51ÊÓƵ

Research Director & Investigative Journalist, Center for Media and Democracy

Executive Session: “Freedom of the Press at 250: The Case for a Strong, Independent Media”

David Armiak is a research director and an investigative journalist with the Center for Media and Democracy. Armiak joined CMD in 2015 and has conducted extensive investigations on dark money, corporate corruption, and right-wing networks. He is responsible for filing and analyzing hundreds of public records requests every year. Armiak has a strong research interest in social movements and political power and has delivered many talks on the subject.

Partner, Generations WMG, a Shore to Summit Wealth Management Partner

Breakout Session: “From Freeburg to Fulton to 1600 Pennsylvania: An Alumnus Reflects on His Experiences at Westminster and America at 250”
Location: CSC 207

Maj. Brock Ayers ’82 (Ret.) is a Partner with Generations WMG, a Shore to Summit Wealth Management Partner, in St. Louis, Missouri. A Certified Financial Planner® professional with more than 33 years in the industry, Ayers began his career at AG Edwards, earning numerous recognitions. Additionally, he served in the US Army and USAR for 18 years, being medically retired as a Major in 1999. Ayers earned his BA in economics and business administration from Westminster in 1982, where he held leadership roles in student organizations and pursued entrepreneurial ventures, including his Super Sweep Chimney Cleaning business.

Post-college, Ayers’ military education included the Army Intelligence School and the National Defense University, earning a Master of Science in Strategic Intelligence. His assignments included the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, the Defense Intelligence Agency – Space and Special Operations Directorate and the National Security Council – White House Situation Room Staff, and the US Transportation Command J2/Intelligence and Crisis Action Team, along with several joint agency roles. An active alumnus, Ayers served as a Trustee of 51ÊÓƵ for 21 years, is a Churchill Fellow, and led the Westminster Alumni Association. His service has been recognized with the Jack Marshall Alumni Loyalty Award, CASE District VI Volunteer of the Year, and the 2024 Alumni Achievement Award. He is also a member of the Delta Tau Delta Distinguished Service Chapter. Ayers founded the Blue Blazers Investment Committee in 1996, and among his proudest achievements is helping Westminster students secure internships and their first jobs after graduation. Ayers and his wife, Laura, share a strong family connection to Westminster, with eight diplomas among their extended family, including their four daughters.

The 2024 Alumni Achievement Award by 51ÊÓƵ was bestowed by 51ÊÓƵ as a result of community efforts, unrelated to the business of the firm. Investment products and services are offered through Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network, LLC (WFAFN), Member SIPC. Shore to Summit Wealth Management, LLC is a separate entity from WFAFN.

Puppeteer, Misfit Marionnettes

Breakout Session: “American Puppeteering and the Creative Spark”

Dug Feltch has been a professional puppeteer for more than 60 years. He began his career alongside master puppeteer Bobby Clarke and his history-making Pinocchio and Aladdin shows, which toured the United States throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He also worked in the studios of famed puppeteer Bil Baird. In 1975, Feltch became the face and voice of St. Louis’ Bob Kramer’s Marionnettes alongside master builder Bob Kramer.

For the next 50 years, Kramer’s Marionnettes toured the United States and Europe, performing for thousands of children and their parents while representing American puppeteering at gatherings around the world. Kramer’s Marionnettes performed in theaters, schools, museums, malls, country clubs, corporate events, and parks. Regardless of where they set up their stage, Feltch and his partner, Kramer, set out to both entertain and educate their audiences. Feltch’s belief in the power of creativity has helped to guide his half-century career. He is currently the face of Misfit Marionnettes and looks forward to inspiring another generation of children and future puppeteers.

President, Celia Newsom Legacy Foundation • The Celia Foundation Speakers

Plenary Session: “Celia and America at 250: Enslavement, Sexual Violence, and the Contradictions of American Democracy” • Celia Foundation Panel

Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge is a lifelong St. Louisan whose paternal family roots in Missouri extend to the early 1800s, when her ancestors were enslaved in the state. A community and business leader, she has dedicated her life to expanding opportunity and advancing educational equity, historical justice, and social justice throughout Missouri.

As president of the Celia Newsom Legacy Foundation, Westbrooks-Hodge helped lead a statewide effort to secure justice for her enslaved second great-grandmother, Celia. Working with family, descendants, supporters in Fulton, and advocates across Missouri, the effort helped establish Celia Day and Human Trafficking Awareness Week and secure an official posthumous pardon Dec. 20, 2024.

Westbrooks-Hodge has more than three decades of experience in financial services, audit, risk management, technology, and strategic planning, with leadership roles at Bank of America, Anheuser-Busch, Express Scripts, and Edward Jones, where she retired as a general partner. She completed a six-year term on the Missouri State Board of Education in July 2026, helping develop the state’s strategic education plan. She continues to serve on the Governor’s School Funding Modernization Task Force, chairs the St. Louis Region Future of Public Education Task Force, and serves on the board of directors of Beyond Housing.

Chief Attorney, Civil Practice, The Legal Aid Society • The Celia Foundation Speakers

Plenary Session: “Celia and America at 250: Enslavement, Sexual Violence, and the Contradictions of American Democracy” • Celia Foundation Panel

Adriene Holder, Esq., is the third great-granddaughter of Celia and Robert Newsom. She descends through Jennie Newsom Broadwater Lewis (her maternal second great-grandmother), Clara Lewis Bates (her maternal great-grandmother), Lulon Harold Bates (her maternal grandfather), and Ardeth Laleete Bates Holder (her mother).

Holder serves as Chief Attorney of the Civil Practice at The Legal Aid Society, where she leads the nation’s largest civil legal services program and oversees nearly 600 advocates dedicated to protecting the rights and dignity of low-income New Yorkers. A respected voice on racial and economic justice, she frequently advises policy makers and testifies before city and state bodies on the issues most affecting marginalized communities. In 2025, Holder was appointed to the transition teams for New York City’s newly elected mayor and comptroller — recognition of her integrity, expertise, and public-service leadership.

Holder is also a board member of the Celia Newsom Legacy Foundation and co-chair of the Family Heritage Committee, where she helps uncover, document, and preserve the genealogies, oral histories, and personal narratives of Celia and her descendants. This work reflects her deeply rooted commitment to family, history, reconciliation, and the ongoing pursuit of justice. Through both her legal advocacy and heritage leadership, Holder continues Celia’s legacy by standing with those silenced by exploitation, inequity, and violence — ensuring that remembrance becomes action and that Celia’s voice endures.

A graduate of Spelman College and Columbia Law School, Holder also serves on the New York State Permanent Commission on Access to Justice and several community boards.

International Educator

Executive Session (with Dr. Kenneth M. Holland): “America at 250: The Declaration of Independence, Democratic Education, and the Global Meaning of Liberty”

Dr. Julie Holland is an international educator who completed a two-year assignment in 2019 as registrar at the American University of Afghanistan. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville; a Master of Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) in curriculum and instruction; and a doctorate in education (Ed.D.) in leadership and policy studies from the University of Memphis.

Her doctoral dissertation examined the internationalization of Canada’s research and medical universities. She has worked in higher education development for the past 15 years in several countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mongolia and Myanmar, with funding from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and U.S. State Department.

From 2023 to March 2025, she lived in Islamabad, Pakistan, where she served as an instructor at the National University of Sciences and Technology School of Business. She lives with her husband, Kenneth, and their Afghan rescue dog, Spinney, in Muncie, Indiana.

Adjunct Professor of Political Science, University of Utah

Executive Session (with Dr. Julie Holland): “America at 250: The Declaration of Independence, Democratic Education, and the Global Meaning of Liberty”

Dr. Kenneth M. Holland is an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Utah and a scholar of American political thought, U.S. foreign policy, international relations and higher education development. Holland earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago and has held senior academic leadership positions in the United States and abroad, including president of the American University of Afghanistan, dean of international programs at Ball State University and chief of party for USAID’s Higher Education System Strengthening Activity in Pakistan. His international work has included assignments in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Japan, Uzbekistan, Canada and other countries.

Holland’s scholarship has focused on constitutional government, democracy, civil liberties, Canada-U.S. relations, Afghanistan, great-power competition and the role of higher education in strengthening democratic societies. He is the editor of Canada and Competing Indo-Pacific Visions of China and the U.S., Caught in a Foreign Policy Dilemma and the forthcoming The International Dairy Trade: Protectionism versus Liberalization and the Future of Globalization. He has also published widely on American constitutionalism, Canadian foreign policy, international trade and the politics of development.

A past president of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, Holland has served as a Fulbright professor of law in Japan and as a Fulbright specialist in Uzbekistan. His current work explores the American founding, U.S. foreign policy, civic learning and the challenges democratic societies face in a changing international order.

Author & Historian

Plenary Session: “What Did John Brown Want?”

Walter Johnson grew up in Columbia, Missouri, and is a member of the Rock Bridge High School Hall of Fame (2006). He is the author of numerous works, including Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (1999) and River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Mississippi Valley’s Cotton Kingdom (2013), published by Harvard University Press.

His autobiographical essay, “Guns in the Family,” was included in the 2019 edition of The Best American Essays; it was originally published in the Boston Review, where Johnson is a contributing editor. His 2003 article “On Agency” is the most cited article in the history of the Journal of Social History and was recently the subject of a special issue of the journal commemorating its 20th anniversary.

The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States was published in 2020. In addition to prizes for each of his books, Johnson has been awarded fellowships from the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Radcliffe Institute.

He is a member of the advisory board of the City of St. Louis Reparations Commission and a founding member of the Commonwealth Project, which brings together academics, artists and activists in an effort to imagine, foster, and support social change, beginning in St. Louis. The Lord Is a Man of War, his biography of John Brown, will be published in May 2027.

Emmy Award-Winning Sports Journalist • Westminster Alumnus ’87

Executive Session: “Asians of Change in American Sports”
Location: CSC 203 Lecture Hall

Michael Kim is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who has presented sports on local, national, and international platforms for more than 35 years. He is best known for nearly two decades at ESPN, joining the network as an original member of the ESPNews staff in 1996. During his tenure, he hosted SportsCenter, First Take, and NHL2Night, served as lead anchor for ESPN America, viewed in 67 countries and territories, and hosted College Gameday Tailgate on ESPN Radio.

In 2014, Kim joined Chicago-based 120 Sports, which later became Stadium, where he hosted the flagship newscast The Stadium and co-hosted Live on the Line, Presented by BetMGM. Kim earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and business administration from 51ÊÓƵ and a master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He and his wife, Marleen, are the parents of their son, Matthew, a graduate of the University of Chicago.

Content Lead, Missouri Historical Society • Westminster Alumnus ’06

Breakout Session: “I am St. Louis”

Adam Kloppe ’06, who majored in anthropology, English and sociology at Westminster, has been with the Missouri Historical Society since 2013. In that time, he has served as the content lead for several major exhibitions about St. Louis history, including The Louisiana Purchase: Making St. Louis, Remaking America; Panoramas of the City; and The 1904 World’s Fair, one of the museum’s signature galleries. He also served as the content lead for the upcoming exhibit St. Louis at Bat: 100 Moments in Baseball History, which opens October 3, 2027. He is married to alumna Katie Pilgram-Kloppe ’08.

Documentary Filmmaker & Director

Breakout Session (with Alicia Sams): “Bridging the Media Gap: Reflections on the Short Film Town Crier and the Divide Between Local Journalism and Documentary Film”

Grace Lee recently directed and produced BTS Army: Forever We Are Young, which was released in cinemas worldwide in 2025. Other credits include the Peabody Award-winning PBS series Asian Americans and And She Could Be Next, about women of color transforming U.S. politics and civic engagement, which also aired on PBS. Her other credits include the Peabody Award-winning American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs; The Grace Lee Project; K-TOWN ’92, an interactive project about the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest; and the podcast Viewers Like Us. She co-founded the Asian American Documentary Network and is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Founder & Executive Director, Race and Place Coalition

Executive Session: “Placing History and the Public: Community Memory, Mapping, and Digital Humanities for America’s 250th”

Dr. James Levy is the founder and executive director of the Race and Place Coalition and Whose Land public history project. A scholar trained in African American history, Levy was an associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater for 11 years, where he directed several award-winning community engagement initiatives. His projects employ oral history and collaborative community research to foster public dialogue about the connections between race and geography.

At Whitewater, Levy founded the Wisconsin Farms Oral History Project, which explores the intersections of race, land, farming, and Wisconsin history. The project sponsored a traveling exhibit and community conversation tour from 2018 to 2019 called The Lands We Share, which reached more than 100,000 Wisconsinites through in-person events and broadcast media. Levy also served as lead curator for the critically acclaimed national exhibition Black Suburbia: From Levittown to Ferguson at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York.

Managing Attorney & Owner, Greta Morina Immigration LLC

Breakout Session: “Modern Immigration Law in the United States in an Era of Monumental Change”

Greta Morina is an immigration attorney based in St. Louis. She holds a Juris Doctor and a Master of Arts in political science from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. As managing attorney and owner of Greta Morina Immigration LLC, she represents immigrant communities in St. Louis and the surrounding region, with a focus on family-based immigration and immigrant visa petitions and applications before U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Morina previously practiced business immigration law at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP in California, where she assisted clients with nonimmigrant and immigrant petitions and advised on immigration program management and compliance. She also worked at McMahon Berger P.C. in Missouri, advising corporate clients on employment-based immigration matters. Her experience across government and private practice informs her client-focused approach to immigration law.

Director, Preston Innovation Laboratory, Rice University

Executive Session: “Curiosity, Courage, and Compassion: Three Qualities for America’s Next 250 Years in Science”

Dr. Daniel J. Preston directs the Preston Innovation Laboratory at Rice University, where he conducts research at the intersection of energy, materials and fluids. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the ASME Old Guard Early Career Award, the Young Faculty Research Award in Rice’s School of Engineering and Computing and the Energy Polymer Group Certificate of Excellence. His group’s recent work has been published in PNAS, Science Advances, Science Robotics, Nano Letters and Advanced Science. Preston’s lab is funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, among other sources.

Documentary Film Producer & Director

Breakout Session (with Grace Lee): “Bridging the Media Gap: Reflections on the Short Film Town Crier and the Divide Between Local Journalism and Documentary Film”

Alicia Sams has more than 30 years of experience producing and directing award-winning films. Most recently, she produced Town Crier, a short documentary directed by Grace Lee, and Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse, which was released theatrically and aired on PBS’ American Masters in 2025. She is also in production with Lee on The Franklin Experiment. As a producer and director, Sams worked with Amy Rice to chronicle Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in the Emmy Award-winning HBO film By the People: The Election of Barack Obama. Her other credits include Long Strange Trip, about the Grateful Dead, Amreeka, Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, Solitary, TOOTS, Wanderlust, Grateful Dawg, Hello He Lied and Other Truths from the Hollywood Trenches, and Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s. In 2012, she conceived, produced, and directed the Emmy-winning Detroit Public Television series Arab American Stories, which was broadcast nationally. She is currently developing the feature film Peace Like a River.

From 2015 to 2023, Sams served as director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics’ Pritzker Fellows Program, bringing leading political and public service practitioners, including elected officials, activists, journalists, nonprofit leaders, diplomats, and policymakers, to campus to engage with students and the broader university and Chicago communities.

Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy, University of Missouri

Executive Session: “America in the World at 250: A View from a Bloody Borderland”

Jay Sexton is the Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy, professor of history and director of the Kinder Institute at the University of Missouri. He is also currently serving as president of the Society of American Foreign Relations (2025-2026).

A native of Salina, Kansas, Sexton returned to the Midwest in 2016 after spending the better part of two decades at Oxford University. He began there as a Marshall Scholar and rose to become director of the Rothermere American Institute (RAI). Upon his departure, he was elected a distinguished fellow of the RAI and an emeritus fellow of Corpus Christi College.

Sexton specializes in the political and economic history of the 19th century, situating the United States within its international context, especially in relation to the British Empire. In A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History (Basic Books, 2018), he argues that moments of transformative change in U.S. history have been shaped by international forces.

His other works include Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837-1873 (Oxford, 2005; 2nd ed. 2014) and The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (Hill and Wang, 2011). He has co-edited several collaborative volumes: The Global Lincoln (with Richard Carwardine), Empire’s Twin (with Ian Tyrrell), Crossing Empires (with Kristin Hoganson) and The Cambridge History of America in the World: Vol. 2 (also with Hoganson).

Sexton is currently at work on three projects: a book on how steam infrastructure shaped U.S. relations with the world in the second half of the 19th century, a new study of the Kansas-Missouri borderlands and a collaborative volume (co-edited with Billy Coleman and Lily Santoro) offering global perspectives on the United States at its 250th anniversary.

Sexton enjoys working with enterprising students, undergraduate or graduate, who set their own intellectual agendas. When not reading or talking history, he cheers for Kansas City sports teams and keeps a close eye on British politics.

U.S. Army (Ret.)

Executive Session: “Noble Wars and Noble Warriors”

Maj. Gen. Henry (Hank) Stratman served in U.S. Army units in the United States, Germany, Korea, Bosnia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and Turkey during his 33-year Army career.

During his first combat tour, Operation Desert Storm, the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, his field artillery battalion provided highly effective fire support for the 3rd Armored Division and 1st Infantry Division’s major combat operations, earning the Army’s Valorous Unit Citation.

Following the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1993 and the failed U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) peacekeeping mission, he was deployed in 1996 to Bosnia with the 1st Armored Division and played a key role in NATO’s enforcement of the Dayton Peace Accords with the Republic of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia.

In 1999, Stratman served as the operations officer of NATO’s Stabilization Force, headquartered in Sarajevo, consisting of military forces from 19 European countries with U.S., U.K. and French-led sectors.

In 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Stratman was deployed to the Mideast region, where he supported U.S. Special Forces combat operations in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. The mission was to defeat the Taliban regime and “kill or capture” Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and Flight 93. The attacks killed 2,977 civilians, including more than 345 first responders.

In 2003, Stratman served as deputy commanding general for support with the Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CENTCOM), where he oversaw preparation of the “theater stance” for Operation Iraqi Freedom. His final combat tour was in Baghdad, Iraq, where he served as chief of staff for Multi-National Forces-Iraq. In that role, he coordinated political, military and economic interests among the Interim Iraqi Government, the U.S. Embassy and coalition forces.

After retiring from the Army on Jan. 1, 2006, he resides in southern Callaway County with his spouse.

James McKelvey Professor of Engineering Education, Washington University in St. Louis

Executive Session: “From Homeland Skies to Global Ties: Air Quality Management and American Green Diplomacy”

Dr. Jay Turner is a professor of energy, environmental, and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He also serves as the James McKelvey Professor of Engineering Education, vice dean for education, and inaugural head of the Division of Engineering Education. He is also an associate in environmental science and engineering at Harvard University. Throughout his career, Turner’s research has focused on air quality characterization, including field measurements, laboratory analysis, and data analysis, to support air quality planning, management, and exposure studies. He also served for six years on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board.

Scholar, Critical Family History, University of Missouri • The Celia Foundation Speakers

Plenary Session: “Celia and America at 250: Enslavement, Sexual Violence, and the Contradictions of American Democracy” • Celia Foundation Panel

Dr. Traci Wilson-Kleekamp recently earned her doctorate at the University of Missouri College of Education after successfully defending her dissertation, “Celia ‘Newsom’ — A Radical Resister” in May 2025. Her research focuses on critical family history and the power dynamics within families that shape identity. For more than two decades, Wilson-Kleekamp has researched the story of Celia, sought out descendants, and used the tools of academic scholarship to affirm Celia’s humanity. Wilson-Kleekamp is the author of “Descendants of Celia and Robert Newsom Speak” (2020), the first scholarly investigation of the intergenerational memory of both Black and white descendants of Robert Newsom using critical family history. She studies narrative erasures that distort histories of minoritized individuals — especially African American women and children — and has presented her research at the University of Missouri through the College of Education and the Department of Women and Gender Studies.

Development & Program Staff, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello

Breakout Session: “Commemorating 250: A Case Study from the Residence and Plantation of Thomas Jefferson, Monticello”

John York ’16 has worked at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello since 2023. In his role, he leads the nonprofit museum’s grant writing and foundation relationships along with frontline-facing work, giving special tours, representing the museum on and off the “little mountain", and collaborating across the museum’s departments to nurture core programs. Recent successes include being a part of the team that captured seed money to develop Monticello’s national efforts for civic education.

Before joining Monticello, York worked in roles involving oral history, living history, and strategic planning for various museums from Kansas City, Missouri, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He also served as a public high school classroom teacher, which allowed him to put to use his belief in public access to knowledge. He earned his B.A. in history and secondary education, summa cum laude, from 51ÊÓƵ, and an M.A. in history museum studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Cooperstown, New York.