Distinguished Alumnus Award 2013

2013 Recipients

B. Michael Baltzell, Engr ’71
Michael (Mike) Baltzell is a manufacturing executive with extensive global experience. Originally from Thurmont, Maryland, Baltzell received a bachelor of engineering science degree in operations research and industrial engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1971 and a master’s degree in operations research from George Washington University in 1976. Mr. Baltzell also conducted post-graduate studies at Hood College and is a graduate of the University of Michigan Executive Program. After earning his bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins, Mr. Baltzell began his career as an industrial engineer at Eastalco Aluminum Company in Frederick, Maryland. In less than 10 years he became Superintendent of Production Services at Eastalco before accepting a research position with an affiliated company, Pechiney Aluminum, where he trained and participated in a smelter research program. The program included a three-month-long intensive research opportunity at a smelter in Holland, which was the start of his global career. After gaining extensive research experience at Pechiney, Mike returned to Eastalco for a superintendent position and was promoted to senior vice president shortly thereafter. His accomplishments at Eastalco include, among many others, installation of a system to produce very high purity aluminum, development of a power modulation program resulting in 18% reduction in power, and introduction of team-based management concepts leading to improved efficiency and effectiveness. As senior vice president at Eastalco, Mr. Baltzell was very involved in economic development in Frederick, Maryland, and served on several government committees such as the Advisory Committee on Manufacturing and International Trade (General Assembly), Governor’s Work Group on Acid Deposition, and the Governor’s Task Force for Regional Economic Development. Additionally, he served on the Board of Directors of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce and as the board’s vice president in 1991. He has also served on the Board of Directors at the Washington/Baltimore Regional Association, Maryland State Chamber of Commerce, Mount Saint Mary’s University, and Frederick Memorial Hospital. In 1994, Mr. Baltzell became the president of the Alumax Primary Aluminum Corporation where he was responsible for all aspects of a 707,000 metric ton per year, five-plant, primary aluminum smelter network. Alumax Primary is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alumax, Inc, which was a Fortune 500 company with assets of more than $3.4 billion and the third largest aluminum company in the United States and fifth largest in the world. In 1998, Alumax was acquired by Alcoa, Inc, and Mr. Baltzell was named Executive Vice President of Alcoa Primary Metals, a position he held until 1999, when he became the President of Alcoa of Australia. As president, Mr. Baltzell assumed responsibility for all aspects of Alcoa's alumina refineries, aluminum smelters, and bauxite mines in Australia and advanced the company’s Australian Good Reputation Index from 27 in 2000 to 6 in 2001 (out of the 100 largest Australian companies). In 2001, Mr. Baltzell joined Alcoa World Alumina and Chemicals as President of Primary Development where he led global opportunities for alumina development in China, Iceland, Bahrain, Trinidad, and Brunei. Mr. Baltzell retired from Alcoa in 2005 and established Baltzell Management Consulting, which provides consulting services on a variety of global business activities including strategy development, executive coaching, and technology selection and implementation. During his career, Mr. Baltzell has proved that he is a natural leader. Under his management, Alcoa Business System won the following awards: 1999 Best Technology Sharing, 1999 Best Overall Audit Scores, 2000 Best EHS Performance, 2000 Best Overall Audit Performance, 2000 Chairman’s Award, 2001 Best People Development, 2001 Best Large BU Financial Performance, 2000 Milestone Achievement COGS, 2000 Milestone Achievement Capital Intensity, 2000 Milestone Achievement ROC, 2001 Distinguished Capital Management (Large BU), 2001 Distinguished Profitable Growth (Large BU) Public Awards, 2001 Employer of the Year – National Training Award, and 2001 National Work and Family Gold Award. Mr. Baltzell has shown leadership both inside and outside of the office and his distinguished career has been exemplary of a Johns Hopkins Engineering alumnus. Top

Julia G. Bolton, Nurs ’61
Julia Gooden Bolton graduated from The Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing in 1961, Case Western Reserve in 1964, and Russell Sage College in 1986. In 1986 she started her career at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, quickly climbing the administrative ladder to hold the position of Vice President for Nursing from 1988 and 1992. In 1991 she served as Interim President, then senior vice president in 1993. During her time at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center, the center set out on their Magnet journey and achieved Magnet status in 2002. There is no doubt that Julia’s influence prepared the institution and its nurses for the award. Julia has been recognized for academic excellence by Sigma Theta Tau International, the Honor Society of Nursing, as well as the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Julia is a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives, the American Organization of Nurse Executives, the Vermont Organization of Nurse Executives, the National Forum of Women Healthcare Leaders and the National League of Nursing. Julia is the author of two articles about the struggles in the contemporary healthcare system: “Valuing Leadership: Transforming the We-They Dichotomy in Nursing Organizations,” Nurse Leader (August 2004); and “Succession Planning: Securing the Future,” The Journal of Nursing Administration (December 2004). Julia is currently a senior consultant for Highpointe Business Solutions (Troy, New York) as well as trustee of Northern Berkshire Healthcare and co-chair of the Northern Berkshire Healthcare (NBH) Quality Committee. Top

David B. Hellmann, Med ’77
David Hellmann, Vice Dean and Director of the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, also serves as the School of Medicine's Interim Vice Dean for Education. Dr. Hellmann,as the inaugural holder of the Aliki Perroti Professorship of Innovative Medicine, which recognizes his leadership in education, has exemplified the finest Hopkins traditions. Since his days as a member of the School of Medicine Class of 1977, through his internship and residency here, to his pivotal role in creating the Johns Hopkins Vasculitis Center in 1998 and the Johns Hopkins Center for Innovative Medicine in 2004, Dr. Hellmann has demonstrated his vision, leadership, and dedication to Hopkins' patients, physicians, researchers and students. His creation of Johns Hopkins Bayview’s nationally recognized “Aliki Initiative,” which imbues students and residents with the importance of knowing each patient as an individual, is a powerful example of the exceptional educational programs he has fostered. Top

F. Norman Hillis III, Engr ’56
F. Norman Hillis attended the Randolph Macon Academy in Virginia and received his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Johns Hopkins in 1956. He has spent his 60+ year career at the helm of his family owned, very successful, international company, Panamerican Construction and Engineering, now known as Panamerican Consulting International Ltd.Panamerican conceptualizes, designs and builds chemical engineering plants all over the world and has offices in Freeport, Bahamas, Lakeland, Florida, and Cali, Columbia. Norman, working alongside his father, F. Norman Hillis, Jr. until his death in 1999, oversaw over 70 projects in 13 countries. Panamerican owns three subsidiary companies: Andean Minerals Development Company, which provides engineering design, procurement, and start-up services; International Purchasers, Inc, a Maryland corporation that procures United States equipment for overseas projects; and Cia. Consultante Panamericana de Colombia, S.A. (CONPANCOL), which carries out the engineering and design of Panamerican plants in many countries of the world. It is also engaged in the procurement and construction of Panamerican plants in Columbia. In addition, it has a steel plate work shop which has supplied equipment for projects in Colombia and other countries. Norman spent much of his career with Panamerican traveling extensively to South America, living in Colombia and Mexico at times which was incredibly consuming and often politically challenging work. In an article in the Johns Hopkins Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Alumni Newsletter Norman said, “I participated in every phase of a project, from the preparation of drawings in the office to fabricating and lining vessels in the field to then starting up the plant and working the bugs out of it.” Norman’s leadership helped the company grow tremendously and, today, the business builds plants that manufacture not only sulfuric acid but also ingredients for detergents as well as fertilizer, with clients all over Central and South America, Asia, and the Caribbean. Norman recently retired and his son, Stephen, has succeeded him in running the company, but Norman remains involved, consulting via email on a new job in Peru. Norman has shown exemplary leadership, befitting a Johns Hopkins Engineering alumnus. He is also a dedicated and generous alumnus, establishing the Frank Norman Hillis Jr. Memorial Scholarship in Medical Education at Johns Hopkins in 2000 in memory of his father and, more recently, the F. Norman and Janet Hillis Endowed Fund in Engineering and Medicine in 2012. Top

Karen N. Horn, A&S ’72 (PhD)
Karen N. Horn earned her PhD in Economics from Johns Hopkins in 1972. She has previously served on the Arts and Sciences Advisory Board as well as the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees. She has enjoyed a long and successful career in finance and economics. She currently serves as a senior managing director of Brock Capital Group LLC, a firm which offers advisory and consulting services to companies and other institutions on a broad variety of matters at the most senior level. She previously held executive leadership roles at Marsh & McLennan Companies, Bankers Trust, Bank One in Cleveland, Pennsylvania Bell Telephone Company, and First National Bank of Boston. From 1982 to 1987, Karen served as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The first woman president of a Federal Reserve Bank, she successfully saw the bank through the Ohio savings and loan crisis. A nationally recognized leader in economics, Karen also serves on dozens of boards and committees, ranging from Eli Lilly and T. Rowe Price Mutual Funds to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlements. Top


Ralph H. Hruban, Med '85
Dr. Hruban is a Professor of Pathology and Oncology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and his Doctor of Medicine from The Johns Hopkins University. He continued at Johns Hopkins for his residency training, spent one year as a Fellow at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and returned to Johns Hopkins, faculty in 1990. Dr. Hruban is currently the director of The Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center and director of the Division of Gastrointestinal/Liver Pathology. The pancreatic cancer research team at Johns Hopkins has made many of the fundamental advances in our understanding of pancreatic cancer over the last decade, including the demonstration that pancreatic cancer is fundamentally a genetic disease. Dr. Hruban has written over 500 scientific papers, 80 book chapters and reviews, and five books. Research contributions include the characterization of PanINs, the precursor lesions that give rise to invasive pancreatic cancer. He is recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as a Highly Cited Researcher, and by Essential Science Indicators as the most highly cited pancreatic cancer scientist — designations given to the most highly influential scientists. In addition to his research efforts, he founded The National Familial Pancreas Tumor Registry at Johns Hopkins and helped create the Johns Hopkins Pancreatic Cancer Web Page, http://pathology.jhu.edu/pancreas. Dr. Hruban serves as president-elect of The Johns Hopkins Medical and Surgical Association, and will assume the role of president at the Biennial Meeting in June 2013. Top

Redonda G. Miller, Med ’92, Bus ’04, '05 (Cert)
Dr. Miller is the Vice President for Medical Affairs and an Associate Professor of Medicine. Previously, she was a vice chair for clinical operations in the Department of Medicine and an assistant dean for student affairs. Her professional and research interests are in women’s health, physician practice issues and medical education. Arriving as a medical student in 1988, she completed her residency in the Hopkins Osler Medical Service. She has distinguished herself with ever-increasing responsibilities, recently leading interdisciplinary teams to improve patient care, playing a major role in improving performance on hospital core measures and in helping to make our physician order entry system more user-friendly. She leads the medical staff functions, serving as the chief medical officer for the Hospital, is the Hospital’s patient safety officer, as well as overseeing Hospital epidemiology and infection control, medical records and the pharmacy, among other institutional activities. Dr. Miller serves as the Class of 1992 Class Representative, a role she has held since graduation. As the alumni liaison with the development and alumni relations office, she solicits her classmates and is the primary conduit of communication with the class. A female alumni leader, Dr. Miller has volunteered her time to participate in career networking and advising events, and rarely declines an invitation to speak or interact with current students or young alumni. Top

Frank B. Murray, A&S ’61 (MAT), ’66 (PhD)
Dr. Frank B. Murray is H. Rodney Sharp Professor in the School of Education and the Department of Psychology at the University of Delaware, where he also served as dean of its College of Education between 1979 and 1995. Currently he directs its Center for Educational Leadership and Policy (CELaP). From 1998-2003, he was appointed President of the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) in Washington, DC, and has been very involved in accreditation discussions over the past two decades. He received his BA degree from St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, and his MAT and PhD degrees in General Education from The Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. He has served in various capacities on the editorial boards of several journals in developmental and educational psychology and is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, he chaired the national board of the Holmes Group, a consortium of research universities engaged in educational reform. For eight years, and served as executive director of the successor, the Holmes Partnership from 1996 to 1998. He was president and co-founder of the Project 30 Alliance, an organization of faculty in education and the liberal arts. Between 1994 and 1997, he co-edited the Review of Educational Research for the American Educational Research Association. In 1996 he edited The Teacher Educator's Handbook for the American Association of Teacher Education. For his contributions to the fields of child development and teacher education, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1994. Top

Khurram Nasir, SPH ’01, Med ’07 (PGF)
  Dr. Nassir's leadership role has revolutionized the collaborative research that we have done at the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease. He received his MPH from the Bloomberg School of Public Health and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Hopkins. Currently, he has an appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine with the Ciccarone Center. Dr. Nasir's pioneering work has led to a much needed overhauling of the traditional paradigms of risk assessment in the important area of primary prevention of cardiovascular disease. He has become a national thought leader in preventive cardiology, cardiovascular computed tomography, and cardiovascular imaging. As a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, he won the A. McGhee Harvey Young Investigator Award. Dr. Nasir has been first and senior author on many important manuscripts in leading cardiovascular and internal medicine journals and has mentored more than 20 of our residents and fellows over the years. His publication record is more impressive than that of most of the full professors in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins. His work has focused on the striking heterogeneity between traditional cardiac risk factor burden and the amount of subclinical atherosclerosis that a middle-aged or older adult may have. He has demonstrated that the absence of coronary calcium is the most powerful "negative indicator" for the development of a cardiovascular event and this information is very important in managing health care costs. Top

Patrick W. O'Carroll, Med ’83, SPH ’83
Patrick O'Carroll serves as the Regional Health Administrator for U.S. Public Health Service in the Pacific Northwest Region. In this role, he provides leadership on key initiatives concerning health promotion and disease prevention, along with eliminating disparities in health status, through cultivation of best practices and collaboration with state and local health officials. In 2012, he accepted a promotion to Rear Admiral, Assistant Surgeon General in the USPHS. Dr. O'Carroll previously worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where he served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer before leading the epidemiology research unit for the prevention of suicide and violence. He co-authored a seminal CDC peer-reviewed paper explicitly defining the field of public health informatics (PHI) for the first time. From this, Dr. O'Carroll created the first training curriculum and textbook on PHI. The book is widely used around the world. He has published four books and monographs, eighteen book chapters, 55 peer reviewed articles, and a dozen government and institutional publications. Dr. O’Carroll’s career includes dozens of posts on committees and task forces, as well as abroad portfolio of international assignments as part of disaster response and epidemic investigations. Top

Arthur M. Rubin, SAIS ’92
Arthur Rubin pioneered the SAIS NY Alumni Group over a decade ago, bringing it to full organizational capacity with a Steering Committee of about 40 SAIS alumni who help determine ways alumni connect with each other, with SAIS and the broader Johns Hopkins community. He runs the alumni organization by fostering relationships, tapping alumni and good ideas and support to run activities. New York alumni, with Arthur's leadership, have published an annual newsletter, created unique opportunities with sub-groups such as the SAIS United Nations alumni group, established and effectively delegated the management of a lively alumni Facebook site. Arthur has been keenly aware to meet the needs of our three campus alumni communities of Bologna, Nanjing and DC thus aiding in the creation of a strong and vibrant network. Arthur has consistently made himself available both to students and staff members in Career Services. He has been a leader in helping organize Career Treks and other career panels in New York, always serving as an important catalyst in identifying other alumni and encouraging them to work together to help students reach their professional goals. He is a successful Wall Street entrepreneur and family man with his life partner Barbara Glassman, SAIS '92, and their two children. Top