2020 Award Winners

As a graduate student, Erich served as co-chair of the Black Graduate Student’s Association, committee chair of the Graduate Student Council (GSC) orientation, as GSC president, and as an active member of the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee (CJAC). He served his first term on the MIT Corporation as a recent graduate member from 2005 to 2010, with appointments to the visiting committees for Architecture, Libraries, Mathematics, and the Dean for Student Life. When he returned to Corporation service in 2013 as a term member, he chaired CJAC and also served on visiting committees for Urban Studies, Dean for Undergraduate Education, and Dean for Student Life. He served as a term member of the Association Board of Directors, becoming its president in 2019. He served on a number of committees of the Association and is dedicated to the engagement of graduate alumni. He is now serving as an alumni member of the MIT Corporation and has a variety of committee assignments. Erich never fails to step forward for MIT. 

John is a tireless volunteer leader, having served on reunion gift committees, class reunion program committees, the MIT Annual Fund Board, as inaugural chair of the 1861 Circle, and in roles for his fraternity. With John’s longstanding commitment to alumni participation, coupled with his own steadfast support of the Institute as a donor, he was the obvious choice to become the inaugural chair of the 1861 Circle. As such, John helped lead the development and growth of this vitally important society. As a member of the Annual Fund Board, John participated in developing concepts for annual giving that have been transformational, including the William Barton Rogers Society. John has been a part of his reunion gift committee since his 25th reunion and has served as a member of his class reunion program committee since his 35th reunion. He has served in various roles for his fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, including as house treasurer and director.

Bridget is one of the most dedicated, effective, and collaborative leaders in the history of the MIT Club of Northern California. While serving as president, Bridget has demonstrated world-class leadership qualities, deep commitment, and passion to MIT. Bridget is not only very smart and insightful but extremely organizationally savvy. In complex and often challenging environments, she can quickly achieve clarity in recognizing all the major multifaceted dynamics at play. Since graduating in 2006, she has been continuously involved with MIT, serving as the vice president of her graduating class, as president of two MIT clubs (South Texas and Northern California), and as an Alumni Association Board member. 

Peter B. Burke ’80

Peter has been integral to the MIT Club of Chicago for 20-plus years. His commitment to the MIT message is demonstrated by his constant presence at events. Peter has always been a driving force behind recruiting new volunteers and officers. Without Peter’s involvement and encouragement, the last three presidents of the Club of Chicago either would not have taken on the role or would not have achieved the success that they have. Peter’s commitment to supporting each of those presidents and their understanding that he would continue to be involved was a big part of their decisions to take on the role. Peter’s contributions inspire others to continue their involvement.

Carol joined the Educational Council in 1988 and thoroughly enjoyed meeting and interviewing prospective students for twenty years. She became the Vice Chair of the central Indiana region in 2008. Her “love of electrons” caused her to volunteer with the Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA) on their website after she retired from Eli Lilly in 2004. This eventually led to a position on the AMITA board first as Archivist and then as Vice President. Today she remains a member of the web committee and still loves electrons. She especially likes promoting the Margaret MacVicar Oral History project since she fondly remembers Scotty from her undergrad years living in McCormick. The 50th Reunion in 2017 was a great excuse to visit campus in person with her husband Bob, another 1967 alumnus.

Bob’s MIT volunteer service began in the early 1980s when he joined the board of the MIT Club of South Florida. He has remained on the board for over 35 years while serving in various roles, including as president. He was also heavily involved with planning his class 50th reunion in 2017. Since then, Bob has embraced the mission of the Cardinal and Gray Society and has worked tirelessly, especially as editor of the Class of 1967 Red Blazer newsletter, to make sure that his class members are fully informed of their Cardinal and Gray Society membership benefits and know about upcoming Cardinal and Gray Society events.

Jacob has served in a variety of roles to bring graduate alumni back to campus. While attending MIT Club of Boston events, Jacob recognized the absence of School of Architecture alumni in attendance. With strong support, Jacob influenced several Course 4 alumni—most of whom had never volunteered for MIT—to be the founding members of the MIT Architecture Alumni Association (MITArchA). His vision was to create a way for the Architecture alumni community to develop a greater awareness of one another and to connect with each other, SA+P, and the Institute. Since then, the group has hosted 44 events all around the world.

Lillian has been an active, dedicated leader for the MIT Club of Hong Kong since 2003. In 2009, she served as director of the club and acted as a liaison with other MIT alumni clubs in the Greater China area. In 2014, she was appointed as secretary of the board of directors of the club. In 2015, she was promoted to vice president of the club, and was finally appointed as president in 2017. In that role, she organized a diverse variety of events, supported the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node, nurtured young leaders within the organization, and raised the bar of donor participation in the community.

Scott’s alumni club involvement dates to the early 2000s, initially with the MIT Club of Japan, followed by the MIT Club of New York, where he first served as a vice president for professional programs and then eventually as president. In 2013, as his role as club president was winding down, he added educational counselor to his list of volunteer roles. Scott has also been actively engaged as a volunteer for the Class of 1986, serving on its 20th, 25th, and 30th reunion committees, most recently as a member of the 30th Reunion Gift Committee, where he reached out to more than 50 classmates to secure a gift.

Ed has been active in the MIT Club of Northern California for 20-plus years. Ed was an especially key volunteer during the early 2000s, when the club experienced enormous growth, and he held two separate vice president roles. He continues today to be an active and vocal member of their board, working most recently on revamping the nominating process. Ed has been a long-time advocate of building online communities for the club, building its first website and continuing to aggressively push for future technology. As a result, the club was one of the first to offer online event registration and dues payment systems.

Al has been active within BAMIT since the early 2000s, first as a member of the planning committee for BAMIT’s 25th anniversary in 2003. More recently, Al has been chairing the BAMIT Call program—a collaboration with the MIT Admissions office where alumni volunteers call Black admitted students and their families to address any questions that may influence their decisions. He also leads the BAMIT Community Advancement Program (BCAP) team. Al convened a team of volunteers who organized the BCAP pilot and have begun the BCAP fundraising effort via the MIT Annual fund. In addition, he has been an EC for 20-plus years.

Lindsay chaired the Annual Fund Board and has been a committed member of the Alumni Association Board of Directors and the CDC. She began fundraising for MIT as senior gift co-chair and helped with several reunion gifts. In her role as Annual Fund chair, Lindsay has spoken at WBRS events in Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles. She has also met with student philanthropy committee members and provided challenge gifts to encourage student giving. Having served in that role as a student, her volunteer journey serves as a meaningful role model. Lindsay has also enjoyed participating in CDC meetings on campus, in New York, and in Los Angeles.

Kerry’s service with the Annual Fund began in 2013, when he joined his 20th Reunion Gift Committee. As an active volunteer who quickly demonstrated leadership capabilities, he was asked to serve on the MIT Annual Fund Board from 2014 to 2017. Concurrently, he served on the Goals Committee and as an MIT Connection fundraising volunteer. Kerry’s experience made him an ideal candidate to lead the class of 1994’s 25th Reunion Gift Campaign in 2019. As co-chair, Kerry established goals, recruited a committee of 14 classmates, and developed campaign strategies. Thanks to Kerry’s leadership, the class raised $2,090,148 from 35.31 percent of the class in honor of their 25th reunion. Kerry also demonstrated exemplary leadership in successfully reaching out to classmates and others to raise money to endow the Kristala L. Jones Prather (1994) Interphase Fund to recognize the first Interphase alumna to become a tenured faculty member at MIT and to provide support for students attending the Interphase program. 

Ed served on the 25th, 30th, 35th, and 40th reunion gift committees for the Class of 1979, for which he was co-chair of the 30th, 35th and 40th committees. For the 40th Reunion Gift Committee, Ed led the Class of 1979 to meet and exceed their fundraising goals of $3,000,000 and 42 percent participation. He helped to form a 40th Reunion Gift Committee of 14 classmates, and took an active role in leading and participating in each committee conference call. In addition, Ed himself was an active reunion fundraiser and solicited over 30 classmates, bringing in over $18,000. Ed also solicited his fellow gift committee members, resulting in an 86 percent committee participation rate.

Erin has been an MITAA Parent Connector and a featured panel speaker at Campus Preview Weekend. In 2018, she was invited to serve as the chair of the Parents Leadership Circle, and has spearheaded the formation of the Parents Leadership Circle Board. As chair of the PLC, she leads an impactful group of MIT parent board members who increase parent engagement and visibility while providing leadership support to the Institute, as well as inspiring other parents to do the same. Erin has done a tremendous job of strategically building, marketing, and setting goals and tactics for the new Parents Leadership Circle Board and the Parents Leadership Circle community. 

Eric has been an EC for over 20 years. He devotes over four hours to each interview and its report and conducted 21 this past year. He has the highest admit rate for New Jersey and checks carefully to see how his recommended students fare at MIT once admitted. As a physician, he screens each prospective student he meets and helps each understand how MIT’s intense culture can affect mental health. He has also submitted detailed feedback on improving the EC process, which helped to craft changes in the program.

Henning joined the Educational Council in 2004 and is regional chair of Germany. Henning keeps great communications with the EC office and frequently helps with quick-turnaround requests for interviews. Henning also provides leadership among RCs through his participation at ALC events and volunteering as a working group member. He often has suggestions for how territories may be managed, particularly for those regions with different concentrations of ECs across larger geographic areas (e.g., Germany). In addition, Henning hosts an admitted student gathering event every year with alumni.

Laurie joined the Educational Council in 2010. She interviews many applicants a year, and for the class of 2023, she interviewed 57 students. All of her reports were rated 5. For the Early Action cycle of the Class of 2024, she interviewed 22 students. Laurie is also willing to go further beyond her duties. For each applicant, she makes multiple attempts to contact the student. She also conducts interviews right up to the deadline to support students who respond late to interview requests.

Sang joined the Educational Council in 2006 and became regional chair of Westchester, New York, in 2012. He carefully manages the workload among ECs so that no one gets overloaded. He also arranges events to let ECs get to know each other. In addition to his roles as an EC and RC, Sang hosts an admitted student gathering event every year with alumni at a golf course and a bowling lane. Sang also provides leadership among RCs through his participation at ALC events.

Marc joined the Educational Council in 2011 and became regional chair of the Dallas, Texas, region in 2018, where he continues to provide leadership today. Marc was also very helpful to the MIT Admissions office for our fall recruitment event in September. Marc has introduced many ideas to better manage his region. He has created his own data tracking and organization system in addition to the existing system. Marc recruited 15 new ECs last year in his first year as RC by recruiting from various alumni clubs.

Sarita joined the Educational Council in 1994 and became vice chair in 2014 and regional chair of Orlando, Florida, in 2019. Sarita keeps great communications with the EC office, and even though she is an RC, she frequently helps with quick-turnaround requests for interviews. The EC office staff loves working with Sarita. She also provides leadership among RCs through participation at ALC events and her participation as a key member of the RC working group to tackle important issues for all regions.

Grace joined the Educational Council in 2001 and became vice chair of the Pasadena-San Gabriel, California, region in 2010. She keeps great communications with the EC office and is also enormously helpful at the regional level. She works with JPL to make its von Kármán Auditorium available each year for the Los Angeles region’s spring break event for admitted students. One year, attendance was low, and Grace, in real time, was able to get young alumni to the event to welcome the members of the admitted class.

The Class of 1985 was instrumental in organizing several “mini-reunion” events around the country this past year that gathered alums from across the decade of the 1980s. Mini reunions were held in Houston, Denver, New York City, and Northern California from June to December 2019, and are already being planned in Washington, D.C., and multiple other locations around the country and around the world for early 2020 and beyond. As with all MIT alumni events, the Class of 1985 wanted to bring alumni together and make connections with the Institute, friends, and fellow classmates. 

To foster class engagement between their 30th and 35th reunions, the class of 1986 stepped outside the box by holding their first-ever virtual reunion on January 12, 2019, to celebrate 32.5 years since graduation. The virtual reunion format allowed classmates from all over the world to participate in the reunion without leaving their homes. With multiple in-person meetup locations across the world, ranging from New York to Silicon Valley to Greece, Class of 1986 alumni were well represented around the globe. The event was a resounding success, with 84 registrants and over 66 virtual call-ins from three continents and five countries.

The Class of 2016 superbly executed their Pi Reunion, held July 25–28, 2019, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 15-member committee, led by co-chairs Katie Siegel ’16, MEng ’16 and Grace Connors ’16, worked tirelessly over the course of the year to plan a thoughtful, engaging, and exceedingly successful reunion for their classmates 3.14 years after leaving campus. Most notably, the committee planned and offered a robust and varied program comprising more than 20 events over the single weekend. The Pi Reunion was extremely successful, drawing 699 Class of 2016s, other MIT alumni, and guests, an increase of 54 participants over 2018.

The MIT Club of Cape Cod went to great lengths to promote STEM projects with local schools through the MIT Club of Cape Cod HS STEM Mini Grant program. The MIT club has offered educational grants focused on technology-related field trips or other educational programs for middle and high school students. The club successfully raised funds for 17 public and private high schools in the amount of $300 per school. The grant requests covered a broad range of topics, and the work of this group will directly impact the greater community of students for years to come.

The leaders of the MIT Club of Rhode Island have been instrumental in turning around and growing the club during the past eight years. They have continued an annual tradition of hosting a welcome dinner for newly accepted students in the area, expanded the event schedule to include at least five events per year, collaborated on the first RI SCRATCH Day in 2018—which exposed the larger community to innovative educational environments under development in MIT’s Media Lab—and used Facebook to publicize its events and YouTube to store over 40 videos. As a result, the club has tripled its paid memberships and greatly improved its financial health. 

The MIT Club of Southern California hosted its fourth annual luncheon in September 2019. The club recruited top-of-the-line speakers and secured a marvelous venue, bringing Alex Padilla ’94, secretary of state for the State of California, and Luz Rivas ’95, Assembly member for the State of California, to address the topic “How to Vote in California (the Mechanics, Not the Candidates!): The Changing Landscape for Civic Participation.” The highly relevant and topical content from Alex and Luz brought an outstanding count of 85 alumni and friends together, marking the fourth year of high attendance. Of these 85 attendees, 41 hadn’t engaged with MIT in a year.

Gene joined the MIT Club of Washington DC board in 2015 and did not hesitate to pitch in where help was needed. He not only helped with planning events, but his observations provided valuable feedback on how to make the events better and more welcoming to alumni in the Washington, D.C., area. As a president of the club, Gene has managed to continue to grow the programming of the third-largest club MIT has, enabling him to increase membership and alumni engagement. He notably organized the annual meeting with Susan Hockfield in the spring of 2019, which brought 100-plus alumni together to hear about her work.  

As the vice president of programs for the MIT Club of Northern California, Phatty oversaw the development of Talk Nerdy to Me coffee gatherings. She organized 169 events across Northern California in 13 cities over the past 18 months. These events attracted over 2,300 attendees, several of whom were first-time attendees. In addition, she served as a moderator for the MIT Volunteer Summit and as an advisor with the Alumni Engagement Career Guidance program. Prior roles include participating in the K–12 STEM Education Volunteer Network, hosting an externship student, co-chairing the club’s Delta-V track, and Social Committee chair. She is also an educational counselor. 

In March 2019, when Jesse became class webmaster, the site was 10 years out of date. He dived right in and devoted 40 hours/week or more to the task, week after week, month after month. The site now has: an index of classmates mentioned in the last 25 years of class notes, a deceased classmates list with obituaries for about half of the former classmates, a list of the 82 foreign students in the class from a 1969 student directory, a list of creative works by classmates (art, monographs, poetry, music performances), and a list of patents held by classmates.  

Anjuli’s work as chair of the Club of Northern California’s Spotlight Series has brought together more than 650 alumni and friends over the past three years to celebrate fellowship and learn about exciting work happening in the MIT community. Under her leadership, Spotlight has reached new levels in quality and is a memorable evening for all. Recently, she pulled together two unique and very successful events that increased club engagement, with two very different but highly engaging speakers—a professor of astrophysics at MIT who was part of the LIGO team, and an MIT dropout who went on to create a payments company valued at over $10 billion.

As a member of the MIT10 Committee, Jason was a true leader in the New York area. In FY18, he helped plan one of the most successful MIT10 events of the year, a happy hour at SPIN, a ping-pong bar near the Flatiron District. Afterward, Jason took the time to email attendees to thank them for joining in and to encourage them to support MIT with a gift as the fiscal year closed. Jason’s personal efforts continued in FY19, when he served as a co-chair for the class’s 5th Reunion Gift Committee. The class achieved both its participation and dollar goals—a feat that Jason was instrumental in. 

Vicky led and revitalized the MIT Club of Utah over a five-year period. She instituted and invigorated alumni club standards like the Admitted Students Dinner, Summer Send-off, and Toast to IAP events. She was instrumental in several of the most successful club events, including the Lightning Talks event. She also created connections with other alumni clubs such as Yale, Wellesley, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, and Dartmouth, managed ongoing activities with the MIT Alumni Association, interfaced with treasurer activities, handled newsletter and other club mailings, scheduled and ran club board meetings, organized club documents, and supported new and current club members. 

Kenny was selected to be the director of communications for the MIT Club of Hong Kong in 2018 after volunteering actively for the club. He was responsible for revamping the group’s online and social media marketing channels, including analyzing the user traffic of iModules and Facebook and creating Instagram and LinkedIn accounts for the club. He was the administrator of the club’s social media channels and became a guru for iModules, assisting other directors and club leaders with its usage. He also helped the club design its new logo and made a “Year in Review” video for the club’s annual meeting in 2018.

Anne started at MIT on October 1, 1973, in the Humanities Department. In 1979, she arrived in EECS and stayed in EECS until her retirement on November 1, 2019. She supported students before the start of their careers at MIT by providing tours to them and their families. She welcomed new sophomores into the EECS Department with the Sophomore Banquet, which filled the Grier Conference Room. Anne recruited advisors from the faculty and research staff to approve students’ registrations and add/drop forms. She provided advisors lunch at the beginning of the term and gave instructions to new advisors at the end of these lunches. She shepherded students and advisors through the challenging end-of-term actions: CAP (Committee on Academic Performance) Warnings and the dreaded Required Withdrawals (now Leaves of Absence). She also shepherded students through applying to the Masters of Engineering program (MEng) via info sessions and help with application forms. She has truly made invaluable contributions to many undergraduates at MIT.

Anna has been a member of the Emma Rogers Society from the group’s beginning. Her loyalty and enthusiasm for MIT as an institution of excellence and influence are palpable. Her volunteer activities of recent years embody the best of MIT and make her a worthy candidate for the Honorary Member (HM) designation. Over the years, she has become a trusted advisor and spokesperson for the group, sometimes writing eloquently about grief and bereavement for the ERS newsletter and speaking at events. She has also become a frequent MIT Alumni Travel Program traveler and an avid proponent of traveling with MIT as an antidote to the pain of losing a spouse or loved one. A few years ago, she took on an outreach role, calling surviving spouses on behalf of ERS and MIT and encouraging them to participate. Her work has resulted in the involvement of many new members of ERS. In 2016, Anna was invited to join the Programming Committee of the MIT Alumni Association Board of Directors, where she excelled.