Two join Conn’s Board of Trustees
Meet the newest members of Conn’s Board of Trustees. Hannah E. Gonzalez ’23 and John S. Zeiler ’74 began their service on July 1.
Hannah E. Gonzalez ’23
Gonzalez was elected by the Class of 2023 to serve as a Young Alumni Trustee. She came to Conn as a member of Posse Foundation’s 11th Chicago cohort and is currently working at Legal Aid Chicago as an education law paralegal.
At Conn, Gonzalez majored in government, minored in philosophy and earned a certificate from the Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy. In 2023, she was inducted as a member of the Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society for her academic achievements and earned the Holleran Center’s Tracee Reiser Community Activism Award. Additionally, she earned the Dean’s Leadership Award, the Judy Bailen Kateman ’65 Outstanding Senior Prize, and the SGA Margaret Watson Leadership Award for her extracurricular achievements. Gonzalez’s work experience includes internships as an undergraduate clerk with the Domestic Violence Division of the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and as a summer policy adviser and advocacy fellow with the U.S. Resettlement, Asylum & Integrations team at the International Rescue Committee.
Gonzalez’s leadership experience includes serving as president of the Student Government Association in her senior year, as chair of the Government and International Relations Department Student Advisory Board, as chair of Equity and Inclusion and House Senator on SGA, and as a big sib for the Genesis Mentorship Program. Throughout her years at Conn, Gonzalez was deeply involved in the Division of Institutional Equity and Inclusion, where she worked as the inaugural lead communications and programming fellow in her senior year and as the leadership development ambassador of race and ethnicity programs in her sophomore and junior years. For her work with the division, she earned the DIEI Emergent Leader Award and the Janet Foster ’80 Senior Award, the highest honor bestowed on a senior who has upheld the legacy of Unity House as a place of support and refuge for students of color at Connecticut College.
John S. Zeiler ’74
Zeiler started Hudson Housing Capital, an institutional investment management firm specializing in high quality affordable housing, in 1998. Hudson’s developments have been part of neighborhood revitalizations in urban areas nationwide.
A certified teacher in New York State, Zeiler teaches at the Bronx Academy for Applied Math and Science, a community public school. He founded nonprofit Project Trampoline (PT) to support minority public school students in the Bronx to matriculate and graduate from college. PT provides focused academic and life skills support through college graduation. There are currently 22 Project Trampoline students enrolled at Conn.
Zeiler is also a member of the board of the Police Athletic League of New York, the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition and the Urban Land Institute Affordable Housing Council.
Zeiler graduated from Connecticut College with a bachelor’s degree in urban studies and holds an MBA from New York University, a MPA from Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a MEd from Relay Graduate School of Education. He was inducted into the College’s Ad Astra Society in 2022.
