St. Lawrence University Announces 2024 Commencement Speakers | St. Lawrence County News

Kathleen Fitzgerald ’92, a conservation leader with extensive experience in integrated major landscape conservation and development programs in Africa and North America, will receive an honorary doctorate. She has worked in 24 countries with a focus on building resilient conservation landscapes for wildlife and people. She has created new natural areas, improved the management and financial sustainability of existing protected areas, established innovative public-private partnerships for conservation and communities, and supported community and climate resilience initiatives. She helped create the first species impact bond, completed dozens of conservation transactions, and is widely published.

Fitzgerald was a partner at Conservation Capital, vice president at the African Wildlife Foundation, co-founder and executive director of the Northeast Wilderness Trust, and executive director of the Stowe Land Trust. She is Project Director of Enduring Earth at The Pew Charitable Trusts, where she focuses on global large-scale conservation, community development and sustainable finance. She is a member of the World Commission on Protected Areas Advisory Group, is a senior advisor to the Global Wildlife Program at the World Bank, and serves on the board of Northeast Wilderness Trust.

At St. Lawrence University, she studied environmental studies and government and earned a master’s degree from the University of Vermont Field Naturalist Program, where she conducted her final research on wolves in Canada. After living in Kenya and South Africa for 15 years, she currently lives in Vermont.

President and CEO of the Adirondack Foundation Cali Brooks will receive the North Country Citation in recognition of her leadership of a community foundation that strengthens and enriches Adirondack communities. In just 20 years, the Adirondack Foundation has grown to $90 million in assets and distributed more than $75 million in grants and scholarships to the Adirondack region’s mountain and lake communities.

Brooks is a member of the North Country Regional Economic Development Council, the Common Ground Alliance Core Team and the New York Federal Reserve Bank Community Advisory Council. She also served on the North Country Public Radio Executive Committee and on the station manager search committee. She received the 2014 Hudson Headwaters Health Foundation Community Champions Award and has worked with dozens of organizations in the United States, Southeast Asia and Central America to strengthen civil society. She was an employee of the HKH Foundation, where she conducted a study to assess the economic, social, cultural and environmental strengths of the Adirondack region.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Brooks served in the Public Affairs Office of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She is a graduate of Evergreen State College and holds a master’s degree in international and cross-cultural management from The School for International Training.

Charles A. Dana Professor of History Liz Regosin has taught at St. Lawrence since 1997 and is widely admired for her commitment to the personal growth and academic success of her students. She has been invited by President Kathryn A. Morris to address the Class of 2024 at this year’s commencement ceremony.

She was selected by students as a recipient of the Owen D. Young Outstanding Faculty Award, and was also honored with the Louis and Frances Maslow Award and the J. Calvin Keene Award in recognition of her scholarship, effective teaching, and care for education and the welfare. of the entire student population. She regularly teaches courses in American history, African American history, and American women’s history, and has also been an instructor in the freshman program. The focus of her research in African American history was on the transition of African Americans from slavery to freedom. She has published two books on the subject: Freedom’s Promise: Ex-Slave Families and Citizenship in the Age of Emancipation; and Voices of Emancipation: Understanding Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction through the US Pension Bureau Files (with Donald R. Shaffer).

Her service as Associate Dean for the Faculty and as Co-Chair of the Faculty Council received high marks from faculty colleagues who consider her a valued and valued mentor, friend and leader of the St. Lawrence community. Regosin received her bachelor’s degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s and Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Irvine. After 27 years of service to St. Lawrence, she will retire in June.