Lauren is honored to serve the Yale Club of Washington, D.C. Elected to the board in 2018, she served as Vice President of Community Service 2018-2019, the Club’s Vice President, 2019-2020, and currently as Vice President of Programming, 2020-2021.  Lauren received her B.A. from Yale in Political Science, ES’14. Lauren was an active leader in the Yale community serving on several student-run boards in addition to her fundraising work for Dwight Hall at Yale, the largest campus-based student-run service organization in the country. She was selected to deliver a speech at commencement. Lauren was awarded the Rita Lipson Cup: to a senior who has taken the best advantage of the opportunities offered by the college, as shown by intellectual growth, personal maturity, and active consideration for others, and recipient of the Bernard Osher Scholarship in recognition for her academic achievements. Deeply committed to promoting the values of Yale, Lauren has created a number of new initiatives during her time at the Club.  Most recently, leading an effort to support Yale alumni performing artists during the pandemic.  Lauren aspires to bring her commitment to social justice to her role at the club. Her professional responsibilities include program management of 36+ federal agencies for Fiserv. A lifelong pianist, she currently enjoys trying to beat her VO2 max uptake on her bike, and her long walks with a certain black Lab. 

Maria Vera Whelan was born and raised in Los Angeles, where she attended the Archer School for Girls. She graduated from Yale University, where she double-majored in History and Spanish. Maria moved to Washington, D.C. following college, where she worked for a PR agency and then got her first job at PBS. She has been at PBS for twelve years in a variety of roles. Today, she is the Senior Director of Marketing, Communications and Social Media for PBS KIDS and Education. In this role, she is responsible for leading the team that manages a multi-platform strategy for connecting children, parents and teachers -- especially those in low-income communities -- with educational media and experiences. Maria also serves on the Board of the Yale Club of Washington, D.C. as the VP of Community Service. In her spare time, Maria enjoys spending time with her family (including her dachshund Archie) and friends, and loves entertaining, cooking and baking.

Robert Cole (Class of ‘75) is a Program Manager in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Department of Homeland Security where he manages performance results and strategic reviews. After receiving his BS in engineering and applied science at Yale and an MBA from Stanford, he worked to bring timesharing computing capacity to clients of Dun & Bradstreet software services, to establish cellular phones on Amtrak in 1990, and to administer grants for training and scholarships to new, college-educated, police officers through the Department of Justice.  Since 2004, with CBP, he has helped improve maritime cargo security, advance border initiatives with Canada and Mexico, and provide strategic planning and performance management reports to DHS and OMB.  

Ellen Fox is a board-certified internist and health care ethicist.  As President of Fox Ethics Consulting, she assists health care organizations and universities to assess, design, and improve their health care ethics programs. She is also currently leading a major national study on ethics consultation in US hospitals and providing advice to organizations on policies relating to COVID-19. Previously, Dr. Fox served as Director of the National Center for Ethics in Health Care; Director of the Center for Ethics in Health Care at Altarum Institute; Director of End-of-Life Care at the American Medical Association; and Director of the Program in Clinical Ethics at the University of Illinois School of Medicine, Chicago. Dr. Fox’s areas of expertise include ethics consultation, ethics evaluation, organizational ethics, and ethical leadership. She has authored numerous academic articles including the most widely cited article in the last 20 years in the leading bioethics journal, and designed the award-winning “IntegratedEthics(R)” model for the US Department of Veterans Affairs. Originally from Arlington, Virginia, Dr. Fox graduated summa cum laude from Yale College and earned her MD from Harvard Medical School. She completed her residency training in internal medicine at Yale, where she also served as Chief Resident. She also received Fellowship training in Medical Ethics and in Geriatrics at the University of Chicago.

Tanaz Meghjani joined the Yale Club of D.C. in 2017. Her main interests as a board member are mentorship and community service. Tanaz works as an analyst at the D.C. Policy Center where she supports the Policy Center’s Education Policy Initiative. Prior to joining the D.C. Policy Center, Tanaz worked as a Consultant at Quadrant Strategies, a research and strategy firm based in Washington, D.C. She has also worked as an analyst at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and as a researcher at Paste Magazine. Tanaz is originally from Atlanta, GA and holds a bachelor’s degree in History from Yale University.

For over 20 years, I have deeply active in and committed to the Yale Club of Washington, D.C. as an organization that not only serves the goals and interests of Yale University and her diverse alumni in the Washington Metropolitan Area, but makes a difference in the DMV through our Club participation and service to the larger community.  In this endeavor, I have devoted substantial time to the Club and its educational and service activities.  Those pursuits include serving as past President and Treasurer of the Club and being an active Board member for many years; acting as a Director for the Mid-Atlantic Region for the YAA’s and the Club’s Day of Service and serving as the Club's delegate to the Annual Yale Alumni Association Assembly; chairing the program of Community Service Awards to inner city high school students and being the Alumni Schools Coordinator for Montgomery County for over 15 years supervising the interviews of over 5,250 Yale applicants.  From 2013-2016, I was a Member of the YAA Board of Governors as well as the chair of the Yale Medal Committee, Washington D.C. liaison/board member for the Yale Alumni College and on the Board of Yale Global Alumni Leadership Exchange.  As a present Board member, I have provided pro bono advice and legal services to the Club, including participation in maintenance of its charitable status and the recent redrafting of its corporate Bylaws. Part of my role at the Club has been the active developer and promoter of Club programming. Thus includes the production of the Club’s YAA award winning, annual 4-day educational Civil War travel tours led and taught by Yale scholars to Gettysburg and the 1864-65 Virginia campaigns of Grant and Lee. During my Club and Board participation,  Organizing Club events, ranging from college admission presentations for college-bound students and parents, wine tastings, “how to network” programs for young alums, and opera lectures with young Yale composers, has also been part of my responsibilities. Most recently, I promoted a virtual art lesson for 6-12 year old Alumni children with a recognized local artist.  I am particularly interested in promoting programs for lesser programmatically-served Yale families with young and older children, with a focus on senior/grandparent-younger children/family interaction. Along the way, I have also had some time to pursue my career as a commercial, trust and estates trial lawyer and raise my family, including a Yale ’06 graduate. 

Tom O’Donnell is an attorney and federal public policy consultant in Washington DC.  In August 2019, he stepped down after 5 years as the founding Executive Director of the LBJ Washington Center, home of the LBJ School of Public Affairs' innovative DC Concentration graduate school program and federal public policy center.  Tom previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff of the White House National Economic Council; Chief of Staff and General Counsel of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers; Chief of Staff in the United States Senate; and Vice President of Policy and Political Affairs at the Human Rights Campaign.  He has also held senior positions at five Presidential Nominating Conventions and served on the policy staffs of two Presidential Transition teams.  Mr. O’Donnell has also spent a significant portion of his career as a law firm partner and counsel in several prominent Washington DC firms.  He is a graduate of Yale University (Hopper College) and the University of Texas School of Law at Austin.

Caroline Drees is the Senior Director for Field Safety and Security at National Public Radio, based in Washington. Before joining NPR in 2019, Caroline worked for the global news organization Reuters for 25 years as a journalist, manager and executive across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and in the United States. Other roles have included running a UNDP/Reuters Foundation project to set up Iraq's first independent news agency. A native speaker of English and German, Caroline also speaks Arabic and French. She received her BA from Yale (Trumbull College) in 1993, and a master’s from the London School of Economics. Caroline is on the Yale Club of DC’s DEI Committee, and is passionate about organizing events with diverse speakers. In her free time, Caroline enjoys spoiling her two dogs Arthur and Fergus, and trying to coax herbs and tomatoes from her backyard vegetable patch. 

Folake is an alum of Yale School of Management’s Executive MBA program. She is a Senior Manager in Deloitte Consulting Insurance Strategy practice where she advises senior-level executives to design and implement complex transformations by leveraging analytics and technology solutions. She resides in the District and enjoys exploring the local trails and cultural sights. Folake leads the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee of the Yale Club of Washington, DC.

A native of Arlington, Virginia, Lauren graduated with distinction from Yale in 2016 with a major in Political Science and bright college years in Trumbull College!  While attending Yale, Lauren earned four letters as a member of the women’s varsity lacrosse team, and served as an editor for the Yale Historical Review for seven semesters. After graduation, Lauren worked for Morgan Stanley in New York for three years in the Global Capital Markets division.  She returned to the D.C. area and is an Assistant Vice President in the Financial Sponsors and Leverage Finance group at MidCap Financial.  A fan of fitness classes and sports, Lauren also enjoys coaching lacrosse and following the Washington Capitals.  She loves to travel, read, and take advantage of the many great historical and political events of D.C.  Lauren is grateful for the opportunity to serve as a member of the Yale Board and connect with so many impressive and interesting Yale alumni!