Great Decisions of Wayne County

The Great Decisions lecture series is a joint venture between The College of Wooster and the local Wayne County community. The purpose of the series is to bring experts on foreign policy and international affairs. Our goal is to contribute to the ongoing education of Wooster students and the broader community. We strive to engage and inform so that we are all better prepared as democratic citizens.

Film and Q&A with Director and Producer of American Factory

Steven Bognar, Director, is an Ohio-based documentary filmmaker, whose films include American Factory 美国工厂, A Lion in the House, The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, and 9TO5 – The Story of a Movement, all co-directed with his late partner Julia Reichert. Bognar’s solo films include Personal Belongings, Picture Day, Foundry Night Shift, and Last Reel. Bognar has guest lectured at Harvard, Yale and Stanford Universities, and has taught filmmaking for over 25 years. He is a two-time Peabody Award nominee, a two-time Primetime Emmy® winner, an Academy Award® winner and a member of the Motion Picture Academy.

Jeff Reichert, Producer, is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and critic who lives in Brooklyn. His films as a director have won awards and screened at major festivals worldwide and include the feature documentaries Gerrymandering, Remote Area Medical, This Time Next Year, the fiction-documentary hybrid Feast of the Epiphany and the shorts Kombit, Nobody Loves Me, American Carnage, To Be Queen and Before You Were Here. He also produced Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s American Factory which won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. His work has been awarded the Film Independent Spirit Award, Gotham Award and Cinema Eye Honor (all for Best Documentary). He is a Peabody Award Nominee. He is also the co–founder and editor of the online film journal Reverse Shot (est. 2003), now a publication of Museum of the Moving Image, and has written for Film Comment and Filmmaker among others. Reichert is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Tuesday, February 3, 2026, at 7:00p.m., Gault Recital Hall, Scheide Music Center, 525 E. University St., Wooster, Ohio

Going it Alone is Neither Safe nor Smart

Eileen O’Connor is the founder and CEO of Garnet Group Public Affairs, specializing in crisis prevention and management, litigation support, Congressional investigations, strategic communications, executive positioning, and global political advocacy. She recently retired from The Rockefeller Foundation, where she served as Senior Vice President for Communications, Policy, and Advocacy on the executive team of President Dr. Rajiv J. Shah. At the Foundation, O’Connor led special projects including the creation of the National Testing Plan (endorsed by the Trump Administration in 2019) during the pandemic. She also spearheaded the Foundation’s work on US and global vaccine distribution, creating coalitions like the State and Territorial Alliance for Testing (“STAT”). Before joining the Foundation, O’Connor served as Vice President for Public Affairs and Communications at Yale University.  O’Connor came to Yale from the Obama Administration, where she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia and senior adviser to the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She lived in Kabul from 2011 through 2012, overseeing $400 million in public diplomacy programs focused on building independent media, telecommunications, economically empowering women, voter protection and participation, and countering violent extremism.

Earlier in her career, O’Connor worked as a journalist at ABC News and CNN, serving as a national and White House correspondent based in London, Tokyo, and Moscow.

She serves on the boards of the Spirit of America, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting and Brave Generation, which helps exceptional Ukrainian students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees designed to rebuild Ukraine. Additionally, she sits on the advisory boards of the Foreign Press Correspondents Association and EPIC (the Earth Public Information Campaign). O’Connor has had numerous op-ed’s published by the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and CNN.com.

Tuesday, February 17, 2026, at 7:30p.m., Gault Recital Hall, Scheide Music Center, 525 E. University St., Wooster, Ohio

American Foreign Relations in the Arctic: Money, Power, and Science in a Changing North

 Dr. Lavelle is a professor at Case Western Reserve University where she teaches courses in U.S. Foreign Policy and International Law and Organization. The author of five books and numerous journal articles, she has been awarded fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the American Political Science Association where she worked as a congressional fellow on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services. Her most recent book Reluctant Conquest: American Wealth, Power, and Science in the Arctic was released by Yale University Press in June, 2025. Dr. Lavelle holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and an M. A. from the University of Virginia.

Wednesday, March 4, 2026, at 7:30p.m., Gault Recital Hall, Scheide Music Center, 525 E. University St., Wooster, Ohio

China, the U.S. and the Global South

Eric Olander is director and founder of The China-Global South Project, an award-winning independent, nonpartisan multimedia initiative dedicated to exploring every facet of China’s engagement in Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Central Asia. Founded in 2010, CGSP produces fact-based, agenda free news and primary-source research about China by a team of editors based in the impacted regions, providing unique on-the-ground perspectives. Eric is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience reporting, producing, and managing newsrooms for some of the world’s leading editorial organizations, including CNN, FRANCE 24, and the BBC World Service, among others. He has an extensive background working in newsrooms and doing content production in the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Asia. China, though, has been the central focus of Eric’s professional career. He first went to China in 1989 and spent more than a decade of combined time living, studying, and working there. Eric is fluent in both French and Mandarin Chinese. He received his undergraduate degree in East African history from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master’s of International Public Affairs with a focus on Chinese foreign policy from the University of Hong Kong.

Tuesday, March 31, 2026, at 7:30p.m., Gault Recital Hall, Scheide Music Center, 525 E. University St., Wooster, Ohio

Great Decisions 2025