WORKING WITH THE CARTERS: AN EMORY FACULTY MEMBER'S RECOLLECTIONS

The 2010 Discovery That Monarch Butterflies

USE MEDICINAL PLANTS to treat their offspring for disease garnered worldwide publicity for Emory biologist Jaap de Roode. President Jimmy Carter was among those intrigued by the finding.

Before retiring from public life, Carter was fully present at Emory— meeting regularly with the university president, keeping up with campus news, attending classes, giving lectures and hosting monthly lunches with faculty and staff. He invited de Roode to The Carter Center to join him and others for lunch, and it was de Roode’s turn to be intrigued.

“I was struck by just how normal President Carter is,” de Roode recalls. “We went into the cafeteria at The Carter Center and he lined up with his tray to pay for his lunch with everyone else.”

Lunching with the former US president was far more relaxed and congenial than de Roode could have imagined. “President Carter is very interested in what people do and what they have to say,” de Roode says. “He really likes to listen and learn.”

Carter told de Roode that his wife Rosalynn Carter was concerned that many pollinators, including some butterflies, were not thriving due to habitat loss. The former first lady wanted to find ways to help conserve them.

It was not just idle chat. That lunch conversation led to a visit by both the Carters to de Roode’s lab on the Emory campus, one of just a handful of monarch butterfly laboratories in the world. The couple also joined de Roode’s lab members in 2012 during a field trip to the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in central Mexico, where tens of millions of migrating monarchs blanket the trees and landscape in the winter.

Rosalynn Carter was inspired to put her passion into action. She co-founded the Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail to help increase habitat for monarchs and other pollinators. She tapped de Roode to serve on the board of directors. The nonprofit took root in Plains, Georgia, and quickly sprouted into one-thousand-seven-hundred registered pollinator-friendly gardens.

Mrs. Carter’s surprise gift to her husband on his ninetieth birthday was the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Pollinator Garden at The Carter Center, which attracted many enthusiastic volunteers to put it together—including Carter Center staff and their families along with de Roode and his students, who donated plants and expertise along with their labor.

The phenomenal energy of both the Carters, de Roode says, helps galvanize others to take positive action. “They could be sipping lemonade while sitting on the porch. Instead they are always creating new things to make the world better. It’s inspiring to see people who have already achieved so much in life keep it going,” de Roode says.—Carol Clark continued from page 19 smooth or crunchy. Laney recalls that Carter’s presence “electrified” the campus as he crossed it with Secret Service guards in tow heading to a lecture hall or class. “I’ve taught in all the schools at Emory,” Carter says. “It has kept me aware of the younger generation, their thoughts and ideals.”

Humble Origins And Heady Ambitions

On September 1, 1982, The Carter Center began as an office staffed by just three people—including Carter—on the tenth floor of Emory’s Robert W. Woodruff Library while its permanent home was being constructed just a few miles away.

Walking on campus one day, Laney and Carter had a chance meeting with Karl Deutsch, then a Harvard social scientist and doyen of international diplomacy. Deutsch told Carter, “You will go down in history as the first president to have made human rights central to foreign policy.” Recalls Laney, “Carter was deeply touched, and for me it was additional validation of Emory’s partnership with him. It has grown through the years and now seems to have been destined from the beginning.” continued on page 23

RARE OPPORTUNITIES: INTERNSHIPS INSPIRE EMORY STUDENTS

STEVEN HOCHMAN, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, SAYS THE CARTER CENTER HAD STUDENT INTERNS BEFORE IT HAD A PROFESSIONAL STAFF. Months prior to the center’s 1982 opening, Jim Waits—then dean of Emory’s Candler School of Theology and future interim director of The Carter Center—tasked a group of his students with researching how such a center might be organized.

“I don’t know how many of their ideas were accepted,” Hochman says. “But these students worked for the institution before it was even given The Carter Center name.”

Forty years later, The Carter Center still provides students with real-world experience through internships and workstudy programs. It also gives them something more: inspiration.

For Phong Le 18B 21MPH, that spark was ignited in the third grade, when Madelle Hatch, chief development officer at The Carter Center, came to his class for career day. She brought a Guinea worm in a jar and talked about the center’s program to eradicate the tropical parasite from poorer parts of the globe. “I didn’t realize you could do work that was that impactful to the world,” Le says.

Le came to Emory and studied information systems and operations management at Goizueta Business School. He applied for an internship at the center and got it. He then continued on to earn a master’s of public health in epidemiology from Rollins.

Along the way, Le returned to the center for a second internship, followed by an opportunity to work as a graduate assistant.

He built an analytics and mapping dashboard for the Trachoma Control program, where today he works as a data analyst.

Current Emory student Kaela Wilkinson 23C was also drawn to The Carter Center’s humanitarian approach. She earned an internship this fall with the center’s Democracy program, which seeks to increase political access and participation around the world. In her first months at the center, Wilkinson has not only gathered resources for election-focused programs in Michigan and Arizona, but she has already started building relationships with local organizers across the nation. And the international studies major expects to make use of the center’s expansive librar y to start her own review of independent legislative theory.

“The center has given us [interns] space to do our own research projects,” Wilkinson says. “It’s been an opportunity to establish some incredible connections and get my foot in the door for international work. I already plan on applying for a second internship.”

Both Wilkinson and Le agree that The Carter Center offers students more than just room to explore their research interests. It also compels them to see the people behind those surveys and studies—no ma er where they go on to work. “You build deep relationships,” Le says. “It’s just like President Carter says: ‘The evidence is the hope you see in their eyes. That’s why we do our work.’ ”

—Tony Rehagen

ALUMNI IMPACT: EMORY GRADUATES BOLSTER THE CENTER'S EXPERTISE

OF ALL THE PROFESSORS

YAWEI LIU 96G HAD DURING HIS TIME AS A PHD STUDENT AT EMORY, ROBERT PASTOR STANDS OUT STRONGLY IN LIU’S MEMORY. Not only was the former Goodrich C. White Professor of Political Science the strictest teacher Liu ever had—giving him his only B—but Pastor also served as a senior fellow at The Carter Center who monitored village elections in Liu’s home country of China.

Two years after the class, Pastor reached out to Liu about joining him in the center’s efforts to bolster the integrity of local elections in China. It was an email that would forever change Liu’s life.

“I had of course heard of The Carter Center, but I didn’t know what an impact it had made in election monitoring around the world,” Liu says. “I care deeply about when China is going to open up and allow people to elect their own officials. I felt like we could make a difference in making that happen. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.”

Twenty-five years later, Liu serves as a senior adviser managing the China Focus for The Carter Center. He is one of scores of Emory alumni who have lent their skills—and the university’s academic reputation—to the center and its mission.

“The training I got at Emory was rigorous,” says Liu. “And the connection between Emory and the center gave us increased credibility on the world stage. The Chinese government is historically nervous about any NGO, especially one from the United States. The relationship between the two made it a lot easier.”

Nowhere is that added credibility more apparent than in global health. Kelly Callahan 09MPH, director of The Carter Center’s Trachoma Control program, experienced Emory’s unique approach when she came to the Rollins School of Public Health to earn a master’s in public health after spending a decade in the field treating disease in Africa.

Prior to her arrival at Emory, Callahan says she was focused purely on how many people were affected and how many she was able to treat. The Rollins faculty challenged her to see her work in more holistic terms, like how it was impacting the country’s gross domestic product, the local and regional economy, as well as global health as a whole.

“I had done it at the community level, but when I came to Emory, I had my eyes opened by the faculty and professors,” she says. “I had some blinders about making sure we worked only on certain outputs and goals [without a holistic view of the problem]. Had it not been for my time at Emory, I would not have gained this global perspective.”

Today, in addition to their positions at The Carter Center, both Liu and Callahan serve as adjunct professors at Emory, where they pass on the education they value so highly, shape the minds and leaders of tomorrow, and perhaps even cultivate future recruits for The Carter Center.—Tony

Rehagen

continued from page 21

In the early years, a few key individuals provided the bridge between the center and Emory. Jointly appointed Carter Center fellows such as Robert A. Pastor in the Department of Political Science, William H. Foege in Rollins School of Public Health, Frank S. Alexander in the School of Law, and others established direct links between the center’s humanitarian work and scholarship at Emory. Foege was well known to Carter, having served as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during Carter’s administration.

Numerous Carter Center staff are Emory graduates, and more than two-thousand Emory undergraduates and graduate assistants have interned there. Camila Giraldez 24C served in the Rule of Law program and says: “Staff lunch days were the best because I got to hear about what’s going on in opposite corners of the world.”

Four Carter Center health program directors—Eve Byrd 86N 98N 98MPH, 98N, mental health; Kelly Callahan 09PH, trachoma; Gregory Noland 18MPH, river blindness, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis, and the Hispaniola Initiative; and Adam Weiss 13MPH, Guinea worm—hold degrees from Emory.

“President and Mrs. Carter saw in Emory a collaborator whose principles and ethics reflected the values they believed in,” says Paige Alexander, CEO of The Carter Center. “The partnership remains vital to our global mission, with Emory graduates, researchers, thinkers, and leaders helping us build a healthier, more peaceful world.”

Located on Emory’s campus and dedicated in 2001,