Making the Most of Your Yale Experience: A Conversation with Yale Alumni

Location: Dwight Hall Common Room, 67 High Street, New Haven, CT 06511

Join Yale Alumni to hear how to make the most of your time at Yale. What did they learn at Yale that was most useful in their lives today? What was least useful? What would they change about their time at Yale? Hear from Alumni on what skills and opportunities you should seek at Yale in preparation for a career in public service.

The panelists include:

• Madeline Kerner ’07: CEO & Co-Founder, Matriculate
• Jeffrey S. Kim ’87: Program Director, California Wellness Foundation
• Hannah Kiburz ’22: Administrative and Marketing Manager, DignityMoves
• Josiah Brown ’92: Executive Director, Connecticut CASA

Dinner will be provided! RSVP here.

Panelist Biographies:

Madeline Kerner founded the national nonprofit Matriculate in the hopes of giving students the hope, support, and models for success they need to thrive in and beyond their education careers. The organization began working to train college students from top universities like Columbia, Princeton, and Yale as Advising Fellows, who would then in turn work with high-achieving, low-income high school students in order to create pipelines to excellence. Today, Matriculate partners with Advising Fellows across 16 partner colleges and universities in an effort to guide students through their applications process and provide a model for the success they can achieve.

Madeline is formerly the Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives, America Achieves; Director of Operations and Special Assistant to Joel Klein, Amplify; National Director of Outreach and Development, Peer Health Exchange; Founding Chicago Executive Director, Peer Health Exchange. She received her B.A. from Yale University in 2007.

Jeffrey S. Kim is a program director at The California Wellness Foundation where he currently manages strategy and grantmaking related to the Economic Security & Dignity portfolio.

Prior to joining Cal Wellness in April 2005, Kim was associate director of development for the National Conference for Community and Justice – Los Angeles Region, and deputy director for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s legal services department.

Kim serves on the board of directors of the Asset Funders Network and Catalyst of San Diego & Imperial Counties. Previously, he was appointed to the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs. He has also served on the board of directors of Grantmakers in Aging, and the steering committees of the Funders Oral Health Policy Group (a national network of funders in oral health) and the Los Angeles chapter of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy.

A member of the State Bar of California, Kim earned his law degree from the University of Michigan and his bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University.

Hannah Kiburz is originally from Colorado and a 2022 Yale University graduate with degrees in Anthropology and Economics. Hannah is committed to the development of NGOs and their practices of sustainability and community involvement. She joined the DignityMoves team in June of 2022, inspired by the organization’s innovative methods of addressing houselessness in California. An avid outdoorsman at heart, Hanna spends as much time as she can hiking, kayaking, and biking.

Josiah Brown is the inaugural executive director of Connecticut CASA—a newly integrated organization to grow the Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) movement statewide.

He comes to this role after having served as founding executive director of CASA of Southern Connecticut. A member of the Governor’s Task Force on Justice for Abused Children since 2020, Josiah Brown joined the CASA movement in 2019 after having been the first associate director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, and previously chief of staff to the president of the New School in New York City. Reporting directly to CEO Jon Schnur, Josiah worked with New Leaders during its start-up while he was in graduate school. In earlier roles, he was an aide to U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and to the director of a center at Columbia University. He worked for UConn Upward Bound and volunteered with urban youth organizations and public schools.

A former president of Domestic Violence Services of Greater New Haven and longtime chair of the Literacy Coalition of Greater New Haven, he was a member of the New Haven Public Schools’ Community Engagement Team and, also as a volunteer, a youth basketball coach. At Yale, since 2008 he has been an associate fellow of Saybrook College. He and his wife, Sahar Usmani-Brown, live in New Haven with their children.

Josiah Brown has a B.A. from Yale and a master’s in public policy from Harvard. At Harvard’s Kennedy School, he and a classmate, Corinne Herlihy, co-authored a report on out-of-school programs and policy for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.