Suzanne Abel

Associate Director for External Relations
Room 316
(650) 723-4719
sabel@stanford.edu

I have been at Stanford and the Haas Center since July 1995, after spending over a decade as the founding director of a public museum of art, history and anthropology in Mendocino County, CA. Prior to becoming a Californian, I lived in Costa Rica for several years, where I worked for the National Museum of Costa Rica and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest Tropical Field Research program. As an anthropologist, I have a longstanding interest in Native peoples of the Americas and in U.S.-Latin American relations.

At the Haas Center, I work closely with the faculty director, executive director, other senior staff, and the development and external relations team, including the fellowships staff. It is my privilege to work with our many donors and other supporters to help keep the Haas Center's programs on track with the resources they need to pursue excellence.

Fortunate to grow up in both the U.S. (mostly Washington, D.C.) and abroad (the former Yugoslavia, India and the U.K.), I have been involved in public service throughout my adult life. My father was a print and broadcast journalist who saw journalism as a pillar of any democratic society, and my mother was an avid volunteer wherever we lived. A 1971 graduate of Harvard-Radcliffe (English), I also completed my Masters and doctoral work in anthropology at Brown University and U.C. Berkeley.

My late husband, Jim Kennedy, was a hospice bereavement counselor with Peninsula Pathways, and before that a documentary filmmaker and journalist. My daughter (a Palo Alto High School grad) graduated from Smith College in 2005 and lives in London, where she works in classical music management. I have three stepchildren, who live and work in Los Angeles, San Diego and Caracas, Venezuela, and three granddaughters. Jim and I were inveterate news junkies and shared a love of international and domestic travel, film, books, museums, theatre and music.