Morehead-Cains on the move: Summer 2021

News & Spotlights | September 2, 2021
From left to right: Charlene Wong ’04, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper ’79, and Madhu Vulimiri ’14.
From left to right: Charlene Wong ’04, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper ’79, and Madhu Vulimiri ’14 at the executive mansion in Raleigh on July 15.

Morehead-Cain Scholars and Alumni landed new jobs and internships, assumed leadership roles, published books, received advanced degrees, were recognized for public service, and more. Keep reading to learn more about who made a move this summer.

Alumnae honored by governor for leadership in public health

Two alumnae, Charlene Wong ’04 and Madhu Vulimiri ’14, were recognized by a fellow alumnus, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper ’79, for their outstanding COVID-19 response efforts in the state, along with their colleagues at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

Charlene serves as chief health policy officer for COVID-19 at the department and as executive director of the North Carolina Integrated Care for Kids Model. The alumna is also an adolescent medicine pediatrician and health services researcher at Duke University.

Madhu is the senior strategy advisor to the chief deputy secretary at the department. She previously served as senior Medicaid strategist.

More updates from the Morehead-Cain community

  • John Wester ’68 of Charlotte has been honored as the 13th recipient of The Advocate’s Award from the North Carolina Bar Association (Litigation Section). The award is presented as merited to attorneys “deemed as being superstars of the section and the legal profession.”
  • Bill deBuys ’72 has published his latest book, Trail to Kanjiroba.
  • Bruce Gellin ’77 is joining the Rockefeller Foundation as Chief of Global Public Health Strategy for its pandemic prevention institute. Bruce will be leaving the Sabin Vaccine Institute, where the alumnus has served as president.
  • Alan Murray ’77 has joined the board of directors for Own the Room, a professional development company specializing in communication and presentation skills.
  • Jimmy Nelson ’77 has received the Order of the Long Leaf Pine award, the highest honor for state service conferred by the governor.
  • Mike Egan ’78 of Atlanta has been elected to the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation board of trustees.
  • Bob Royalty ’83 has published his latest book, Walking Hadrian’s Wall: A Memoir of a Father’s Suicide.
  • North Carolina Representative Kristin Dutrow Baker ’85 of Cabarrus County received the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association’s Legislative Excellence award.
  • Carwile LeRoy ’88 won this year’s sailing competition hosted by Clagett Regatta, an adaptive sailing and disabled sailing nonprofit for disabled and Paralympic athletes.
  • Scott Martin ’88 published his 17th book, The Ultimate Business Superpower: Harness Its Energy and Massively Increase Your Revenue. The marketing book is geared toward business owners, MBA candidates, executives, and marketing managers.
  • Kevin Callaghan ’89, chef and owner of Acme Food & Beverage Co. in Carrboro, announced plans to open a new restaurant and bar in Southern Village’s Lumina Theater in partnership with Carrboro United.
  • In July, the UNC–Chapel Hill Board of Trustees swore in Malcolm Turner ’93 as one of six new board members. The alumnus, the head of strategy and corporate development for DraftKings, will serve a four-year term.
  • Kathryn Yount ’91, the Asa Griggs Candler Chair of Global Health and professor of global health and sociology at Emory University, was listed at #15 in a bibliometric review of the most influential authors in women’s empowerment and violence prevention research for the last two decades.
  • Chris Barge ’98 will become the Boulder (Colorado) Library Foundation’s first executive director. Chris served in senior leadership roles with the Community Foundation Boulder County for the last thirteen years, and before that, was a newspaper journalist for ten years.
  • Shana Fulton ’98 was recognized in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, the oldest peer-review publication in the legal profession, for her work as a partner at Brooks Pierce.
  • Kevin Massey ’01 is in the cast of Broadway’s Wicked, which reopens at the Gershwin Theatre on September 14 after being closed since March 2020.
  • Meghan Mitchell ’01 has been promoted to chief academic officer with Valor Collegiate Academies—the first free, public college preparatory charter school in Nashville, Tennessee, whose mission is to serve a diverse background of students.
  • Corrie MacLaggan ’02 has been chosen as the statewide managing editor for the public radio stations of The Texas Newsroom. The alumna will be departing from her post as managing editor of The Texas Tribune, a digital news site.
  • Mary Fletcher Peña ’02 has assumed the role of vice president and deputy general counsel at Bandwidth Inc., a Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) company.
  • Rhiannon Fisher ’03 became head of creative learning at Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, Surrey, England.
  • Venroy July ’04 has received the 2021 Young Alumni Award from the Duke University School of Law in recognition of his leadership and service contributions to the school and broader legal profession.
  • Angela Liu ’04, a partner at Dechert LLP, received the 2021 Asian Leaders Worth Watching award from the Profiles in Diversity Journal.
  • Julia Shalen ’06 has joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as assistant professor in pediatric rheumatology.
  • Antonio McBroom ’08, a franchise owner and developer for Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, was recognized in the C-Suite Awards 2021 by the Triad Business Journal.
  • Alex Lim ’10 is leaving San Francisco for London to join the venture capital and private equity firm Blossom Capital as managing partner.
  • Lynzentia Anka-Lufford Osa ’10 has joined Microsoft as sales excellence manager in London.
  • Erin Becker ’11 has started a new position as associate creative director, copy, at Nomadic Learning—a collaborative learning platform.
  • Chris Carter ’11 won the Juan Linz Prize for Best Dissertation in the Comparative Study of Democracy for his paper, “States of Extraction: The Emergence and Effects of Indigenous Autonomy in the Americas.” The award is given annually by the Democracy and Autocracy Section of the American Political Science Association.
  • Will Morrel ’12 is joining Raleigh Capitol Ear, Nose, & Throat as a surgeon in August.
  • Todd Lewis ’13 defended his dissertation for his PhD in health systems at Harvard University on August 26.
  • Sakib Huq ’14 has received his MD from The John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. The alumnus plans to move back to Pittsburgh this month to begin a neurosurgery residency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC).
  • Benton Moss ’15 has acquired the real estate company Simmons & Harris, Inc., and its subsidiary, Metro Maintenance, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
  • Janie Sircey ’15 has joined her “dream company,” the LEGO Group, as digital marketing manager.
  • Violette Zhu ’15 has received her MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The alumna, who received degrees in business administration and public policy at Carolina, plans to return to San Francisco this fall as a product manager at Google.
  • Elizabeth Schroeder ’16 has accepted a scholarship to attend the George Washington University School of Law beginning this fall.
  • Tony Asher ’17 graduated from the UNC School of Medicine and plans to start a neurosurgery residency at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, in July.
  • Rachel Lempp ’18 has joined Magnolia Innovation in New York City as senior sales enablement coordinator and associate consultant. The alumna was previously a project manager for strategic integration at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
  • Margaret Hassel ’19 plans to attend Columbia Law School this fall.
  • Tai Huynh ’20 has been named a 2021 Hunt State Policy Fellow by The Hunt Institute. The inaugural program will seek to “provide a bipartisan group of future education policymakers and aspiring state and local elected officials in North Carolina with the resources, space, and expertise needed to develop thoughtful positions on a variety of education policy issues.”
  • Sean Nguyen ’21 has received the Joshua Meador Prize from the UNC Department of History for his capstone history paper, “A Forgotten Legacy: The Origins of Asian American Student Activism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.” The prize recognizes the best History 398 Capstone Seminar research essay.
  • Francie Sentilles ’21 has been awarded a Fulbright grant to research adaptation strategies used by artisanal fishing communities post-COVID-19. The scholar will study at the Universidade Federal de Bahia in Salvador, Brazil, beginning in 2022.
  • Kartik Tyagi ’23 has been named the international president-elect for HOSA—Future Health Professionals, a global student-led organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as by many federal and state agencies.
  • Pavani Peri ’20 is running a Chapel Hill Town Council campaign for Paris Miller-Foushee.
  • Wesley Price ’20 has completed his research as a Luce Scholar at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Seoul, South Korea, and has become a pre-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • Lizzie Russler ’20 has joined BSR (Business for Social Responsibility) as its collaborative initiatives coordinator. She’s working to bring together stakeholders to develop, implement, and scale solutions to systemic challenges related to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, such as climate change, economic inequity, and gender inequality.
  • Luke Buxton ’21 accepted an offer to become the integrated strategy coordinator at Bleacher Report, a website that focuses on sports and sports culture. This past summer, the recent graduate interned with his Morehead-Cain Mentor Graham Boone ’09, vice president of partnerships at Blue Wire Podcasts.
  • Caroline Durante ’21 has accepted a job from LaFORCE, a public relations firm in New York City. The recent graduate will be an account coordinator, working with the brands SoulCycle and Target. Caroline spent her Morehead-Cain Professional Experience summer as a corporate and consumer intern at the company.
  • Kimathi Muiruri ’21 has become a program associate at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. The recent graduate will support research and programmatic work, primarily with the center’s Land, Agriculture, and Food Systems team.
  • Mark Finamore ’25 has been selected to join the UNC Clef Hangers, Carolina’s oldest a cappella group (co-founded in 1977 by Barry Saunders ’81 and Manley Roberts ’80).

Do you, or a classmate, have news to share with Morehead-Cain? Let us know by submitting a news update. We want to celebrate your milestones with you.

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