M.O.P. Vaishnav College for Women Archives

Mr. Torrey Lawson is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and educator with over 20 years of experience across national and international media. He has worked as a producer at NBC News and ABC News, and reported internationally for CGTN Digital and BBC Worldwide. He has also served as the Joan Konner Visiting Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and as the inaugural Stokes Visiting Professor of Journalism at Loyola University New Orleans, where he developed courses on digital storytelling, investigative reporting, film, and media studies, as also a high-enrollment course on sports, media, and politics. Besides, Mr. Lawson has taught investigative reporting at UC Berkeley. He is currently a Fulbright Specialist and Visiting Fellow at Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, where his research examines how digital platforms are used for recruitment and exploitation across borders; it has a particular focus on human trafficking networks, platform accountability, and the global implications of AI-driven media systems.

As a Fulbright Specialist in India, Mr. Lawson will work with students and faculty at M.O.P. Vaishnav College for Women in Chennai, leading workshops and lectures on investigative journalism, digital verification, and global storytelling in the evolving media landscape.

Ms. Persis Naumann is a PhD Candidate and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Global Health Ethics, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, where she also holds a master’s degree in Healthcare Ethics. Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Sathyabama University, Chennai, India. Prior to moving to the U.S., Ms. Naumann taught IGCSE biology at Ghiyasuddin International School in the Maldives.

She is also the founder of Kelir Books LLC in Pittsburgh that produces bilingual Tamil language and cultural resources that represent all types of Tamil families including Tamils living around the globe, multicultural families, and language learners.

As a PhD student her research directly impacts Tamil women and the wider South Asian community. As a professor of ethics, she focuses on the promotion of cultural understanding and ethical decision making in cross-cultural care. In her entrepreneurial endeavor rooted in social responsibility, she equips and empowers parents and families through the complexities of socio-cultural identity in today’s world and advocates for ethical approaches in storytelling, representation, and business practice.

Ms. Naumann has extensive experience in bioethics empirical research including the qualitative research project, “Barriers to involvement in healthcare decision making in advanced cancer care in minority populations”, which was published in the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics Journal. She has also presented bioethics papers at major regional, national, and international ethics conferences and won several regional and national scholarships.

She worked with the Director of the American Nurse Association (ANA) Center for Ethics and Human Rights on nursing ethics policies, contributing towards ANA’s position statements and publications on gender and culture.

She has been a member of the Advisory Committee at Jeevaratchanai Social Service Organization Chennai, India, for over 10 years and currently provides them with quality and ethics consultation. By volunteering in person at the Jeevaratchanai children’s home and collaborating with the host institution during the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship she will spend time with the girls living there and students at the university, sharing America’s diverse culture and history through music, dance, sports, and food, celebrating the differences, and embracing the similarities in the cultures of America and India, as well as sharing her own travel and migration experience as a Chennai-born girl living in Pittsburgh. As a Global Health Ethicist with interdisciplinary experience, specialized in healthcare ethics research, teaching, practice, and policy, Ms. Naumann continues to contribute to the field of healthcare ethics, particularly at the intersections of class, culture, and gender.

Social stigma associated with involuntary childlessness persists in society – costing people their mental health, their relationships, their careers, and even their lives. Since much of the healthcare and ethics research, discourse, and processes stem from the Global North, they can lack the nuances and complexities that come with specific cultural understanding. This research aims to develop a robust, comprehensive, and culturally relevant ethical framework for sexual and reproductive healthcare by studying the impact of social stigma on healthcare decision making among women with involuntary childlessness in Tamil Nadu.

Through ongoing extensive research, Ms. Naumann is creating frameworks in the intersectional field of ethics, culture, and stigma in relation to healthcare access and decision making; lecturing in the field of healthcare education, raising the next generation of ethical thinkers and doers; and creating a network of culturally competent ethics trainers who will support organizations to address bias, stigma, and discrimination as a healthcare intervention.