Global Achievement Award 2016 | Johns Hopkins Alumni

Cresenciol Arcos, SAIS '73
Ambassador Cresencio Arcos, SAIS ’73 is incredibly deserving of the Global Achievement Award from Johns Hopkins University. Having obtained his MA degree from SAIS focusing on Latin America in 1973, he launched a prolific career spanning more than four decades that has had far reaching impact. Ambassador Arcos has held some of the highest ranks within the White House, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, and corporate America, including AT&T’s Vice President and Managing Director for International Public Affairs. He has served as Ambassador to Honduras during the early 1990s, and in this capacity was instrumental in negotiating peace in neighboring Nicaragua. He has advised some of this nation’s greatest diplomatic and military strategists, and been a vehicle for peace and progress as a result. His humble roots and modest disposition are mere masks for the great accomplishments he has achieved in his lifetime. Ambassador Arcos has also long been a champion for business development, fair competition, and increased market access for much of the developing world. In 1993, he served on the Department of Sate’s North American Free Trade Agreement Task Force, bringing a balanced perspective that helped ensure open markets that enhanced economies and provided jobs for member nations. His entrepreneurial spirit has allowed him to design trade agreements and policies that truly advance the values instilled in him at Johns Hopkins.

Michael Berkow, Ed '00
Michael Berkow is an experienced police executive with extensive knowledge in both domestic and international arenas. During his 39-year career, he has affected policing in over 30 foreign countries all over the world. Currently, Berkow is the Director of Coast Guard Investigative Service, a position he has held for over three years. In this role, he oversees 500 Officers in ports both domestic and foreign, including Guam, Puerto Rico, Bahrain, Hawaii and Alaska. Previously, Berkow served as President for Altergrity/Kroll a company that focuses on data protection and recovery, cyber security, and investigations on a global-level. His work in international security has been instrumental in multiply situations in countries such as Somalia, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Tanzania, Uganda, and Yemen. Following the July 2005 London bombings, Berkow worked with the London Metropolitan Police Service to examine, train, and retain leadership. He served as Director of the effort to rebuild the Somalia National Police Force and was the first director for the Haitian National Police Project, an effort to create the first civilian police force in Haiti’s history. He served as the police liaison for President Jimmy Carter’s election monitoring mission to Jamaica in 1997 and 2002; provided anti-corruption training and police forces in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania; and provided civil disorder management training to the Tanzanian and Yemen Police. Mr. Berkow was also responsible for police training and assistance in South and Central America. In addition, he was the 1999 recipient of a prestigious Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship to study the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Hamam Hadi, BSPH '97
Professor Hamam Hadi is President of the University of Alma Ata in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He has earned a reputation of being a thought and action leader in public health nutrition in Indonesia, the 4th most populous country in the world. Prior to attending Johns Hopkins, Dr. Hadi earned his Masters of Science degree in epidemiology in 1998 and Medical Degree in 1988 from the University of Gadja Mada in Indonesia. Dr. Hadi then capped his academic training by earning his Doctor of Science Degree from the Department of International Health in the School of Public Health in 1997. Dr. Hadi entered academia following graduation from Johns Hopkins in 1997, joining the faculty of the University of Gadjah Mada, serving as director of the post graduate program in nutrition, a position he held through July 2015, and rising to the rank of Professor. In 2000 to 2001, Dr. Hadi also directed the University of Gadjah Mada School of Public Health, the largest school of public health in Indonesia, and from 2001 to 2004 he was vice dean of the faculty of medicine, the largest school of medicine in Indonesia. In 2003, Dr. Hadi and his medical school colleagues established the first school of nutrition in Indonesia. The country now has more than 25 schools of nutrition, indicating the importance and high demand for this type of educational program across Indonesia. Since 2003, Dr. Hadi has been the chairman of the Indonesian Association of School Nutrition, a national organization tasked with redefining nutrition competences and the curricula for different levels of higher education nutrition programs, within the guidelines of the Indonesian Qualification Framework. Also with this major university system, Dr. Hadi served as director of the Centre for Health and Human Nutrition from 2000 to 2009. The Centre provides technical assistance in the development of regional and national policies on nutrition interventions. Currently, the Centre is conducting a national survey on nutrition services in hospitals and communities, expected to help guide the development of a national standard for nutrition services and is already guiding the national development of dietetics programs across some two dozen universities throughout the country. Dr. Hadi earned the rank of full professor in 2004, six years following his graduation from Johns Hopkins. He has over the course of his career published over 150 scientific articles, both nationally in Indonesia and in internationally recognized, peer‐reviewed journals, to advance the prevention of micronutrient deficiencies and improve growth children, as well as other areas of public health priority. He has been chief editor of the Indonesian Journal of Clinical Nutrition since 2000. Since 1998 he has advised more than 150 graduate students at the faculty of medicine, University of Gadjah Mada. Perhaps, however, Professor Hadi’s most entrepreneurial, envisioned and likely to be longest lasting contribution to the future health and quality of life of Indonesia has been the founding of the Alma Ata School of Health Sciences in Yogyakarta, Indonesia in 2009. The name chosen by Dr. Hadi was motivated by the global momentum and example established by JHU’s own Professor Carl E. Taylor in the Department of International Health, who served as the primary architect and organizer of the Alma Ata Conference in 1978, that established the critical importance of primary health care in achieving health for all. Recognizing a profound need for accelerating the training of allied health professionals to serve as entry level members into the expanding health care systems of Indonesia, Dr. Hadi founded, directed and became the architect of a School that has trained and graduated over 1,000 health science professionals to fill this human resources gap in the country.

Caitlin Reed, BSPH '09
Caitlin Reed embodies Global Achievement. She is a dedicated clinician and fierce advocate for patients with deadly infectious diseases. Dr. Reed successfully treated the most extensively drug-resistant case of TB ever in the U.S. While others urged palliative care, Dr. Reed persevered; her patient had just a few weeks left on treatment before being declared cured. Beyond that, Dr. Reed changed policy for tens of thousands of patients around the world. By being courageous enough to publicly voice the difficulties in accessing a new but unavailable TB drug, Delamanid, in Lancet Infectious Diseases and the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Dr. Reed convinced the company to allow for broader access. Dr. Reed is now convincing policymakers to fund a stalled plan to combat drug-resistant TB globally with a compelling op-ed in the L.A. Times, and visits to her representatives. Dr. Reed's rare mix of compassion, spirit, intelligence, and tenacity to the neglected field of tuberculosis, has achieved amazing results. She is equally skilled and passionate about improving the delivery of care of other diseases, selflessly combatting the Ebola epidemic in 2014 in West Africa, and fighting the Toxoplasmosis drug price hike. Dr. Reed is a truly exemplary reflection of Hopkins, saving lives, millions at a time.

Keerti Shah, BSPH '57, '63
Keetri Shah prodigious accomplishments as an investigator are more fully recounted by colleagues whose comments are attached. Suffice it to say his contributions in three fields of virology represent landmarks still cited today. His early studies of insect-borne viruses laid the foundation for his future research by combining an epidemiological prospective with solid laboratory investigation. Moving to his work on SV40 and related viruses, he broadened his approach to the role of viruses in cancer. Finally, as one of the pioneers, he brought the prospective of population-based research to HPV as the cause of cervical and laryngeal cancers. The present HPV vaccine would not have been possible without his research. He thus typifies the global approach to research that our school represents. He has been a guide and principal adviser in forming a new department that aims to combine a populational vision with solid biologic research. Without Keerti’s wisdom and tact, the department, as it still exists, would not have been possible.

Keith West, BSPH '79, '87, Faculty
Keith is a nutritionist with an RD from Walter Reed and an MPH and DrPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. West has made major contributions to international nutrition where his randomized community trials of vitamin A specifically, and micronutrient supplements in general, have changed policies and programs around the world. One of his strengths is his ability to build research field sites where evidence for interventions can be tested in randomized trials on a massive scale. He played key roles in vitamin A supplementation trials among preschool age children in Indonesia and Nepal that showed one in three child deaths could be averted with inexpensive twice yearly vitamin A supplements. Further trials showed an impact on maternal mortality with maternal vitamin A supplementation in Nepal, maternal micronutrient supplementation on preterm birth and newborn vitamin A on neonatal mortality in Bangladesh. Such findings have led to supplementation programs that have saved millions of lives worldwide. Another area in which he has made important contributions is the nutrition of refugee and severely malnourished populations. He is also an outstanding teacher whose course on international nutrition is a favorite among students and alumni. He has advised many masters and doctoral students, and is dedicated to capacity building in low income countries. His commitment to improving the health of low resource populations is unwavering.