The MIT Alumni Better World Service Award

Vanessa Feliberti Bautista is an outstanding leader who has committed herself to the cause of enabling equal access to technology jobs for underrepresented populations. Her work in creating, leading, and supporting programs for education, job training, and career development has enabled hundreds of racial and ethnic minorities and economically challenged individuals to find life-changing opportunities and achieve their career and life goals. Vanessa has inspired countless young technologists to find their place in their worth at work. As a lead for the women’s community within the workplace, Vanessa has organized early-in-career activities, mentorship rings, and even argued with architects to include the nursing facilities new mothers needed to return to work during a building renovation. Vanessa has focused her service-related efforts on equity and inclusion, creating opportunities, and working tirelessly to promote DEI.

Oluwasegun Ige has performed sustained, innovative, and impactful community service for Africans for over 14 years. Dr. Ige’s desire to expand African educational opportunities led him to found Anike Foundation in 2007 with one clear purpose: making education accessible to improve the livelihoods of individuals in Africa. Anike is a small nonprofit that leverages its limited resources through its partnerships: It now has a network of over 200 partners in 20 countries across the continent, touching thousands of lives through its funding of essential programs. Dr. Ige’s foundation is 100 percent volunteer based, and he has grown his diverse team of volunteers to over 70 individuals in 12 countries around the world. Dr. Ige’s effort to bridge the education gap between impoverished communities in Africa and the developed world is exemplary.

Donald Rea founded the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) STEM Volunteers program, in concert with AAAS leadership, in 2004. Serving just a single school district that first year, the program has grown to encompass five school districts in the Greater Washington, DC, Metro region, and by 2019 had over 180 volunteers serving over 6,000 students. Rea’s vision was to pair retired or semiretired STEM professionals with K–12 educators in the region to give the educators a rich resource for their classroom studies across STEM topics. Don has made a deep impact on the community with his excellent training and delegation skills and dedicated spirit.

Dheera Ananthakrishnan ’90, a mechanical engineering major, is an orthopaedic spine surgeon, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.   In addition to her faculty medical appointments at a number of institutions—most recently at Emory University, where she currently service as assistant professor of orthopaedics surgery in the Emory Spine Center—Dheera’s service experience includes working with Doctors Without Borders, Orthopaedics Overseas, and the World Health Organization. Dheera’s background in mechanical engineering and orthopaedic surgery, coupled with her interest in global health, led her to found the nonprofit 501c3 Orthopaedic Link in 2009. Her work bringing implants and tutoring local spine surgeons has advanced spine surgery by decades in underdeveloped regions. To date, Orthopaedic Link has mobilized more than $3 million worth of surplus implants and instrumentation worldwide, which has led to hundreds of patients’ lives being improved. In addition to her global health work, Dheera has served her community at Emory and in Atlanta (outside of her day job) as a spine surgeon. She serves as a clinical mentor for graduate students in Georgia Institute of Technology’s Coulter Department of Bioengineering, marrying her engineering and medical education to motivate and inspire students to change the field of orthopaedics through device design. Dheera is a rare individual in many ways. She was an MIT undergrad during a time when females were very underrepresented. She chose to become a spine surgeon and is one of a handful of academic female spine surgeons in the country. As such, she is a shining role model for women who are interested in surgery and spine surgery. Furthermore, she has shown incredible involvement with MIT throughout her career. She has mentored students at the MIT D-Lab, been part of a manufacturing symposium, given a career path IAP lecture, and chaired a panel at the MIT Women's unConference. In addition to all the above and her day job as a spine surgeon, Dheera is currently a student in the 2023 cohort of the Executive MBA program at MIT Sloan, with the goal of furthering her impact globally and locally with a new set of skills from MIT. The energy and passion that Dheera brings to her myriad impactful activities are truly helping to build a better world.  

Reinier “Rein” Beeuwkes, a biology life sciences major, is a scientist, biomedical-pharmacy entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is a vocal and avid citizen advocate for fusion energy, and while not a plasma physicist himself, he has worked to stimulate support for fusion among elected officials, business leaders, academics, and more. In 2007, Rein, a longtime researcher who has held leadership positions at Smith Kline Worldwide (now GlaxoSmithKline) and Ischemix, Inc., began a single-minded campaign to ensure that any US congressperson or senator who visited Boston also visited the MIT Plasma  Science and Fusion Center at MIT.   Participating in those early visits made him aware that in addition to being severely underfunded, the leadership of the federal fusion program lacked a sense of urgency and that the community of private companies and federally funded research institutions were all competing with each other for diminishing federal resources. Rein led efforts to organize the national fusion community and replace territorial, competitive lobbying with a unified agenda to promote fusion through a compelling narrative about the role that fusion energy could play in meeting future climate goals. Reinier also coached MIT fusion scientists and others on developing messaging that would resonate with elected officials. Today, 15 years later, fusion is no longer a pipe dream. It is on the front pages of major newspapers and magazines. In addition to meeting with representatives in the West Wing and on Downing Street, he has been an inspiring force for a large bipartisan Congressional Fusion Caucus.  The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a $1 billion fusion energy research funding package. Community service comes in many forms. In the case of Rein Beeuwkes, it is in the form of a citizen advocate for the development of a clean energy source that can benefit the world, as well as support MIT’s leadership in developing solutions to climate change.