Spring is always an exciting time at SIPA with second year students preparing to graduate and first year students preparing to complete internships and work shops in the summer months.  SIPA does not offer summer classes so that students can complete long term professional development opportunities anywhere in the world.  The following is a message from the Dean regarding the Annual Global Leadership Awards Dinner that took place last week.  I was lucky to get a seat and it was a great night.

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I am pleased to announce that the honorees at SIPA’s Annual Global Leadership Awards Dinner on April 29 will be Fareed Zakaria, Editor of Newsweek International and CNN International talk show host; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Foreign Minister and Finance Minister of Nigeria and currently Managing Director at the World Bank; and Partners In Health, the nonprofit organization founded by Paul Farmer that pioneered the delivery of comprehensive health services to the poor, first in Haiti and then across the globe.

As Managing Director of the World Bank, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has oversight responsibility for the World Bank’s operational portfolio in Africa, South Asia and Europe and Central Asia. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala spearheaded several World Bank initiatives to assist low income countries during the food and subsequently the financial crisis. She is presently chairing the 16th replenishment of over $40 billion for the International Development Association, the grant and soft credit arm of the World Bank. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala previously served as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and as Finance Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has received numerous awards, including Time magazine’s European Hero of the Year Award for her work on economic reform in Nigeria. In 2006, she was named by Forbes magazine as one of 100 most powerful women in the world. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala was educated at Harvard University and has a Ph.D. in regional economics and development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Since October 2000, Fareed Zakaria has overseen all of Newsweek’s editions abroad. His cover stories and columns — on subjects from globalization and emerging markets to the Middle East and America’s role in the world — reach more than 25 million readers each week. Prior to joining Newsweek, Dr. Zakaria served an eight-year term as Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs, a widely-circulated journal of international politics and economics. In 2008, he began hosting Fareed Zakaria GPS, a weekly foreign affairs program that airs worldwide on CNN International. Dr. Zakaria’s in-depth interviews with heads of state as well as intellectuals, business leaders, politicians and journalists have been broadcast in more than 200 million homes in over 210 countries. Born in India, Dr. Zakaria received a B.A. from Yale College and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has received honorary degrees from numerous universities including Brown, the University of Miami, and Oberlin College.

Partners In Health is a Boston-based non-profit health care organization dedicated to providing a “preferential option for the poor.” Partners In Health was founded in 1987 after two of its founders, Paul Farmer and Ophelia Dahl, had previously set up a community-based health project in Cange, Haiti. The clinic was the first of several successful projects intended to address the health care needs of residents in the poorest area in Haiti. Since its founding, Partners In Health has expanded to eight other sites in Haiti and nine additional countries.