Conference: Finding Place in an Era of Loneliness

Abbylin H. Sellers is the Edward L. Gaylord Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University in the School of Public Policy.  She teaches welfare policy and the core curriculum courses on great books and foundations of American constitutionalism, which lay a foundation for effective public policy solutions being guided by moral and ethical principles.

Before joining Pepperdine University, she was a professor of American Politics at Azusa Pacific University where she taught courses on the constitutional presidency, Congress and the legislative process, women and the political process, civil discourse in an age of political polarization, and served as a faculty fellow in the Honors College teaching American democracy for the Honors College. Sellers was awarded the university’s highest honor for teaching, the Teaching Excellence award in 2017.

Her research focuses on welfare policy, political behavior, and immigrant entrepreneurship, with her work appearing in Political Psychology; Politics, Groups, and Identities; Presidential Studies Quarterly; and the Journal of Military History.  Her co-authored work has been recognized by the American Political Science Association for “Best Paper” for the Representation and Electoral Systems section in 2018.  Sellers was awarded as a 2022-2023 Fulbright Scholar to teach American constitutionalism and the constitutional presidency in Japan at Yokohama National University and Hosei University (Tokyo). She annually serves on the summer faculty for the James Madison Foundation’s Summer Institute in Washington, DC.

Sellers earned her B.A. from Westmont College, M.A. in public policy from Regent University, and Ph.D. in political science from Claremont Graduate University.

Susan McWilliams Barndt is a professor of politics at Pomona College, where she has won the Wig Award for Excellence in Teaching four times. McWilliams serves as the president/chair of the American Political Thought section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). She is a former member of the executive committee and chair of the Publications Policy Committee of the APSA.

McWilliams is the author of The American Road Trip and American Political Thought (Lexington, 2018) and Traveling Back: Toward a Global Political Theory (Oxford, 2014). She is also the editor of A Political Companion to James Baldwin (Kentucky, 2017) and a co-editor of several books, including The Best Kind of College: An Insiders’ Guide to America's Small Liberal Arts Colleges (with John Seery, SUNY, 2015) and The Princeton History of American Political Thought (with Nicholas Buccola and Roosevelt Montás, Princeton, forthcoming).

McWilliams is the co-editor (with Jeremy Bailey, University of Florida) of the American Political Thought book series at the University Press of Kansas and a past editor of the peer-reviewed journal American Political Thought. Her writing has appeared in both scholarly and popular journals, and she is a regular media commentator on American politics for outlets such as Business Insider, KPCC’s AirTalk, LiveNOW From FOX, The Los Angeles Times, Ms. Magazine, The Nation, The New York Times, Newsweek, Pacifica Radio, Politico, The Tavis Smiley Show, and Today in LA on KNBC.

For her work, McWilliams has received recognitions that include the Graves Award in the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and the Jack Miller Center's Teaching Excellence Award in Higher Education.

McWilliams holds a B.A. in political science and Russian from Amherst College, an M.A. and Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University and a Certificate in Advanced Educational Leadership from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.

During the 2025-2026 academic year, McWilliams is the William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow in Government at Claremont McKenna College.

Matthew B. Crawford did his PhD in the history of political thought at the University of Chicago. He lives in Winnipeg, but remains a Senior Fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. A New York Times best-selling author, his books have been translated into 13 languages. His shorter writings have appeared in First Things, Unherd, Compact, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, American Affairs, The New Atlantis, Le Monde, Le Figaro, The Sunday times of London, and many other publications. He writes the Substack Archedelia: Toward a political philosophy of the present.

Nate Peterson is a graduate of United States Military Academy at West Point, earning a Bachelor of Science in Military History before commissioning as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army. He completed service in early 2019. 

Believing that peace (not just war) is the extension of politics by other means, Nate went on to earn a Master of Dispute Resolution from Pepperdine’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution. He later served as Executive Director of the Conflict Resolution Institute in Ventura County, where he led organizational strategy, expanded mediation and training programs, and strengthened community partnerships.

Nate recently graduated from Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy, and now serves as Assistant Director for Student Services for Pepperdine’s Master of Middle Eastern Policy Studies program in Washington, D.C. He is dedicated to fostering durable peace through intentional relationship-building in educational, governmental, and community settings.

Carolyn Gorman is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute where her research examines policies and programs in the U.S. related to mental health and mental illness. Previously, Gorman was a data science and policy associate at the JPMorgan Chase Institute, an associate research scientist at the Coleridge Initiative, and the senior project manager for mental illness policy at the Manhattan Institute. She served as vice chair of the board of the former Mental Illness Policy Org., a nonprofit founded by the late DJ Jaffe, and as staff on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Gorman’s writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Free Press, UnHerd, New York Daily News, New York Post, City Journal, National Review, The Hill, and RealClearHealth, as well as the peer-reviewed Psychiatric Services and The Routledge Handbook of the Economics of Ageing. Gorman holds a B.A. from Binghamton University and an M.S. in public policy from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.

Jonathan Teubner, Ph.D., is a Research Associate at the Human Flourishing Program, where he leads the AI and Flourishing Initiative. He has published broadly in the field of history of philosophy, theology, and cultural sociology, and is the author of Charity after Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity (Oxford University Press, 2024) and Prayer after Augustine: A Study in the Development of the Latin Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2018), the latter of which won the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2019. Along with Sarah Coakley and Richard Cross, Teubner is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook to the Historical Reception of Theology (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2025).

Teubner has held faculty positions at the Australian Catholic University and at the University of Virginia, where he led a collaborative team of data scientists and scholars across the social sciences to create AI tools to predict political and social violence. Teubner’s insights and analysis have appeared in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Hill, he is regularly interviewed by BBC, CNN, Scripps News and NBC Nightly News, and is a contributing editor at The Hedgehog Review. In 2022, he co-founded FilterLabs, a data analytics company that leverages artificial intelligence to source high-quality localized data in hard-to-reach regions of the world.

Renae Wilkinson, Ph.D., is a sociologist and research associate at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, whose work examines how social resources and adverse life conditions shape health and well-being across the life course. She completed her doctoral training at Baylor University. Her current research spans three core areas: (1) analyzing how social factors and life adversities influence long-term health outcomes using large-scale cohort studies, (2) leading projects within the Global Flourishing Study that explore the role of social relationships and adversity in promoting human flourishing across cultural contexts, and (3) investigating the relationship between homelessness and health, with a focus on identifying protective resources that buffer the effects of housing insecurity. 

Pete Peterson is a leading national speaker and writer on issues related to civic participation, and the use of technology to make government more responsive and transparent. He was the first executive director of the bi-partisan organization, Common Sense California, which in 2010 joined with the Davenport Institute at the School of Public Policy to become the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership.

Peterson has co-created and currently co-facilitates the training seminar, "Public Engagement: The Vital Leadership Skill in Difficult Times" a program that has been attended by over 4,500 municipal officials, and he also helped to develop the program, "Leading Smart Communities," which explores the ways in which technology is changing local government processes. Peterson has served as the chair of the Governance Committee for the Public Interest Technology-University Network.

Peterson writes widely on public engagement for a variety of major news outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle, as well as numerous blogs. He contributed the chapter, "Place As Pragmatic Policy" to the edited volume, Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America (New Atlantis Books, 2014), and the chapter "Do-It Ourselves Citizenship" in the volume, Localism in the Mass Age (Wipf & Stock, 2018).

Peterson serves on the boards of the Jack Miller Center and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, as well as the National Advisory Council for the Ashbrook Center, and on the Scholars Council for Braver Angels. He represents the School of Public Policy in the Public Interest Technology-University Network (PIT-UN).  Peterson has served as a member of the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship, organized by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the nonprofit, Sophos Africa. Peterson has served on the Leadership Council of the bipartisan reform organization, California Forward, and has been a public affairs fellow at The Hoover Institution.

Peterson was the Republican candidate for California Secretary of State in 2014.

Mary Carl is a seasoned nonprofit executive with more than two decades of leadership advancing equity, homelessness response, and public health initiatives. She currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of Miracle Messages, where she leads innovative, relationship-centered approaches to addressing homelessness.

Prior to this role, Mary was Executive Director of California at Health Leads, partnering closely with community organizations, local public health departments, and health care systems to address social determinants of health. She previously served as Director of Programs at Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, a leading homeless services organization in Alameda County, CA. Mary began her career supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities and mental illness, grounding her leadership in direct service and community engagement.

She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Courageous Women and is Treasurer of the Board of Directors for Ability Challenge.

Mary grew up in Buffalo, NY, and spent her summers in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She now calls Richmond, CA, home, where she lives with her two children, partner, and rottweiler puppy.

She holds a Master of Health Care Delivery Sciences from Dartmouth College, a Master of Public Health from the University of North Carolina, and a Bachelor of Arts from the State University at Buffalo.

Philip Falcone was sworn into office to represent Riverside's first ward on April 9, 2024. Philip is a New Orleans native, raised in Riverside and attended Riverside schools including Notre Dame High School, Riverside City College, UC Riverside, and obtained a Master's degree from California Baptist University.

Over the past decade, Philip’s service has focused on historic preservation, education, public art, infrastructure, and environmental protections. He began his career of public service in 2017 as the youngest commissioner in the City of Riverside’s history and the chairman of the City’s Cultural Heritage Board. On the commission, he advocated for historic district protections to maintain Riverside’s century-old built environment and expanded the recognition of cultural landmarks. He was later appointed to serve as County of Riverside Historical Commissioner.

As an educator, Philip has worked in bilingual after-school programs in the Riverside Unified School District and currently serves as a professor of oral communications and local government at Riverside City College, California Baptist University and Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. He previously served as Senior Advisor to the Mayor of Riverside.

Philip resides in the Downtown neighborhood and in his free time researches and authors local history articles for various Riverside publications. Philip’s published book City Hall 50: Building a City Beautiful, chronicles Riverside history and municipal architecture.

Elissa Lee is the senior advisor for community engagement of California Volunteers, a program housed in the California Governor’s Office. In this role, she oversees the neighbor-to-neighbor initiative, fostering social connections in California neighborhoods to enhance community health and resilience.

As both a researcher and a clinician, Elissa has led various physical and mental health initiatives across sectors, including awareness and action health campaigns for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation. She has designed chronic care and homelessness prevention programs for the Medicare Advantage Plan and the Senior Care Action Network.

Elissa is also an accomplished author, having published a book and several articles on health disparities in underrepresented, LGBTQ+, immigrant, and disabled communities.