2019 Outstanding Recent Graduate Award Recipients


Adeeb Barqawi, Ed ‘15
Adeeb Barqawi is president and CEO of ProUnitas, an organization that leverages the power of technology to systematize access to social and health services in an efficient and accountable process. The work of ProUnitas began when Adeeb, a 2012 Teach For America corps member, became a physics teacher at Kashmere High School in Northeast Houston. During his time in the classroom, he received numerous awards, including the Kinder Foundation Excellence in Teaching Award, as well as the State of Texas ACP Beginner Teacher of the Year Award. Prior to Teach for America, Adeeb worked in the pharmaceutical industry. He earned a Master’s degree in Physiology and Biophysics from Georgetown University in 2012 before coming to Johns Hopkins for a Master’s degree in Education. Adeeb is an alumnus of the Center for Houston’s Future Fall 2015 Business/Civic Executive Leadership Forum and a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum Class XXXVII. His work led him to be recognized by The Houston Chronicle as one of “five people who are most likely to shape Houston’s future.” In 2017, he was appointed by the Texas State Board of Education to serve on the inaugural steering committee of the Texas Long-Range Plan for Public Education, where he will work alongside exceptional leaders to set a new vision for public education in Texas. He is currently a board member of Good Reason Houston and Healthy Living Matters and was a 2018 Leadership ISD Civic Voices Fellow.

Lisa Marie Gerolamo, Nurs ‘13
Lisa Gerolamo is the prime example of an Outstanding Nurse Alumna. The School of Nursing should be incredibly proud to call her their own. Lisa graduated from the Accelerated BSN program in July 2013, and started a graduate job at Children’s National shortly thereafter. Less than two years into working as a RN on the highly intense 47-bed PICU, Lisa was recognized as a DAISY Award Honoree in March 2015.  Lisa worked hard to become APHON chemotherapy certified in June 2015, in order to care for the bone marrow transplant patients on her unit. She has served as both a Nurse Mentor and Preceptor since August 2016. In March 2017, she transitioned to the Critical Care Float Pool and became cross-trained in the NICU and Cardiac ICU. Lisa most recently became AACN certified in January 2018.   She is now full-time in the Pediatric ER at University of Maryland, serving many inner city and West Baltimore residents.  Lisa has also continued to dedicate herself to global health outreach. After visiting West Haiti during her BSN Public Health rotation, she has returned each December (since 2015) to volunteer in Milot, Haiti at Sacred Heart Hospital on the general pediatrics and PICU units.   She continues to rotate between days and nights as if she was born to do it, pick up additional shifts when there is “high needs” and unsafe ratios, all while maintaining a can-do attitude.   

Isaac Kinde, Med ’15
Isaac A. Kinde, M.D., Ph.D., is head of research & innovation and a co-founder of Thrive, where he is commercializing tests for the earlier detection of cancer from a simple blood draw.  As a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, his thesis research produced inventions enabling the earlier detection of cancers and other genetic diseases through improvements to massively parallel DNA sequencing technology, under the mentorship of research advisors and co-inventors Bert Vogelstein, Ken Kinzler, Nickolas Papadopoulos, and Luis Diaz, Jr.  Notable applications of his work include the earlier detection of ovarian and endometrial cancers from liquid-based Pap tests, recurrent bladder cancers from urine, and a variety of cancers from blood. Descriptions of his inventions and their applications appear in prominent scientific journals – such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, and Nature – and are the subject of several issued patents and patent applications. In 2013, he was recognized as one of Forbes Magazine’s “30 under 30” in Science and Healthcare.  Kinde holds a B.S. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he was a Meyerhoff Scholar, and both a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Medicine and an M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Monica Lopez-Gonzalez, A&S ’05, ’07, ’10
Dr. Monica Lopez-Gonzalez, a visionary and polymath, is a multilingual business executive, cognitive scientist, educator, entrepreneur, multidisciplinary artist, public speaker, theorist, and writer. She is the Chief Science and Art Officer at La Petite Noiseuse Productions, a unique company at the forefront of innovative science-art integration. At her company, Dr. Lopez-Gonzalez leads an original research and development program within creativity and human intelligence with the goal of advancing artificial intelligence in an effective, efficient, and ethical way. The result has been a novel model that merges the Cognitive Brain Sciences with the Arts, and forms the basis of the company’s consulting services in different industries (autonomous systems, education, healthcare, entertainment, among others) with clients in several U.S. cities and several countries in Europe. To prepare next generation leaders for the challenges of tomorrow, Dr. Lopez-Gonzalez has created since 2009, as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University and Peabody Institute, a STEAMM education platform. She was recognized in 2016 as a “particularly imaginative polymath” by the Imagination Institute based at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center. A leading figure in building bridges across disciplines, sectors, and cultures, she has most recently been a fellow and distinguished guest and speaker at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Salzburg, Austria; a plenary speaker and awards judge for AutoSens in Detroit, Michigan and Brussels, Belgium; a panelist at the BIO International Convention on Healthcare; and a speaker at the Maryland State Board of Education’s Fine Arts Advisory Panel.

Lucy Marcil, BSPH ’13
Lucy Marcil, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, has demonstrated leadership, outstanding clinical skills and a commitment to her patients while thinking creatively about developing strategies to lessen the impact of childhood poverty in the community – both domestically and abroad. During her medical residency, she learned that 20% of families eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) do not receive it. In response, Lucy co-founded StreetCred to fight childhood poverty by providing EITC-eligible families with financial literacy training and tax preparation services during their pediatric medical visits.  To help scale up the efforts of StreetCred, Lucy conducted a needs assessments at nine clinics across six states; raised approximately $200,000 in grants, corporate donations and grassroots fundraising; and hired and supervised a team of seven staff – all while completing a rigorous medical residency program. Under her leadership, StreetCred has returned over $4,000,000 to families to date, with a return on investment of $20 to families for every $1 spent on the program. Lucy has expanded StreetCred to four sites in Boston and several states nationally and is looking to leverage clients’ tax data to help them apply for other resources – all while working to expand the program nationally. Her work with StreetCred was recently recognized when she was named
a 2018 TED Fellow. Prior to moving to Boston, she created a care program for Namibian orphans affected by HIV and supported a community health program for mothers and children living in slums in Bangladesh. Domestically, she worked in Baltimore and Philadelphia to alleviate childhood toxic stress.

Nader Moinfar, BSPH ’11
Dr. Nader Moinfar entered the MPH program with the goal of finding an avenue for placing his clinical work as a retina specialist within the context of public health as well as the global community. As an MPH graduate, he has contributed greatly to public health ophthalmology. As an ophthalmologist in practice for over 20 years, Dr. Moinfar has collaborated on numerous clinical research studies funded by the National Eye Institute. Dr. Moinfar completed his MPH in 2011. Since then, he has assumed leadership positions, including Vice-Chairman of Ophthalmology, Orlando Regional Healthcare System (ORHS), one of the largest departments of ophthalmology in Florida and the busiest Level I trauma center, as well as Chief of Ophthalmology for the Lakeland Regional Medical Center since 2014. In addition to seeing patients and engagement in clinical research, Dr. Moinfar serves on numerous committees: the Credentials Committee, Winter Haven Hospital; Collaborative Quality Advisory Committee, ORHS; and the Surgical Working Group, Diabetic Retinopathy Clinical Research Group (NIH). As an alumnus, Dr. Moinfar has served on the Bloomberg School of Health DAAC (Dean’s Academic Advisory Council) and established, soon after his graduation, the Moinfar Family Scholarship Fund for a MPH student in financial need at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Rhoda Redulla, Nurs ‘11
Rhoda Redulla is the Magnet Program Director for the New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She has demonstrated exceptional contributions to nursing and commitment to voluntary service through her involvement in the Society of Gastroenterology Nurses and Associates (SGNA), the professional organization for gastroenterology nurses, composed of 8,000 nurses, technicians, and other professionals.  Dr. Redulla chairs the Education Committee at the national level and has been providing strategic direction to advance the professional development of the members.  Through her work with the SGNA Rhoda has contributed to the development of numerous educational programs, including web-based learning modules, webinars, and live events.  Since her completion of her DNP in 2011, she has authored numerous international and national publications and presented at conferences.  She applied the knowledge and skills obtained at Hopkins through her work with the Cochrane Nursing Care Field and Joanna Briggs Institute.  In 2012, based on her DNP capstone project, she proposed a new educational program offered at the annual SGNA conference to help develop the capacity of nurses in caring for Hepatitis C patients.  Since then, over two hundred nurses have completed the course and demonstrated impact in many organizations.  Her contribution to SGNA was recognized and selected as a Committee Spotlight featured in “The Bottom Line” in 2017.  She mentored other nurses and co-led a new fellows program.  This led to the implementation of evidence-based projects that improve the patient experience and the professional practice environment.  She also spearheaded an effort to build awareness of Hepatitis C prevention in the Philippines and continues to develop capacity among public health workers.  

Priyali Sur, SAIS ’17
Priyali Sur, 2017 Millenium Fellow at the Atlantic Council and Social Development Consultant at World Bank Group, is an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker reporting on social and development issues with a focus on gender rights.  She started her career as a television journalist for India’s leading English news channel CNN IBN, winning three national awards for her reporting. She also spent time in Washington, D.C on a Fulbright Hubert H. Humphrey fellowship. She is a contributing writer for the U.S. Women’s Media Center where she works on Gloria Steinem’s reporting project. Her most recent work is The Azadi Project (https://theazadiproject.com/), which aims to empower and integrate refugee women in Greece. It provides digital economy job skills to refugee women and girls by teaching them technical expertise such as multimedia communications and storytelling at refugee shelters.

Joseph Young, Peab ’09
Hailed as one of the most gifted conductors of his generation, Joseph Young (AD ’09, Conducting) was named the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Artistic Director of Ensembles at the Peabody Conservatory starting in 2017. In this role, he leads the programming and direction of all Peabody Conservatory instrumental ensembles. This position was highly competitive, including an international search, and it is a true testament to his skill that he obtained it at such a young age. This year Joseph also begins his tenure as Music Director of the Berkeley Symphony (CA). Prior to this position, he was assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony, where he conducted more than 50 concerts per season with the Atlanta Symphony and served as the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra. Previous appointments have included resident conductor of the Phoenix Symphony, where he made his subscription debut in the 2011-12 season, and League of American Orchestras Conducting Fellow with Buffalo Philharmonic and Baltimore Symphony. Young made his major American orchestral debut in January 2008 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and has since appeared with Saint Louis Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Colorado Symphony, Charleston Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Bamberger Symphoniker, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfonica y Coro de RTVE(Madrid), and Chicago Sinfonietta, among others. Young is a recipient of the 2015 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards for young conductors, an award he also won in 2008 and 2014. In 2013, Young was a semi-finalist in the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Germany.