Memory Wall

Here are some remembrances of our past fellows…

Beth Fredrick

Beth FredrickIn 1997, I was privileged to have a short fellowship with the Pop Center. Winifred Fitzgerald and I had met during the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing and she honored my desire to reboot my thinking about population and reproductive health by giving me a spot on Bow Street. Having worked with the Guttmacher Institute for 12 years, I was ready to breath the newest thinking on gender from Gita Sen and Tim Evans, hear Chris Murray explains the DALYs first hand, learn from the wisdom of Rose Frisch and take over a desk from Babatunde Osotimehin, who preceded me by a week.

My office-mate was Shobha Raghuram, (pictured with Fredrick) a highly accomplished, soft-spoken development analyst. In our time together, she schooled me on the ethics of partnership, the discipline of considering issues deeply and from a number of perspectives, and the realities of living and working within a caste system. We could not have been more different, but we became fast and fierce friends. Her thinking informs my work still as I navigate complicated partnerships with the Advance Family Planning Initiative of the Gates Institute on Population and Development.”
-Beth Frederick is Executive Director at Advance Family Planning Initative at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Rocio Calvo, Bell Fellow, 2009-2011

“I spent two terrific years at the Pop Center as a Bell fellow. We were a close group of postdocs from all over the world who liked to work together. Actually, many of my current professional collaborations, and enduring friendships, are from my time at the Pop Center. I think our secret laid on Martha Fay’s daily round of cookies!”
-Rocio Calvo is now an Assistant Professor at the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work

Monica DasGupta, Senior Fellow, 1992-1998

Monica reports that she was very productive during the period she was at the Center… “I mentored several Bell Fellows, including Li Shuzhuo and Jacob Adetunji.  I also taught a course to MPH students, and advised a couple of doctoral students, including Shelah Bloom. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to co-edit four books (three with Lincoln Chen) and write their introductions. I wrote many papers, but particularly recall the work I did on a research project involving gender ratios in China, India, and South Korea.”
-Monica DasGupta is now Research Professor, Dept of Sociology at University of Maryland and at the Maryland Population Research Center

Jacob Adetunji

“I came to the Center at a very glorious period. It was a time when Dr. Chris Murray was making waves with his work on the DALY and the

Global Burden of Disease (GBD) studies, Prof. Lincoln Chen and other were engaged in policy dialogues as part of the preparation for the 1994 Cairo Conference. Prof. Amartya Sen and Dr. Sudhir Anand were pushing for new measures of human development index with at the US Agency for International Development in Washington, DC.UNDP and Drs. Tim Evans and Alayna Adams were engaged with trachoma and food security issues respectively. The Center was booming with intellectual activities under the guidance of giants such as late Prof. Dave Bell (one time Administrator of USAID – where I now work), George Zeidenstein (former head of the Population Council), and Prof. Allan Hill (who at that time was the Secretary General of the global union of demographers or IUSSP). I was also privileged to work with a set of first rate colleagues from diverse backgrounds.  It was a highly stimulating intellectual environment. I made connections and had opportunities to work with excellent demographers, including Drs. Monica DasGupta and Michel Garenne, and I acquired broader intellectual outlook that have proved very useful professionally.”
-Jacob Adetunji, Ph.D., is now Senior Technical Officer at the Office of Population and Reproductive Health, Bureau for Global Health

Three fellows sit on a sofa

Lincoln Chen with some fellows