April 21, 2009

Susan Orr, founder and CEO of Telosa Software, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, it was announced by the Academy yesterday. She joins 210 new Fellows and 19 Foreign Honorary Members joining one of the nation's most prestigious honorary societies and a center for independent policy research.

The scholars, scientists, jurists, writers, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders come from 28 states and 11 countries and represent universities, museums, national laboratories, private research institutes, businesses, and foundations.

Among the 2009 Fellows are Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nelson Mandela; U2 lead singer and humanitarian advocate Bono; Mario Capecchi, a Nobel Prize laureate in medicine or physiology; biographer Robert Caro; author Thomas Pynchon; actors Dustin Hoffman and James Earl Jones; mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne; singer/songwriter Emmylou Harris; California Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George; Defense Secretary Robert Gates; and National Public Radio journalist Susan Stamberg.

"It is an amazing and humbling honor to be included in such a distinguished group," said Orr.

Orr founded Telosa Software in 1986 to provide information services to the nonprofit sector. Telosa currently provides software and related training and support to thousands of nonprofit organizations around the world. Since 1967, Orr has been a trustee of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, where she has served as chairman since 1997.

Since its founding in 1780 by John Adams, James Bowdoin, John Hancock and other scholar-patriots, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences has elected as members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth.

The Academy undertakes studies of complex and emerging problems, including science, technology and global security; social policy and American institutions; the humanities and culture; and education. The Academy's membership of scholars and practitioners from many disciplines and professions gives it a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary, long-term policy research.

For a complete list of 2009 fellows, visit www.amacad.org/news/newsRelease.aspx.