Maxwell School News and Commentary

Gary Pudles '84 B.A. (PSt) is the president and CEO of AnswerNet, a call center outsourcer operating throughout North America. AnswerNet was awarded a large contract to make outbound calls for the State of New York to book appointments for COVID-19 testing. 

Mark Katz ’90 B.A. (PSt) has been named the executive vice president and general counsel of the Ryan Specialty Group, a Chicago-based insurance firm. In this new role, Katz will lead the company’s legal, compliance and regulatory functions. 

According to Professor Allan Mazur, conspiracy theories are, by definition, resistant to evidence or data that might prove them false.

Stephanie Pasquale ’94 B.A. (PSt)/’97 M.P.A. has been appointed as director of neighborhood engagement at the Allyn Family Foundation, a philanthropic organization working to improve the quality of life across Central New York. In this new position, Pasquale will be the Allyn Family Foundation’s liaison with the City of Syracuse, working closely with the Syracuse Housing Authority on large scale affordable housing projects.

Susan Schnitzer ’91 B.A. (Econ/PSt) has been named the president and CEO of the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants (CIRI), a nonprofit that advocates for and supports immigrants, refugees and survivors of human trafficking across Connecticut. In her new role, Schnitzer will help CIRI grow and diversify.

Rosenblum, a senior policy studies major in the College of Arts and Sciences and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and a psychology major in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a Schwarzman Scholar. The program provides scholars the opportunity to develop their leadership skills and professional networks through a one-year master’s degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Andrew Schwab ‘03 B.A. (Hist/PSt) was named the senior manager of policy and federal affairs at the United States of Care. In his new role, Schwab will focus on expanding the organization's footprint among federal policy makers in both the legislative and executive branches. 

This is a boom time for undergraduates at the Maxwell School—new majors, expanded research programs, diverse experiential opportunities, enhanced advising, and more. It all builds on a tradition of undergraduate education that goes back to Maxwell’s beginning. There has never not been a “Maxwell undergrad.”

As undergraduate programs have become more visible, Maxwell donors—many of them alumni of the undergraduate majors themselves—have grown more eager to support those programs.