About Ascanius: The Board of Directors

Kristen Bortner has been involved with Ascanius since 2002 in a variety of capacities. She has developed innovative teaching materials, delivered numerous teacher workshops, and served as both a teacher and administrator at Ascanius' enrichment camps for elementary and middle school children. She also volunteered as an Ascanius Executive Committee member from 2015 through 2022, helping to manage the organization's operations and direct its work toward its mission. Kristen holds a Bachelor's degree in Classics from the University of Virginia and a Master's degree in Literacy Education from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She resides in Fairfax Station, Virginia, where she currently stays home with her children; previously, she taught Latin for eleven years in public schools in Virginia, Missouri, and Illinois.

S. Douglas Bunch is a Partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC, a member of the Securities Litigation & Investor Protection practice group, and Co-Chair of the firm's Pro Bono Committee. Additionally, in 2022, President Joseph R. Biden appointed Mr. Bunch to serve as Public Delegate of the United States to the United Nations, a position he currently holds.

Mr. Bunch also plays a prolific role in empowering students and cultivating educational opportunity - nationally and globally. He is the co-founder and chairman of Global Playground, Inc., a nonprofit that builds schools and other educational infrastructure in the developing world, and he serves or has served on the boards of multiple other education nonprofits. Mr. Bunch has also twice been appointed, in 2016 and again in 2020, by governors of Virginia to the Board of Visitors of the College of William & Mary, the university's governing board, where he currently serves on the Executive Committee and as Chair of the Committee on Institutional Advancement.

Barbara Caceres works full-time and remotely as the Salesforce Administrator in the fundraising department for a major health non-profit in New York City. Despite her current career path outside of the Classics and Education world, she has a Masters in Liberal Studies with a track in Archaeology of the Classical, Late Antique, and Islamic Worlds from The City University of New York Graduate Center. She also has a B.A. in European History from St. Joseph's College, and a B.A. in Classical Archaeology from Hunter College. Her interests continue to include Greek and Roman gender & sexuality studies, Classicism spanning from the ancient world to contemporary times, and Latin Education.

Mr. Kevin Jefferson is a graduate student and teaching assistant for the Department of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to pursuing a graduate degree, he was Latin teacher and Latin Club sponsor at Woodgrove High School in Loudoun County, Virginia. He now directs the Latin Tournament of the Classical Association of Virginia. Mr. Jefferson formerly served as Director of Student Programs for Ascanius, in which role he helped to design, organize, and coordinate both the major LatinSummer programs and smaller student outreach programs. He is also the author of the newly revised Activitates Liberis series, volumes 1-2. His professional memberships include the Classical Association of Virginia, the Foreign Language Association of Virginia, and the American Classical League. His personal interests include music, mythology, spoken Latin, and epic poetry.

Irene Morrison-Moncure is a graduate student in the PhD program in Classics at The City University of New York. She graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2011 and currently teaches at Hunter College. She has been with Ascanius since 2012 and in the past has worked with the LatinSummer and Roman Explorers student programs. Her interests include the Augustan age and Lucan and she recently participated in the Classical Summer School of the American Academy in Rome.

Emma Vanderpool is a Latin teacher, who has worked at the university, high school, and middle school levels. She earned her undergraduate degree at Monmouth College before earning her Master of Arts in Teaching at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has worked with Ascanius in a variety of ways, including running Let's Learn Latin programming at the CAMWS Annual Meeting; the Roman Explorers program in Monmouth, Illinois; and reviewing applications for the Grants Committee. Her interests include Active Latin, writing novellas, and culturally responsive pedagogy.

Donna Seidman recently joined Ascanius: The Youth Classics Institute as Executive Director, furthering the mission of promoting Latin and classics to elementary and middle school aged students. She has taught Latin in the classroom in elementary, middle, and high school and currently teaches 7th through 9th grades while finishing her master's degree in Classics at Villanova. Anxious to see a platform which serves teachers of younger children, she helped to start and still administers the Facebook group, Teaching Latin to the Littles: Elementary Latin Teachers. Donna has also served on the Excellence Through Classics executive committee and currently serves on the SCRIBO committee.