A member of the Pomona College Board of Trustees since 2013, Janet Inskeep Benton ’79 was elected the new chair of the Board. Her three-year term began July 1. Benton is the founder and president of Frog Rock Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission is to improve long-term outcomes for underserved children in Westchester County, New York.

“Our Board of Trustees believes in and is committed to the promise of a Pomona College education,” says Benton. “As board chair, I will engage these colleagues and bring them together to address strategic issues that come before us. I’m honored to serve in this role and look forward to a productive year ahead.”

Erika James ’91 is dean of The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and an expert on crisis leadership, management strategy and workplace diversity. She was previously dean and professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Her most recent book is The Prepared Leader: Emerge from Any Crisis More Resilient Than Before, co-authored with Lynn Perry Wooten. She serves on numerous boards, including Morgan Stanley, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Economic Club of New York.

“I look forward to reconnecting from the perspective of a leader in higher education,” says James. “Having spent more than 30 years in multiple universities, I have a broad understanding of higher education and am hopeful I can add value to the school that paved the way for my professional journey.”

Jason Sheasby ’97 is a law partner at Irell & Manella, where he specializes in complex litigation, intellectual property, antitrust and internal investigations.

A Harvard Law School graduate, Sheasby obtained a verdict for the city of Pomona that a Chilean mine shipped tainted fertilizer before and during World War II, which leached into the city’s water—the first successful application of California’s product liability law to an environmental tort.

“Pomona [College] altered the trajectory of my life,” says Sheasby. “Its financial generosity allowed me to attend the school and spend two terms in Cambridge, [opening] up a world I did not even know existed. I want to ensure that Pomona continues to play this role in the lives of students.”

Two trustees are transitioning to emeritus status: Allyson Aranoff Harris ’89, a trustee since 2014, and Osman Kibar ’92, a trustee since 2016.

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Jonathan Williams

A national leader in college admissions, Jonathan B. Williams became Pomona’s next vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid effective August 1.

Williams joins Pomona from New York University, where he most recently served as associate vice president of undergraduate admissions, precollege, access and pathways.

Under his leadership since 2016, applications to NYU’s three degree-granting campuses in New York, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai increased by 97%. He has played a key role in attracting the most diverse and academically accomplished student body in the school’s history. In addition, Williams extended the reach of the admissions office by creating the Precollege Access and Pathways division at New York University. Through that work, upward of 5,000 students participated each year in NYU pre-college programs that foster a college-going culture in communities nationwide.

“Jonathan joins Pomona at a pivotal time for higher ed admissions and the College,” says G. Gabrielle Starr, president of Pomona College. “He will be instrumental in ensuring that access to a Pomona education regardless of family income remains a bedrock value of the College. We look forward to welcoming Jonathan to campus.”

With a track record of success in college admissions, nonprofit management and enrollment management, Williams is a leader in identifying pathways to opportunity for people seeking postsecondary education. Through his work with organizations such as Reach for College! and Heads Up of Washington, D.C., as well as college admissions offices at Oberlin College, the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth College, he has helped thousands of young people and their families through their educational journeys.

Williams earned degrees from Dartmouth College and the University of Maryland at College Park, and he is completing his doctorate in higher education administration at New York University. He serves on the boards of the Common App, the Enrollment Management Association and Minds Matter NYC.

“I am honored to be joining the Pomona community and to work with this incredibly talented team of professionals,” says Williams. “I am excited to build upon the legacy of diversity, inclusivity and academic excellence that are hallmarks of the College’s student body. I am thrilled to continue my work of helping students find and unlock their potential through access to higher education.”

Williams succeeds former Vice President for Strategy & Admissions and Financial Aid Seth Allen, who started at Pomona in 2011 and retired in February 2024. Since then, Ray Brown has been serving as interim vice president for admissions and financial aid for the College.

George C. Wolfe posing in the press room at the 77th Annual Tony Awards held at The David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York, NY on Sunday, June 16, 2023.

In June George C. Wolfe ’76 received the 2024 Special Tony Award for “Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre” at the 77th annual ceremony.

Wolfe has been nominated for 23 Tony Awards and won five, including Best Direction of a Play for Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Best Direction of a Musical for Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk. Additionally, Wolfe was the producer of The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival from 1993 to 2005, directed/adapted Spunk, and created Harlem Song for the Apollo Theatre.

Wolfe’s work outside of theatre includes directing and co-writing the HBO film co-wrote the HBO film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, as well as Lackawanna Blues, for which he earned The Directors Guild Award, a National Board of Review Award, a Christopher Award, and the Humanitas Prize. For Netflix he directed Rustin and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which was nominated for five Academy Awards.

“[Wolfe’s] stellar contributions as a playwright, director, producer and artistic director, including his unforgettable direction in productions like Angels in America and Bring in ‘da Noise…, have left a lasting impression on audiences,” said Heather Hitchens, president and CEO of the American Theatre Wing. “Beyond his tremendous dedication to storytelling, he has shown an unwavering commitment to diversity and inclusion throughout his illustrious career that has shifted culture and elevated the theatre community.”

Wolfe is the chief creative officer of the Center for Civil and Human Rights, and from 2009 to 2017 served on The President’s Committee on the Arts and The Humanities. Additional awards include the NAACP Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award, NYU’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and induction in the Theatre Hall of Fame. Wolfe was named a “Library Lion” by the New York Public Library and a “Living Landmark” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

The group of both tenure-track and tenured faculty includes multiple alumnae, as well as several who previously taught here as postdoctoral fellows and visiting professors.

Alejandra Castillo ’17, visiting instructor of mathematics and statistics, graduated from Pomona with a degree in mathematics before pursuing a master’s in statistics at Oregon State University. Her graduate student research explores alternatives to penalization when trying to obtain a sparse solution to a clustering problem. In Corvallis, Castillo was a graduate mentor for the Oregon 4-H Outreach Leadership Institute, which prepares high school migrant youth from farming communities for college.

Pui Tiffany Chow, assistant professor of art, earned her MFA in visual art from UC Riverside. She previously taught at Pomona as a lecturer and visiting assistant professor. Chow’s painting explores the intersection of abstraction and figuration through a pastiche of historical references ranging from the representation of the female form to various Eastern and Western cultural codes.

Andrew Law, assistant professor of philosophy, specializes in freedom and moral responsibility, in addition to metaphysics. His research encompasses free will, time and the relationship between the two. Law earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from UC Riverside and did his postdoctoral research at the Institute for Philosophy at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany. Law previously lectured at Western Washington University and USC.

Amira Lundy-Harris, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies, is a scholar in trans studies, Black studies, kinship, Black feminist thought, women’s studies and LGBTQ studies. They earned a Ph.D. in women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where they were the instructor of record in a course that introduced significant strands of thought in the field of Black trans studies and covered genealogical connections to Black feminist thought and trans studies.

Pamela Prickett, associate professor of sociology, earned a Ph.D. from UCLA. She was an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam and served as a faculty member for the Amsterdam Research Centre for Gender and Sexuality and the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. Her research focuses on how the erosion and resilience of social ties perpetuate social inequalities. She has published two books about Los Angeles, including Believing in South Central and The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels.

Omer Shah, assistant professor of anthropology, received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia and has been teaching at Pomona as a Chau Mellon fellow since 2022. Shah was awarded a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities to write two chapters of his monograph Made in Mecca: Expertise, Techno-politics, and Hospitality in the Post-Oil Holy City.

Amani Lee Starnes, assistant professor of theatre, has been a professional performer in Los Angeles and New York for nearly 20 years, appearing in such productions as Amazon’s Transparent and NBC’s Community. She earned her Ph.D. in theater and performance studies from Stanford this summer, and her expertise includes contemporary Black feminist theatrical adaptation.

Jessica Stern ’12, assistant professor of psychological science, graduated from Pomona summa cum laude with a degree in psychology and earned a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research examines how early childhood experiences shape brain development, empathy and mental health over the life course. Stern most recently was a National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellow and Engagements teaching fellow at the University of Virginia.

Kara A. Godwin, a visionary leader and strategist, will join Pomona as the inaugural senior global fellow starting at the end of August.

Godwin brings more than 20 years of experience as an accomplished strategist and collaborative scholar focused on global engagement, with an emphasis on institutional transformation and interdisciplinarity. Most recently, she served as the director of internationalization at the American Council on Education (ACE), where she led ACE’s global strategy and flagship Internationalization Laboratory program.

“This new position is a critical step forward in advancing our Global Pomona Project as we work on realizing our vision of providing transformative global learning experiences for all Pomona students,” says Yuqing Melanie Wu, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College. “With Kara’s leadership, the College is poised to accelerate our progress toward our global engagement goals.”

Students in lounges and hallways of Millikan Hall.

Students majoring in any discipline now have a new option for a minor: data science. A new offering this fall at Pomona, the data science minor will help student develop skills in using and analyzing data. All data science minors will have to complete five courses, one in each of the core areas —programming, statistics, data science, ethics, and linear algebra courses—by the end of their junior year.

Among the data science minor faculty are mathematicians, economists, psychologists and biologists who will use an interdisciplinary approach to enable students to extract and communicate meaningful insights about data.