America’s Best Leaders, 2007: Honoree Biographies
Secretary James A. Baker III
Partner
Baker Botts LLP
James A. Baker III is presently a senior partner in the law firm of Baker Botts. He has served in senior government positions under three United States Presidents. Mr. Baker served as the nation's 61st Secretary of State from January 1989 through August 1992 under President George Bush. During his tenure at the State Department, Mr. Baker traveled to 90 foreign countries as the United States confronted the unprecedented challenges and opportunities of the post–Cold War era. Mr. Baker’s reflections on those years of revolution, war and peace—The Politics of Diplomacy—was published in 1995.
Mr. Baker served as the 67th Secretary of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. As Treasury Secretary, he was also Chairman of the President's Economic Policy Council. From 1981 to 1985, he served as White House Chief of Staff to President Reagan. Mr. Baker's record of public service began in 1975 as Under Secretary of Commerce to President Gerald Ford. It concluded with his service as White House Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to President Bush from August 1992 to January 1993.
Long active in American presidential politics, Mr. Baker led presidential campaigns for Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush over the course of five consecutive presidential elections from 1976 to 1992.
A native Houstonian, Mr. Baker graduated from Princeton University in 1952. After two years of active duty as a lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, he entered the University of Texas School of Law at Austin. He received his J.D. with honors in 1957 and practiced law with the Houston firm of Andrews and Kurth from 1957 to 1975.
Mr. Baker’s memoir—Work Hard, Study . . . and Keep Out of Politics! Adventures and Lessons from an Unexpected Public Life—was published in October 2006.
Mr. Baker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 and has been the recipient of many other awards for distinguished public service, including Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson Award, The American Institute for Public Service's Jefferson Award, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government Award, The Hans J. Morgenthau Award, The George F. Kennan Award, the Department of the Treasury's Alexander Hamilton Award, the Department of State's Distinguished Service Award, and numerous honorary academic degrees.
Mr. Baker was born in Houston, Texas in 1930. He and his wife, the former Susan Garrett, currently reside in Houston, and have eight children and nineteen grandchildren.
Kenneth I. Chenault
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
American Express Company
Kenneth I. Chenault is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Express Company. Mr. Chenault joined the company in September 1981 as Director of Strategic Planning. He was named President of the Consumer Card Group in 1989, and in 1993 he became President of Travel Related Services (TRS), which encompassed all of American Express’ card and travel businesses in the United States. In 1995, he assumed additional responsibility for the company’s worldwide card and travel businesses and also was named Vice Chairman of American Express. Mr. Chenault became President and Chief Operating Officer in February 1997. He assumed his current responsibilities as CEO on January 1, 2001, and as Chairman on April 23 of that year.
Before he came to American Express, Mr. Chenault was a management consultant with Bain & Co. from 1979 to 1981, and an attorney with Rogers & Wells from 1977 to 1979.
Mr. Chenault serves on the boards of American Express and several other corporate and nonprofit organizations, including IBM, the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, the National Center on Addiction & Substance Abuse at Columbia University, the Smithsonian Institution’s Advisory Council for the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Phoenix House Foundation and the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation. He also is on the boards of the Partnership for New York City, The Business Council and the Business Roundtable and serves as Vice Chairman of each of these organizations.
A wide variety of civic, social service and community organizations have recognized Mr. Chenault for his public service leadership. He has received the Phoenix House Public Service Award, the Corporate Responsibility Award from the International Rescue Committee and the Wall Street Rising Leadership Award, among others.
Mr. Chenault holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA in history from Bowdoin College, and he has received a number of honorary degrees from several universities.
He and his wife, Kathryn, live in New York with their two children.
Kenneth Fisher
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Fisher House™ Foundation, Inc.
Kenneth Fisher is Chairman and CEO of the Fisher House Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that constructs “comfort homes” for families of hospitalized military personnel and veterans. Founded in 1990 by his late uncle Zachary Fisher, the program aids more than 10,000 guest families each year and has saved families more than $80 million. To date, the foundation has built 37 houses at military bases and VA medical centers across the country and overseas, in Landstuhl, Germany. It plans to complete 21 more houses by the end of 2010.
Mr. Fisher is also a senior partner in the prestigious New York City firm Fisher Brothers, where he continues a four-generation tradition in real estate. A 27-year veteran of the rest estate industry, Mr. Fisher oversees the firm’s daily marketing activities and is responsible for the ongoing leasing and management of more than six million square feet of class-A commercial space in midtown Manhattan covering Park, Sixth and Third Avenues.
In addition to his responsibilities at Fisher Brothers, Mr. Fisher is an executive committee member for the City Investment Fund, LP, co-sponsored by Fisher Brothers and Morgan Stanley. CIF is a $770 million investment vehicle designed to pursue strategic real estate investment opportunities exclusively within the five boroughs.
Mr. Fisher was a member of the board of directors of the Realogy Corporation, a publicly traded company that offers real estate franchise brokerage, relocation, and title and settlement services. He is currently a member of the board of directors of Strategic Board of Hotels and Resorts, a publicly traded company. He also serves on the board of the Jackie Robinson Foundation.
In 2007, George W. Bush appointed Ken to the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, which will conduct a comprehensive review of the care provided to soldiers who return from the battle-field. Mr. Fisher is a recipient of the 2005 Kaufman Center Corporate Leadership Award. He is a member of the executive committees of both the Real Estate Board of New York and New York’s Board of Governors, and he sits on the board of trustees of the Intrepid Museum Foundation and on the board of directors of the New York’s Finest Foundation. He is also a trustee of the New York City Association for the Help of Retarded Children, which in 2003 presented him with the first M. Anthony Fisher Humanitarian Award, named in honor of his late cousin Tony, who was also a member of the AHRC board.
William H. Foege, M.D., M.P.H.
Senior Fellow
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
William H. Foege is an epidemiologist who worked in the successful campaign to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. Dr. Foege became Chief of the CDC Smallpox Eradication Program, and was appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in 1977. He attended Pacific Lutheran University, received his medical degree from the University of Washington, and his Master’s in Public Health from Harvard University.
In 1984, Dr. Foege and several colleagues formed the Task Force for Child Survival, a working group for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, The World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Its success in accelerating childhood immunization led to an expansion of its mandate in 1991 to include other issues which diminish the quality of life for children.
Dr. Foege joined The Carter Center in 1986 as its Executive Director, Fellow for Health Policy and Executive Director of Global 2000. In 1992, he resigned as executive director of The Carter Center, but continued in his role as a Fellow and as Executive Director of the Task Force for Child Survival and Development. In January 1997, he joined the faculty of Emory University, where he is Presidential Distinguished Professor of International Health at the Rollins School of Public Health. In September 1999, Dr. Foege became a Senior Medical Advisor for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In October 1999 Dr. Foege resigned as Executive Director of the Task Force for Child Survival and Development. Dr. Foege has retired from both Emory University and the Gates Foundation in December of 2001; however, he remains active in both organizations Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and as a Gates Fellow.
Dr. Foege is the recipient of many awards, holds honorary degrees from numerous institutions, and was named a Fellow of the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1997. He is the author of more than 125 professional publications.
Michael J. Fox
Founder
The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research
Michael J. Fox was born Michael Andrew Fox in 1961 to parents William and Phyllis in Edmonton, the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta. (He later adopted the "J" as an homage to legendary character actor Michael J. Pollard.) Fox debuted as a professional actor at 15, co-starring in the sitcom Leo and Me on Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) with future Tony Award-winner Brent Carver. Over the next three years, he juggled local theater and TV work, and landed a few roles in American TV movies shooting in Canada.
When he was 18, Mr. Fox moved to Los Angeles. He had a series of bit parts, including one in CBS' short-lived (yet critically acclaimed) Alex Haley/Norman Lear series Palmerstown USA, before winning the role of lovable conservative Alex P. Keaton on NBC's enormously popular Family Ties (1982-89). During Mr. Fox's seven years on Ties, he earned three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe, making him one of the country's most prominent young actors.
Mr. Fox returned to series television in 1996 with ABC's Spin City, portraying Michael Flaherty, New York's deputy mayor. He won critical praise, garnering three Golden Globe Awards, one Emmy Award, three Emmy nominations, a GQ Man-of-the-Year Award (in the TV comedy category), a People's Choice Award, and two SAG Awards.
Mr. Fox also had time during his busy TV work to become an international film star, appearing in over a dozen features showcasing his keen ability to shift between comedy and drama. These include the Back to the Future trilogy, The Hard Way, Doc Hollywood, The Secret of My Success, Bright Lights, Big City, Light of Day, Teen Wolf, Casualties of War, Life With Mikey, For Love or Money, The American President, Greedy, The Frighteners, and Mars Attacks!
Mr. Fox married his Family Ties co-star, actress Tracy Pollan, in 1988. Together they have four children. Though he would not share the news with the public for another seven years, Fox was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson's disease in 1991. While he maintains a strong commitment to his acting and writing careers, upon disclosing his condition in 1998, Mr. Fox has shifted a good deal of his focus and energies toward The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, which he launched in 2000.
Ronald Grzywinski
Chairman
ShoreBank Corporation
Ronald Grzywinski is the chairman and cofounder of ShoreBank Corporation of Chicago. His career helping to transform underserved urban and rural neighborhoods into vibrant communities has inspired a worldwide community development banking movement.
Mr. Grzywinski’s experiences and observations of the disparities in economic opportunities between African American and white communities inspired his commitment to discovering ways in which a financial institution could catalyze positive social change. Having witnessed the ramifications and injustices of “redlining,” Mr. Grzywinski recruited three like-minded colleagues whose earlier work had launched one of the country’s first minority small business loan programs – Mary Houghton, Milton Davis and James Fletcher – to purchase what is known today as ShoreBank.
Despite the notion that a for-profit institution could create public benefits was unimaginable to most, Mr. Grzywinski and his colleagues set out to provide access to the resources to minorities that were typically unavailable to minorities to help fuel new economic and community development opportunities. Along the way the bank would generate a profit while fostering the redevelopment of the city’s South Shore neighborhoods and thus the nation’s first community development bank was born.
The ShoreBank model would ultimately become the inspiration for establishment of the Community Development Financial Institutions which since its inception in the 1990s has invested nearly $2 trillion dollars for the redevelopment of neglected urban and rural communities across the U.S. Today, ShoreBank has banks in Cleveland, Detroit and the Pacific Northwest as well as in Chicago.
In 2006, Mr. Grzywinski was presented a Citizen Activist Award from the Gleitsman Foundation at for challenging social injustice in the U.S., and named a member of the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion to provide advice and recommendations on initiatives focused on expanding access to banking services by underserved populations. And in early 2007, he was named a member of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship.
In 2001, Northern Michigan University presented Mr. Grzywinski with and Honorary Doctorate of Business and in 1988, he was awarded the Medal for Entrepreneurial Excellence by the Yale University School of Management. He currently serves on the boards of the Enterprise Foundation, CFED (Corporation for Enterprise Development), the Center for Community Change, Ecotrust, Ecotrust Canada, and various ShoreBank affiliates. Mr. Grzywinski holds a B.S. from Loyola University in Chicago.
Lee H. Hamilton
President and Director
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Lee H. Hamilton is president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University. Mr. Hamilton represented Indiana’s 9th congressional district for 34 years beginning January 1965. He served as chairman and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, chaired the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress. As a member of the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee, Mr. Hamilton was a primary draftsman of several House ethics reforms.
Mr. Hamilton was named co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a forward looking, bi-partisan assessment of the situation in Iraq, created at the urging of Congress. Mr. Hamilton served as Vice-Chair of the 9/11 Commission and co-chaired the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, established to monitor implementation of the Commission’s recommendations. He is currently a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council, the FBI Director’s Advisory Board, the CIA Director’s Economic Intelligence Advisory Panel, the Defense Secretary’s National Security Study Group, and the US Department of Homeland Security Task Force on Preventing the Entry of Weapons of Mass Effect on American Soil.
Mr. Hamilton is a graduate of DePauw University and Indiana University school of law. Before his election to Congress, he practiced law in Chicago, Illinois, and Columbus, Indiana. Mr. Hamilton is the author of A Creative Tension - The Foreign Policy Roles of the President and Congress; How Congress Works and Why You Should Care; and co-author of Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission.
Mary Houghton
President
ShoreBank Corporation
Mary A. Houghton is president and cofounder of ShoreBank Corporation of Chicago, a $2.1 billion regulated commercial bank holding company. Since its inception in 1973, ShoreBank has been providing individuals and small businesses with access to the financial resources and information that are helping to revitalize disinvested and neglected urban and rural communities. Originally a commercial lender, Ms. Houghton continues to lead the company’s expansion into environmental and community development finance to other countries.
ShoreBank was the first bank in the U.S. to manage a business strategy designed specifically to stimulate positive economic and community development opportunities that transform underserved neighborhoods into new vibrant communities of choice – places where people are choosing to live and work. Today there are about a dozen banks, several hundred credit unions and NGOs specializing in local community development finance.
Since 1997, Ms. Houghton has been a member of the Development Finance Forum, an international network of independent practitioners who is helping to build the development finance industry. Ms. Houghton is the chair of ShoreCap International which was established in 2003, which invests capital in locally regulated financial institutions. She is also the chair of ShoreCap Exchange which began recently providing funding for technical assistance to financial institutions which ShoreCap is an investor. Ms. Houghton currently serves on the boards of K-REP Bank in Nairobi, Kenya; Women’s World Banking; the Calvert Foundation; and the Women’s Self Employment Project. In addition, Ms. Houghton also serves on numerous advisory committees and boards including the Advisory Board of the Harvard Business School’s Initiative on Social Enterprise and the Policy Advisory Board of the World Bank-based Cities Alliance.
In 2004, Ms. Houghton was named Community Banker of the Year by American Banker in recognition of being a pioneer in the community development banking field and for her role in the bank’s efforts to forge new economic opportunities that have helped foster positive social change in Chicago and around the world. In 2006, The Gleitsman Foundation, which honors those who challenged social injustice, presented her with a Citizen Activist Award at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2007, Ms. Houghton was named a member of the Ashoka Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship.
Ms. Houghton holds an M.A. in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University and B.A. cum laude from Marquette University. In 2001, Northern Michigan University presented her with and Honorary Doctorate of Business.
Andrea Jung
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Avon Products, Inc.
Andrea Jung, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Avon Products, is responsible for developing and executing all of the company’s long-term growth strategies, launching new brand initiatives, developing earnings opportunities for women worldwide, and defining Avon as the premier direct seller of beauty products.
Ms. Jung was appointed CEO in 1999 and elected Chairman in 2001. She has been a member of the Board of Directors since January 1998.
Prior to her current role, Ms. Jung was President and Chief Operating Officer, with full P&L responsibility for Avon’s business units worldwide. From 1996 to 1998, she ascended to senior level positions within Avon’s product marketing group, where she oversaw research and development, market research, strategic planning, joint ventures and alliances.
Ms. Jung joined the company in January 1994 as President, Product Marketing Group, Avon U.S. Before joining Avon, Ms. Jung was Executive Vice President at Neiman Marcus from 1991 to 1993, responsible for accessories, cosmetics and women’s, intimate and children’s apparel. Prior to that, she was Senior Vice President, General Merchandising Manager, at I. Magnin from 1987 to 1991.
Ms. Jung became the first woman elected chair of the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association in March 2001, a role she held until early 2005. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the General Electric Company and is a member of the New York Presbyterian Hospital Board of Trustees and the Catalyst Board of Directors.
In 2005, Ms. Jung was ranked #5 on Fortune magazine's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business” list and has been on that list since its inception. Also in 2005, The Wall Street Journal ranked Ms. Jung #3 on its "50 Women to Watch in Business” list. In late 2004, she was named one of "10 Prominent People to Watch in 2005" by Newsweek magazine. In January 2003, she was featured in BusinessWeek as one of the “Best Managers of the Year.”
Ms. Jung is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and is fluent in Chinese (Mandarin).
Nicholas Kristof
Columnist
The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since November 2001, writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week. Previously, he was associate managing editor of The Times, responsible for the Sunday Times.
Mr. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated from Harvard College, Phi Beta Kappa, and then won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, where he studied law and graduated with first class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. After working in France, he caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia, writing articles to cover his expenses. Mr. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 120 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. He’s also one of the very few Americans to be at least a two-time visitor to every member of the Axis of Evil. During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, wars, an Indonesian mob carrying heads on pikes, and an African airplane crash.
After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a correspondent in Los Angeles and as bureau chief in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo. In 2000, he covered the presidential campaign and in particular Governor Bush, and he is the author of the chapter on Mr. Bush in the reference book The Presidents.
In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China’s Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary. He has also won other prizes including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly award, the Online News Association award, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award.
Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are authors of China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power and Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia. Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are the parents of Gregory, Geoffrey and Caroline. Mr. Kristof enjoys running, backpacking, and having his Chinese and Japanese corrected by his children.
Fred Krupp
President
Environmental Defense
Fred Krupp is president of Environmental Defense, a national nonprofit organization that links science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems.
Mr. Krupp and Environmental Defense have been influential in developing market-based solutions such as the acid rain reduction plan in the 1990 Clean Air Act and the U.S. proposal to achieve least-cost greenhouse gas reductions in the global climate treaty. Mr. Krupp often headed the Environmental Defense delegation in international climate change negotiations and has led the organization in a series of corporate partnerships with McDonald's, BP, FedEx and others.
He spearheaded the successful effort to convince chemical manufacturers to speed the health screening of their most widely produced chemicals and was quick to make use of the Internet to advance environmental protection, most notably by providing convenient public access to information on pollution sources and health effects by zip code.
Since Mr. Krupp joined Environmental Defense in 1984, its annual budget has increased from $3 million to $71.8 million, full-time staff increased from 50 to nearly 300, membership expanded from 40,000 to more than 500,000 and new offices opened in Raleigh, Austin, Boston, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Beijing.
Mr. Krupp has served on the President's Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations in the George W. Bush and Clinton administrations and served on the commissions on the environment established by Presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush. He served on the board of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. He is the recipient of the 1999 Keystone Leadership in Environment Award and the 2002 Champion Award from the Women's Council on Energy and the Environment.
Mr. Krupp is a graduate of Yale with a law degree from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Environmental Defense, Mr. Krupp spent several years in private law practice in New Haven and helped found the Connecticut Fund for the Environment, a leading state environmental group. He lives in Connecticut with his family.
Yo-Yo Ma
Artistic Director & Founder
The Silk Road Project, Inc.
The many-faceted career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma is testament to his continual search for new ways to communicate with audiences, and to his personal desire for artistic growth and renewal. Whether performing a new concerto, revisiting a familiar work from the cello repertoire, coming together with colleagues for chamber music or exploring musical forms outside of the Western classical tradition, Mr. Ma strives to find connections that stimulate the imagination.
Yo-Yo Ma maintains a balance between his engagements as soloist with orchestras throughout the world and his recital and chamber music activities. He draws inspiration from a wide circle of collaborators, each fueled by the artists’ interactions. One of Mr. Ma’s goals is the exploration of music as a means of communication and as a vehicle for the migrations of ideas across a range of cultures throughout the world. Expanding upon this interest, in 1998 Mr. Ma established the Silk Road Project to promote the study of the cultural, artistic and intellectual traditions along the ancient Silk Road trade route that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. By examining the flow of ideas throughout this vast area, the Project seeks to illuminate the heritages of the Silk Road countries and identify the voices that represent these traditions today.
Mr. Ma is an exclusive Sony Classical artist, and his discography of over 75 albums (including more than 15 Grammy Award winners) reflects his wide-ranging interests. All of his recent albums have quickly entered the Billboard chart of classical best sellers, remaining in the Top 15 for extended periods, often with as many as four titles simultaneously on the list.
Yo-Yo Ma was born in 1955 to Chinese parents living in Paris. He began to study the cello with his father at age four and soon came with his family to New York, where he spent most of his formative years. Later, his principal teacher was Leonard Rose at the Juilliard School. He sought out a traditional liberal arts education to expand upon his conservatory training, graduating from Harvard University in 1976. He has received numerous awards, including the Avery Fisher Prize (1978), the Glenn Gould Prize (1999), the National Medal of the Arts (2001), the Dan David Prize (2006) and the Sonning Prize (2006). In 2006, Secretary General Kofi Annan named him a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
Mr. Ma and his wife have two children. Mr. Ma plays two instruments, a 1733 Montagnana cello from Venice and the 1712 Davidoff Stradivarius.
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
U.S. House of Representatives
Nancy Pelosi made history this year, breaking the marble ceiling to become the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. As the highest-ranking elected woman in American history, she is second in the line of presidential succession.
Speaker Pelosi is focused on growing the economy and strengthening families. In its first 100 hours, the 110th Congress passed legislation to increase the minimum wage for the first time in 10 years, reinstated pay-as-you-go budget rules, and make college more affordable. The House also acted quickly to invest in stem cell research giving hope to American families plagued with disease and sickness, and is committed to reducing the cost of needed prescription drugs for America’s seniors and people with disabilities.
In the first 100 days, the Congress acted swiftly to defend our country with the passage of the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission; to protect our troops by strengthening our military readiness; and to responsibly change the direction in the war in Iraq.
The Speaker graduated from Trinity College in Washington, D.C. She and her husband, Paul Pelosi, a native of San Francisco, have five grown children: Nancy Corinne, Christine, Jacqueline, Paul and Alexandra, and six grandchildren. While raising her five children prior to her election to Congress, Pelosi served in a number of positions including Chair of the California Democratic Party. She has represented California’s Eighth District, which includes most of San Francisco, since 1987, achieving a distinguished record of intelligence and security initiatives, family and child policy, health care, human rights and environmental policy. Prior to serving as Speaker, Pelosi led House Democrats with remarkable effectiveness as House Democratic Leader.
Since her first term in Congress, Ms. Pelosi has been a leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS. One of Pelosi's first legislative victories was the creation of the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS program. She has promoted increased funding for research and treatment that has extended the lives of millions, and supported efforts to develop an HIV vaccine.
Throughout her career, the Speaker has led bipartisan efforts for international human rights in all parts of the world, including China, Central America, Tibet and most recently in the Sudan.
The Honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger
Governor
State of California
The world knows Arnold Schwarzenegger as a famous bodybuilder and a Hollywood action hero, but he is also a successful businessman, generous philanthropist and California's 38th Governor.
Since he took office, Governor Schwarzenegger's responsible fiscal policies have brought California back from the brink of bankruptcy, reinvigorating the economy, creating a better environment for business and creating more than 680,000 new jobs. Improved state revenues have paid down the state's debt and afforded record investments in schools, roads and affordable healthcare for children.
Governor Schwarzenegger's most notable accomplishments include a bipartisan agreement to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions by signing landmark legislation in 2006, increasing the minimum wage while lowering the state's unemployment rate and overhauling the workers' compensation system—cutting costs by more than 35 percent. In addition, Governor Schwarzenegger is the first governor in decades to make major investments in improving California's aging infrastructure through his Strategic Growth Plan, helping to reduce congestion and clean the air. He established the Hydrogen Highway and Million Solar Roofs Plan, continuing his leadership in creating a greener environment.
This world-famous athlete and actor was born in Austria in 1947, and at 20 became the youngest person ever to win the Mr. Universe title. He came to America shortly after, winning an unprecedented 12 more world bodybuilding titles. Challenging both his body and mind, he earned a college degree from the University of Wisconsin and became a U.S. citizen in 1983. Three years later he married broadcast journalist Maria Shriver.
Governor Schwarzenegger's most gratifying accomplishments are rooted in public service—committing his time, energy and personal finances to charitable organizations around the world. He and Ms. Shriver have remained closely involved in Special Olympics, an organization founded by Ms. Shriver’s mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Governor Schwarzenegger’s many accomplishments have earned him the praise of numerous organizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center's "National Leadership Award" for his support of the organization's Holocaust studies.
Governor Schwarzenegger and Ms. Shriver have four children—Katherine, Christina, Patrick and Christopher.
Ruth J. Simmons
President
Brown University
Ruth J. Simmons was sworn in as the 18th president of Brown University on July 3, 2001. She also holds an appointment as professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Africana Studies. She was president of Smith College from 1995 until the time of her appointment at Brown.
A native of Texas and a 1967 graduate of Dillard University in New Orleans, Ms. Simmons received her Ph.D. in Romance languages and literatures from Harvard University in 1973. She is fluent in French and has written on the works of David Diop and Aime Cesaire.
In 1983, after serving as associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Southern California, Ms. Simmons joined the Princeton University administration. She remained at Princeton for seven years, leaving in 1990 for two years to serve as provost at Spelman College. Returning to Princeton in 1992 as vice provost, she remained at the university until June 30, 1995. As vice provost she was deputy to the provost and executive secretary of the Priorities Committee, the university’s budget committee. In 1993, invited by the president to review the state of race relations on the Princeton campus, Ms. Simmons wrote a report that resulted in a number of initiatives that received widespread attention. In 1995 she became president of Smith College, the largest women’s college in the United States, where she launched a number of strategic initiatives to strengthen the college’s academic programs and inaugurated the first engineering program at a U.S. women’s college.
Ms. Simmons is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, and the Council on Foreign Relations; she is currently serving as chair of the Ivy Council. She also serves on a number of boards, including Howard University, Texas Instruments, and the Goldman Sachs Group. Active in a wide range of educational, charitable, and civic endeavors, she holds honorary degrees from numerous colleges and universities.
Ms. Simmons is the recipient of a number of prizes and fellowships, including the German DAAD and a Fulbright Fellowship to France. In 1997 she was awarded the Centennial Medal from Harvard University, in 1999 the Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service from Columbia University, and in 2001 the President’s Award from the United Negro College Fund. She has been honored with the 2002 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal; the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal; and the chairman’s award of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. She was selected as a Newsweek “person to watch” and as a Ms. Woman of the Year in 2002. In 2001 Time magazine named Ms. Simmons America’s best college president.
Pat Summitt
Head Coach, Women's Basketball
University of Tennessee
Pat Head Summitt, head coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Volunteer basketball team, is starting her 34th season at the helm of the nation’s most successful program, a “hoopdom” built tirelessly, diligently and successfully by Coach Summitt, her staff and the 143 student-athletes who have been fortunate enough to don the Orange & White jerseys of the Tennessee Lady Volunteers for more than three decades.
Coach Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history (men or women) with 947 victories, enters her latest campaign as the reigning 2007 NCAA Champions. On April 3, 2007, Coach Summitt’s Lady Vols brought home a seventh NCAA basketball title to Knoxville after defeating #2-ranked North Carolina and #15-ranked Rutgers in the championship game. During her tenure, the Lady Vols have won seven NCAA titles, as well as 26 Southeastern Conference tournament and regular season championships. Tennessee has made an unprecedented 26 consecutive appearances in the NCAA Sweet 16 and produced 12 Olympians, 19 Kodak All-Americans named to 32 teams, and 69 All-SEC performers. Academically, Coach Summitt has a 100 percent graduation rate for all Lady Vols who have completed their eligibility at Tennessee.
Coach Summitt’s business-like philosophy of coaching was chronicled in her best-selling books, Reach for the Summit (1999) and Raise the Roof (1999), as well as the HBO documentary A Cinderella Season: The 1997 Lady Vols Fight Back. Coach Summitt was also the first female coach to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Coach Summitt has been named SEC Coach of the Year, The Sporting News Coach of the Year and the Naismith Coach of the Year. She has also been the Associated Press Coach of the Year and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Coach of the Year.
In 1984 Coach Summitt was the U.S. Women's Olympic basketball coach and led the team to the Olympic gold medal. In 2000, she was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, the first time she was eligible for the Hall’s ballot. She serves on the board of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History / Behring Center and is an active spokesperson for the United Way, The Race for the Cure and Juvenile Diabetes. She is still active as an alumna with the Chi Omega sorority.
Patricia Sue Head Summitt was born on June 14, 1952, in Henrietta, Tennessee. Along with her son, Ross “Tyler” Summitt, and two yellow Labrador retrievers, Coach Summitt resides in the family compound along the banks of the Tennessee River. She also enjoys cooking, golf, running, water and snow skiing, and boating.
Shirley M. Tilghman
President
Princeton University
Shirley M. Tilghman was elected Princeton University's 19th president on May 5, 2001, and assumed office on June 15, 2001. An exceptional teacher and a world-renowned scholar and leader in the field of molecular biology, she served on the Princeton faculty for 15 years before being named president.
Ms. Tilghman, a native of Canada, received her Honors B.Sc. in chemistry from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1968. After two years of secondary school teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa, she obtained her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia.
During postdoctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health, she made a number of groundbreaking discoveries while participating in cloning the first mammalian gene, and then continued to make scientific breakthroughs as an independent investigator at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia and an adjunct associate professor of human genetics and biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Ms. Tilghman came to Princeton in 1986 as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. Two years later, she also joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an investigator. In 1998, she took on additional responsibilities as the founding director of Princeton's multi-disciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.
A member of the National Research Council's committee that set the blueprint for the U.S. effort in the Human Genome Project, Ms. Tilghman also was one of the founding members of the National Advisory Council of the Human Genome Project for the National Institutes of Health.
From 1993 through 2000, Ms. Tilghman chaired Princeton's Council on Science and Technology, which encourages the teaching of science and technology to students outside the sciences. In 2002, Ms. Tilghman was one of five winners of the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science. In the following year, shereceived the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Developmental Biology, and in 2007, she was awarded the Genetics Society of America Medal for outstanding contributions to her field.
Ms. Tilghman is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the Royal Society of London. She serves as a trustee of The Jackson Laboratory, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a director of Google Inc.
Harold Varmus
President and Chief Executive Officer
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Harold Varmus, former Director of the National Institutes of Health and co-recipient of a Nobel Prize for studies of the genetic basis of cancer, has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City since January 2000.
Much of Dr. Varmus’ scientific work was conducted during 23 years as a faculty member at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical School, where he and Dr. J. Michael Bishop and their co-workers demonstrated the cellular origins of the oncogene of a chicken retrovirus. This discovery led to the isolation of many cellular genes that normally control growth and development and are frequently mutated in human cancer. For this work, Dr. Bishop and Dr. Varmus received many awards, including the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.
In 1993, Dr. Varmus was named by President Clinton to serve as the Director of the National Institutes of Health, a position he held until the end of 1999. Since his arrival at MSKCC, Dr. Varmus has emphasized opportunities to harness recent advances in the biological sciences to improve the care of patients with cancer. Under his leadership, the scientific programs have been reorganized and enlarged, a magnificent new research building, the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center, has been constructed, and new graduate training programs have been established in chemical biology and computational biology (as part of a new Tri-Institutional Research Program with Rockefeller University and Weill-Cornell Medical College) and in cancer biology (through MSKCC’s first degree-awarding program in the newly-established Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences).
Dr. Varmus has authored over 300 scientific papers and four books. He has been a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences since 1984 and of the Institute of Medicine since 1991, and has received the National Medal of Science, the Vannevar Bush Award, and several honorary degrees and other prizes, in addition to the Nobel Prize.
A native of Freeport, Long Island, Dr. Varmus is the son of Dr. Frank Varmus, a general practitioner, and Beatrice Varmus, a psychiatric social worker. After graduating from Freeport High School, he majored in English literature at Amherst College and earned a master’s degree in English at Harvard University. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Dr. Varmus is married to Constance Casey, a journalist and horticulturist; their two sons, Jacob and Christopher, also live in New York City.
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