvy universities at the forefront of the AI revolution—and they’re returning to campus to share what comes next. Join us for AI and the Future of Education with Mark Gorenberg ’72 (MIT Board Chair and AI investor) and Jon Levin ’90 (Stanford President and renowned economist).
  Read Bio
  How will AI change the way students learn? Which fields will be transformed? What opportunities are just beginning to emerge that we can't yet imagine?
  
  

  If you’re curious about the future of education—or want to see how Hopkins graduates are helping to shape it—this is your chance.
  
  

  Mark P. Gorenberg ’76
  
  

  Mark P. Gorenberg became chair of the MIT Corporation in 2023. He has 33 years of venture capital experience and is the founder and managing director of Zetta Venture Partners, a seed and early-stage venture capital firm focused on AI. 
  
  

  He joined the MIT Corporation in 2001, becoming a life member in 2012. He has served on many of the Corporation’s committees, including the MIT Investment Management Company Board, the Executive Committee, the 2022 Presidential Search Committee, and the Development Committee. He has also served on the Visiting Committees for the departments of linguistics and philosophy, aeronautics and astronautics, political science, and mechanical engineering, as well as the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
  
  

  Gorenberg has participated in multiple MIT fundraising committees and campaigns over the last two decades. He cochaired the Campaign for a Better World, which raised $6.24 billion to help the people of MIT tackle humanity’s urgent global challenges. He also served on the steering committee for the Campaign 2000 and cochaired the Campaign for Students. He was on the board of directors of the MIT Club of Northern California for 14 years and serves on the steering committees for the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation and the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.
  
  

  He is a director of several Zetta Venture Partners’ portfolio companies and is a past director of the National Venture Capital Association. Prior to his career in venture capital, he served as a software executive, entrepreneur, and member of the first Sparcstation team at Sun Microsystems. He serves on the boards of numerous successful startups. In 2011, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  

  
  

  Jon Levin ‘90

  
  

  A leading economist and academic leader Jonathan Levin is widely recognized for his scholarship in industrial organization and market design. Named Stanford University’s thirteenth president on August 1, 2024, Levin previously served as the Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business.

  
  

  Levin was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. After graduating from Hopkins School in 1990, he earned undergraduate degrees in English and Mathematics at Stanford in 1994, an M.Phil in Economics at Oxford University in 1996, and a PhD in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999. After joining the Stanford faculty in 2000, Levin rose through the ranks to become the Holbrook Working Professor of Price Theory in the Department of Economics. He served as department chair from 2011 to 2014, a period of rising stature for Stanford economics.

  
  

  From 2021 to 2025, Levin served as a member of President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He is a Trustee of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. He has consulted widely in industry and government. He was part of the international expert group that designed the first vaccine Advance Market Commitment for pneumococcal disease and participated in the design of the FCC’s noted broadcast spectrum incentive auction.  
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  Monday, April 20, 2026: Sarah Merriam '89

  Morning Assembly, Athletic Center, 8:00 am
  
  Judge Merriam grew up in New Haven.  She attended Hopkins School from 1983 until her graduation in 1989, then went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude, from Georgetown University in 1993. She began her legal education at the University of Connecticut School of Law, then transferred to Yale Law School after her first year and received her law degree from Yale in 2000. In 2018, Judge Merriam received an LLM in Judicial Studies from Duke Law School.
  
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  From 2007 through 2015, Judge Merriam served as an Assistant Federal Defender in the District of Connecticut, representing indigent criminal defendants and witnesses in federal court in all aspects of those cases, including appeals. Prior to becoming an Assistant Federal Defender, she served as an associate at the law firm of Cowdery, Ecker & Murphy in Hartford, Connecticut; as a law clerk to Judge Thomas J. Meskill of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (2002-03); and as a law clerk to Judge Alvin W. Thompson of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut (2000-02).  
  
  Judge Merriam served as a United States Magistrate Judge for the District of Connecticut from April 3, 2015, through October 12, 2021, and as a United States District Judge for the District of Connecticut from October 12, 2021, through September 28, 2022.
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  Friday, May 1, 2026: Misha Body '98

  Morning Assembly, Athletic Center, 8:00 am
  Misha Body has 25 years of experience working in zoos, aquariums, and cultural institutions, all with the intention of impacting wildlife conservation. Misha’s strengths include actively identifying and empowering the diversity of skills and perspectives amongst her team members to achieve strategic goals; modeling and coaching a leadership style that embraces empathy, compassion, and accountability; and creating and nurturing connections and networks to expand the impact on organizational mission. Her personal mission is to collaboratively create environments in which mission-driven conservation professionals can achieve their greatest successes.
  
  Read Bio
  Misha started her zoo/aquarium career over 20 years ago at the Bronx Zoo and Mystic Aquarium caring for pinnipeds, penguins, raptors, and an assortment of fascinating creatures in JungleWorld, Congo Gorilla Forest, and the World of Darkness. She then moved into wildlife education for several years, loving the opportunity to share her passion for the natural world with a variety of audiences. Following that, Misha was the inaugural Living Collections staff member at the California Science Center where she worked her way through being a registrar, a department catch-all coordinator, helped open the $165 million Ecosystems gallery, and then was promoted through management roles, culminating as the Director of Husbandry. Misha has also served as the Director of Wildlife Care at the San Diego Zoo, where she introduced a more compassionate, balanced, and person-first approach to leadership while promoting and supporting innovative methods of animal care and interdepartmental and cross-campus collaboration. Misha has provided services as an independent consultant and Senior Strategist for Canopy Strategic Partners, helping recruit, screen, and place executive leaders in AZA accredited zoos, as well as helping facilitate workshops and analyze culture for animal care teams to operate more collaboratively and effectively. Misha has also taught a graduate-level course in strategic planning, bringing over 200 students through the process of creating executable plans for achieving conservation behavior change. Currently, Misha is the Deputy Zoo Director, Animals & Experiences for the Los Angeles Zoo & Botanical Gardens. 
  
  Misha has held multiple roles with the Association of Zoos & Aquariums including being a member of the Honors & Awards Committee, the Professional Development committee, and the Annual Conference Program Committee, being elected to the Ethics Board, and serving as an Accreditation Inspector. She has also served on the board of directors for the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network-Los Angeles and is a current board member for the Minorities in Aquarium and Zoo Sciences organization. She is a graduate of the AZA Executive Leadership Development Program, and earned a Bachelor’s in zoology from Connecticut College, a Master’s in biology from Miami University, and certificates in conservation biology from Columbia University and management & operations from the University of Southern California, Miami University, and AZA.
  
  When she's not immersed in her fulfilling work, Misha enjoys exploring the quirky curiosities Los Angeles offers with her husband, dreaming of far-off adventures, or watching the birds squabble in her backyard.