Instructor and Staff Profiles

Professional Staff

Bethlehem “Betty” Aynalem

Bethlehem “Betty” Aynalem is the Director of the Leland Scholars Program (LSP) and Stanford Summer Fellows Program (SSFP). She grew up in American Canyon, California, and earned her degree in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, (UCSB) and her master's from the University of San Francisco (USF) in Higher Education and Student Affairs. Betty is a proud first-generation college student and has dedicated her career in higher education to first generation and/or low income (FLI) students and families... Read more about Betty.

Cecilia Martinez

Cecilia is the Assistant Director of LSP. She graduated with her BA in Public Health from UC Berkeley and with her Ed.M in Higher Education from Harvard University. She worked as a college advisor for three years and most recently, as a program coordinator at Cal Poly, supporting students from low-income backgrounds...Read more about Cecilia

Kylee Beck

Kylee is the Program Manager for LSP. She grew up in Northern California and graduated from Stanford in 2020 with a major in human biology. She is grateful to be a part of the LSP team, working together with folx across campus who are dedicated to ensuring that all of Stanford’s resources are made accessible to all students. Having been a fist-generation, low-income (FLI) student herself, she is excited by the strong student support networks and community-centered goals of programs like LSP... Read more about Kylee.

Graduate Fellows (GFs)

Stephanie Fischer

Stephanie is a Ph.D. student in Earth Systems Science and is a Ph.D. minor with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity. She also earned a B.S. in Earth Systems and B.A. in Music Composition from Stanford. Stephanie's research is focused on environmental justice, community-engaged research, and scholar-activism... Read More about Steph.

Javier Omar

Javier Omar is a doctoral student in the Developmental and Psychological Sciences program at Stanford University. His current research interest is in examining the influence of early life stress and immigration-related stress on social-emotional development and educational outcomes... Read more about Javi.

Instructors - Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR)

Megan Formato

Meg Shields Formato is a lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford and a tutor in the Hume Center for Speaking and Writing. She holds a PhD in History of Science from Harvard University and a BA in English from Amherst College. As a historian of modern science and technology,...Read more about Megan

Jennifer Johnson

Jennifer Johnson holds a B.A. in Art History with Honors from the University of Maryland at College Park and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Education (Language, Literacy and Culture Division) from the University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to Stanford, Jennifer taught courses in the Linguistics...Read more about Jennifer Johnson

Lisa Marie Swan

Lisa Swan is a lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric. She holds a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in English Education from the University of Maryland. Her research interests include composition pedagogy, equity, and faculty professional development. Lisa has...Read more about Lisa

Nissa Cannon

Nissa Ren Cannon grew up in Santa Cruz, CA, and earned her B.A. in Comparative Literature and Italian at UCLA, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in English at UC Santa Barbara.
Prior to arriving at Stanford, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Honors College at Boston University, ... Read more about Nissa

Rebecca Richardson

Becky Richardson is a Lecturer in PWR. She attended Mount Holyoke College and holds a Ph.D. in English from Stanford University. Having recently taught courses on "The Rhetoric of the Confession," "The Rhetoric of Coming of Age," and "The Rhetoric of Sympathy," she is especially interested in encouraging ... Read more about Rebecca

Instructors - Math

Dana Paquin

Dr. Dana Paquin earned her Ph.D. in Mathematics at Stanford University in 2007. She is currently an Associate Professor of Mathematics at California Polytechnic State University, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University. Previously, she was the Division Head of...Read more about Dana

Instructors - Chemistry

Jennifer Schwartz Poehlmann

Jennifer Schwartz Poehlmann studied chemistry at Washington University in Saint Louis Missouri (A.B. 2002) before coming to Stanford University as a graduate student (Ph.D. 2008). Her thesis work under Prof. Edward Solomon addressed structural contributions to reactivity in active sites of non-heme di-iron enzymes, including ferritins. She joined the Stanford Center (now Vice Provost) for Teaching and Learning as a Teaching Fellow in 2008. In 2009, she became Lecturer and Introductory Course...Read more about Jennifer Schwartz Poehlmann

Nathaniel Brown

Nathaniel Brown received his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Rochester in 2013 before attending Princeton University for his PhD in Chemical Biology, where he developed tools to study the densely-phosphorylated inositol pyrophosphate signaling molecules in Professor Dorothea Fiedler’s lab. Read more about Nathaniel