Faculty

Faculty Director

Melissa L. Bradley, MBA

Faculty Director, Fellowship for the Common Good

Core Course Faculty – Strategies for Addressing Societal Change

Melissa is the newly appointed Faculty Director for Georgetown University’s Fellowship for the Common Good. She has been a Professor of Practice at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for more than 10 years, where her recognitions include the Entrepreneurship Faculty Excellence Award, the Joseph F. LeMoine Award for Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching Excellence, the Peter W. Gonzalez, Jr. Award for Excellence in Adjunct Faculty Teaching, the Ideas Worth Teaching Award, and the John Carroll Award, the highest alumni recognition Georgetown bestows. She has been named to the Forbes 50 Over 50 list for social entrepreneurship, the Washington Business Journal Power 100 and received the Torchbearer 50 Legend award. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Georgetown University’s School of Business and a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from American University.

She is also an exited founder, a board member of Eat the Change, and a trustee of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Melissa’s influence extends beyond her entrepreneurial ventures: She is a member of the Milken Institute Inclusive Capitalism Executive Council, Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women Advisory Council, the Small Business Administration’s Investment Capital Advisory Committee (ICAC), and the National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE). In Fall 2024, Melissa was named to the Smart Business Dealmaker Hall of Fame for her successful and sustainable record in investing in the DMV and beyond.

Melissa’s additional professional experience includes serving as CEO of Tides, working in the administration of Presidents Clinton and Obama in the Office of Thrift Supervision and the White House Social Innovation Fund, respectively, and being the former Vice President at UBS Private Client Services.

Core Course Faculty

Meet the faculty that will teach your two core courses along with Melissa Bradley.

Erin Cline, PhD

Tagliabue Professor of Theology and Religious Studies

Fruit that Will Last: Meaning & Purpose

Professor Cline specializes in Chinese philosophy, Chinese religions, and comparative philosophy and theology. The author of seven books, she is especially interested in how the virtues, values, and rituals that classical Chinese philosophers discussed can help us to live better lives today. Her new book, The Problem of God: The Challenges of Faith, Religion, and Spirituality Today (Georgetown University Press, March 2026), offers readers from all walks of life the chance to explore the big questions about life and faith, drawing on her work teaching Georgetown’s iconic introductory theology course over the last seventeen years to an increasingly diverse student body. Her other new release is The Analects: A Contemporary Translation (Liveright, Feb. 2026), a new translation which dismantles patriarchal misinterpretations of one of the most influential texts in human history, and reorganizes the teachings of Kongzi (Confucius) thematically in order to make them accessible readers around the world today.

Professor Cline’s new translation follows her recent work, The Analects: A Guide (Oxford University Press, 2021), which offers an argument that the Confucian Analects is a sacred text, exploring its often-neglected religious and spiritual dimensions. Professor Cline has also written for a broader audience of readers interested in how Chinese philosophy might help us in a variety of contemporary endeavors. Her book, Little Sprouts and the Dao of Parenting: Ancient Chinese Philosophy and the Art of Raising Mindful, Resilient, and Compassionate Kids (W.W. Norton, 2020), shows how the wisdom of Chinese philosophy can enrich the lives of families today in a variety of surprising ways. Inspired by her own experiences as the mother of three children, the book explores wide-ranging topics, from the role of daily rituals and mindfulness practices to ways of nurturing a love of nature and a love of learning, to how we respond to disabilities and challenges.

In addition to her work in the field of Chinese philosophy, Prof. Cline also works on Ignatian spirituality in relation to different religious and cultural traditions; her book, A World on Fire: Sharing the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises with Other Religions(The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), puts the Ignatian tradition into conversation with Asian traditions (including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism), showing how and why the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises—though they are rooted in the Christian tradition—might be adapted for people from traditions other than Christianity who are interested in Ignatian spirituality.

Peter Folan, SJ, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Theology and Religious Studies

Fruit that Will Last: Meaning & Purpose

Peter Folan, S.J. is a Jesuit priest and an assistant professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies.

Folan focuses his research primarily on ecumenical theology, where he pays special attention to the ways that the Bible and its interpretation function in ecumenical dialogues. He has also written and lectured on issues pertaining to ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and Catholic higher education.

He holds a doctorate in systematic theology, has spent years studying biblical languages, and has ministered at Jesuit parishes in Boston and Washington, D.C. This variety of experiences places him at the intersection of the best of scriptural exegesis and the most pressing theological issues confronting church communities today. It is at this juncture – where the biblical word meets the lived reality of the church – that Folan situates his theological research and teaching.

Faculty Affiliates

Meet some of the experts who will lead the exclusive policy briefings.

Paul Almeida, PhD

Dean, McDonough School of Business

William R. Berkley Chair, Professor of Strategy and International Business

Paul Almeida is Dean, William R. Berkley Chair, and Professor of Strategy and International Business at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He received his Ph.D. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Almeida’s research studies innovation, knowledge management, alliances and informal collaborations across firms and countries. He is particularly interested in understanding how knowledge builds across people and organizations and how this affects performance. He has published in leading journals such as Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, Journal of International Business Studies, and Research Policy as well as in scholarly books. He has served on the editorial boards of several leading journals and as Area Editor for the Journal of International Business Studies. Professor Almeida was also previously Chair of the Technology and Innovation Management Division of the Academy of Management. He has received the Georgetown’s Faculty Research Award and the Dean’s Service Award. Professor Almeida has taught executives, MBAs and undergrads at Georgetown in the areas of strategy, international business, technology and knowledge management. He has won the Joseph LeMoine Award for Graduate and Undergraduate Teaching Excellence, Best Professor Award for Executive Programs at Georgetown University, and is a seven-time winner of the Best Professor Award for Georgetown’s Executive MBA program.

Professor Almeida previously served as Deputy Dean leading the Office of Executive Education and Innovation at MSB. The office focuses on developing and running innovative degree and customized certificate programs for executives with an emphasis on global education and technology-enhanced learning. Executive Education offers six highly successful degree programs including the Executive MBA, Georgetown-ESADE Global Executive MBA, Executive Master’s in Leadership program (EML), EML for DC Public School Principals, Executive Master’s in International Business (Brazil), and Master’s of Science in Finance (online). In addition, Executive Education offers numerous customized programs in as many as 30 countries around the world for companies like Rio Tinto (UK), ICBC (China), Panasonic, Bayer (Germany), Abengoa (Spain) and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Paul Almeida also leads the innovation function at MSB and is charged with leading the development of new programs, applying technology to enhance existing programs, and exploring opportunities for enhancing organizational efficiencies.

Paul Almeida has conducted executive education and corporate seminars with over 75 organizations, including Microsoft, Gucci, Rolls Royce, IBM, Bechtel, Nextel, Sprint, Samsung, ARAMARK, AREVA, ENI, the World Bank, US Chamber of Commerce, National Public Radio, OPIC, the Department of Agriculture, FDIC, Federal Election Commission, Department of Commerce and Social Security Administration.

Mark Bosco, SJ, PhD

Vice President for Mission & Ministry

Mark Bosco, S.J., Ph.D., was appointed Vice President for Mission & Ministry at Georgetown University beginning on August 1, 2017. In this role, Fr. Bosco shares the Catholic and Jesuit heritage of education and spirituality with faculty, students, staff, parents, and alumni through seminars, presentations, immersion programs, and retreats. Fr. Bosco oversees robust campus ministry programs on four campuses and a dynamic pastoral care program at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. In addition to these responsibilities, Fr. Bosco also teaches undergraduate courses in the Departments of English and Theology in Georgetown College.

A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Fr. Bosco came to Georgetown from Loyola University Chicago, where he was a tenured faculty member in the Departments of Theology and English. From 2012-2017 he also served as Director of The Joan and Bill Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage (CCIH) at Loyola University Chicago.

Fr. Bosco’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of theology and art—specifically, the British and American Catholic literary traditions. He has published on a number of authors, including Graham Greene, Flannery O’Connor, and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. He is the author or co-editor of five books and nearly twenty articles and book chapters. He has taught classes on a wide range of topics, including the Catholic Literary Tradition, Sacramental Theology, Theological Aesthetics, Art and Religious Imagination, and 20th Century American and British Literature. He is also co-producer and co-director of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) award-winning documentary film Flannery: The Storied Life of the Writer from Georgia. In 2019, the film became the first ever recipient of the Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film.

Fr. Bosco holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies in Theology and Literature from the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, and an M.Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.

Eugene J Dionne, PhD

Distinguished University Professor

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. excels in defining for readers the strengths and weaknesses of competing political philosophies. His analysis of American politics and trends of public sentiment is recognized as among the best in the business. He believes America is about to enter a new progressive era, a period of reform in government and renewed civic activism in our communities. Dionne spent fourteen years with the New York Times, reporting on state and local government, national politics, and from around the world, including stints in Paris, Rome, and Beirut. The Los Angeles Times praised his coverage of the Vatican as the best in two decades. In 1990, Dionne joined the Washington Post as a reporter, covering national politics.

In January 2016, his most recent book, “Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond,” was published (Simon & Schuster). His best-selling book, Why Americans Hate Politics (Simon & Schuster), was published in 1991. The book, which Newsday called “a classic in American political history,” won the Los Angeles Times book prize, and was a National Book Award nominee. Dionne began his op-ed column for the Post in 1993, and it is syndicated to more than ninety other newspapers.

He is a regular political analyst on National Public Radio and a regular commentator on politics on various television and radio broadcasts. His second book, They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (Simon & Schuster), was published in February 1996. Dionne’s third book Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge (Simon & Schuster) was published May 2004. He is the editor of Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America (Brookings Press, 1998), and What’s God Got to Do with the American Experiment (Brookings Press, 2000), co-edited with John DiIulio, Jr. Dionne co-edited Bush v. Gore (Brookings Press, 2000) with William Kristol, Sacred Places, Civic Purposes: Should Government Help Faith-Based Charity? with Ming Hsu Chen (Brookings Press, 2001), and United We Serve: National Service and the Future of Citizenship with Kayla Meltzer Drogosz and Robert E. Litan (Brookings Press 2003). He is the series co-editor to the Pew Forum Dialogues on Religion and Public Life, which includes One Electorate Under God?: A Dialogue on Religion and American Politics (Brookings Press, 2004).

In 1994-95, he was a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. In May 1996, Dionne joined the Brookings Institution as a senior fellow in the Governance Studies Program, then known as Governmental Studies. Dionne began teaching at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute in the fall of 2003. Dionne grew up in Fall River, Mass. He lives in Bethesda, MD with his wife Mary and their three children, James, Julia and Margot.

Robert M. Groves, PhD

Senior Advisor to the President, Georgetown University

Dr. Robert Groves most recently served as Georgetown’s Interim President from November 2024 through June 2026. Prior to that, he held the position of Executive Vice President and Provost from 2012 through 2024. He is also the Gerard J. Campbell, S.J. Professor in the Math and Statistics Department as well as the Sociology Department at Georgetown University. Groves is a social statistician who studies the impact of social cognitive and behavioral influences on the quality of statistical information. His research has focused on the impact of mode of data collection on responses in sample surveys, the social and political influences on survey participation, the use of adaptive research designs to improve the cost and error properties of statistics, and public concerns about privacy affecting attitudes toward statistical agencies.

Prior to joining Georgetown, from 2009-2012, he was director of the U.S. Census Bureau (presidential appointment with Senate confirmation), a position he assumed after being director of the University of Michigan Survey Research Center, professor of sociology, and research professor at the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland.

He has authored or co-authored seven books and scores of peer-reviewed articles. His 1989 book, Survey Errors and Survey Costs, was named one of the 50 most influential books in survey research by the American Association of Public Opinion Research. Some of his other books were given national awards.

He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the US National Academy of Medicine. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Groves is the chair of the Board of Directors of the Pew Research Center.

Groves has a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and master’s degrees in statistics and sociology from the University of Michigan. He also earned his doctorate at Michigan.

Joel Scott Hellman, PhD

Dean, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

Joel Hellman became Dean of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in July 2015 after 25 years working on some of the most complex issues of governance, conflict and the political economy of development. He served at the World Bank in many senior roles including Chief Institutional Economist, Director of the Center for Conflict, Security and Development in Nairobi, Kenya where he led the Bank’s engagement with fragile and conflict-affected states around the world, and Coordinator of the Bank’s response in Indonesia to the devastating Asian Tsunami. He was the Senior Political Counselor at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. As a scholar, Dr. Hellman was a political science professor at Harvard University and Columbia University focusing on the politics of economic reform.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, he is a graduate of Williams College. He has a Ph.D. from Columbia University and a M.Phil. from Oxford University.

Margaret (Maggie) Little, PhD

Senior Research Scholar, Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Director of Ethics Lab

Professor of Philosophy

Dr. Little is Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown. Her research interests include issues in reproduction, clinical research ethics, data ethics, and the structure of moral theory.

A Rhodes Scholar and fellow of the Hastings Center, she has twice served as Visiting Scholar in residence at the National Institutes of Health Department of Bioethics, and was appointed to the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is co-founder of The Second Wave Initiative, which works to promote responsible research into the health needs of pregnant women.

In her previous role as Director of the Kennedy Institute, Dr. Little oversaw a time of transformative development, including the launch of the world’s first Introduction to Bioethics MOOC in April 2014; the inauguration of Conversations in Bioethics, an annual campus-wide event focused on a critical issue in bioethics; the deployment of a series of experimental undergraduate courses utilizing project-based learning and design studio methods. Dr. Little is founder and Director of EthicsLab, a unique team of Philosophers and Designers at Georgetown University that develops new methods to help people build ethical frameworks to better address real-world problems. Ethics Lab works to help surface the moral values at stake in emerging, complex issues, including data ethics and AI, to help build responsible progress. She is a founding co-chair of the Tech and Society Initiative at Georgetown.

Peter Marra, PhD

Dean, Earth Commons Institute for the Environment and Sustainability

Laudato Si’ Professor of Biology and the Environment

Dr. Peter P Marra is the Dean of the Earth Commons—Georgetown’s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability—and Laudato Si’ Professor of Biology and the Environment. Marra uses birds to help us define and understand broad environmental issues, tackling contemporary conservation challenges by addressing fundamental knowledge gaps at the intersection of ornithology, ecology and conservation biology. His transformative work—including quantifying the loss of 3 billion birds from North America, the impacts of climate change, the astounding ecological destruction of outdoor cats and emerging diseases such as West Nile virus—explores the interaction between humans and our environment and poses critical questions to humanity about the environmental costs of urbanization and globalization. His work spans biology, engineering, physiology, and biogeochemistry, and has helped ignite new research into the study of full life cycles of migratory animals while furthering technological advances, including the use of genetics, stable isotopes and remote tracking technologies. With over 260 peer-reviewed papers, Marra uses integrative techniques and rigorous quantitative approaches, leveraging data to link fundamental ecological advances to address conservation problems and reimagine approaches that inform policy. Over 55 current and former students and his position as Founding Director and Dean of the Earth Commons, Georgetown University’s new institute for environment and sustainability, demonstrate Marra’s dedication to moving research to implementation and educating the next generation of diverse scientists.

Andrew Steer, PhD

Distinguished Research Professor of the Practice in Environment and Economics

Sir Andrew Steer, PhD, is Distinguished Research Professor of the Practice in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and the Earth Commons. He is also Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics.

Sir Andrew served, most recently (2021-2025) as the inaugural President and CEO of the $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund, the world’s largest philanthropy for nature and climate, investing in systems change across nature protection, food and agriculture, industrial and energy decarbonization, financial reform, and the application of AI and big data. He was President and CEO of the World Resources Institute (2012-2021), leading a team of 1600 professionals at an NGO consistently ranked as the top Think Tank/Do Tank on sustainable development. Previously, he served as Special Envoy for Climate Change at the World Bank, Director General at the UK’s Department of International Development, and Director of the World Bank in East Asia.

In 2024 he was knighted by King Charles in recognition of “sustained contribution as one of the world’s best-known leaders in global sustainable development economics”; and was named by Forbes as one of the world’s 50 most influential environmental leaders, in its inaugural Sustainability Leaders awards. He serves on the UK Foreign Secretary’s External Foreign Policy Board, is co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Innovative Finance; and a member of the boards of BRAC, the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, and the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.

He was educated at St Andrews University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cambridge University, and has a PhD in Economics and Finance.