Professional Ethics Symposium - Panelist Biographies

Justice Elizabeth Clement

Chief Justice Elizabeth T. Clement joined the Michigan Supreme Court in November 2017 and became Chief Justice in November 2022. Clement serves as chair of the Michigan Judicial Counsel and on the Governor’s Task Force on Juvenile Justice. She previously served as the Court’s co-liaison to the State Court Administrative Office Department of Child Welfare Services, liaison to the 203 Problem-Solving Courts in the state of Michigan and to the Michigan Judicial Institute. Prior to her election to the court, Justice Clement served as Chief Legal Counsel in the Executive Branch, advising on a wide variety of legal, legislative, and policy matters. She previously held the positions of cabinet secretary and deputy chief of staff, as well as deputy legal counsel in the Governor’s Office. Clement served as legal counsel to the Michigan Senate in 2010 and as a legal advisor from 2006 to 2010 in the Senate Majority Policy Office. She began her legal career in private practice representing individuals in the areas of family law, adoption, probate, estate planning and criminal law. She graduated from Michigan State University and Michigan State University College of Law. Chief Justice Clement lives with her husband and children in East Lansing.

Dr. Tesler graduated from the University of Michigan with a dual bachelor’s degree in biology and nursing in 2006. He then obtained his MD from Michigan State University. He completed an OB/GYN Residency at Hurley and became board-certified in 2021.

In his medical career, Dr. Tesler is currently the System Chief Medical Director for OB/GYN and Perinatal Health for McLaren Health, working with all 13 hospitals and nine birthing centers. He is also the Fellowship Director for the Family Medicine Surgical OB Fellowship, which he developed to address rural OB care shortages.

He is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine at Michigan State and works under the Senior Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion. His work focuses on DEI initiatives and Curricular Review for SOGI.

Dr. Tesler owns OB-GYN BOARD PREP, educating over 500 OB/GYNs annually to become board-certified.

He has also toured around the country as “Paging Dr. Rainbow.” Teaching the benefits and reasoning for improved LGBTQIA+ care.

He works proudly in the executive world of medicine and higher education as an openly gay cis married man of 24 years to his husband Bill and a father to their son Aiden.

Dr. Brian Tesler

Scott Weiss

Speakeasy is a growing 51-year-old global communication consulting firm with offices in Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Amsterdam, as well as ongoing operations in Dubai, London, and Mumbai. The company works with executives mostly from the Fortune 500 on the effectiveness of their communication capabilities, both delivery and strategy. Last year the company worked with thousands of executives in 10 countries on 6 continents. Their top clients, all multi-decade engagements, include LVMH, EY, Accenture, VISA, Nestle, Coke, and Microsoft.

Prior to joining Speakeasy in 1994 as CEO, Weiss spent ten years at NYSE company Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. as an Executive Vice President in charge of distribution for all Turner networks. In addition, Weiss also served as Corporate Vice President of Special Projects reporting to CEO, Terry McGuirk and Chairman Ted Turner, where he founded Turner Private Networks and created the CNN Airport Channel.

Weiss founded the T. Howard Foundation in 1993, a Washington DC based non-profit that promotes diversity and inclusion in the multi-media entertainment and technology industries, where Weiss currently serves as Chairman Emeritus. He has also been an “Emmy” voting member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for 38 years.

Weiss is the author of “DARE!… “Accepting the Challenge of Trusting Leadership,” the Axiom Gold Medal Winner on Ethics and an Amazon best-selling book. Weiss has been a guest speaker at numerous conferences and has been featured in Forbes, Fortune, Inc., The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, CEO Today, and other publications.

Weiss graduated in 1981 from Michigan State University from the College of Communications, Arts, and Sciences, and received the Alumni of the Year Award in 2019. He has also served as an adjunct professor at Georgia Tech University and has served on multiple Boards. He currently lives in Jupiter, Florida, married to his wife Marci for 38 years, parents of three professionally successful adult children, Alexandra, Monica, and Jake.

Brenda Cucci

Brenda is the founder and CEO of Ability2S. The Company’s purpose is to work with leaders and decision makers at all levels helping them create a Strategy that not only incorporates Sustainable business in a Secure manner but outlines a plan to incorporate how to execute their strategy for Success. Her 30 years of experience in the technology industry helping leaders establish, deliver and execute business strategy utilizing technology is what drove Brenda to create Ability2S. Strategy for a Sustainable business, in a Secure manner delivers Success for the companies and organizations. Current clients range from Fortune 100 to start-ups. She has experience in the following industries: Automotive, Tech/Comms, State and Federal Government, Retail and CPG.

Prior to her entrepreneurial debut, Brenda’s most recent role was as Senior Managing Partner at IBM where she led strategic sales for sustainability initiatives. Her responsibilities were focused on incorporating IBM sustainability products and services into all client relationships. She brought decades of experience in the technology space to IBM and the strategic sales executive position. This included experience as a product owner and creator, partner ecosystem lead and as the driver of sustainability and building an EV charging network. Her role at IBM included working with each part of IBM’s business including WatsonX AI, Hardware, Software, Security, Cloud and Consulting. She led the adoption of an AI driven platform in conjunction with a technology startup to build an interoperable EV charging network for consumers, government entities and businesses. The biggest hurdle in EV adoption is the EV charging infrastructure and thereof was a target area for growth. Brenda led a widespread ecosystem drive to build an accessible platform.

IBM recruited Brenda from Accenture where she worked with C-level leadership across the corporate spectrum to develop executable technology plans for both short and long-term business goals. This included starting Accenture’s North America Sustainability initiatives by leveraging products that started in Europe and customized them to fit US guidelines. Brenda’s 18 year relationship with one of the most desirable brands in the world – McDonald’s proved to deliver success for business with Accenture.

Brenda has been in the technology space for over 20 years including HP, Cisco, Xerox, Unisys, Accenture and IBM. Her roles at these companies have stretched all aspects of the business. From engineering and product development to financial operations and contract negotiations to sales and leadership.

Barb has over 35 years of experience in higher education planning focused on facilities and space planning and management at Michigan State University. Her experience ranges from policy development; strategic capital and space planning; budget development and administration; space utilization metrics and analysis; and project management. She works with faculty, staff, students and administration at all levels of the university. Barb is a long-time active member of the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) and the Higher Education Facilities Management Alliance, having served as a Board member for the Alliance, and a frequent conference speaker on the topic of strategic space and facilities planning.   

She is appreciative of and thankful for the opportunity to serve in her role where she is responsible for the strategic alignment of space and physical resources to support MSU’s core mission of advancing knowledge, conducting high-caliber research and enabling outreach and engagement.  This is accomplished by working with others across MSU’s colleges and units. The scope and scale ranges from laboratory and instructional spaces to full scale new buildings that is reflective of the breadth and depth of the MSU mission.

Barb Kranz

Blaire Morseau

Blaire Morseau is a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Michigan State University where she is also Affiliate Faculty in Digital Humanities and American Indian and Indigenous Studies. Before becoming a professor, she worked as her tribe’s first full-time archivist, launching an online collections and dictionary website called Wiwkwébthëgen (we-oh-KWEB-juh-gun) using traditional Potawatomi cultural protocols of access and traditional knowledge labels. She recently released an edited volume featuring the collection of antique birch bark books written by 19th century Potawatomi author, Simon Pokagon, titled, As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in their Contexts, published by MSU Press. Dr. Morseau consults on various exhibitions and collaborative programming for archives, libraries, and museums around the country including the Field Museum of Natural History, The Newberry Library, and The Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Her research interests are in Indigenous science fiction and futurisms, traditional cultural and ecological knowledge, digital heritage, and Native counter-mapping. She is currently working on a new book project — a monograph titled, Mapping Neshnabé Futurity, published by the University of Arizona Press with a spring 2025 release date.

Marilyn Amey

Marilyn is a professor of higher, adult, and lifelong education and immediate past chairperson of the Department of Educational Administration. She studies educational partnerships, particularly those of community colleges; leadership, including how leaders learn; post-secondary governance and administration; and faculty concerns, including interdisciplinary academic work; and institutional transformation. Her current work focuses on education partnerships including a multi-year evaluation of a multiple- institutional networked improvement community, and mid-level academic and administrative leadership.

Dr. Danielle K. Brown is a social movement and media researcher and holds the 1855 Community and Urban Journalism University Professorship at Michigan State. She is the founding director of the LIFT project – a project focused on mapping, networking and resourcing trusted messengers to dismantle dis- and misinformation narratives that circulate in Black communities and about Black communities in other spaces. Danielle consults in newsrooms nationwide to help turn narrative analyses into tools for advancing the profession and encouraging citizen engagement in democracy. Her publicly accessible articles and commentary have appeared in local, national, and international outlets such as Nature, Scientific American, The Conversation, The Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Lab, and The Washington Post. This work has helped mainstream theories about the protest paradigm and informed the curriculums of training organizations around the country about producing pro-democratic protest reporting. In addition, I have developed workshops and trainings for multiple professional and public audiences, including organizations like the Carnegie Council, Council for Foreign Relations, National Press Club, and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. She has received several early career awards for her efforts, including being honored as the 2024 International Communication Association’s Early Career Scholar award.

Danielle Brown

Elly Jordan

Elinor Jordan is a Supervising Attorney for Training and Impact, focusing on work with unaccompanied immigrant children. Immediately before joining MIRC, Elly helped found the Survivor Law Clinic at the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, where she engaged in novel legal representation to enforce crime victim rights for survivors. Earlier in her legal career, Elly taught and litigated cases as a Supervising Attorney with Michigan State University’s Immigration Law Clinic. While a student at MSU Law, Elly was the editor-in-chief of the Michigan State Law Review. Upon graduation, she served as a clerk for the Honorable David W. McKeague of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and later as an associate with the firm Warner Norcross & Judd.

Elise Maizel is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University College of Law. Her scholarship examines the role of lawyers and the legal profession in the way corporations do harm to society. This work focuses on cultural, structural and doctrinal factors that shape law practice and corporate behavior. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming with the Cardozo Law Review, Journal of Corporation Law, UC Law Journal and the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice & Comment. Professor Maizel has previously taught at New York University School of Law and the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Prior to her time in academia, Professor Maizel worked as a litigation counsel at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in the areas of corporate law, bankruptcy, internal investigations, and white-collar defense. She also maintained a pro bono criminal defense practice that included work in capital defense and compassionate release.

Elise Maizel