Theme: Breach

Breaking past the status quo. Redefining progress. Adding new, fresh perspectives. Synergizing and incentivizing to improve and revolutionize the world.

Schwab Auditorium
E Pollock Rd & Pattee Mall
University Park, Pennsylvania, 16802
United States

Bella Glanville

Bella Glanville is an international model, coach, founder of the 'Lovekidz' foundation and a high school senior. She grew up in London where she is known for her work with companies such as Topshop and Vogue. Bella gives weekly seminars at leadership events and schools, building on the skills she has learned from being a participant and coach at personal development events run by the world's top speakers, such as Anthony Robbins.

Brian Davis

Brian A. Davis is an undergraduate student at The Pennsylvania State University. As an adolescent he was a casualty of contemporary police brutality. A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Brian has witnessed to the caste system first hand institutionalized by police departments. Brian has devoted most of his time to student activism and has made helping others a lifetime dedication. Brian has won multiple awards and scholarships for his leadership and selflessness effort in serving others, including recognition for creating a university-Wide initiative to gather water for Flint, Michigan during their Water Crisis. Brian directed 22 students with 5,000 bottles of water to Flint, Michigan to distribute water to undocumented families, food banks and local shelters. Brian’s humanitarian work extends internationally as well providing community service in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Bruno Descaves

With his innate talent and invention, Bruno Descaves’ marionettes, violin renderings and contraptions have fascinated audiences around the world, filling the environments with strong vibrations of contentment, wonder and great joy, which remain precious moments in people’s lives. His unusual trajectory led him, after graduating with a degree in Physics, to work his way around the earth in 7 years, going clockwise essentially by land and sea. In 2016 he obtained his Masters in Performing Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro researching and building the Intercessor Objects, devices based on the qualities of marionettes, that are manipulated and worn by persons during performances allowing for an expansion in our awareness as collective human beings.

Cecilia McGough

Cecilia McGough is an astronomer, activist, and writer as a Penn State Schreyer Honors College scholar pursuing a major in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Cecilia is the founder and current president of the Penn State Pulsar Search Collaboratory. She has been participating in pulsar research continuously since December of 2009, co-discovering pulsar J1930-1852 with the widest orbit ever observed around another neutron star, competing in the International Space Olympics held in Russia, and co-authoring her research in the Astrophysics Journal. Cecilia is a mental health activist in fighting against the negative stigma towards mental illness. She is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of the soon to launch non-profit Students With Schizophrenia which is the only non-profit in the United States focused on empowering college students with schizophrenia.

Claudia Williams

Claudia founded The Human Zone after spending more than a decade as an attorney representing public, private and non-profit organizations. Claudia provides strategic, HR-based support aimed at transforming leaders and making great places to work. Claudia also developed Frientorship™, an individual and team development model that encompasses key principles of friendship, mentorship and leadership to bring out the best in people, teams and organizations. While working as an attorney, Claudia served as an Adjunct Professor for The Pennsylvania State University, teaching Labor-Management Relations to MPA candidates at the Harrisburg campus. She was named as one of the Central Penn Business Journal’s 25 Women of Influence.

Glenn Ruse

Glenn Ruse Jr. is a Classicist and Roman Historian currently working as a Production Editor with Taylor and Francis Group in Philadelphia. Glenn graduated from Penn State with a degree in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies (CAMS) in 2007 and continued his studies at Brandeis University where he earned his Master’s degree in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies. Glenn also worked as an adjunct professor of Classical Studies at The College of Wooster where he taught a course on the intersection between ancient literature and modern film, before he entered the field of academic publishing with Taylor and Francis. Glenn’s focus is on the life and works of Marcus Cicero, the Roman orator, Senator and philosopher. Glenn’s master’s thesis investigated the ways in which Cicero used his oratory and rhetoric to establish himself in Rome despite his “outsider” status.

Jonathan Marks

Jonathan Marks works at the intersections of ethics, law, and policy. Having studied law at Oxford University, he qualified as a barrister and mediator, and spent a decade in full-time legal practice in London, where he developed expertise in human rights law, environmental law, and commercial regulation. Jonathan is currently the director of the Bioethics Program at Penn State University, and affiliate faculty with the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State Law, and the School of International Affairs. He is also an academic member of Matrix Chambers, a leading set of barristers’ chambers in London. He has participated as an expert in law and ethics in meetings held by the Royal Society in London, the National Academies in Washington, D.C., and the World Health Organization. Jonathan recently finished a book on the ethics of public-private partnerships in public health, and he continues to explore the ethical, legal, and policy implications of reciprocity and influence for public bodies.

Matt Stumpf

Matt Stumpf is on a mission to motivate people of all ages, races, and ethnic backgrounds to enter into meaningful conversations. Trained as a minister, Matt has a unique background in psychology, communications, leadership, behavioral health, and public speaking. Matt is a graduate of Liberty University with a Master’s degree in Human Services Counseling and Executive Leadership and began his professional career in full-time ministry. For the past six years, Matt has been actively involved in the student community of Penn State Altoona. His desire is to constantly motivate the people around him into conversations that engage, include, and empower people to reach out into the uncomfortable. When not on the campus of Penn State Altoona, you can find him cheering on his oldest son at a band concert, enjoying his middle son on the stage, or watching his beautiful princess dance.

Peter Buckland

Peter Buckland leads a couple of lives. One life takes him into his work as the Academic Programs Fellow at Penn State’s Sustainability Institute and into service as a municipal official with a call to environmental justice and equality. Another life has been steeped in studying, teaching, composing, and performing music since childhood. Sometimes these lives merge in curious ways. He’s written on what can we learn about environmental ethics and environmental degradation from thrash metal songs and how musicians created the sonic form of late Cold War paranoia and environmental degradation. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania with his partner Meg and his son Sacha.

Theresa Vescio

Theresa K. Vescio is a Professor of Psychology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies. Her research seeks to understand the factors that facilitate and temper the expression of sexism, racism, and heterosexism. Dr. Vescio has two lines of research that are funded by the National Science Foundation – research on the underrepresentation of women in masculine domains (e.g., science, technology, engineering, business) and her research on masculinity. Dr. Vescio has published numerous articles, edited a volume on The Social Psychology of Power (with Ana Guinote), served as Associate Editor for both the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes and the British Journal of Social Psychology, and served on the editorial boards of Psychological Science, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition, and Social Psychology and Personality Science.

Tim Simpson

Dr. Tim Simpson has been using and teaching students about 3D printing for nearly 20 years, but his passion for the technology was reignited five years ago when he saw his kids’ excitement at printing pink tiaras, ninja stars, and even their own heads on plastic figurines at home. With the recent advancements in 3D metal printing, this Penn State professor of mechanical and industrial engineering feels like a child himself, questioning everything that he has seen and learned about manufacturing and design. Dr. Simpson’s enthusiasm is evident as he leads hundreds of visitors on tours each year through Penn State’s CIMP-3D (Center for Innovative Materials Processing through Direct Digital Deposition). As Co-Director of the lab, Dr. Simpson enjoys blowing people’s minds with lab’s state-of-the-art metal 3D printing systems, which have fabricated everything from aircraft parts, to engine pistons, to knee implants, to watch cases.