Where R.A. Now?

Joseph Azam is Senior Vice President and Global Chief Compliance & Ethics Officer at Infor, a privately held major provider of business-specific software across the manufacturing, distribution and service industries worldwide. In his role, Joe oversees business conduct, internal investigations, corporate criminal matters and compliance in a wide range of areas, including anti-corruption, sanctions and export controls. Prior to his position at Infor, he served as SVP & Group Chief Compliance Officer at News Corp and SVP & Associate General Counsel, Global Anti-Bribery at London-based HSBC where he was also a member of the bank’s Global Internal Investigations Group investigating bribery, money laundering, sanctions violations, and other financial crimes. He has held similar in-house positions at Accenture and Oracle. He began his legal career at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York. His work has taken him throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.  He is a graduate of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he was co-Editor-In-Chief of the Hastings International & Comparative Law Review and now serves on the law school's Board of Governors. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from NYU where his graduate research focused on Political Islam in the Middle East and South Asia.  His has written for Ethisphere Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Lucky Peach Magazine, the LA Times, and MTVNews. In 2018, he contributed to The Displaced, an acclaimed book of essays published by AbramsPress and edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen. Proceeds from the book go directly to the International Rescue Committee.

Rogelio Plasencia joined The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018 as the manger of The Apollo Circle young patrons program. Before joining The Met, Rogelio was the Director of Membership for The Phillips Collection and oversaw the growth of their young patron program, the Contemporaries. He began his career in fundraising at the American Museum of Natural History, and has worked at various cultural institutions between New York and D.C., including El Museo del Barrio and The Smithsonian Institution.

Rogelio earned his BS from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at NYU with a major in Marketing, and minors in Art History and Latin American Studies. While at NYU he was and RA at Carlyle Court, and President of the Cuban American Student Association.

Dan Barker joined Social Impact at BlackRock in 2018 and leads corporate grant making. Before joining BlackRock, Dan was a management consultant at Deloitte where he advised corporate, multilateral, and nonprofit clients on social impact strategy. Prior to Deloitte, Dan managed a number of public-private partnerships and policy initiatives focused on advancing economic development at Earth Institute. He began his career as a researcher at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Dan has published research with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Halcyon Incubator on outcomes based funding models and social enterprise. He holds a Masters in International Finance and Economic Policy from Columbia University and a BA in International Relations from NYU. While at NYU he was an RA at Gramercy Green and Greenwich Hotel and founded the International Relations Society.

Dan and Rogelio have been married for six years.

Geoffrey Kwan was an RA at 3rd North Residence Hall between 2014 - 2015. After graduating with a degree in Nutrition & Dietetics at NYU, he began transitioning is career within the Human Resources field through several roles in the hotel and tech industry. He currently works as a University Recruiter for Facebook helping students get internships and full-time opportunities and being an advocate for them throughout the process. Geoffrey truly believes that his experience as an RA has really shaped his career path and has inspired him to do a unique line of youth mentorship work. 

Opal Bennett has been a curator since 2014 when she joined the Programming team at Montclair Film Festival as Shorts Programmer.  Beginning as a volunteer for the first Sundance London Film Festival, she now curates year round. Opal is on the programming teams for Aspen ShortsFest, Athena, Nantucket and Tribeca Film Festivals, and is a Program Consultant for The March on Washington Film Festival. She is also on the selection committee for shorts at Cinema Eye Honors. Opal has served on juries for SxSW, IndieMemphis, NewFest, Leuven ShortsFest, IndieStreet Filmfest, Cleveland and Seattle International Film Festivals among others. She has also participated on selection committees for documentary programming and grants. A Columbia Law grad, Opal holds a Masters in Media Studies from the LSE, and received her B.A. from New York University.   Opal served as an RA in Weinstein Hall with NYU Director of Student Conduct, Craig Jolley as her supervisor.

Vanessa Herman is a commerce & content professional. With 10+ years of experience in E-Commerce, Product, and Content, she has worked in start-up, on contract at Google Express, as well as for companies such as Restoration Hardware, ABC, CBS, Spirit Airlines, and on projects such as Yahoo's "WHO KNEW" and NBC's "SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE". She was an R.A. at NYU Hayden from 2003-2005 and received her Bachelor's Degree from NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. While at NYU, Vanessa focused on language, literature, performance and culture with a curiosity about identity and duality, given her own identity, as a biracial woman of Puerto Rican and Jewish descent. Vanessa grew up with the L.A. vibe, loving theatre and television, thus her studies in New York were a natural fit. Currently based in San Francisco, when she’s not working, she enjoys shopping local to find wonderful artists & artisans, getting her yoga on in her athleisure wear and practicing Reiki, as a Level 2 practitioner, working with women recovering from breast cancer for The Shanti Project and various community members at SF Reiki Center.