HSPH Student to Speak at University Commencement
An MPH candidate who witnessed the ravages of civil war first hand in her native Nigeria has been selected to deliver the Graduate English Address at Harvard University Commencement at the Cambridge campus on June 8. Arese Ukpoma Carrington of the Department of Population and International Health was chosen from all the graduate student applicants university-wide and will speak on their behalf. She is the first HSPH student to be selected since 1993.
"We do a lot of good work at HSPH," she said. "In the 21st century, public health will be an important global issue, and Commencement will be a good platform to help people understand what public health is about."
The
theme of Carrington's speech is "Defend the Defenseless," a
maxim she learned from her father after the Nigerian civil war erupted
in 1966. Before then, Carrington's childhood was wonderful, she said.
Her father was a civil engineer, and her mother was the great-granddaughter
of a former king of Benin. One of seven children, she was unaware of the
mounting chaos in her country.
"When the winds of war are in the air," she said, "parents try to protect their children. We asked them, 'What is going on? Why are we seeing these images of fighting on television?'"
Carrington's parents split the family to increase their chances of survival. Her father gathered the four oldest children, leaving Carrington and her younger brother and sister in the care of their mother. Before her father departed, he offered her the words she has chosen for her platform. "He said, 'Look after your younger siblings. They are virtually defenseless. I am going to give you a duty--defend the defenseless'," she remembered.
Carrington was nine years old at the time. The words, she said, ring with her today, as do the memories of her parents' bravery.
"Even when we were hearing bombs and shelling outside," she said, "my mother would tell us that it would be okay. As kids, we tend to look at our parents to see what kind of emotions we should be feeling. My mother showed great bravery."
The family was eventually reunited. Carrington later pursued a career in medicine and became a practicing physician in 1980. In 1986, she founded and served as chief executive officer of Health and Medical Services, an international consulting company specializing in preventive health care in the workplace. To avoid conflicts of interest, she gave up the company in 1995 when she married the American ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington, an alumnus of Harvard Law School.
They moved to the United States when the ambassadorship was over, and Carrington reexamined her goals. The former doctor and business executive decided to enter the public health arena, coming to HSPH in 1999.
Raising awareness of public health issues in developing countries is especially important to Carrington. Now an American citizen, she hopes to put her cross-cultural perspective to work on international, public health levels.
Carrington submitted her written speech to a panel of six judges in the beginning of April. She was asked to deliver the address at a preliminary audition and then at a final audition on April 25.
Carrington also was recently elected marshal for this year's graduating class at HSPH.
Approximately 30,000 people are expected to attend Commencement exercises
in Cambridge this year. Afterwards, HSPH members will return to the Longwood
campus to hear speaker David Ho, Time Magazine's "Man of the
Year" in 1996. Ho helped discover that a combination of protease
inhibitors administered shortly after infection with HIV drastically reduced
the amount of virus in the blood.
