Board of Trustees Welcomes Six New Members

The Smith College Board of Trustees welcomed six new members who will begin their governance duties July 1, and Deborah L. Duncan was named chair of the board.

Meghna Purkayastha, Smith class of 2016, majored in biology and economics and served as president of the Student Government Association in her senior year. She will serve a two-year term on the board. At Smith, Purkayastha conducted research in neglected tropical diseases and global health while also spending time abroad in Costa Rica. She is interested in pursuing drug development in developing countries and will be working in the asset management division of the Public Financial Management Group in advance of applying to business school.

Other new trustees, who will serve four-year terms on the board, are:

Melissa Parker Draper, Smith class of 1977, is a sponsor, with her husband, Tim Draper, of Smith’s annual Draper Competition for Collegiate Women Entrepreneurs. The competition encourages students of all majors to leverage their creativity, generate ideas and build sustainable business models. An arts and education advocate, Melissa Draper serves on the board of California Institute of the Arts and chairs the board of the California State Summer School for the Arts. She majored in art history at Smith and lives in Atherton, Calif. She has four children and two grandchildren.

Steffanie Garrett, Smith class of 1988, has been an attorney for 25 years. Most recently, she worked as a United Nations legal officer at the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Previously, she was a litigation partner and deputy practice group leader with the Chicago office of Holland & Knight and a Cook County assistant state’s attorney. She served twice on the board of the Alumnae Association of Smith and as chair of the college’s Network of Alumnae Admission Coordinators, and has held several officer positions in the Smith Club of Chicago. She majored in government and French at Smith and received her J.D. from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary. Garrett’s pro bono and community service focuses on human rights and the arts, and includes serving on the board of Planned Parenthood of Illinois, on the leadership council of the National Immigrant Justice Center and in leadership committee roles at the Lycée Français de Chicago. She lives in Chicago with her husband and two sons.

Daniel L. Goroff is vice president and program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a private philanthropy that supports breakthroughs in science, technology and economics. His interests include behavioral economics, government regulation, reproducible research, mathematical knowledge management, as well as the economics of science and higher education. Goroff is professor emeritus of mathematics and economics at Harvey Mudd College, where he served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty. Before that, he was a faculty member at Harvard University. Goroff earned his B.A.-M.A. degree at Harvard, an M.Phil. in economics at Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in mathematics at Princeton. He has twice worked for the president’s science advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, most recently as assistant director for social, behavioral and economic sciences. Goroff resides in New York City.

Peggy Liu, Smith class of 1980, is a Hong Kong-based investor, listed company director and an attorney with extensive managing partner experience in the legal field. She is active in public service with a focus on issues concerning women and education. She is a member of the Leadership and Public Policy Advisory Committee of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where she initiated a joint Smith-HKUST program to foster women’s leadership in Hong Kong. The first conference was held in Hong Kong in 2015. Liu graduated from Smith with a degree in government. She received law degrees from the University of Oxford and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  

Mohsen Mostafavi is Dean and the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and principal of Mohsen Mostafavi Architecture (MMA). An architect and educator, his work focuses on modes and processes of urbanization and on the interface between technology and aesthetics. Mostafavi is a consultant on a number of international architectural and urban projects, and is the author and co-author of many books, including Architecture is Life and On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time. He has served on the steering committee of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and the design committees of the London Development Agency (LDA) and the RIBA Gold Medal. Mostafavi received his professional training at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He and his wife Homa Farjadi, professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and principal of Homa Farjadi Architects, reside in Cambridge, Mass. 

Information about the Smith College Board of Trustees is available online at:http://www.smith.edu/trustees/.