Meet our board members
Our board exemplifies a diverse range of experience and backgrounds. Each individual brings a unique skillset that allows ISS to grow to meet the needs of the international education community. View our full board and learn more about each member below.
Peter Vermeulen, Chair
Executive Coach, Interim CHRO, HR Strategic Consultant, Terra Umana
Peter Vermeulen is a a multilingual leader with 25+ years of experience in supporting global organizations, primarily in tech and healthcare. In his current work as Executive Coach and Interim CHRO at Terra Umana, Peter helps individual executives and teams achieve top performance and unleash their potential.
His previous experiences include work at LHH, TeleSign, Amazon, and Johnson & Johnson. As Global Head of HR for the Customer Care and Customer Experience groups at Amazon, Peter supported expansive global teams of customer-facing associates. Peter led 360 HR professionals across 19 countries, plus oversaw recruitment and onboarding of 40,000 employees every year to support business acceleration. He also started new business units in the Philippines and Colombia and prepared startups in Brazil, Mexico, Sweden, Romania, and the Middle East. Prior to Amazon, Peter acted as Senior Vice President of HR at Americas for Linde, a leading industrial gas company. Before joining the Linde Group in 2014, Peter worked for eighteen years at Johnson & Johnson, serving in roles such as HR Director and Global HR Leader.
In addition to his extensive work in HR, Peter is also a lecturer at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and the Vierick School of Management in Ghent, Belgium. He holds a Master of Business Economics from the University of Leuven and Master of European Studies from the University of Strasbourg. Peter has worked in multiple countries and is committed to incorporate this global mindset to his coaching and connections.
Liz Duffy, President
President, ISS
Liz Duffy became President of ISS in July 2015. Previously, she had served for 12 years as Head Master of The Lawrenceville School, a boarding school in New Jersey with 815 Grade 9-12 students, from 42 states and 39 countries. Before leading Lawrenceville, Liz held senior leadership positions at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (WWNFF), and The Ball Foundation. Liz has served on the boards of many foundations and educational institutions, including Princeton University, the National Association of Independent Schools, WWNFF, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the E.E. Ford Foundation, Princeton AlumniCorps, ArtsEd NJ, and Cum Laude. She has spoken and written extensively on school leadership and educational trends, and has mentored many new heads and school leaders. Liz graduated from Princeton University magna cum laude with an AB in molecular biology. She went on to earn an MBA and an AM in Education from Stanford University.
Porter Braswell, Board Member
Co-founder and Executive Chairman, Jopwell
Porter Braswell is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Jopwell, an HR tech platform that helps diverse students and professionals unlock opportunities for career advancement. In 2021, Jopwell was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum.
Porter is also the founder of 2045 Studio, a holding company of diversity-focused brands, and the producer of the podcast Race at Work. Porter has received numerous awards for his thought leadership, including Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People In Business,” Inc. Magazine’s “30 Under 30,” Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year New York Winner and National Finalist,” Vanity Fair’s “Future Innovators Index,” Adweek’s “Young Influentials,” and LinkedIn’s “Top Voices.”
Porter is the author of Let Them See You, published by Penguin Random House in 2019. Additionally, Porter is a Trustee of the Lawrenceville School and also serves on the boards of DREAM charter school and CFES Brillant Pathways. He started his career at Goldman Sachs on the foreign exchange desk after graduating from Yale in 2011, where he was a four-year member of the men’s varsity basketball team.
Tani Brown, Board Member
Principal, MUUS Climate Partners
Tani Brown joined the MUUS Climate Partners team in 2022 as a Principal on the Climate Partners investment team. She is responsible for a diverse range of functions related to operations, platform, external communications, investor relations, and human resources. She is passionate about climate equity and community access.
Tani started her career in marketing functions at Nike and Google, managing communications, operations, and client services for top big-box retail customers during the golden age of data-driven advertising technology and exchanges. In 2013, she was selected to complete a Fulbright grant in Vietnam with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs where she facilitated cultural exchange, English language instruction, and mutual understanding between the U.S. and Vietnam. She returned to the U.S. and spent 7 years building Jopwell, the leading venture-backed career advancement platform for diverse talent. At Jopwell, she held various senior leadership positions and focused on building talent attraction and recruitment strategies at top companies from the U.S. across finance, consulting, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, and CPG. Tani is an avid contributor to workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion issues and has been featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and USA Today.
Tani is chair of the jobs and employment committee for the Brooklyn NAACP and serves on the selection committee for the Princeton NY Prize in Race Relations. She graduated from Princeton where she captained the Ivy League championship women’s basketball team.
Tani Castañeda, Ed.D., Board Member
Chief Enrollment Officer & Associate Vice President, Teachers College, Columbia University
Tania (Tani) Castañeda, Ed.D. is a higher education professional who has worked in a variety of student affairs and services functions for public and private institutions of all sizes. She is currently Chief Enrollment Officer and Associate Vice President for Teachers College at Columbia University. In this role, she supports the strategic direction of Teachers College and leads the Division of Enrollment Management encompassing the offices of admission, marketing, financial aid and the registrar. Tani has held positions at Rutgers University, Clark University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Boston College. She began her career in executive search and marketing research consulting firms before entering higher education administration. Tani earned her doctoral degree in organizational leadership from Northeastern University and holds master’s degrees in counseling from Boston College and psychology from Brandeis University. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College.
Aithan Shapira, Board Member
Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management
Founder, Made to Tilt
Consortium for Advancing Adult Learning & Development, McKinsey & Company
Aithan Shapira (MFA, PhD) is an established artist, internationally acclaimed Lecturer at MIT Sloan, and founder of TILT, a firm focused on evolving leaders and cultures for ever-changing contexts. His transformational executive training methods draw on 20+ years of experience helping unlock people’s creative capacities in order to innovate at the speed of change. He has committed the last decade to developing and deploying progressive curricula for training capabilities to serve global leaders, high-performing change agents, organizations and government entities forwarding the UN SGDs that are sincere about transforming concepts and processes into living practices and cultures that facilitate ongoing growth, agility, and coordinating efforts of individuals and communities.
Aithan serves on McKinsey’s think tank for Learning Innovation and has evolved his curricula intersecting transformation, skills development, culture and creativity for the future of work at MIT Sloan, Harvard iLab, Stanford d.school, and the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship. He has trained more than 12,000 leaders, 200 facilitators, given over 100 keynotes, and delivered customized leadership curricula for more than 30 Fortune 500 organizations in health, technology, finance, and energy.
Aithan developed his research on the creative process at the Royal College of Art & Design, lived in an Australian Aboriginal community for three years to study creativity in cultures of survival, and continues to be a visiting critic at arts institutions internationally. He exhibits his artwork in museums and galleries in New York, London, and Miami.
Jeffrey Dietel, Board Member
Former Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President, Verizon
Jeff worked in marketing and operations at Verizon Communications from 2000 to 2022. With a record in visionary leadership as a C-suite marketing and operations executive, Jeff drove growth and transformation across consumer and B2B businesses and business models. His experience encompasses product development, pricing strategy, partner negotiation, customer experience, and the launch and expansion of subscription-based business models. He has a BA in Marketing from William Patterson University and an MBA with a marketing emphasis from Seton Hall University.
Throughout his Verizon career, Jeff played a pivotal role in customer-focused and technology-enabled shifts. Jeff was integrally involved in launching first-to-market products and services that evolved into multibillion-dollar enterprises, including the industry-leading pivot to LTE. He championed data and technology innovation, including the use of analytics, automation, and machine learning to spur more efficient actions. Jeff debuted digital tools and marketing transformation with a $1 billion EBITDA impact within Verizon Business Group over three years. Jeff also introduced the first Customer Experience team at Verizon Business Group, launching NPS as the lead CX indicator.
Jeff is known as a strong recruiter, coach, and collaborator. His work extended to cross-sector relationships, optimizing market outcomes and promoting ongoing learning. Jeff led the transition from voice to data with the introduction of the Droid smartphone franchise, launching Android into the mainstream. He also established deep partnerships to create new connected device categories with the launch of Google’s first Android tablet and Android Wear smartwatch.
Nicole Furlonge, Board Member
Professor of Practice and Director, Klingenstein Center, Teachers College Columbia University
Nicole L.B. Furlonge, Professor of Practice and Director of the Klingenstein Center, earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her M.A. from the University of Michigan and B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Teachers College, Dr. Furlonge served as Director of Teaching and Learning at the Holderness School, where she facilitated professional learning for faculty and developed LEARNS (Listening, Engaging, Asking, Reflecting, Networking, Sharing), a framework for formative professional learning and inquiry. She has taught English and served as English Department Chair and Director of Diversity at several independent schools, including St. Andrew’s School (Delaware), The Lawrenceville School, and Princeton Day School.
Nicole is the author of Race Sounds: The Art of Listening in African American Literature, published by University of Iowa Press. Her book demonstrates listening as an interpretive, creative, and civic act that leads to deeper engagement with identity and racial difference. Currently, Nicole’s research examines the intersections between listening, cognitive neuroscience, cultural competency, school leadership and adult learning. Ultimately, she is interested in investigating ways to cultivate the habits of a listening mind.
Debra Kushma, Board Member
Senior Advisor, Phoenix Strategic Performance
Debra Kushma is a Senior Advisor at Phoenix Strategic Performance. She has spent her 25-year career in both financial services and strategic consulting. As a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, Debra held a broad range of operating positions. She helped to build a European retail investment advisory business, focusing primarily on marketing and on-line platforms with Pan-European capability under a global organizational framework; established the function of Chief Operating Officer for IT, as well as the function of Chief Administrative Officer for the Asset Management Division. As part of a strategic, firm-wide, market-driven culture shift initiative at Morgan Stanley, Debra created a cross-divisional training effort, including a worldwide training initiative for all Associates, Vice President and Principals. In addition to her Morgan Stanley experience, she managed client services for Fischer Francis Trees & Watt and was a strategic consultant for Coopers & Lybrand. Debra holds an MBA in Finance from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, a MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics (Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship), and a BSE in Engineering from Princeton University. Debra and her family lived in London, England for 12 years, during which time her three children attended international schools.
Debu Purkayastha, Board Member
Managing Partner, 3rd Eye
Debu Purkayastha is Managing Partner at 3rd Eye, a Venture Capital and Private Equity firm investing in the technology, media & telecoms sectors globally. Debu has significant Investment, M&A and operating experience in US, Europe, Asia & Africa – having lived in three continents, five countries & seven cities across the world. Until 2017, Debu was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Octopus Investments (global investment firm, AUM $8B+).
Debu spent almost six years at Google, spearheading its M&A and Investment efforts including landmark acquisitions and investments globally. He also led Google’s New Business Development efforts and was instrumental in launching several of Google’s iconic products globally spanning multiple key strategic focus areas. Debu was a founding member of Google “Campus”, the pre-eminent co-working space for startups in London, which led to the “Google for Entrepreneurs” program. Prior to Google, Debu headed Sabre’s Corporate Development/M&A team and was an Investment Banker with Salomon Smith Barney in Wall Street, Silicon Valley & London.
Debu sits on the Boards of Cambridge University/Cambridge Enterprise and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust (Revenues: ~$2.6B – largest Hospital Trust in the UK) amongst others and is the Chair of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation (500 years old foundation/charity with assets of ~$1.5B), in addition to Advisory Boards including PRS for Music, Unilever and London Business School (Curriculum Committee). Debu spends his personal time working with leading NGOs and governmental institutions in several politically sensitive and conflict zones (including Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Kashmir, etc.) focusing on economic development initiatives. Debu has an MBA from London Business School and is a qualified Chartered Accountant.
Homa Sabet Tavangar, Board Member
Author and Global Trainer
For over three decades, Homa Sabet Tavangar’s work has addressed themes of culture, innovation, leadership, global citizenship and global competence, and deep diversity, equity, belonging and inclusion.
Homa’s clients range from Fortune 50 corporations and professional associations to public, international and independent K-12 schools and universities around the world. Co-founding the Big Questions Institute and Oneness Lab represents a natural extension of her work, especially during a time of unprecedented global challenges.
Homa is the author of Global Kids (Barefoot Books, 2019), best-selling Growing Up Global: Raising Children to Be At Home in the World (Random House, 2009), which was the inspiration behind NBC-Universal’s animated series Nina’s World, starring Rita Moreno, and co-author of six books for educators. Her recent publication, 9 BIG Questions Schools Must Answer to Avoid Going “Back to Normal” (*Because “Normal” Wasn’t That Great to Begin With), written with Will Richardson, is available now as a free download.
Born in Iran, she has lived on four continents, and her heritage includes four world religions. Homa is a graduate of UCLA and Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.
Lucinda Warren, Board Member
Chief Business Officer, Cue Biopharma
Lucinda (Cindy) Warren has over 30 years of global experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Lucinda joined Cue Biopharma in September 2024, responsible for corporate strategy and development. Prior to joining Cue, she served as vice president of business development for Neuroscience and Japan Regionally at Johnson & Johnson from 2014 to 2024, where she was responsible for end-to-end business development, including licensing, mergers and acquisitions, and alliance management. Her leadership was instrumental in optimizing resources, fostering high-performing teams, and cultivating strong relationships with stakeholders. Lucinda’s extensive experience also includes significant roles at Janssen Cilag Australia and Centocor/Janssen Biologics, where she led business units and managed global transitions, consistently delivering value through strategic transactions. Lucinda holds a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences with a minor in Neurology from the University of Alberta and is an alumna of the Women in Bio Board Room Ready program.
Kevin Wong, Board Member
Partner, Co-Founder, PrepMaven, Princeton Tutoring
Kevin is a co-founder and managing partner of Princeton Tutoring and PrepMaven. The goal of these companies is to help students, through individualized tutoring and guidance, not only improve their grades and test scores, but also develop habits, mindsets, and values to support meaningful long-term success. Kevin is passionate about using education and coaching to help others reach their full potential. Prior to focusing on education work, he co-founded and operated an investment management company, Princeton Asset Management Company, which used quantitative analysis and automated trading techniques to develop and execute profitable, market-neutral trading strategies.
He received a B.S in Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University. Kevin serves on the Board of the Newgrange School, which specializes in serving students with learning disabilities, and he is a governor and former co-chair of the Asian-American Alumni Association of Princeton. He also serves as a mentor and advisor to student-run startups through Princeton’s entrepreneurial hub (eHub).
Katherine Yearwood Young, Board Member
Founder and Financial Advisor, Yearwood Young Advisors
Kate is the founder and sole owner of Yearwood Young Advisors LLC (“YYA”), a fee-only, fiduciary registered investment advisor. At YYA, Kate works closely with her clients to gain a deep understanding of their needs and values in order to develop comprehensive financial plans that help them build the financial foundation to live the life that they want. She also manages over $50mm in discretionary investment portfolios on behalf of her clients.
For the preceding decade of her career, Kate held various roles as an investment analyst evaluating hedge funds. During this time, Kate met with hundreds of managers active across various strategies, geographies, and financial markets. Most recently, she built hedge fund portfolios for high net worth individuals and families at Bessemer Trust, a multi-family office. Prior to that, she invested on behalf of various institutional clients (including pensions, endowments, and insurance companies, among others) at EnTrustPermal and New Holland Capital, two large alternative investment advisory firms. She was named a Hedge Fund Rising Star by Institutional Investor in 2017. She started her career as an analyst on the U.S. Interest Rate Structuring desk at Barclays Capital.
Kate holds a B.A. in Engineering Sciences with a concentration in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from Harvard University. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA) Charterholder and a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional.
Marc Larkins, Board Member
Worldwide Vice President, Corporate Governance, and Corporate Secretary, Johnson & Johnson.
Marc Larkins is Worldwide Vice President Corporate Governance and Corporate Secretary at global healthcare leader Johnson & Johnson. In this role, Larkins is responsible for directing Enterprise corporate governance and the Company’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Program Office. Larkins started at Johnson & Johnson as Senior Counsel in the Law Department managing government litigation, investigations and internal compliance reviews.
Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson in 2015, Larkins served as the Acting State Comptroller for the State of New Jersey. Larkins was named to that independent post by Governor Chris Christie in December 2013. There, he led a staff responsible for conducting audits, investigations and performance reviews at all levels of New Jersey government. From 2010 to 2013, Larkins served as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the New Jersey Schools Development Authority (SDA), where he was responsible for the management and implementation of the state’s school construction program throughout New Jersey.
Larkins previously served in various capacities as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, where he held positions of Acting First Assistant United States Attorney, Executive Assistant United States Attorney and Acting Counsel to the United States Attorney. Throughout, Larkins was involved in the oversight and management of all operations of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and supervised a number of units including as Acting Chief of the Terrorism Unit and Chief of the Government Fraud Unit. He prosecuted public corruption cases in the Special Prosecutions Division and narcotics cases in the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Larkins began his legal career as a law clerk to the now retired Honorable James H. Coleman, Jr., the first African-American Justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court. He then served as a law clerk to the Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr., United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals, while Judge Greenaway sat on the District Court. In 1999, he was accepted into the Attorney General’s Honors Program at the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. He served as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division for a little over three years, specializing in domestic and international narcotics prosecutions. Larkins received his undergraduate degree in accounting from Seton Hall University and his Juris Doctorate from Seton Hall University School of Law.