The Silfen Forum Participants

Amy Gutmann, PhD, HON’22

U.S. Ambassador to Germany, ret.; Penn President Emerita; Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, School of Arts and Sciences; Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication

Amy Gutmann is a prize-winning scholar, teacher, university leader, and diplomat. She has published and lectured worldwide on democracy and education; deliberation, compromise, diplomacy, and their critics; bioethics and access to healthcare; human rights, identity politics; and ethics in public affairs. Gutmann served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany (2022-24). During her tenure, the German relationship with the U.S. became stronger than ever in the post-WWII period, on multiple measures including support for Ukraine’s defense against Putin, increased trade and investment, and resistance to rising extremism.

The longest-serving president of Penn, from 2004 to 2022, Gutmann’s 18-year presidency of the University of Pennsylvania was transformative. Named by Fortune in 2018 as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” Gutmann is renowned for championing affordable access to education and health care, innovative discoveries that save lives and propel economies forward, global engagement, and public-private partnerships.

First in her family to graduate from college, Gutmann made affordable educational access a top priority, more than doubling the number of students from low-income and first-generation college families. Gutmann led the city’s most powerful economic growth engine and its preeminent academic health care system, Penn Medicine. Gutmann created a robust innovation ecosystem with Pennovation Works and the Pennovation Center business incubator and laboratory.

Global engagement was also a centerpiece of Gutmann’s presidency, which included the creation of Perry World House on campus and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C.

Gutmann raised over $10 billion for Penn and Penn’s endowment quintupled from $4 to $20 billion. These resources underwrote massive expansions of student financial aid, innovative collaborative research, and patient-centered clinical care—in addition to the single largest private contribution to the city’s public schools.

Gutmann is an award-winning author and editor of 17 books. Appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama, Gutmann chaired the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues for seven years.

Gutmann serves on the Board of Trustees of the American Academy in Berlin (2024- ) and the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts Board of Trustees (2025-). She also serves on the Commission to Study the Potential Transfer of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History to the Smithsonian Institution (2025-).

Virginia M.-Y. Lee, PhD, MBA, WG’84

John H. Ware 3rd Professor in Alzheimer's Research in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, Perelman School of Medicine

Virginia Lee is the John H. Ware 3rd Professor in Alzheimer’s Research in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Lee is known for her trailblazing work to understand how different forms of misfolded proteins can move from cell to cell and lead to disease progression in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other dementias and movement disorders. Lee’s research focuses on how the brain works and what mechanisms cause it to fail. She discovered the genetic origins of three different proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and related neurodegenerative disorders, describing tau, alpha-synuclein, and TDP-43 as critical proteins and further clarified the role they play in each disease. Thanks to Lee’s work, drugs to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease have found their way into the clinic, with more in phase III clinical trials that could save older adults from the worst impacts of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases.

Many years of Lee’s research was conducted in partnership with her late husband and collaborator, John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, the William Maul Measey-Truman G. Schnabel, Jr., M.D. Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, who passed away in 2022. They spent 45 years together in life and the laboratory, including at the Perelman School of Medicine since 1980.

Key to the discoveries Lee made with Trojanowski was their establishment of the Penn Medicine Brain Bank, which stores brains from patients with neurodegenerative diseases, as well as from people without them, allowing for the comparison between the sets to determine which proteins were involved in the diseases and what brain regions were affected.

Lee has been recognized with many national and international awards, including the Sheila Essey Award for ALS Research from the ALS Association and the American Academy of Neurology, the Breakthrough Prize, the Life Time Achievement Award in Alzheimer’s Disease Research from the Alzheimer’s Association, the Helis Foundation Award for Parkinson’s and Neurodegenerative Disease Research, the Robert A. Pritzker Award for Leadership in Parkinson’s Disease Research from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine, and the John Scott Award from the Board of Directors of City Trusts.

Mayor Cherelle Parker, G’16, LPS’16

100th Mayor, City of Philadelphia

Cherelle L. Parker is the 100th Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. Born to a single teenage mother and raised by her grandparents James and Dorothy Parker, Mayor Parker is a Philadelphia native. It was the power of a village – her family and her community – and their belief in the power of education that gave her the opportunity to -succeed. A graduate of Philadelphia public schools, Mayor Parker was the first person in her family to go to college; earning her bachelor’s degree from Lincoln University where she became a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., then earning her master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving her undergraduate degree, she taught public school as a high school English teacher and ESL teacher working with immigrant children and adults.

Inspired to public service by Philadelphia Councilwoman Marian Tasco, whom she interned for, the future mayor worked in Tasco’s office and rose to serve as a senior staffer where she oversaw – among many other things – the implementation of all economic and community development initiatives that helped neighborhoods and business corridors thrive. By the time she left, she was one of Councilwoman Tasco’s most trusted advisors.

The future mayor was elected to the State House and served for 10 years representing Northwest Philadelphia, the 200th district. On winning her election, she made history as the youngest African-American woman elected to the State Legislature. In Harrisburg, her colleagues elected her to chair the Philadelphia Delegation, and her leadership in this role earned her a reputation as one of the most effective legislators in Harrisburg. She was elected to City Council in 2015 to represent the 9th Council District and by 2019 was elected by her peers to serve as City Council Majority Leader. In the 2023 mayoral election, Cherelle L. Parker won a highly contested Democratic Primary and General Election to become the 100th Mayor of Philadelphia and the first woman to hold the office.

A mom, a teacher, and a strong, experienced leader, Cherelle L. Parker is the first Black woman Mayor of Philadelphia, seeking to create a Safer, Cleaner, Greener city with access to economic opportunity for all. Mayor Parker spends her time outside the office at home in Northwest Philadelphia with her son, Langston, and their dog, Max

Judith Rodin, PhD, CW’66, HON’04

President Emerita, The University of Pennsylvania; Former President, Rockefeller Foundation

Dr. Rodin is a pioneer, innovator, change-maker and global thought-leader. For over two decades Rodin led and transformed two global institutions: The Rockefeller Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania. A ground-breaking executive throughout her career, Dr. Rodin was the first woman named to lead an Ivy League Institution and was the first woman to serve as The Rockefeller Foundation’s president. A research psychologist by training, she was one of the pioneers of the behavioral medicine and health psychology movements.

Dr. Rodin’s leadership ushered The Rockefeller Foundation into a new era of strategic philanthropy that emphasized partnerships with business, government, and the philanthropic community to address and solve for the complex challenges of the 21st century. Rodin championed two whole new fields that are now pervasive: resilience and impact investing.

At Penn, Dr. Rodin presided over an unprecedented decade of growth and progress that transformed the institution, its campus, and the community, taking the university from sixteenth to fourth in U.S. News and World Report national rankings. The University also engineered a comprehensive, internationally acclaimed neighborhood revitalization program in West Philadelphia.

Dr. Rodin has served as a member of the board for several leading corporations and many non-profits, and is currently serving as the Chair of the National Academy of Medicine's Climate Grand Challenge. She has authored more than 250 academic articles and chapters, and has written or co-written 15 books, including The Power of Impact Investing: Putting Markets to Work for Profit and Global Good and The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong. Her most recent book, published by Wharton School Press, is entitled Making Money Moral: How a New Wave of Visionaries is Linking Purpose and Profit. 

Andrea Mitchell, CW’67, HON’18

NBC News Chief Washington Correspondent and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent

Andrea Mitchell is NBC News’ Chief Washington and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent. A veteran political correspondent, Mitchell has covered every presidential campaign since 1980 as well as reporting on national security issues across all NBC News platforms. 

Mitchell's extensive coverage of the White House, Congress and the State Department includes the Reagan/Gorbachev summits, 9/11, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Iran nuclear negotiations, conflicts in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and assignments in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. She was a panelist for the 1988 Bush-Dukakis Presidential debate as well as in the NBC News Democratic Primary debate in 2015. In 2019, she co-moderated the fifth Democratic Presidential debate. From 2008 to 2025, Mitchell hosted Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC. 

Mitchell has been honored for her distinguished reporting, receiving awards including the 2025 Peabody Career Achievement Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 40th annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards. Mitchell is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where she served as a Trustee for two decades, including a term as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees, and is currently an Emeritus Trustee. She is the author of the 2005 memoir Talking Back.