The Tufts Alumni Association recognized 13 alumni for their vivid engagement, career successes and contributions to the university in an awards ceremony on Feb. 27. The awards included a Young Alumni Achievement Award, a Young Alumni Service Award, Distinguished Achievement and Distinguished Service Awards, Active Citizenship and Public Service Awards, a Career Services Award and Service Citations.
“Since 1941, the Tufts University Alumni Association (TUAA) has honored accomplished individuals for service to their professions, communities, and to Tufts,” Jennifer Covell, president of the Tufts Alumni Association, wrote in an email to the Daily. “Along the way, we have added new categories in areas that we thought should be acknowledged, such as adding the Career Services Award a few years ago. The experience of attending these awards is both moving and inspiring and a great way to connect with Tufts.”
The Awards Committee for the Alumni Council is co-chaired by Peter Brodeur and Peter Bronk.
Bronk explained how nominees for the awards are chosen.
“Nominations and letters of support are received from the Tufts alumni community and from Tufts' faculty and staff who may be acquainted with individual nominees,” Bronk wrote in an email to the Daily.
Brodeur expanded on this, explaining how honorees are chosen from the nominee pool.
“The Awards Committee members carefully read each nominee packet, submit initial top picks, and then we come together to really discuss each nominee," Brodeur wrote in an email to the Daily.
Brodeur said that the awards for both achievement and service often overlap, and the Awards Committee looks for nominees who have made a significant impact locally, nationally or globally.
“We have so many truly worthy and impressive nominees each year, it is always a very long and tough process," Brodeur said. "The Awards Committee spends days reading through nominations and hours in meetings discussing who to honor in a particular year."
Bronk emphasized that making the decisions can be difficult.
“At times, it can be an apples vs. oranges decision, where the relative value of one person's achievements vs those of another are nearly impossible to quantify," Bronk said. "Among the attributes considered are the scope, duration, uniqueness and impact of a nominee's contributions in his or her field."
The recipients for the alumni awards this year were Ryan Pandya (E’13), Derrick Young Jr. (MG’17), Bill Abrams (A’75, A’11P, A’16P), Julie Salamon (J’75, A’11P, A’16P), Xanthe Scharff (F’06, F’11), Heather Sibbison (J’83, A’13P, A’16P), Bertram Gresh Lattimore (F’65, F’70, PhD’72), Alan Solomont (A’70, A’08P), Lee Gelernt (A’84), Nina Smith (J’89), Chiamaka Chima (E’14, EG’16), Cynthia Valianti Corbett (F’78) and Raphael Hui (A’06).
The Young Alumni Achievement awards were awarded to Pandya and Young.
Pandya is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Perfect Day, a food company whose mission is to create animal-free dairy products in an effort to spread delicious food while supporting the environment.
Young is the co-founder and executive director of Leadership Brainery, a non-profit that focuses on improving access to education and workforce leadership opportunities among minority communities.
Abrams, Salamon, Scharff and Sibbison received the Distinguished Achievement awards.
Abrams is the president of an international development organization called Trickle Up that helps people living in extreme poverty advance their socioeconomic statuses.
Salamon is a New York Times bestselling author, who has been a film and television critic for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She is also the daughter of Czech immigrants who were Holocaust survivors.
Scharff is the chief executive officer and co-founder of The Fuller Project, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on women with goals of increasing awareness, identifying injustice and encouraging accountability.
Sibbison is a partner at Dentons, where she serves as a chair of the firm's Native American Law and Policy practice. She assists tribal governments, addressing a wide range of legal and policy issues that are rooted in the historical mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and lands. Previously she worked on these issues for the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lattimore and Solomont received the Distinguished Service Awards.Lattimore graduated from The Fletcher School and served two years aboard the aircraft carrier USS CORAL SEA (CVA-43) off Vietnam and taught at the Naval Academy for a year.
Solomont is currently the dean of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, which focuses on the study and promotion of civic and political engagement of young people. Prior to his work at Tufts, Solomont was the U.S. ambassador to Spain and Andorra and served as the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service.
Gelernt and Smith were awarded the Active Citizenship and Public Service Awards.Gelernt is a lawyer at the ACLU’s national office, and he is recognized as one of the country’s leading public interest lawyers. Smith is the CEO of GoodWeave International, a global NGO working to stop child labor in global supply chains.
Chima was given the Career Services award. She is currently an analog design engineer at Intel Corporation, having previously interned at Bose Corporation and Analog Devices, Inc.
The Service Citations were awarded to Hui and Corbett.
Hui is currently a corporate lawyer in Hong Kong, having majored in international relations and economics during his undergraduate career at Tufts.
Corbett was an international economist specializing in emerging markets and architected debt conversion plans for most of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s. Since then, she has established an art gallery called Cynthia Corbett Gallery and the Young Masters Art Prize, a not-for-profit international art initiative that strives to highlight emerging artists and offer them global visibility.
Brodeur reflected on what being part of the process is like.
"Each year, the Committee attempts to put together a group of honorees that represent the diversity of our alumni and the incredible breadth of their accomplishments," Brodeur said.
