Facing History & Ourselves: Meeting The Moment

Clint Smith is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2021. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling poetry collection Above Ground and the award-winning poetry collection Counting Descent. His writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Clint received his B.A. in English from Davidson College and a Ph.D. in Education from Harvard University. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Susan Edwards is an Operating Director, DEI & Impact at The Vistria Group. In her role, she works with portfolio companies in advancing impact and DEI efforts that improve employee experience.

Prior to joining Vistria, Susan was a director at Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT) managing their Private Equity Accelerator, designed to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in alternative investments. Prior to MLT, Susan served as Interim Executive Director at the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center in Liberia and helped Africa’s first democratically elected woman president launch her center and flagship leadership development program on International Women’s Day in 2020.

Susan has served as an investment professional with the Pan African Capital Group in Liberia and with the Abraaj Group in Kenya, focused on the Africa Health Fund, a $105m fund supported by the IFC and Gates Foundation that made investments in health care companies targeting the base of the pyramid. Prior to Abraaj, she managed the nextONE Business Accelerator at the Chicago Urban League, which provided advisory services to Black-owned businesses in Chicago and enabled them to scale. Mrs. Edwards began her career at Abbott Laboratories in engineering and program management roles.

Susan currently serves on the Advisory Board of Facing History Chicago. She received a B.S in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Ms. Farahnakian leads the GCM Grosvenor’s Compliance Team and is responsible for ensuring that the firm maintains compliance with various federal, state, and international regulations. Prior to joining GCM Grosvenor, she was a Managing Director and Assistant General Counsel at JPMorgan Chase. During this time, she was also Head of Regulatory and Compliance functions for Research, Americas Investment Banking, Americas Control Room, and Disclosure of Interest. She has also worked as an Executive Director in Legal at Morgan Stanley, where she advised its Global Research Department on legal and compliance issues. Prior to that, she practiced as an in-house litigator and Assistant General Counsel at JPMorgan Chase, covering sales and trading, investment banking, research and retail. 

Ms. Farahnakian graduated with distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and French. She was also a Morehead-Cain Scholar. She received her Juris Doctor from Yale University. Currently, Ms. Farahnakian is a member of the Illinois Bar and the New York Bar. She also serves on the Adler Planetarium Board of Trustees, Yale Chicago Board, Yale Women Chicago Board, and the Facing History & Ourselves Chicago Advisory Board. Recently, she was honored by the ADL at their 25th Annual Women of Achievement awards.