2011 CARIBBEAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH HONOREES

The 2011 Caribbean American Heritage (CARAH) Awards were held in Washington DC Friday November 11 2011, honoring the Caribbean's elite.CARAH was instituted in 1994 by the Institute of Caribbean Studies in order to demonstrate the contributions that Caribbean immigrants make to the USA.   Also honored from time to time are Friends of the Caribbean whose work contribute to the wellbeing and welfare of the Caribbean peoples.  ICS'  Founder and President, Dr. Claire Nelson cites the CARAH Awards as part of the organization's campaign to ensure that the conversation on the future of America and immigration includes a recognition of the indivisible historical linkages between the US and the Caribbean.

 Dr. Frank L. Douglas – Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship

Frank L. Douglas M.D., Ph.D. is a Guyanese American medical doctor and researcher. Douglas resigned from his appointment as a professor of practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in July 2007 after the university's administration refused to consider granting Assistant Professor James Sherley tenure.

Douglas graduated from Lehigh University, received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Institution, and a fellowship in neuroendocrinology at the National Institutes of Health. Douglas taught clinical pharmacology at the Pritzker School of Medicine before becoming a professor of practice at MIT and establishing the Center for Biomedical Innovation Management.

He is a 2010 GQ magazine Rock Star of Science and a 2007 Black History Maker Awardee. He was twice the recipient of the Global Pharmaceutical Research and Development Director of Year Award. Dr Douglas is a twenty-four year veteran of the Pharmaceutical industry where he held several leadership positions, including Chief Scientific Officer, Executive Vice President responsible for Research and Development, and member of the Board of Management of Aventis AG. He is presently President and CEO of the Austen BioInnovation Institute in Akron. Prior to this he was founder and first executive director of the MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation from which he resigned to protest the treatment of another professor, who was denied tenure at MIT. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Multiple Myeloma Foundation, and trustee of Akron Tomorrow. He is lead author of the White Paper, entitled: Value-Driven Engineering and U,S, Competitiveness: A call for a Platform to Advance Value- Driven Engineering

Douglas currently sits on the Board of Trustees at Lehigh University and Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main as well as the board of directors at NitroMed, Gene Logic, and Altanos Pharmaceuticals Holding.

Maryse Conde – Award for Excellence in Literature

Maryse Condé (born 1937) is a Guadeloupian, French language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Maryse Condé was born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, the youngest of eight children. In 1953, her parents sent her to study at Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels.

Condé's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolité, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celinaire's Throat also shows traces of her paternal great-grandmother.

In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre.

Dr. Arlie Petters – Excellence in Science & Technology Award

Dr. Arlie Oswald Petters is the Benjamin Powell Professor and Professor of Mathematics, Physics, and Business Administration at Duke University. Before coming to Duke, he was an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University for five years (1993-1998) and an Instructor of Pure Mathematics at MIT for two years (1991-1993).  Dr. Petters’s work at the Fuqua School of Business has dealt with finance, social entrepreneurship, and environmentally sustainable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) business efforts in a developing world setting. Dr. Petters’ career at Duke is also marked by several firsts as an African-American, becoming the first to be tenured in the Department of Mathematics, the first to hold a triple appointment with Mathematics, Physics, and the Fuqua School of Business, and the first to be elected to Duke’s Bass Society of Fellows.

Dr. Petters received his Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT in 1991 with a specialization in mathematical physics. He began his career at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he was part of an accelerated B.A./M.A. program for undergraduates. He graduated from Hunter in 1986 and was the recipient of several awards in mathematics and physics. Hunter College honored Dr. Petters by inducting him into the Hunter College Hall of Fame (1999) and awarding him an honorary Doctor of Science degree (2008).

Dr. Petters’s research on gravitational lensing deals with how light is affected by the warping of space and time. He was the first to develop the mathematical theory of gravitational lensing, which brought powerful methods from pure mathematics to bear on astronomy. Dr. Petters also pioneered new applications of gravitational lensing in physics, predicting effects that probe the nature of space time around black holes and developing tests of gravitational theories like Einstein’s general relativity and hyperspace gravity models. He wrote three problem-solving books on mathematics and scientific reasoning for elementary and high school students .

Dr. Petters has received many awards and honors for his innovative research, including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and an National Science Foundation Career grant award. He was also selected in 2006 by the National Academy of Sciences to be part of a Portrait Collection of Outstanding African-Americans in Science, Engineering, and Medicine. The collection is on permanent display at the Keck Center in Washington, DC.

In addition to being a researcher, Dr. Petters has helped and mentored numerous underrepresented minority and majority students, faculty, and professionals, and consequently received many community service awards. In 2005 Dr. Petters founded the Petters Research Institute as a way of giving back to Belize. The institute is a center of excellence aimed at developing the Belizean human capital in STEM fields and fostering Belize’s national development through environmentally sustainable applications of STEM tools in entrepreneurship and innovation. Dr. Petters is spearheading these efforts in close collaboration with governmental, educational, and private sector entities in Belize.

In recognition of Dr. Petters’s outstanding scientific and educational work, he was named in 2008 by the Queen of England to Membership in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, he was honored in 2009 with a street in his name in Dangriga, Belize, and he was appointed in 2010 as the inaugural Chairman of the Council of Science Advisers to the Prime Minister of Belize.

Rev. Neville Callam – Luminary Award

Callam was born in Jamaica to a committed Baptist family, his father a deacon and his mother involved in other ministries. He discovered his own Christian faith as a teenager.

Callam was educated at the United Theological College of the West Indies, the University of the West Indies, and Harvard Divinity School and was ordained in 1977. In his pastoral ministry Callam has served as senior pastor of the Grace/Mineral Heights and Tarrant/Balmagie Circuits. He is also an academic specialising in Christian ethics and theology and has taught at the United Theological College of the West Indies, the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology, and Jamaica Theological Seminary, and, as a visiting lecturer, at Barbados Baptist College. He has also served on the University Council of Jamaica, the accrediting body for colleges and universities in Jamaica. He has written five books and published journal articles and book chapters. He is a popular speaker at forums, symposiums, seminars and workshops throughout the world.

Callam has also enjoyed a career in the media. He created and ran The Breath of Change (TBC FM), a religious radio station, and was a founding director of the National Religious Media Company of Jamaica, the operator of LOVE FM and LOVE TV. He has also served as Chairman of the Board of the Public Broadcasting Corporation of Jamaica.

Callam has a long career in the service of the Jamaica Baptist Union. He has held the positions of chairman of the media commission, general treasurer, acting general secretary, and finally, president, serving terms 1985-87 and 2000-02. He has been vice president of the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship and from 2000 until 2005 he was vice president of the Baptist World Alliance, having served on many of its committees, commissions, and workgroups, including the general council and executive committee. On 6 July 2007 he was elected General Secretary of the BWA during a meeting of the general council at Accra.

Callam has been married for over thirty years and has two children.

Hazelle Goodman – Excellence in the Arts

Born in Trinidad WI, the actress and comedienne came to America at the age of 8 to join her mother, the late Rev. Dr. Virginia Goodman, who was the first woman of African and Caribbean descent to become a Moravian minister.  While her values are deeply rooted in my Caribbean heritage, Goodman has built my life and work on American soil, earning on the way a HBO Special.  Her latest show is 'Don't Get Me Started'.

After graduating from City College of New York with a degree in drama, Goodman spent seven years developing her one woman show called Hazelle!. The show was adapted for the screen by HBO in 1995, and earned two Cable Ace nominations in the Best Comedy Special and Best Performer categories. In 1997, she became the first black woman to have a prominent role in a Woody Allen film when she portrayed Cookie, a prostitute in Allen's Deconstructing Harry. Goodman also had a recurring role on Homicide: Life on the Street as Georgia Rae Mahoney, a key figure in a drug dealing family who is eventually murdered. On stage, in addition to her one woman show, she has also portrayed the Queen in Shakespeare's Cymbeline and took part in the

February 10, 2001, staging of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues at Madison Square Garden. Goodman went on to write and star in a second one woman show called To the Top, Top, Top!. She was also an original cast member of Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell, performing the late artists monologues that primarily dealt with adventure.

Janet Rollé – Trailblazer Award

Janet Rollé is the executive vice president and chief marketing officer for CNN Worldwide. She oversees the positioning and promotion of CNN’s multiple networks and services, including CNN, CNN.com, CNN International, HLN, CNN.com/Live, CNN Mobile and all other CNN services. Rollé is responsible for brand strategy, consumer and trade communication, audience development, and sales communications supporting CNN brands and programming. Rollé reports directly to CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton and is based in New York.

Rollé joined CNN in April 2011 from BET Networks, where as executive vice president and chief marketing officer she led brand strategy and marketing efforts, including on-air promotions, off-channel and digital marketing, affiliate and trade marketing. She directed a redesign of the BET network on air, and comprehensive, multi-platform marketing campaigns for the brand’s signature successes, including BET’s history-making scripted series THE GAME, The BET Honors and the BET Awards, for which BET received multiple Promax/BDA Awards. Advertising Age magazine named her one of “10 Who Made Their Mark” in 2010 for her noteworthy brand development work at BET.

Before joining BET Networks, Rollé worked at AOL as Vice President and General Manger of AOL Black

Voices and AOL Women’s and Lifestyle Programming from 2005-2007. In this role, she oversaw editorial

programming for AOL Black Voices and the 10 websites in the lifestyle category.

From 2000-2005, Rollé worked at MTV Networks as the vice president of programming enterprises and business development for VH1 and CMT. She began her business career at HBO, where she spent nearly 10 years, eventually rising to Director of Marketing and New Media for HBO Home Video.

Rollé earned her MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business, where she was the President of the Black Business Students Association. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Dance from the State University of New York at Purchase. She serves on the Board of Directors of the American Foundation for the University of the West Indies and on the Nominating Committee for the Board of Directors of the United States Tennis Association.

Garth Fagan – Marcus Garvey Lifetime Achievement Award

Fagan is the founder and artistic director of the award-winning and internationally acclaimed Garth Fagan Dance, now celebrating its 40th Anniversary season. A Tony and Olivier award winner, Fagan continually renews his own distinctive dance vocabulary, which draws on many sources: sense of weight in modern dance, torso-centered movement and energy of Afro-Caribbean, speed and precision of ballet, and the rule breaking experimentation of the post-moderns. “Originality has always been Mr. Fagan’s strong suit, not least in his transformation of recognizable idioms into a dance language that looks not only fresh but even idiosyncratic,” writes Anna Kisselgoff of The New York Times.

For his path-breaking choreography for Walt Disney’s The Lion King, Fagan was awarded the prestigious 1998 Tony Award for Best Choreography. He also received the 1998 Drama Desk Award, 1998 Outer Critics Circle Award, 1998 Astaire Award, 2000 Laurence Olivier Award, 2001 Ova􀆟on Award, and the 2004 Helpmann Award for his work on the Broadway musical, which opened in fall 1997 to extraordinary critical praise. Fagan’s distinguished work in the theatre also includes the first fully staged production of the Duke Ellington street opera, Queenie Pie at the Kennedy Center in 1986 and the opening production of Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival's Shakespeare Marathon: A Midsummer Night's Dream, (1988), set in Brazil and directed by A.J. Antoon.

In the world of concert dance, Fagan choreographs primarily for Garth Fagan Dance. His recent work, Mudan 175/39,

was named by The New York Times as the third of the top six dance watching moments of 2009. Fagan has also produced commissions for a number of leading companies, including his first work en pointe, Footprints Dressed in Red, for the Dance Theatre of Harlem; a solo for Judith Jamison; Jukebox for Alvin for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater; and Never No Lament for the Jose Limon Company; and Ellington Elation, part of a triad of pieces commissioned by New York City Ballet in honor of Duke Ellington’s centenary and New York City Ballet’s 50^th anniversary.

Fagan began his career when he toured Latin America with Ivy Baxter and her national dance company from Jamaica. Baxter, and two other famed dance teachers from the Caribbean, Pearl Primus and Lavinia Williams were major influences on Fagan. In New York City, Fagan studied with Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Mary Hinkson, and Alvin Ailey, who were all central to his development. Fagan was director of Detroit's All-City Dance Company, and principal soloist and choreographer for Detroit Contemporary Dance Company and Dance Theatre of Detroit.

In October 2001, Mr. Fagan a native of Jamaica was presented with the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander:

a national honor bestowed upon him by the Jamaican government. In August 1998, he received that country’s Special Gold Musgrave Medal, for his “Contribution to the World of Dance and Dance Theater” and the Prime Minister’s Award, a plate bearing the signatures of all the Prime Ministers of Jamaica, acknowledging his achievements.

Fagan is a Chancellor’s Award-winning Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of the State University of New York. He taught for over three decades at the State University of New York at Brockport. He holds honorary doctorates from the Juilliard School, the University of Rochester, Nazareth College of Rochester, and Hobart and William Smith Colleges. In 1996 he was one of only twenty-five American scholars, artists, professionals and public figures to receive the title Fulbright 50th Anniversary Distinguished Fellow.

Fagan also received the 2001 Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, “established to honor those great

choreographers who have dedicated their lives and talent to the creation of our modern dance heritage.” He is also the

recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the prestigious three-year Choreography Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.