George Washington Forum News and Events

Maryann Feldman (Arizona State University), Jason Jolley (Ohio University), and Neill Lane (local entrepreneur)

Maryann Feldman:

Maryann P. Feldman is the Watts Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions at Arizona State University and research director at the Global Center for Technology Transfer.

Professor Feldman chairs the Policy Forum of the Science, Technology and Economic Policy Board of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, where she also chairs a congressional mandated assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

She is a senior fellow at Heartland Forward, a nonpartisan “think and do tank” focused on improving economic performance. Feldman serves on the advisory board of the Canadian Institute for Advance Research (CIFAR) global program on Innovation, Equity and the Future of Prosperity. She is a board member of the Ontario Brain Institute. Feldman is an editor of the journal Research Policy, the leading journal in the field of innovation studies.

Professor Feldman was a winner of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research for her contributions to the study of the geography of innovation, the commercialization of university research and the role of entrepreneurial activity in the formation of regional industry clusters. Feldman is a prolific and highly cited author. She received the Distinguished Scholar award from the Technology and Innovation Management division of the Academy of Management.

Her recent research focuses on place-based economic development and the factors that promote economic restructuring and resilience.

Jason Jolley:

G. Jason Jolley, Ph.D. serves as Interim Associate Vice President for Research and Creative Activity at Ohio University where he coordinates economic development activities across the university. In his faculty role, he serves as Professor of Rural Economic Development and MPA Director at Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service. He also directs the Center for Economic Development and Community Resilience. Prior to joining Ohio University in 2013, Dr. Jolley spent seven years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Kenan Institute/Kenan-Flagler Business School where he co-led the largest state sponsored study of the effectiveness of economic development incentives for the North Carolina General Assembly.

Dr. Jolley has served as principal investigator on over $10 million in sponsored research funding and co-led efforts to secure an additional $2 million in federal funding and $1 million in state funding for regional economic development partners. His portfolio includes funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, Appalachian Regional Commission, Small Business Administration, Ohio Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation, Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and JobsOhio, among others. Dr. Jolley also leads Ohio University portion of the Ohio Economic Development Institute (OEDI), in partnership with the Ohio Economic Development Association (OEDA) and JobsOhio. OEDI provides state level certification to Ohio economic developers.

Neill Lane:

Neill Lane is a successful entrepreneur and start-up CEO. His currently an advisor, board member and angel investor.

He is a founding member of the Athens Ohio Investment Alliance, an angel investor group in Athens, Ohio and an investor member of Queen City Angels in Cincinnati, Ohio Neill currently serves as board chair of My Green Lab, a California not-for-profit that is the world’s leading organization establishing standards and practices for environmental sustainability in laboratories. My Green Lab presented at the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP28, and its customers and sponsors include Agilent Technologies, Roche, Amgen, Astra Zeneca, Millipore Sigma and Thermo Fisher Scientific, amongst others.

He also serves on the boards of Impact Laboratories and Voxel Innovations. Impact Laboratories is a newly formed for-profit start-up, which will deliver My Green Labs laboratory certification and ACT product environmental impact labels. Voxel Innovations is an innovator in developing pulsed electrochemical machining technology to its fullest potential.

Neill was the founding CEO of Stirling Ultracold in Athens, Ohio. Under his leadership the company delivered the first environmentally friendly, energy efficient, ultra-low temperature cooling products to customers worldwide. Stirling Ultracold is now an award-winning premium brand; their technology and products have positively changed the entire industry’s approach to sustainable ultra-low freezers. Stirling Ultracold was the first ultra-low freezer brand to receive the ENERGY STAR rating. Neill led four rounds of fundraising as the company established cleantech manufacturing in Appalachian Ohio. Stirling Ultracold’s products played a key role in m-RNA Covid vaccine distribution. In May 2021, the company was acquired by BioLife Solutions (Nasdaq BLFS) in what is thought to be the largest ever Appalachian Ohio regional exit. Institutional investors included TechGrowth Ohio, a pre-seed fund focused on early stage, innovative technology companies, Advantage Capital, and the Ohio Innovation Fund.

During 2008 and 2009, Neill was a co-founder and president of Blight to Bright LLC, a developer of largescale solar installations, and an executive in residence with TechGrowth Ohio.

Previously Neill served for 10 years as CEO of Sunpower Inc in Athens, Ohio. Sunpower developed, manufactured, and licensed Stirling engines and coolers, as well as linear compressors, for applications including solar thermal electric power, household refrigeration, household micro combined heat and power, radioisotope space power and cryogenic refrigeration. Under his leadership the company established its cryocooler manufacturing capability. Licensees include LG Electronics; their class-leading refrigerators use a linear compressor developed with Sunpower. The company’s cryocooler was used by NASA’s Rhessi Program, which completed 16-years of successful operation in 2016. Sunpower was acquired by Ametek (NYSE AME) in 2009.

Earlier in his career he held several engineering leadership and teaching positions. He was born and grew up in Zimbabwe, and he has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Dr. Patrick Griffin (University of Notre Dame)

Patrick Griffin is the Madden-Hennebry Family Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the Thomas Moore and Judy Livingston Director of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. His work explores the intersection of colonial American and early modern Irish and British history. As such, it focuses on Atlantic-wide themes and dynamics. He has published work on the movement of peoples and cultures across the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the process of adaptation. He also examines the ways in which Ireland, Britain, and America were linked—and differed—during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He has looked at revolution and rebellion, movement and migration, and colonization and violence in each society in comparative perspective. Prof. Griffin currently serves as director of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies.

Kevin Conley Ruffner, Isabel Huber Planton

Kevin Conley Ruffner

Kevin Ruffner served in a variety of domestic and foreign assignments with the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991 until his retirement in 2017.  He continued as a contractor until 2023.  As a member of the CIA History Staff, he worked on major declassification projects, including the CORONA satellite system and Nazi war criminals and collaborators.  The Agency subsequently declassified his publications as part of the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.  In addition to his civilian career in the Federal Government, Ruffner served in the Regular Army, the Army National Guard, and the Army Reserve from 1982 until his retirement in 2010.  Ruffner earned a Ph.D. in American Civilization at the George Washington University.  He is a 2024-2025 Broadening Academic Initiative Hybrid Fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Isabel Huber Planton

Isabel Huber Planton received a BA in English Literature from Ohio University in 2006 and an MLS from Indiana University in 2008. She worked in the Teaching and Research Department at the Lilly Library at IU 2011 – 2025 an d is now at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, which collects material related to the State of Michigan and the University. During her time at the Lilly Library, she became increasingly interested in the library’s extensive manuscript collections related to Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Since 2018, IU has hosted a summer festival known as Granfalloon: A Kurt Vonnegut Convergence. Presented by the IU Arts and Humanities Council and inspired by Vonnegut, the Granfalloon “brings together musicians, artists, thinkers, and good people from all walks of life for a celebration of art, ideas, and community.” The 2025 Granfalloon will take place in spring and summer, tying together many campus and community events with themes relating to this year’s selected Vonnegut novel, Cat’s Cradle. In conjunction with past Granfalloons, Isabel has curated three Kurt Vonnegut exhibitions and given talks on various aspects of Vonnegut’s life and writings. She hasn’t read every single one of his novels yet but she’s working on it.

Professor Penelope Ismay

Penelope Ismay is Associate Professor of History at Boston College and Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Undergraduate Engagement.

She is interested in how the radical changes associated with modernity were made socially meaningful in Britain and around the world. Her first book examined the surprising ways in which Britons used friendly societies to navigate the new social landscape of rapidly growing urban centers in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

She is currently working on a social history of self-interest and on the changing boundaries that Britons drew around it in the second half of the nineteenth century. Tentatively titled, The Boundaries of Self-Interest, her hope is that this new story might remind us that when Britain experienced its most profound period of economic growth, it also worked hardest to keep self-interest within socially tenable boundaries.

Professor Ismay teaches courses on early modern and modern Britain and its empire, revolution and social trust in modern Europe; money and credit, women and work, marriage and family, and sociability and associational life.

Professor Emma Griffin, FRHistS

Emma Griffin is a Professor of Modern British History and Head of School at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the author of several books, and the President of the Royal Historical Society, 2020-24.

Emma Griffin was educated at London and Cambridge and following eighteen years at UEA, is now based at the University of London. She is the author of five books, most recently Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy, published by Yale UP in 2020, as well as many articles, essays and reviews in both academic and non-academic publications. She is currently working on a book provisionally entitled Industrial Revolutions: A World History for Penguin Press / Allen Lane.

Emma is a frequent contributor to radio and television, and has written and presented several Radio 4 documentaries on diverse aspects of her research, from the history of foxhunting, to the industrial revolution, to the gender pay gap and its history. She was a historical advisor for the Channel 4 drama, The Mill and co-presented ‘The Real Mill’ with Tony Robinson on More4. She has appeared as an expert contributor on several radio and television programs, including BBC1’s Why do you Think You Are? and Radio 4’s In Our Time.

Dr. Joel Mokyr

Dr. Joel Mokyr conducts research on the economic history of Europe, and specializes in the period 1750-1914. His current research is concerned with the understanding of the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies, as well as the impact that industrialization and economic progress have had on economic welfare. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Cliometric Society as well as the British Academy, the Italian Accademia dei Lincei and the Dutch Royal Academy. He has been the President of the Economic History Association, editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, and a co-editor of the Journal of Economic History. He is currently co-editor of a book series, the Princeton University Press Economic History of the World. He was the 2006 winner of the biennial Heineken Award for History offered by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the winner of the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history. His most recent book is A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy, published by Princeton University Press in 2016. He has supervised over forty doctoral dissertations in the departments of Economics and History.

Brianne Wolf

Brianne Wolf is Assistant Professor of Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy and Director of the Political Economy minor at Michigan State University’s James Madison College. Trained in the history of political thought, her research and teaching reflect on questions about the interaction between economics and politics, liberalism, and moral judgment. Each theme relates to a central concern as a scholar: understanding the proper relationship between the individual and society. Dr. Wolf is broadly interested in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially the work of the Scottish and French Enlightenment thinkers.