Tutty Alawiyah is the Rector of As-Syafi’iyah University in Jakarta, Indonesia. She was formerly a Minister for Women’s Affairs in two previous governments in Indonesia.

She was elected as the President of the International Muslim Women's Union (IMWU) at its 4th General Congress and Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in May 2007. She is also the President of the Council of the National Forum for Majelis Ta'lim (Badan Kontak Majelis Taklim), a Non-Governmental Organization of Islamic Study Circles with mostly female members. The NGO has millions of members throughout Indonesia.

In addition, Dr. Alawiyah served as a member of the Consultative Assembly of the Republic of Indonesia (MPR) from 1992 to 2004. She has been involved in local politics as a member of the Consultative Council of the Betawi Community and the General Secretary of the Mamdani Community (2001-2006).

She is also one of the founders of As-Syafi`iyah Islamic Learning Institution, which consists of three units: Education (from kindergarten to University); Social Activities, which has, since 1978, been educating hundreds of orphans from all parts of Indonesia, including the late Tsunami Victims from Aceh; and, Da'wah activities, such as radio and BKMT organizations.

She has published many articles. These include, Education for a Better Life with Islamic Ideals; Women, Leadership, Opportunities and Challenges in Indonesia; Promoting Gender Responsive Approach to Public Policy and Government; The Role of Scholars in the Intelligence of the Nation’s Life; Criminology from an Islamic point of view; and, The Challenging Era of Reformation and Globalization. She has also written over 14 books on religious topics as well as women and children’s issues such as, Orphans & Challenges (UIA press); and, Women in Islam.

Dr. Alawiyah obtained her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the Islamic State University in Jakarta, Indonesia. She speaks fluent Indonesian, Arabic and English.

William Anderson joined the staff of the National Academies in August, 2001. He is associate executive director in the Division on Earth and Life Studies and director of the Disasters Roundtable in the National Research Council. From June 1999 to June 2001, he served as senior advisor in the Disaster Management Facility in the Infrastructure Division at the World Bank while on leave from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

For more than twenty years, he held various positions at NSF, including program director, section head, and acting division director. While at NSF, he was responsible for developing multidisciplinary natural hazards research programs and providing oversight for such large-scale research activities as the NSF-funded earthquake engineering research centers and the cooperative program on wind engineering. During his career with the federal government, Anderson also held concurrent assignments with other agencies, including the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and the Department of State. Prior to his appointment at NSF, Anderson was associate professor to full professor of sociology at Arizona State University. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He also taught at Kent State University and Ohio State. At Ohio State he was field director at the Disaster Research Center where he directed teams conducting research on the impacts of natural and technological disasters in the U.S. and abroad. He is the co-author of two books, and author and co-author of numerous research reports and professional journal articles.

Willie Belleh, Jr. is a Management Specialist and a Lawyer. He has over twenty years of management, academic and analytical consulting field experience in government, academia and the private sector.

In government, he performed technical middle and senior level management functions. He served as Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer to the Constitutional Commission that drafted Liberia’s second constitution. At the Ministry of Finance, he served as Assistant Comptroller-General for Public Corporations where he assisted in monitoring the performance of state owned enterprises. Earlier, he had served as Management Trainee where he received broad exposure to fiscal management, including being an assistant to the Deputy Minister of Finance for Fiscal Affairs and sitting on the technical committee of the national budget committee. At the Liberia Institute of Public Administration, he served as Director for Special Projectss and Special Assistant to the Director-General. In this capacity, he handled inter-agency coordination, coordinated the institute’s annual national conference on Public Administration as well as activities in the Director-General’s office. Earlier, he had served as Development specialist, in which capacity he participated in public sector organization development activities, including civil service reforms, organization restructuring, and training of lower and middle level civil servants. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Port Authority, the Forest Development Authority, the National Bank of Liberia as well as its successor the Central Bank of Liberia. He has currently concluded an engagement with the Government of Liberia where he served as Chief of Staff for the Head of State and Chairman of the National Transitional Government of Liberia.

In academia, Prof. Belleh has taught, as Assistant Professor of Management, management, marketing business policy and strategy, business law, personnel and organizational theory. He served as Chairman of the Management Department responsible for coordinating the academic program of the department. Later, he served as Associate Professor of Management and Dean of the college of business and Public
Administration of the University of Liberia. In this capacity, he was responsible to: manage research, teach, develop priorities and attract funding, manage fiscal matters, recruit faculty and staff and interacted with various clientele of the College. He was a member of the Faculty Senate, the University Council and the Executive Committee of the University.

In the private sector, he is co-founder and partner/senior consultant of SUBAH-BELLEH ASSOCIATES, one of Liberia’s leading consulting firms. His consulting experience has been extensive. He has successfully completed assignments commissioned and/or funded by the World Bank, African Development Bank, European Investment Bank, United Nations Industrial Development Organization, United Nations Development Program, United Nations Childen Fund, Catholic Relief Services, Lutheran World Federation, Danish Agency for International Development Assistance, United States Agency for International Development, the Government of Liberia, Christian Health Organization of Liberia and the Africa Alliance of YMCAs.

Mr. Belleh holds BBA, MBA and LLB degrees. He also has formal training in management consultancy, Projects management and computer literacy. He is known for his conceptual and analytical competencies as well as his excellent writing and interpersonal skills.

Jonathan Oluwole Coker

Jonathan Oluwole Coker is a retired Civil Servant of the Nigerian Government. He began his career in 1972 as a Foreign Service Officer, serving both at home and in the Country’s diplomatic mission abroad. He was appointed Ambassador in 1991 to Cote d’Ivoire just at the wake of

a) The end of the golden and peaceful ear of the Late Felix Houghouet-Boigny, who ruled Cote d’Ivoire for about half a century, and
b) The eruption of war in the neighboring Liberia and later in Sierra Leaon. As Nigerian’s Ambassador to Cote d ’Ivoire at the point in time, he played a very significant role in the emergent political processes in the three countries respectively. After 8 years as Ambassador of Cote d’Ivoire, he was deployed to oversee the protocol department of the ministry of Foreign Affairs for about 6 months before being appointed as the overall protocol boss of Nigeria.

In that capacity, he served as the Chief of State Protocol, working closely with the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria from 1999 to 2004.

At the end of the first term of the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, he was appointed Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, a position he held for three years, during which period relations between Nigeria and China grew tremendously and impacted considerably and positively, the economics of both Nigeria and China.

Since he retired in June 2007, he has been invited both by the Nigerian government and some foreign institutions to advise on the emerging role and strength of China in the global policy and especially in Africa. His recent significant contribution to that topic was an invitation to and effective participation in a forum on Current Development and Trends in China’s Relations with African Countries organized by the HEINRICH BOLL STIFTUNG Foundation under the auspices of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC). The event took place on April 28, 2008 at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington D.C.

While he was still serving Ambassador, he was honored with the position of Advisor to the CHINA-AFRICA BUSINESS COUNCIL ADVISORY BOARD by the UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME Coordinator in CHINA. Nigeria still counts him as an expert on Nigeria/China, Africa/China relations as he was an active player in the process leading to the organization of the first-ever summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Ambassador Coker similarly extends his knowledge and services to the ECOWAS Commission especially in the relationship of the African sub-regional Organization with CHINA.

Now as a private citizen, he is busy putting together in Nigeria, a consortium dedicated to the Management of integrated domestic and industrial wastes in the Lagos area of Nigeria, from collection to the different stages of transformation to compost, gases and energy of electricity generation. This is an agreement between the State Government and Ambassador Coker’s privately run environment outfit.

He is devoting his present time to galvanizing his knowledge about the world and experience thereof gained over 35 years to attract more knowledge and know how and important foreign investments into the Nigerian economy.

Valentine Udoh James is the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. He began his tenure at Clarion University in July of 2008. He was the Dean of Graduate Studies at Fayetteville State University from February of 2008 to June of 2008. He served as the Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Fayetteville State University from August of 2004 – February 2008. He is also a full professor who specializes in Sustainable Development and Environmental Sciences with particular emphasis on the environmental issues of developing countries. He has held tenure track/tenured positions at University of Louisiana, Lafayette; University of Virginia in Charlottesville; Southern University in Baton Rouge, where he served as the Director of the Ph.D. Program in Public Policy and Interim Chair of the Master of Public Administration Department. He served as the Director of African Studies Program at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Dr. James has authored and edited fourteen books and several are forthcoming. He is the author of several scholarly articles in refereed journals and he is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa (JSDA) – an online journal he founded in 1998. He serves on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals and he is often sought after to provide lectures and opinions on matters concerning development and environmental issues of developing countries.

He is the recipient of scholarly awards such as the: 1) American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Diplomacy Fellowship; 2) Fulbright –Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship and; 3) The University of California Presidential Fellowship. He has worked for the United States Agency for International Development. He has mentored three Teaching Fulbright Scholars from Nigeria, South Africa and Cameroon and has served as the supervisor of two Fulbright Language Teaching Assistants from India and Afghanistan in 2006. In 2007, he mentored six Fulbright Language Teaching Assistants (FLTAs) from Bahrain, China, India, Pakistan, Tanzania and Russia. In 2008, he set the stage for Fulbright Language Assistants (FLTAs) from Algeria, Bahrain, Nigeria and Tanzania to join Fayetteville State University in order to continue the work on the instruction of critical languages. In 1996, Dr. James organized an international conference on sustainable development in developing countries while he was on the faculty of the University of Virginia. In April of 2007, he organized the “First International Congress on Critical Perspectives on Energy, Environment, Technology and Water Development and Protection Worldwide.” The papers presented are forthcoming in the Journal of Global Development Studies and in a book. In April of 2008, he organized the “Second International Congress on Critical Perspectives on Energy, Environment, Technology and Water Development and Protection Worldwide.”

Dr. James holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Science from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas; an M.A. in Environmental Science from Governors State University, University Park, Illinois and a B.S. in Biology from Tusculum College, Greeneville, Tennessee. He studied liberal arts at the American College of Rome in Rome, Italy. He speaks several African languages and Italian and has lived in and traveled to many countries in Europe, Africa and Asia.

His current research focuses on the sustainability of the environmental/ecological systems of the emerging nations of the world. He is currently collaborating with several Chinese and African researchers at the Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, China Agricultural University, University of Ibadan, University of Ilorin and the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research (NISER). He has been instrumental in establishing study abroad programs with foreign institutions.

Dr. James’ teaching, research and outreach activities influence regional, national and global decision making processes that impact people in the United States and around the world. For a complete dossier which documents teaching, research, community outreach activities, and administrative experiences, please contact him at vjames@clarion.edu.

Fuad Safwat is professor emeritus of biology at University of Massachusetts Boston. Dr. Safwat has been on the faculty of Baghdad University, Washington University and University of Massachusetts Boston, where he has served as chair of the Biology Department, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, dean of Graduate Studies and Research, and provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs. He also served as special assistant to the chancellor with the mandate to explore new strategies for teaching and learning at the undergraduate level.

Dr. Safwat prepared a major report entitled Learning Communities as an Evolving Model for Cooperative and Collaborative Learning. Dr. Safwat also served as campus liaison with Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL), a national organization involved in strengthening science, mathematics, engineering and technology at the undergraduate level.

Adenrele Awotona is the founder and director of the Center. He is a former Dean of the College of Public and Community Service at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Before then, he was at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he served as the Dean of the School of Architecture.

• Tel.: +1 617 287-7116
• Email: adenrele.awotona@umb.edu

Jennifer Brunson

Secretary to the Board

Jennifer is working with CRSCAD Director, Professor Adenrele Awotona in the areas of Research, Marketing and PR. She also creates, publishes and distributes CRSCAD's electronic newsletter. She is the main point of contact for the Center as well as the International Conference: Rebuilding Sustainable Communities with the Elderly and Disabled People after Disasters.

Please contact her at Jennifer.Brunson001@umb.edu or CRSCAD@umb.edu.