2018 Recipients of the Outstanding Recent Graduate Award

Katherine Lieva and Dieudonne A. Balla, Ed ’15
Dido Balla and Katherine Leiva currently teach English as a Second Language (ESOL) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. They founded FitLit in 2015 to help improve their students' lives through literacy and fitness. Balla moved to the U.S. from Cameroon to pursue his education, while Leiva is driven to honor the memory of her parents, who both passed away due to Type II Diabetes; they both make fitness an integral part of their lives and classrooms.
Seal-bin Han, Engr ’17
Seal-Bin Han is the founder and CEO of FitMango, a leading fitness technology platform that makes it easier and cheaper for large gyms to offer customized personal training to gym goers that began while Seal was still a student at Hopkins. In addition, Seal started his own non-profit, World Youth Initiative, which encourages young, motivated leaders to initiate service projects throughout the world.
Liam M. Haviv, A&S ’17
Liam is the founder and CEO of a national, non-partisan, not-for-profit organization - IDEAL (inform, discuss, enlighten, acknowledge, and learn) which has grown to ten chapters at high schools and universities in eight states. The mission of IDEAL is to change the way students think about politics and interact with each other.
Zachary R. Herchen, Peab ’06, ’07, ’09
Zach performs contemporary, jazz, and rock music in New York. He has premiered dozens of pieces ranging from jazz tone poems to Japanese noise rock to multimedia works and self-released his first CD, “Emerging Voices”, featuring commissioned works for voice and sax with opera singer Elisabeth Halliday, and is the artistic director of Con Vivo Music.
Jessica H. Ladd, BSPH’11
As the founder and CEO of Callisto, Jessica Ladd uses technology to combat sexual assault, empower survivors, and advance justice, created an online reporting system designed to empower the reporting experience for sexual assault survivors. In a time when 90% of sexual assaults are committed by repeat offenders but fewer than 10% are reported, the matching system is essential to identifying serial assaulters and help victims report.
Fernando R. Mena-Carrasco, Nurs ’15
Fernando Mena-Carrasco worked as a case and clinic manager of a primary care center in Saint Louis, using his background in social work to help Latino American immigrants find primary and HIV/AIDS care. Through his involvement with Medicines for Humanity, a non-profit committed to serving poverty-stricken communities, he was able to make recommendations to government and hospital officials in the Dominican Republic regarding ways to lower child mortality rates.
Chiara Monti, SAIS-Bol ’13, SAIS ’14
Chiara Monti has been working at the European Commission since March 2015, originally in the Cabinet of the President and currently in the Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Previously she held positions at the World Bank, the Migration Policy Institute, the German Marshall Fund of the US, and the Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development.
Jennifer M. Parisien, Bus ’13
Jennifer Parisien has taken JHU’s mission of “teaching business with humanity in mind” throughout her career and personal life by promoting financial literacy in Native American communities. Over a three-year timespan, Jennifer led a group of tribal government CFO’s, experts in the industry, and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) and AICPA to produce the only guidebook available that tackles accounting and financial reporting for tribal governments.