FEBRUARY PROGRAMS
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
February 2 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Russell Cooke is our Quarterback.
Thursday Luncheon Roundtable
February 5 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Speaker is Donna Bullock. Her topic ‒ Home Together: An All-in Approach.
For over 35 years, Project HOME has been working to break the cycle of homelessness in Philadelphia as its service approach became a national model for programs aiming to end and prevent homelessness. The organization also works to bring together individuals, institutions, and government agencies to support best practices in the field. President and CEO Donna Bullock, who succeeded founders Sister Mary Scullion and Joan Dawson McConnon in 2024, discusses the organization’s comprehensive work, the current state of homelessness in the city, and why housing must be paired with healthcare, employment, education, and advocacy to create lasting stability.
Donna Bullock represented the 195th Legislative District in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives, serving neighborhoods in North Philadelphia and the Art Museum area where Project HOME focuses many of its resources. As a legislator and Majority Chair for the Children and Youth Committee and Ethics Committee, her priorities closely aligned with the mission and work of Project HOME. Prior to nearly ten years in State government, she served as a special assistant to Philadelphia City Council President Darrell Clarke and as the council’s research fellowship director. Early in her career, Donna practiced law and worked for Philadelphia Community Legal Services, advising nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and community groups. She holds a BS from Rutgers and a JD from Temple School of Law.
Piano Bar Party
Friday, February 6 from 6pm to 8pm
Join us at the “Piano Bar” where our Steinway baby grand takes center stage. Featuring Liam Charron, pianist, composer, and arranger rooted in jazz and the Great American Songbook. Bring a guest or two for an evening of beautiful music ‒ and dancing if the mood strikes. A New Initiatives Committee Event.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
February 9 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Skip Schwarzman is our Quarterback.
Thursday Luncheon Roundtable
February 12 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Speaker is Cynthia Otto. Her topic ‒ How Dogs Save Lives.
Dogs: Devoted family pets, “best friends,” and all-around charmers of the animal world ‒ but also exceptional lifesavers because of their sense of smell. Cynthia Otto briefs us on the science of olfaction and explains how dogs rely on their exceptional sense of smell to experience the world. She and her team at the Penn veterinary school’s Working Dog Center partner with dogs to harness their sense of smell in life-saving work from search and rescue to medical detection.
Cynthia Otto, Professor of Working Dog Sciences and Sports Medicine at Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine, is a specialist in veterinary emergency medicine/critical care and canine sports medicine/rehabilitation. She is Executive Director and founder of the Working Dog Center, overseeing fitness and medical care of the program’s detection dogs, providing rehabilitation and conditioning for police and other working dogs, and conducts research on and by detection dogs.
Having written more than 150 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and book chapters, Cynthia is an internationally recognized expert in both emergency medicine and working dog science. Awards include the American Veterinary Medical Association Bustad Companion Animal Veterinarian of the Year (2018), Mark Bloomberg Award (2019), and the AVMA Career Achievement in Canine Research Award (2025).
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
February 16 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Roberta Kangilaski is our Quarterback.
Friday Club Dinner
February 20 with Member mixer at 5:30pm, presentation at 6:15pm, followed by dinner
Speaker is Robert Seyfarth. His topic ‒ The Mind and Society of Baboons.
Robert Seyfarth has devoted his professional life to understanding the evolution of social complexity, the mind, and behavior in humans and in our closest animal relatives. That goal propelled his four-decade study of African monkeys and apes. His talk describes the social organization of baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana and discusses his work to explore how baboons think and what they think about.
Robert Seyfarth, professor of psychology at Penn since 1985, conducted research with his wife Dorothy Cheney, a Penn professor of biology, who died in 2018. Focusing largely on monkeys and apes living in natural condition, their study of vervet monkeys in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park is captured in How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species (University of Chicago Press, 1990). Baboon Metaphysics (University of Chicago Press, 2007) describes their long-term study of free-ranging baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Both were elected to the National Academy of Sciences and jointly received the Distinguished Primatologist Award from the American Society of Primatologists in 2016.
Monday Quarterback Luncheon
February 23 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Rick Pasquier is our Quarterback.
Wednesday Movie Night
February 25 at 6pm; feature at 6:30pm
With snacks and drinks including light fare, popcorn, chips, nuts, soda, beer, and wine.
Bedazzled
Director Stanley Donen, UK, 1967, 1 hour 43 minutes, color
A comic retelling of the Faust legend set in Swinging 60s London written by Peter Cook, and starring Cook, Dudley Moore and Raquel Welch. Stanley Moon (Moore), a bumbling short-order cook is infatuated with statuesque waitress Margaret (Eleanor Bron). On the verge of suicide, he meets George Spiggott (Cook), the Devil, who in return for his soul, grants seven wishes to woo the challenging Margaret. Despite the wishes and the advice of the Seven Deadly Sins, including Lilian Lust (Welch), Stanley can’t seem to win his love.
Thursday Luncheon Roundtable
February 26 from 12:30pm to 2pm
Speaker is Jeffrey Green. His topic ‒ Bob Dylan as a Prophetic Figure.
Jeffrey Green judges that Bob Dylan ought to be seen in prophetic terms, as someone wrestling with fundamental values ‒ individual freedom, social justice, adherence to the divine ‒ and with the tensions between these values. He discusses Dylan’s original contributions to the meaning of self-reliance, his quest for rapprochement between the religious and nonreligious, and his views on problems for ordinary people operating in a fractured political world.
Jeffrey Green, Director of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy at Penn, is a political theorist with broad interests in democracy, ancient and modern political philosophy, and contemporary social theory. He is the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Without God (Oxford University Press, 2024), The Shadow of Unfairness: A Plebeian Theory of Liberal Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2016), and The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship (Oxford University Press, 2010) and is co-editor of The Changing Terrain of Religious Freedom (Penn, 2021). His current book project, Civics Beyond Borders, argues for cosmopolitan and philosophical civics education that fosters humility. In 2023, Jeffrey received the Henry Teune Award for Excellence in Teaching from Penn’s Pi Sigma Alpha Society. He holds a BA from Yale, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD from Harvard.