Innovators

Dr. Wayne A.I. Frederick, President of Howard University, joins Innovators to talk about how his institution continues to deliver excellence in many fields, and how Howard is innovating to cope with the ongoing pandemic.

Dr. Frederick was named Howard president in 2014, and also serves as the distinguished Charles R. Drew Professor of Surgery. Dr. Frederick received his B.S and M.D. from Howard University, and also earned a MBA from the university in 2011.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*

Dr. Elsa Murano, the former president of Texas A&M and current director of the Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture, joins Innovators to talk about the world's food production system and how it has been disrupted during the pandemic.

Dr. Murano was appointed Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety in the United States Department of Agriculture in 2001 and served until 2005, which she went to work at Texas A&M. In 2007, she became the first Hispanic-American and first woman to hold TAMU's presidency. Her current leadership of the Borlaug Institute helps to carry on the legacy of Dr. Norman Borlaug by overseeing the Institute and its international agriculture training programs.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*

Klara Jelinkova, Vice President for International Operations and IT at Rice University, joins Innovators to talk about how technology influences and can enhance international education at universities of higher education.

Jelinkova holds a Master's in Education from Boston University and a Bachelor's in Economics and Slavic Languages from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*

Dr. Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), joins Innovators to assess the long-term impact of 2020's high-profile protests against systemic racism in the wake of the murders of George Floyd and other unarmed Black Americans. Dr. Lomax also talks about the ongoing pandemic that has claimed the lives of Black Americans at some of the highest rates in the country – two times higher than that of white Americans.

Dr. Lomax graduated from Morehouse College with an English degree, earned a master's degree in English literature from Columbia University, and earned a doctorate in African American studies from Emory University. He became the president of UNCF in 2004.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*

Dr. Caroline Buckee, Associate Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University, joins Innovators to talk about championing the fight against infectious diseases and what challenges still lie ahead for the world of public health in a post-COVID-19 world.

After completing her undergraduate studies, Buckee earned a master's degree in bioinformatics at the University of York. There, she helped map the DNA sequence of the malaria parasite Plasmodium knowlesi, an undertaking that sparked a lasting interest in pathogen genomics.

Buckee earned her PhD in mathematical epidemiology at Oxford University.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*

Dr. Allison Brashear, Dean of the University of California-Davis School of Medicine, joins Innovators to talk about her program's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how the pandemic has helped her West Coast medical school expand translational research, topple organizational silos, and embrace a curricular shift to lifelong learning.

Dr. Brashear has been the Dean of the UC Davis School of Medicine since early 2019. She completed the Harvard School of Public Health Leadership program for Physicians in 2004 and earned her M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in 2012. She was named an Association of American Medical Colleges Council of Deans Fellow in 2014.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*

Dr. Allison Brashear, Dean of the University of California-Davis School of Medicine, joins Innovators to talk about her program’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and how the pandemic has helped her West Coast medical school expand translational research, topple organizational silos, and embrace a curricular shift to lifelong learning.

Donde Plowman, PhD, Chancellor of the University of Tennessee's flagship Knoxville campus, discusses her institution's COVID-19 response in the latest installment of Innovators.

Chancellor Plowman earned her doctorate in strategic management from the University of Texas at Austin, an undergraduate degree with a major in English from Southern Methodist University, and an MEd in higher education administration from the University of North Texas.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*

Bernadette M. Melnyk, PhD, chief wellness officer at The Ohio State University, analyzes the U.S. healthcare system's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the latest installment of Innovators.

The outbreak was destined to be a global crisis, Melnyk said. However, in her estimation, it was made far worse by our less-than-ideal response to it.

Melnyk blames, among other things, a lack of coordination and cooperation by health officials at the federal, state, and local levels. The result, she said, was a frenzied, haphazard approach that has left the general public drowning in a flood of information, often contradictory and sometimes just plain wrong.

In addition to holding a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in nursing and a doctorate in clinical research, Dr. Melnyk is a registered nurse, a certified psychiatric- mental health nurse practitioner, and a certified pediatric nurse practitioner. She's a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), the American Academy of Nursing (AAN), the National Academies of Practice (NAP), and the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP).

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*

Robert Hinson (USAF, Lt. General (Ret), Executive Director of The National Strategic Research Institute (NSRI) at the University of Nebraska, joins Innovators to talk about how he leads NSRI and how UARCs function to protect the nation from a myriad of growing global threats.

Hinson joined the University of Nebraska on August 1, 2012, following a nine-year foray into the private sector — as a vice president with defense contractor Northrup Grumman. Hinson's mission at the university: Establish an academic research center that could serve as a beachhead in the always-fierce battle for military research dollars.

The upshot: the National Strategic Research Institute (NSRI), which has, by most any measure, met the university's lofty expectations. Since its launch eight years ago, NSRI has completed more than 110 projects for the U.S. military, yielding some $176 million in revenue. In 2019, revenue was up a staggering 52 percent from the previous year.

Innovators is a podcast production of Harris Search Associates.

*The views and opinions shared by the guests on Innovators do not necessarily reflect the views of the interviewee's institution or organization.*