Musician Darius Brubeck ’69 received a Rockefeller Foundation residency fellowship, spending November at the Bellagio, Italy, Conference Center in composition and collegial exchange with other artists and scholars. His upcoming winter months will also be filled: “I’ll be taking part in concerts with my father, Dave, and brothers Chris and Dan in London with the London Symphony Orchestra in December, with some dates in Germany following. Will visit New York and vicinity mid-January for the International Association of Jazz Educators Conference, then a Memphis concert Jan. 29,” he says. For further information on Brubeck and his family of musicians, please visit www.brubeckmusic.com.
For the second year in a row, Phillip Buchanan ’92, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), has been named to The Nonprofit Times “Power and Influence Top 50.” This honor recognizes leaders who have had a major impact on the nonprofit field in the last twelve months, and whose leadership is responding to, and growing with, challenges in the charitable sector. Buchanan joined CEP, which develops comparative data to enable higherperforming foundations, as its first staff member in 2001. He has overseen the growth of the Cambridge, Massachusettsbased organization to a staff of 30, with a new office in San Francisco slated to open in October. He was a government major at Wesleyan and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. His past experience includes strategy consulting at the Bostonbased Parthenon Group and six years in higher education administration, as assistant to the presidents of Wesleyan University and Mount Holyoke College.
Nancy Campbell, MALS ’80 and former first lady of Wesleyan, recently earned the National Trust’s Louise Du Pont Crowninshield Award for her dedication to historic preservation, extending over more than 25 years. After several years serving on state historical trusts, in 1983 Campbell was nominated to the National Trust’s Board of Advisors and was later selected to serve on the Board of Trustees. Marking an important milestone in history, in 1966 Campbell was chosen as the first woman chair of the Trust and successfully led the Campaign for America’s Historic Places to vastly exceed its fundraising goals. President of the trust Richard Moe, says Campbell, “epitomizes the spirit of volunteerism that is the bedrock of preservationalism.”
Barbara Casey ’71 was honored at the 10th annual Angels in Adoption awards ceremony, held in Washington, D.C. The program is organized by The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute to raise awareness about children, in foster care and orphaned, in need of permanent, loving homes; Senator Arlen Specter nominated Casey, who directs Adoption Associates, LLC, a licensed Pennsylvania adoption agency, and also heads a law firm specializing in adoption issues. She is a fellow of the Pennsylvania Academy of Adoption Attorneys, the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, and Resolve. She earned a master’s degree, as well as a JD, from the University of Pennsylvania.
TriWest Healthcare Alliance, the largest contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense, headquartered in Arizona, named Blake Chaffee ’73 vice president of the Behavioral Health division. He will oversee the administration of the psychological health programs offered in the government’s TriCare System. Chaffee, a former Navy clinical psychologist and widely published author, earned a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in psychology at American University.
Prince Chambliss ’70 was named one of America’s leading litigators by Black Enterprise magazine. Chambliss, a partner with Stokes, Bartholomew, Evans & Petree, in Memphis, Tenn., is a graduate of Harvard Law School, with more than 30 years of litigation and mediation experience. “He has been lead counsel in jury trial verdicts in areas ranging from contractual disputes to class action personal injury suits to insurance and securities fraud,” the magazine notes, in addition to being “the first African American partner of a majority law firm in his state and the first African American president of the Memphis Bar Association.” Other attorneys named in this all-star list include Michele Roberts ’77 and Ted Shaw ’76.
K. Ceajer Chan ’79 was appointed secretary for financial services and the treasury by Chief Executive Donald Tsang for the Hong Kong Ministry. Previously, he had been dean and Professor of Finance for the Business School at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. An economics major at Wesleyan, he earned his doctorate from the University of Chicago.
David M. Ackman ’84, M.D., commissioner of health for Nassau County, N.Y., is president of the New York State Association of County Health Officers, which represents the state’s 58 local health departments on such issues as bioterrorism preparedness, public health funding, HIV prevention strategies and vaccination programs. “Ever since 9/11, health departments have been asked to take on a greater role in emergency preparedness without reducing attention to basic public health problems,” Ackman observes. “The result is that health directors are juggling more balls than ever, with fewer resources.”
Peter C. Adamson ’80, MD, a pediatric oncologist and scientist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, has been selected to lead the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) in its efforts to find cures for children with cancer. An internationally recognized leader in pediatric cancer drug development, he was elected by principal investigators of more than 200 Children’s Oncology Group sites. “Scientific discovery today is occurring at an unprecedented pace, but the clinical trial system that historically worked so well is showing a diminishing rate of return in our ability to cure children,” said Adamson in a hospital press release. “This system was not designed to rapidly bring findings from the bench to the bedside, and a transformation of the system’s approach is needed to propel translational efforts on an international scale.” A chemistry major at Wesleyan, he earned his MD from Cornell University School of Medicine.
Lisa Alter ’78 and her daughter, Jordana Alter Confino, the co-founders of Girls Learn International, are National Organization for Women’s 2007 Susan B. Anthony honorees. This award is given to a grassroots activist “who has advanced the cause of women’s rights or improved the lives of women.” A government major while at Wesleyan, Alter received her JD from New York University and, with her daughter, founded GLI in 2004 as a nonprofit service-learning initiative involving American students in the international effort for girls’ education. Chapters in U.S. middle and high schools are paired with partner classrooms in communities in which girls have traditionally been discouraged from pursuing education, and they undertake a variety of educational, communication, advocacy, and outreach projects. (See girlslearninternational.org.)
