Saturday, November 22, 2008

Was invited by former President George H.W. Bush to attend the christening of the new aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush at Norfolk , VA on Jan. 10, 2009. Nov.24, 2008 – Breakfast and panel discussion at the National Press Club in association with my (and others) receiving the recognition of America’s Best Leaders 2008 (24 Leaders Who are Making a Difference) by U.S. News & World Report and the Center for Public Leadership of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. David Gergon MC’d the affair and C-SPAN-2 covered it. We also all appeared in the Dec. 1-8, 2008 issue of U.S. News & World Report. Other winners who were present were: David Baltimore, Regina Benjamin, Benjamin Carson, Manuel Diaz (Mayor of Miami), Marian Wright Edelman, Fiona Anne Harrison, Freeman A. Hrabowski (Pres. U of MD, Baltimore County, Dave Levin (Founder of KIPP Foundation, Linda Rottenberg (CEO, Endeavor), Mike Feinberg (C0-founder of KIPP), Maria Zuber (MIT). Awardees who were not there: Lance Armstrong, Jeffrey Bezos (CEO, Amazon.com), Terence Blanchard and Herbie Hancock (Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz), Robert Gates (Secretary of DoD), Amory Lovins, Anne Mulcahy (CEO Xerox), Indra Nooyi (CEO, PepsiCo.) Junior Officers DoD, Jeffrey Sachs, Steven Spielberg, Michael Tilson Thomas Music Director, SF Symphony. David Gergon asked each of us what we would recommend to President-Elect Obama as an area that he should pay attention to. I stressed the need for support of biomedical research and also the importance and moral obligation that we have towards promoting Global Health and its potential for “Health Diplomacy”.