Eight JFK Awardees joined our
40th Reunion celebration for a luncheon in their honor, highlighted with remarks
from University President Lehman. The buffet luncheon was held at the edge of Beebe
Lake. Awardees talked to the group about the impact of the JFK Memorial
Award on their lives since graduation. See their bios below, current as of
June, 2004.
After graduating from
Cornell, Jason Conn has just completed his first year at the University of
Michigan Law School. This summer he will be an intern at the United States
Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
In the fall, Jason will
take over as a Co-Chair for the University of Michigan Law School
Hunger
Coalition, coordinating the law school’s volunteer efforts at local shelters
and food banks. Additionally, he will continue his involvement with the
Food Stamp Law Advocacy Project, which assists low income families from
the greater Detroit area with the burdensome process of applying for
government food assistance.
Kirk Forrest '76
Kirk Forrest is beginning
his thirtieth year practicing law since graduating from Harvard Law School.
He has held positions on the legal staffs of major corporations and was a
partner in a major law firm for six years. Most recently, he served as Vice
President & General Counsel of SAM'S CLUB, the warehouse club business of
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. in Bentonville, Arkansas.
While he has not gone into
public service on a full time basis, Kirk has remained active in community
leadership, serving as a Board member of many charities. He is currently the
President of the Simon Estes Educational Foundation in Tulsa, which provides
scholarships to needy college-bound students.
Jared Genser '95
Jared Genser is the
president of Freedom Now and an associate in
the federal affairs and legislative practice group of Piper Rudnick LLP in
Washington, D.C. Previously, Jared was a management consultant with
McKinsey & Company, the global strategy consulting firm. Before forming
Freedom Now, he represented
James Mawdsley, a
British national who served 416 days of a 17-year sentence in solitary
confinement in Burma for handing out pro-democracy leaflets there.
After graduating from Cornell, Jared earned a Master’s in Public Policy from
the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a J.D.,
cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School. He has published
opinion-editorials on human rights topics in such publications as the
Washington Post, Asian Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune,
and Washington Times.
Joe Lupica '76
Joe Lupica is Managing
Director of Comann and Montague, a NASD-member investment banking firm
serving public and private companies in the consumer products, healthcare,
technology, logistics, and other manufacturing and service industries. In
1983, after graduation from Cornell Law School, Joe became a White House
Fellow in the Reagan Administration, during which time he served as Special
Assistant for Intergovernmental Affairs as part of the White House staff and
Special Assistant to the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
He has since served a
variety of corporate, nonprofit, and governmental clients as an investment
banker, attorney, and development officer. The central interests of his
broad career have been in the areas of healthcare, the consumer product and
service sector, and international emerging markets. His diverse experiences
also include having been a partner in a major Connecticut law firm, a senior
officer at Kidder, Peabody & Co, and vice president of finance at Goldman
Sachs.
Joe currently serves on a
number of Advisory Boards for growth-stage companies in the healthcare,
wellness and managed care sectors. He is also currently a member of the
Board of Directors of the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations and the
Advisory Board of the Governor’s Council on Health, Physical Fitness and
Sports for the State of Arizona.
Chris Vaeth '97
Chris Vaeth is the founder
of the new Truth Force Training Center, a Bronx-based training center in
nonviolent action and community organizing skills. He is also part-time
development associate with DRUM –
Desis Rising Up and Moving, a South
Asian-led immigrant rights group on the forefront of organizing post-9/11
detainees, their families, and low-income immigrant youth.
Chris was formerly
director of community organizing at
Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice,
a youth organization in the South Bronx, where he launched a campaign for
police accountability and programs for political education. He has worked
for stronger rent laws in NYC (Tenants
and Neighbors), an end to redlining
in San Francisco (Greenlining Institute), campaign finance reform in Boston
and nationwide (Democracy Matters), housing rights in Mexico (Centro
Integral Comunitario), and with President Clinton’s Liaison to the Gay and
Lesbian Community at the White House. Chris was recently Senior Program
Associate with the Open Society Institute, where he initiated the formation
of a national network of social justice fellowship programs.
Chris has engaged in
long-term studies of nonviolent resistance and liberation struggles at the
Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New
Delhi, and among nonviolent people’s movements across Latin America. After
graduating from Cornell in 1997, Chris attended Harvard Divinity School,
where he studied under Prof. Cornel West and worked on several campus
initiatives, including the Harvard Living Wage Campaign. Chris currently
serves on the North Star Fund’s Community Funding Board, the Board of
Directors of the South Bronx Ghetto Film School, and the Steering Committee
of the National Organizers Alliance.
Drew Warshaw
'03
Since graduating from Cornell, Drew Warshaw has been working in Washington,
D.C., at the Center for American Progress. He serves as Special Assistant to
the Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President, Sarah Wartell. The
center is dedicated to finding progressive and pragmatic solutions to
significant domestic and international problems and to developing proposals
that support those solutions.
Working for campaign
finance reform and public interest lobbying remain Drew’s major interests.
While an undergraduate at Cornell, Drew was the Co-founder of
Democracy
Matters, a non-partisan, student-based organization dedicated to
comprehensive election reform, and served as its Campus Director from
2001-03. After graduation, Drew became the founding editor of the online Democracy Matters Digest, a monthly dispatch with the purpose of framing the
news of the day so that it will“inform the public that the
democratic process matters -- not in some abstract sense, but in a
fundamental way that affects the daily life of all Americans.”
Joyce West'86
Joyce C. West is
currently the director of the
American Psychiatric Practice Research Network
(PRN) which she helped establish in 1993. She has also served as Associate
Director for Research and Evaluation in the American Psychiatric
Association’s (APA’s) Office of Quality where she conducted research to
monitor and improve quality of psychiatric care.
Prior to joining the APA,
Joyce was a consultant with Lewin and Associates, a Washington, D.C.- based
health policy consulting firm. The author of numerous publications, Joyce
holds a doctor of philosophy degree in mental health services research from
Johns Hopkins University and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard
University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Ilir Zherka '89
Ilir Zherka, is Executive
Director of DC Vote, an educational and advocacy organization whose mission
is to secure full voting representation in Congress for the residents of the
District of Columbia. He has helped submit pending legislation such as the
No Taxation Without Representation Act, putting to good use the his
legal education from the University of Virginia Law School, which he
attended after graduating from Cornell.
Ilir is a lifelong
advocate of civil, human, and worker rights. Before joining DC Vote, he was
President and Executive Director of the National Albanian American Council (NAAC),
where he was instrumental in convincing the US government to intervene in
the Kosova war and helping to secure peace in Macedonia through
constitutional reform.
Prior to his work at NAAC,
Ilir promoted worker rights as Senior Legislative Officer to Secretary of
Labor Alexis Herman. He also acted as legislative counsel to Congressman
George Miller (D-California) for labor, judiciary, and foreign policy
issues. In this capacity, he spearheaded Miller’s “No Sweat” campaign to
combat the use of sweatshops abroad, and was responsible for organizing the
hearing that exposed the use of child labor in the production of the Kathie
Lee Gifford clothing line. That hearing drew significant national attention
to child and sweatshop issues, paving the way for major reform.
To further the cause of
human rights, Ilir has testified before the US Congress, the DC City
Council, and other governmental bodies. He has also appeared on numerous
television and radio news programs, including the News Hour with Jim Lehrer,
One on One with John McLaughlin, Fox’s Hannity and Combs, and CNN’s Talk
Back Live.
