Head, Disaster and Risk Management Information Systems Research Group, Chulalongkorn University
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in March 2011 and the Thailand Floods of the same year were among the most destructive natural disasters in Natt Leelawat s lifetime.
For Leelawat who began graduate studies at Tokyo Tech as Japan and Thailand reeled from these disasters the year 2011 would mark a turning point in his life and career. What I learned from Tokyo Tech and being in Japan helped me clarify my interests, create new research on disaster risk reduction, and communicate my knowledge to a new generation of engineers and technologists, he says.
A Community Resource
JUST DAYS BEFORE Tim Ritchie MC/MPA 1998 became president of Boston’s Museum of Science (MOS), the United States reported its first coronavirus case. Soon the nation was dealing with a major crisis that affected just about everyone and MOS was no exception. As the pandemic reached Boston and Massachusetts began its lockdown in March, MOS followed suit. In April, Ritchie had the unenviable task of laying off nearly two-thirds of the museum’s workforce. “There’s been a lot of grief and loss, and there’s been a lot of growth and change,” he says of that intense time.
Greece was just emerging from 10 years of unprecedented economic crisis, and Bakoyannis was just a few months into his first term as mayor of Athens, when the pandemic hit.
Finding Her Community
“SOMETIMES YOU THINK that being different is a liability when you’re young you want to fit in,” says Kesha Ram MC/MPA 2018, who in November became the first woman of color elected to the Vermont State Senate.
Ram was raised in Los Angeles, where her parents a Jewish American mother and an immigrant Hindu father owned an Irish pub. She didn’t always view this diversity as a plus. “Only when I moved to Vermont as a first-year student at the university [University of Vermont] did I start to gather strength from it,” she says.
Kesha Ram speaks on a panel with four other women, all elected or appointed public servants, organized by Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership in honor of Women s History Month in 2018.
Bringing a Change Toolkit to the American Red Cross
LEADING ORGANIZATIONS through change is what Elisa Basnight MC/MPA 2007 does best. “My toolkit is really a change toolkit,” she says. Last year Basnight joined the American Red Cross as a senior vice president for the organization’s blood supply chain. “And who would have thought that there would have been this much change within the first year?” she says.
Basnight grew up in Wisconsin, with a father who was a U.S. Navy Reserve officer and small business owner and a mother who was a nurse. Early on, they instilled in her three core values: hard work, education, and giving back to others even though the family did not have a lot. Basnight found her way to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, served in the Army, and later went on to become the first lawyer in her family, practicing at a New York City firm.