Category: Arts & Culture

Misook Doolittle uplifts the arts, cultural pride, and human services with a deep belief in the beauty of everyday impact. Born in Seoul, Korea, Misook followed her creative passions to the United States, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Southern Indiana. Inspired to design sophisticated clothing made for women by women, she founded her eponymous fashion label, Exclusively Misook, in 1985. The brand became an international success, invigorating the high-end women’s knitwear market with refined aesthetics, sustainable materials, innovative technology, and uncompromising style.

The label allowed Misook to fulfill a personal mission she continues today: empowering women and international communities through thoughtful creativity, with an eye toward making a lasting impact. Misook continues this legacy in her philanthropic work, which honors the extraordinary in the everyday — including women, music, education, and diversity — to enrich our society. Driven by her deep commitment to social responsibility, she founded the Harry and Misook Doolittle Foundation in 2001 to support Korean heritage, arts and culture, education, and healthcare, among other initiatives. The organization now serves as a living tribute to her late husband, an acclaimed author and visual artist. Misook is a board member of the New York Philharmonic and American Friends of Covent Garden and serves on advisory boards for the Metropolitan Opera, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and City Harvest, among others.

Through her business entrepreneurship and indelible impact, Misook has elevated the cultural world and redefined Korean-American elegance; she is admired today as a testament to the enduring power of creative vision, resilience, and generosity.

Ambassador (ret) Kathleen Stephens was a career diplomat in the United States Foreign Service, 1978-2015. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 2008-2011, the first woman and first Korean-speaker in that position. Other overseas assignments included postings to Trinidad and Tobago, China, Korea, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Northern Ireland, where she was U.S. Consul General in Belfast during the negotiations culminating in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and India, where she was U.S. Chargé d’affaires (2014-2015). She also served in Washington-based policy positions at the State Department and National Security Council.

Ambassador Stephens was William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University’s Shorenstein Asia Pacific Research Center, 2015-2018. She has served as President and CEO of the Korea Economic Institute of American (KEIA) from 2018 to 2023. She is board vice-chair of The Asia Foundation and board chair of Pacific Century Institute. Ambassador Stephens’ U.S. government awards include the Presidential Meritorious Service Award (2009) and Linguist of the Year (2010). Other awards related to Korea include the Kwanghwa Medal of Diplomatic Merit, the Sejong Cultural Award, the Korean-American Friendship Association Award, the Kevin O’Donnell Distinguished Friend of Korea, AmCham Korea’s Outstanding Achievement Award, and in 2022 the First Baek Bum Kim Koo Award.

Nicholas Harkness is the Modern Korean Economy and Society Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Korea Institute at Harvard University. At Harvard, he also organizes the Roman Jakobson Symposium and the Harvard-Yenching Institute Field Development Program in Linguistic and Semiotic Anthropology. 

Harkness’s long-term ethnographic research in South Korea has focused on language, music, and religion within the context of Korea’s massive engagement with Protestant Christianity in the 20th and 21st Centuries. He is the author of Songs of Seoul: An Ethnography of Voice and Voicing in Christian South Korea (2014) and Glossolalia and the Problem of Language (2021). Harkness’s scholarship and teaching have been recognized by numerous awards, including the Edward Sapir Book Prize from the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and an honorable mention for Francis L. Hsu Book Prize from the Society for East Asian Anthropology (American Anthropological Association), the Richard Saller Prize for the Most Distinguished Dissertation in the Division of Social Sciences (University of Chicago), and the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for Excellence in Teaching (Harvard University). Harkness is also the recipient of major grants and fellowships, including from the Social Science Research Council, the National Humanities Center (Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship), the Academy of Korean Studies, the Korea Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation (Hanna Holborn Gray Fellowship).