Fond Farewells and Warm Welcomes at the Center for Genetics and Society

Biopolitical Times

Changes are in the works here at the Center for Genetics and Society, both on our staff and our Advisory Board.

On the staff side, Jessica Cussins will be leaving her position at CGS at the end of the month, and starting a Master’s program in public policy this fall at the Harvard Kennedy School. Jessica started at CGS in 2012 as a summer staff associate, and quickly grew to be a key and deeply valued member of our team. As readers of Biopolitical Times know well, she is an insightful analyst and compelling writer about all things biopolitical. We’ve also benefited greatly from her research and policy analysis skills (is there anyone who knows more than Jessica about the unfortunate push for approval of “three-person IVF” in the UK?). We’ll greatly miss Jessica’s day-to-day presence in the office, but are very glad that she plans to stay connected, doing some writing and researching for CGS in a consulting role. And we’re thrilled about the exciting new adventures that await her.

CGS’s Advisory Board plays a vital and much appreciated role in our organizational strategizing, development and culture. We recently welcomed a wonderful new member, Alexandra Minna Stern. Alex is a historian of science and medicine and Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and GynecologyAmerican Culture, and History at the University of Michigan. Her research and public scholarship has focused on the history of eugenics and the uses and misuses of genetics in the United States and Latin America. She is the author most recently, of Telling Genes: The Story of Genetic Counseling in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), and the award-wining Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (University of California Press, 2005). A new edition of Eugenic Nation will be published in December 2015; the publisher describes it as “radically new and relevant,” connecting  “the eugenic past to the genomic present with attention to the ethical and social implications of emerging genetic technologies.”

Another recent change on the CGS Advisory Board is in the bittersweet vein: David Winickoff has stepped down from the board and taken a leave from his position as Associate Professor in Bioethics and Society at UC Berkeley, in order to accept a temporary post as Senior Policy Analyst at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, where he will lead the new Working Party on Biotechnology, Nanotechnology and Converging Technologies. We deeply appreciate his many contributions to CGS’s work, and look forward to staying in touch as he embarks on a new professional chapter. 

Back in the office, we’re fortunate to be joined this summer by two terrific staff associates, Jonathan Chernogouz and Natalie Oveyssi. Jonathan is with us full time until he begins his junior year at UC Berkeley majoring in political economy and minoring in public policy.  He has been working at CGS part time since he was a sophomore, and has been interested in the history of eugenics since learning about the movement in high school. Natalie, who will be working part time, graduated summa cum laude from UC Berkeley in spring 2015 with a B.A. in Sociology.  She served for two years as editor-in-chief of UC Berkeley's undergraduate humanities and social science research journal, and was awarded highest honors for her thesis on women's empowerment and the early twentieth-century American eugenics movement.

We expect to have more news to share shortly about new staff. Stay tuned!