Release date: Feb. 3, 2006
Contact: Beverly Cox Clark at 404-712-8780 or beverly.clark@emory.edu

Emory Names 2006 Humanitarian Award Winners

(Top L to R) Laurie Gorham, Amanda McCullough, Beatrice Lindstrom, (Bottom L to R) Dianna Myles and Rob Brawner recently were named the university's 2006 Humanitarian Award.

Emory University seniors Laurie Gorham, Beatrice Lindstrom and Dianna Myles, Oxford College sophomore Amanda McCullough, and Goizueta Business School student Rob Brawner were recently named the university's 2006 Humanitarian Award winners. The honor recognizes undergraduate and graduate students who embody a spirit of volunteerism and sense of community, both on campus and off. This year's honorees are involved in both local and international community service.

Students are nominated for the Humanitarian Award by peers and faculty members for: demonstrating honesty, integrity, responsibility and a sense of community; for special acts of courage and friendship; and for committing an unusual amount of time and energy in service to others. Recipients were presented with a plaque and $100 gift certificate to the Emory bookstore at a recent ceremony on campus.

• Laurie Gorham is known as "Captain Platelet" around campus for her ongoing efforts to increase platelet donations for children fighting cancer. During her sophomore year, she organized the annual Emory Platelet Drive after a stint as a volunteer with Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. Gorham also co-runs KidsVision, a program aimed at teaching science to underprivileged elementary school students. After a study–abroad trip to India, where she lived in a Tibetan refugee community and worked at local hospitals, Gorham deactivated from her sorority. She began donating the money that would have gone to membership dues to the Tibetan Children's Village, where the funds pay for the education, room and board and health care of Tibetan refugees. She also served for two years as an Emory orientation leader and was co–captain of orientation for 1,600 incoming freshmen last fall.

• Beatrice Lindstrom is co–founder of Paperclips for Peace in Sudan, an Emory student activist group seeking to raise awareness and humanitarian aid for victims of the Darfur genocide in the Sudan. Nearly 200 members of the Emory community have volunteered with the project, and Lindstrom is working to spread the grassroots activism to other colleges and local high schools. As co–founder of Emory Tsunami Relief, she helped to organize 400 students and raised nearly $20,000. Lindstrom also spent last summer in Thailand, where she taught English in an impoverished village while participating in tsunami relief work. She has previously served as president of Students in Alliance for Asian–American Concerns, and is now chair of a committee working to raise awareness about victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam. She also is co–chair of Emory's Multicultural Council.

• Dianna Myles is the founder and director of Emory's only children's musical theater program for inner–city middle school students. Myles started theprogram, known as BLAST – Bringing Up Leaders and Achievers through Student Theater – her sophomore year. She also served in the year-long Kenneth Cole Fellowship for Community Building and Social Change. She currently is a legislator on the Emory College Council and is the founder and main organizer of the council's first annual "Salute to Service" week, to be held later this spring. Through her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, she has organized a "Health Week" on campus which included several talks and programs on Black women and depression, domestic violence, child exploitation and safe sex, as well as a service project at the Good Samaritan Health Center of Atlanta.

• Amanda McCullough took a year off after high school to volunteer in Peru at several sites, including an orphanage called the Casa Hogar Los Gorriones ("the Home of the Sparrows"). Once on the Oxford campus, she founded the Peruvian Orphan Project, a student group that has raised thousands of dollars to help with financial needs of the home. She also has participated in AIDS Walk Atlanta and volunteered at a local battered women's shelter, nursing home and elementary school. She serves as president of POOCH (Pets of Oxford Community Hotline), a student group that provides on–campus foster care for dogs awaiting adoption. She is the first current Oxford College student to receive the award.

• Rob Brawner, a Princeton University graduate, left a lucrative job to attend Emory's Goizueta Business School with a goal to learn the best theories and business practices and use them to address significant issues affecting the community. After an internship with Leadership Atlanta, Brawner decided to tackle the pervasive problem of homelessness in the city. He now leads a group of MBA students working with the Gateway 24/7 Homeless Service Center in downtown Atlanta to manage donations and obtain support from corporations.

He also volunteers with Community Consulting Teams in Atlanta, a volunteer organization of current MBA students and graduates from schools across the country who provide pro-bono consulting services to nonprofits in Atlanta. Brawner is on a team working with the Samaritan House to develop requirements for a system to track donors and volunteers.

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For nearly two decades Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

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