Leadership
Secretariat
Secretary General – Kelsie Riemenschneider
Kelsie Riemenschneider is a junior majoring in Biomedical Engineering with a Spanish minor at Georgia Tech. She has extensive Model UN experience from attending many conferences as a high school delegate, and this will be her third year as a GTMUN staff member. In the past, Kelsie served as the Assistant Director of the ICJ, Director of GA 1, and Assistant Secretary General. In addition to GTMUN, Kelsie is involved in many campus organizations, including the Omega Phi Alpha service sorority, MOVE and 1-to-1 tutoring, and the Honors Program. She has also conducted undergraduate research for four semesters, and is currently working in a bone and tissue engineering lab. Kelsie hopes to attend medical school after graduating.
Director General – Parsa Garrett
Parsa Garrett is a third year International Affairs and pre-law major. He competed in Model UN in high school and has been working with GTMUN for 3 years now. As a staff member, he has been the Assistant Director of GA 3 and the director of GA 4. His extracurricular activities include playing music with his band and this summer he will be interning at Amnesty International in Atlanta. After graduating, Parsa plans on attending law school where he can study Human Rights Law.
Conference Director – Laura O’Donnell
Laura O’Donnell is in her third year at Georgia Tech, majoring in
International Affairs and Chinese. She is experienced in Model UN.
She participated in competitive Model UN throughout high school and
has held the following positions the last three years at GTMUN: Director of the Security Council, Director of GA 4, and Assistant-Director of GA 1. She enjoys studying languages and has taken classes in Chinese, French, and Spanish. She hopes to one day be able to make clever puns in languages other than English. She thinks that French humor is very Sarkoztic.
Senior Technology Advisor – Emilio Salazar
Emilio Salazar is in his third year of a Biomedical Engineering/Computer Engineering double major at Georgia Tech. He has been doing Model UN for five years. At GTMUN, he has been an Assistant Director for GA4, and has also served as Assistant Conference Director. This year, he has the honor of designing the very shoes he will be filling for this new secretariat position, and he expects to make them big enough for others to want to wear. In whatever time he has left over from classes and MUN, he TAs a Tech class, practices Hapkido, and, when he’s not being lazy, likes running.
Faculty Advisors
Dr. Kirk Bowman is an Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also the author of a 2002 book on democratization, development, and the military in Latin America and some twenty articles, book chapters, and published papers. His next book focuses on national tourism ministries in Latin America and the Caribbean and a forthcoming co-authored project explores the powerful relationship between soccer, identity, and politics in the Southern Cone of Latin America. Dr. Bowman has conducted extensive fieldwork in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, Fiji, Honduras, and Uruguay and speaks Spanish and Portuguese. He consulted the tourism industry in Argentina and Fiji and received three major grants from the National Institutes of Health for applied research on sustainable development and conservation in Fiji. He received his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 1998. Dr. Bowman was the winner of the 2007 University System of Georgia Board of Regents Teacher of the Year, and the 2008 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Georgia Professor of the Year. He has directed 13 study abroad programs in Latin America and Iberia, and is the founding faculty director of the award-winning International House at Georgia Tech.
Dr. Brian Woodall is Acting Chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. He received his doctorate in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. His areas of specialization include comparative politics (with an emphasis on Japan and East Asia), international relations, and international political economy. His on-going research interests focus on Japan’s domestic politics and foreign relations, East Asian regional economic integration, and U.S. policy toward Asia. Before joining the faculty in the Nunn School, he held faculty positions at the University of California at Irvine and at Harvard University, and was, on two occasions, a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo. Some of his publications include Elections in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan under the Single Non-Transferable Vote (co-editor and contributor; University of Michigan Press, 1999), Japan Under Construction: Corruption, Politics, and Public Works (University of California Press, 1996), and Japan’s Changing World Role: Emerging Leader or Perpetual Follower? (The Japan Society, 1993). He has received numerous awards and grants, including the Japan Foundation, Fulbright Commission, the Abe Fellowship from the Social Sciences Research Council, and the Japan-United States Friendship Commission.