1982 Jim Jarboe, 82MPH, chair of the RSPH Lead Gift Campaign, has been named Real Estate Agent of the Year 2000 by ReMax Executives, Inc. This annual award goes to the top seller among the company’s individual residential agents.

1986
Lisa Koonin, 86MSN/MPH, has been appointed director of the Office of Healthcare Partnerships, Division of Prevention Research and Analytic Methods at CDC.

1990
Layla Ibrahim Aljasem, 90MPH, is director of the Kuwait Department of Health Education, Ministry of Health. She is also a clinical tutor in the Department of Community Medicine and a faculty member at Kuwait University.

1993
Kristal Ammons, 93MPH, is a program consultant with the Georgia Department of Community Health, Office of Minority Health. Working with health care organizations and community coalitions, Ammons is developing strategies to improve minority access to health care and decrease racial disparities. She is the immediate assistant of the executive director of the Office of Minority Health.

Anne Mardis, 93MPH, married Patrick O’Keefe in September 2000. She is now working as an epidemiologist for CDC in Morgantown, West Virginia.

1994 Wendy Katz, 94MPH, is coordinating the Palliative Care Education Center and developing the home care and hospice programs at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital.

1995
Mark Kashdan, 95MPH, of Atlanta, is an attorney with the Office of the General Counsel in the US Department of Health and Human Services.

1996
Mina Pattani Handa, 96MPH, has moved to Silver Spring, Maryland. She now works as a research associate for the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). A nonprofit education and advocacy organization, CSPI focuses on improving the safety and quality of the food supply by educating the public about nutrition and representing public interests before legislative, regulatory, and judicial groups.

Kira Sue Sloop, 96MPH, and her husband, Ross, announce the birth of James Carson on March 15, 2001. Photos can be viewed at: http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/lig/k/i/kirasue/cybercasa.htm

Andrés Villaveces, 96MPH, and Lisa DeRoo, 96MPH, married on December 16, 2000, in Bogatá, Colombia. RSPH alums in attendance were Dotty Foote, 96MPH, and Mary Wieczinski, 97MPH. Villaveces has received his PhD in epidemiology from the University of Washington in Seattle and currently works in the Department of Injuries and Violence Prevention at the World Health Organization in Geneva. DeRoo is working toward her PhD in epidemiology, also at the University of Washington. After finishing her data collection and analysis at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, she will join Villaveces in Geneva.

1997
Using data from the Mercer National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans, Maris Bondi, 97MPH, and her colleagues at Partnership for Prevention are attempting to document the extent to which employers include preventive services in the health plans they provide employees. The group will also examine the influence of state legislative mandates on coverage levels and identify opportunities to increase coverage. Bondi is working toward a master’s degree in health policy at Johns Hopkins.

Randy Durbin, 97MSPH, his wife, Jennifer Grass Durbin, 98MPH/MN, and his young daughter have relocated to Lilburn, Ga. Durbin is currently director of epidemiology and health informatics at Science Applications International Corporation.

Erin Brand Jakum, 97MPH, and her husband, Joshua, announce the birth of their first child, Ethan William, on November 17, 2000.

Last spring Joseph O’Brien, 97MPH, received his medical degree from George Washington University. While enrolled, O’Brien was editor-in-chief of Reform Watch, a medical student journal on health care, and was active on the Committee on Health Policy. With the help of Karl Klontz, FDA expert on food- and waterborne diseases, and other University of Washington faculty, O’Brien developed a series of web-based medical case studies. O’Brien writes that medical students across the nation have been submitting diagnoses. A new series debuts in August. Check it out at http://www.gwu.edu/~cotw/. O’Brien is now a resident in orthopaedic surgery at the University of Maryland.

1998 In December 2000, Swan Cheng, 98MPH, married Ivan Yeung. The couple has since relocated to Hong Kong, where Yeung is an investment banker with Deutsche Bank. Cheng writes that she hasn’t started looking into public health opportunities in Hong Kong yet, opting to wait until the couple’s new baby is a bit older. For now, she’s enjoying the expatriate life.

Curtis Deloney, 98MPH, is attending a two-year master’s in clinical research program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Upon completion, he will return to Wake Forest University and complete his medical degree.

Hernando Perez, 98MPH, married Valerie Jean Wood, of Norton, Mass., on May 12, 2001, in Providence, R.I.

Jeremy Corry, 92C, 98MPH, died July 6 in Houston, Texas, after suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Corry, 30, worked as a researcher and systems manager at Emory from 1992 to 1999, when he earned an MPH in epidemiology. He then joined the School of Medicine at the University of Texas at Houston as information systems manager for the departments of pathology and cardiosurgery. During his two years in Texas, Jeremy founded the Houston Faerie Circle and served as coordinator for the Texas Medical Center Lambda Group. As an undergraduate at Emory, he majored in biology and was active in many student organizations, including Emory’s first recognized gay and lesbian student group. A memorial service was held in Atlanta July 22. The faculty and staff of RSPH extend deepest sympathies to Jeremy’s friends and family.

1999
This spring, Hozefa Divan, 99MSPH, began working as an epidemiologist for the Santa Clara County Department of Public Health in San Jose, Calif.

Evan Kaplan, 99MPH, has been promoted from the Office of Grants, Contracts, and Procurement to the Office of the General Counsel at the Georgia Department of Community Health. He is also on the evaluation team for a new information system that will allow for a single point of entry for all health transactions in Georgia.

In August of last year, Swati Patel, 99MPH, married Himanshu Karvir, in Asheville, N.C. Patel’s father rented the entire Asheville Civic Center to accommodate three days of religious ritual, feasting, dancing, and music. Almost 2,000 guests attended, converging in Asheville from all over the globe. The couple honeymooned in Bora-Bora and then relocated to Chicago, where Swati works for Lucent Technologies.

Kristen Villani, 99MPH, married John Hedstrom, on April 28, 2001, in Washington, D.C. RSPH Class of 1999 alums in attendance were Jen Ludovic, Heather Christian, Alisa Golson, David Bullock, Bradley Majette, Angie McGowan, and Graham Fox.

Villani is a lobbyist for the College of American Pathologists and attended both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in that capacity. Previously, she was the legislative director of lobbying for a law firm representing a number of medical specialty groups and has worked for North Carolina Congressman Mike McIntyre on Capitol Hill.

2000
Kelley Brittain, 2000MPH, married Jason Hise, on August 5, 2000. The couple resides in Lawrenceville, Ga., and Brittain is editor of Health Portal, a publication of Air Quality Sciences, Inc.

Fatima Shani Cody, 00C, 01MPH, recently added the Gold Congressional Medal to her long list of honors, awards, and accomplishments.

The Congressional Medal is the highest honor for youth bestowed by the US Congress. Fatima has worked for more than six years on meeting the award requirements, which include volunteerism, public service, physical fitness, and an overnight expedition. Her volunteer activities are extensive and include teaching science to second graders in an Atlanta City elementary school twice a week for the past two years. She has also delivered meals to the elderly for Meals on Wheels, worked in soup kitchens, mentored middle school students in Atlanta, and volunteered for Project Open Hand.

US Rep. John Lewis and Fatima Shani Cody

She earned her MPH this past July in Health Policy and Management. At RSPH, she has served as the “Go Girls” fitness coordinator and worked on the “Healthy Bodies & Spirit/WIC Project.” These projects focused on increasing participants’ knowledge about the importance of diet and exercise in healthy living. Cody practices what she preaches. A dance minor while an Emory undergraduate, she continues to fill in as a substitute teacher for beginning, intermediate, and advanced modern, ballet, and Jazz dance classes for the Georgia Ballet.

Cody is now working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the Office of the Director as a health communications intern. She is developing materials that will encourage healthy lifestyles among women. As an undergraduate, Fatima was a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar and one of four seniors inducted into the Emory College Hall of Fame. She hopes to begin medical school during 2002.

A public servant and lover of statistics, Ovid Hatcher Stephenson put the needs of others before his own throughout his life. When he died at 91, he left a gift of opportunity for students at the Rollins School of Public Health—the Ovid Hatcher Stephenson Scholarship. 1930 was a tough year for new college graduates. The stock market had recently crashed, banks were going belly up, and manufacturers were shutting down all over the country.

It was also the year the Stephenson brothers from Kite, Georgia, graduated with honors from the business school at Emory, the joint winners of the Alpha Kappa Psi Scholarship Cup for academic achievement. After graduation, one of their professors called them both into his office and said he had a lead on a graduate assistantship at the University of Kentucky. The brothers were equally qualified, and the professor couldn’t decide which one to recommend for the job.

Even before the Great Depression, Ovid (left) and his younger brother Bill knew the value of a dollar, and they never took education for granted. They worked long hours to pay their way through school. During the summers, they tramped all over the mountains of western North Carolina, selling Bibles and dictionaries door-to-door, often depending on the kindness of strangers for food and lodging. One year, they bought a Model T Ford for $35 to deliver their wares at the end of the summer. They sold it for $50 when they were done, turning a nice profit.

“ He told them they had to decide between themselves,” says Robert Stephenson, the youngest of the five Stephenson brothers. “He couldn’t choose between two brothers.

” Ovid Hatcher Stephenson, the eldest, had always watched out for his little brother Bill, who was only 16 when he entered Emory. Ovid had delayed college for a year so they could attend school together and share a room to cut expenses.

“Ovid told the professor that since he was older, and jobs were so hard to come by, he could probably survive on the street more easily than Bill,” says Robert Stephenson. “So he sent Bill on to graduate school.”

For the next few years, Ovid got by on occasional accounting jobs and helped his father sell farm equipment until the family business went under. Then came the New Deal.

Ovid went to work for the new Federal Emergency Relief Administration as a traveling auditor in south Georgia, and Bill began a lifelong career with the Tennessee Valley Authority after graduate school. Ovid later took a job with the Georgia Department of Labor, where he established a staff unit to study and report labor statistics. He headed that unit for almost 30 years until he retired in 1971.

When Ovid died at 91 in January of 2000, he left a sizable sum to Emory to establish a student scholarship fund. Robert Stephenson, executor of his will, designated the fund for students in the Rollins School of Public Health. This way, Ovid can offer students the opportunity to attend graduate school—an opportunity that he never had.

“Ovid was extremely loyal to Emory, and he spent most of his career as a statistician in the public sector,” says Robert. “We know that those who work in the public sector don’t make as much money as they probably could in the private sector. And they’re doing a public service. If they want to get a graduate degree, they’ll need some help. ” —Valerie Gregg