ALUMNI AWARDS 2023

These five Haverfordians were recognized during Alumni Weekend for their service to the College, society, and their professions.

The KANNERSTEIN AWARD for loyal service to the College was presented to Natalie Wossene ’08. As an undergraduate at Haverford, Natalie served on numerous committees, was Students’ Council co-vice president, and was a student representative to the Board of Managers. Her volunteerism did not stop at graduation. As an alum, she is a former member of both the Alumni Association Executive Committee and the Young Alumni Advisory Group, having served as president on both committees. Natalie, who is senior director of Azure product marketing at Microsoft, has been a member of the Multicultural Alumni Action Group, Giving Day advocate, admissions volunteer, and reunion volunteer, and she has participated in the Center for Career and Professional Advising’s “Fords on Friday” alumni speaker program. Natalie became a member of the Haverford Corporation in 2021. She and her husband Elijah Moyo have three children: Mambo, Waleed, and Murphy. The family resides in Seattle.

The HAVERFORD AWARD honored physician Kiame Mahaniah ’93 for his work in community health focused on the pursuit of social justice and equity. During his eight years at the Lynn Community Health Center in Lynn, Mass., where he rose to CEO and led the Center through the pandemic, he played an instrumental role in increasing access to substance use disorder and addiction programs in Lynn, expanding a recuperative care center for the most vulnerable populations, and opening a retail pharmacy. In April, Kiame was appointed Massachusetts’ Undersecretary for Health. A practicing physician who holds a teaching appointment at Tufts University School of Medicine, he attended Jefferson Medical College and completed his family medicine residency at the University of Pittsburgh. Kiame is married to Katrin Schneck, and the couple has two adult children, Laura and Kieto.

The DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARD went to two alumni who were recognized for outstanding accomplishments in their fields:

Kari Nadeau ’88 is the chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies. For more than 30 years, she has devoted herself to understanding how environmental and genetic factors affect the risk of developing allergies and asthma. Her laboratory has been studying air pollution and wildfire effects on children and adults, and she oversees a team working on air pollution and wildfire research along with a multidisciplinary group of community leaders, firefighters, engineers, scientists, lawyers, and policymakers. Kari has published more than 400 papers, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. EPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, and was appointed as a member of the U.S. Federal Wildfire Mitigation and Management Commission in 2022. She also launched four biotech companies and founded the Climate Change and Health Equity Task Force. She started the Sustainability Health Seed Grant initiative, the Climate Change and Health Fellowship program, and developed climate change and health courses at Stanford University. A member of Haverford’s Board of Managers, she and her husband Paul Jackson have five children: Katherine, Elizabeth, Stephanie, Jennifer, and Christopher.

Akira Iriye ’57, P’86, is a historian of American diplomatic history, especially United States-East Asian relations and international issues. Born in Tokyo, Japan, he came to the United States in 1953 to attend college. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1961 and began his career as a lecturer in history there, then taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the University of Rochester, and the University of Chicago before being appointed as a professor of history at Harvard University in 1989, where he became Charles Warren Professor of American History in 1991, retiring in 2005. Since then, he has been a guest professor at Waseda University, Ritsumeikan University, and the University of Illinois. Akira is the author of a number of important works on the interaction between Asia and the United States and has been a consistent proponent of raising global community consciousness. He is the only Japanese citizen ever to serve as president of the American Historical Association, and has also served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Akira and his wife Mitsuko reside in Gwynedd, Pa., and one of their two daughters, Masumi, is a member of the Haverford Class of 1986.

The YOUNG ALUMNI AWARD went to Rebecca Fisher ’18. She is a co-founder and tour guide, with fellow Haverford alum, Joey Leroux ’18, at Beyond the Bell tours in Philadelphia. Among the company’s cornerstone tours are the Badass Women’s History Tour and the LGBTQ History/ Gayborhood Tour. Rebecca majored in Italian with a concentration in Peace, Justice, and Human Rights. Passionate about the intersection of tourism and social justice, her senior thesis focused on inclusive tourism and she has presented her research internationally. As an alum, and a Tuttle Creative Resident at Haverford, Rebecca led the new “People’s History” tour of campus and co-designed a complementary library exhibit with librarians called “In Perpetuity.” Both cover topics such as the historical relations between the Quakers and the Lenape people, boycotts held by the Black Students League in the 1970s, and how BIPOC community members have contributed to Haverford.