Events

Mrs. Jennifer Scott Williams was born in Oklahoma City, OK. As an Air Force dependent she moved around often, which contributed to her ability to adapt to new environments quickly. After living in Tennessee, Washington, D.C., and Ohio, her family made its permanent home in Panama City, FL, where she graduated with honors from Bay High School in 1996. Thereafter, Jennifer attended Spelman College and the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she received dual Bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and in Electrical Engineering via the Atlanta University Center Dual Degree Engineering Program in 2001. 

Once Jennifer graduated, she moved to Houston to work for NASA Johnson Space Center Mission Operations (MOD) as a Space Shuttle flight controller in the Instrumentation and Communications Group (INCO).  While there she obtained 8 certifications and supported 24 Shuttle flights, three of which she served as Lead INCO.  She attended the University of Houston part time in the Telecommunications program, where she graduated with her Master of Electrical Engineering in 2005.

After her last lead flight, Jennifer took on a rotational opportunity in the JSC Office of Education as the Minority University Research and Education Program (MUREP) manager, where she managed 8 JSC programs with a team of 4 people, all for the benefit of providing research opportunities to minority students in Higher Education.

Upon returning to MOD (now Flight Operations – FOD), she was selected as the Communications Operations Lead (INCO) for the Boeing Commercial Crew Mission Operations Team.  She served as the ops focal for all Comm and Track (C&T), Operational Flight Instrumentation (OFI), commanding and telemetry development activities, and assisted Boeing engineers with display development, design, fault detection, testing, and operations concept development for the Boeing CST-100 (Starliner) spacecraft.

In May 2015, she accepted a position within the International Space Station (ISS) Program as a Research Portfolio Manager (RPM).  She managed the Life Sciences portfolio at Ames Research Center, which covered mission integration and operation of several NASA sponsored research projects.  She also managed integration activities that enable launch and return of the payloads to and from ISS.  

In September 2020, Jennifer was selected as Branch Chief of the Applications Client Support Office.  In this role, she manages a team of RPMs responsible for enabling Technology Demonstrations, STEM projects, Commercial payloads and External payloads for launch and operation aboard and return from the ISS.  The clients her team serve include NASA organizations such as the Science Mission Directorate, Science and Technology Mission Directorate, Advanced Exploration Systems, as well as the ISS National Laboratory.

She is a graduate of NASA’s highly competitive Foundation of Influence, Relationships, Success, and Teamwork (FIRST) program.  She has been selected as Employee of the Month, awarded the Steely-eyed Missile Man for “Toughness”, is a member of Montclair Who’s Who among Women in North America, and was profiled in the Georgia Tech Living History Program and Alumni Magazine.  She is married with two children.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-scott-williams-nasa

Richard S. Lawrence
District 7890 - Chair
Water & Sanitation Projects

Rick received Bachelor of Building Science and Bachelor of Architecture degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.  He was a practicing architect in Manchester, CT for 46 years until his retirement in 2015 when he and Elin made Ft. Lauderdale their residence and began spending summers in Rhode Island.

He joined the Manchester, CT Rotary Club in 1978 and in 2000 received the first of six Paul Harris Fellow awards.  For the past six years he has served as District 7890 Chair for Water & Sanitation Projects. In 2014 Rotary International presented him with the “Service Above Self” Award – Rotary’s highest honor and awarded annually to a maximum of 150 individuals throughout the world.

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While vacationing in Guatemala in 2006 Rick attended a meeting of the Rotary Club of La Antigua, Guatemala, making the initial connections that resulted in twenty-five sustainable clean water and sanitation projects completed from 2007 through 2020.  His presentation today describes the efforts to fund another two villages in Rotary years 2019-2021 utilizing the ninth and tenth Global Grants.

Dr. Geovanny Ponce
Houston ISD - East Area Superintendent

Raised in an impoverished neighborhood in his native Honduras, Dr. Geovanny Ponce experienced first-hand the hardships of poverty. But it was his persistence of going to school and love of reading that opened doors for a better future.  Today, through his work in education, Dr. Ponce continues to make a difference in the lives of children, who like him, have little or no opportunities. His calling is that every student, no matter their background or lack of resources will succeed.

For more than two decades, Dr. Geovanny Ponce has proven to be an innovative and knowledgeable educator. His childhood experiences have fueled his passion for supporting the growth of the urban child. Dr. Ponce, an immigrant from Honduras, instills collaborative leadership to ensure students from all social, economic and ethnic backgrounds have equal access to high-quality learning opportunities.

Dr. Ponce’s broad range of experience includes mechanical engineer, classroom teacher, campus network specialist, dean of instruction, assistant principal, principal of Hartman Middle School, and most recently principal of Jones Futures Academy. Through his work, he has received recognition from Rice University’s REEP Program and the George W. Bush Presidential Center. He was recognized as HISD’s Secondary Principal of the Year and the Region IV Secondary Principal of the Year for the 2017-18 school year. Previously, he was selected as Bilingual Teacher of the Year, HISD Assistant Principal of the Year, and HISD’s Rookie Secondary Principal of the Year.

Dr. Ponce earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the National Autonomous University of Honduras in Tegucigalpa, a master’s degree in educational administration and supervision at the University of Houston, a bilingual education certification from St. Thomas University, a REEP Business Fellowship for School Leaders from Rice University, and superintendent certification from Region IV. His accomplishments as a secondary school leader led him to serve as a lead principal working to support other secondary school leaders in HISD. Dr. Ponce earned his doctoral degree in fall 2019 in public school administration at Texas A&M University- College Station.

Mary E. Klotman, MD
Duke School of Medicine, Dean
Duke University, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs

Mary E. Klotman, MD, was chair of the Department of Medicine at Duke University March 1, 2010 through July 1, 2017. On July 1 she became dean of the Duke School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Duke University.
 

Klotman earned her undergraduate (zoology) and medical degrees from Duke, and then completed her internal medicine residency and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine at Duke. She became assistant professor of medicine at Duke before moving to the National Institutes of Health, where she was a member of the Public Health Service and trained and worked in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology under the direction of Robert C. Gallo, MD.

In 1994, Klotman joined the faculty at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, where she was a tenured professor of medicine and microbiology and associate professor of gene and cell medicine; she held the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Chair in Infectious Diseases. She served as chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases for 13 years and co-director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute. She returned to Duke in March 2010 to become chair of the Department of Medicine. 

Klotman is editor of Annual Reviews of Medicine. She was elected to membership in the Academy of Medicine in 2014 and has served as councilor and is past president of Association of American Physicians and past president of the Association of Professors of Medicine. She is a former president of the Duke Medical Alumni Association, and she received a Duke School of Medicine Distinguished Alumni Award in 2015.
 

Klotman is married to Paul Klotman, MD, a former resident at Duke, now CEO and president of Baylor School of Medicine in Houston. They have two sons.

Paul Klotman, MD
President and CEO
Executive Dean
Baylor College of Medicine
 

Dr. Paul Klotman began serving as president, CEO and Executive Dean of Baylor College of Medicine on September 1, 2010. He received his B.S. degree in 1972 from the University of Michigan and his M.D. from Indiana University in 1976. He completed his medicine and nephrology training at Duke University Medical Center. He stayed at Duke as a faculty member before moving to the National Institutes of Health in 1988, where he became chief of the Molecular Medicine Section in the Laboratory of Developmental Biology. In 1993, he became chief of the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory in the NIDR/NIH. In 1994, he moved to Mount Sinai School of Medicine as Chief of the Division of Nephrology. In 2001, he was selected to be the chair of the Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

At Baylor College of Medicine, he oversees the only private health sciences university in the Greater Southwest United States, with total research funding of more than $500 million. The medical school is ranked among the top 25 institutions for research and the top 5 for primary care by U.S. News & World Report. The School of Health Professions is among the best in the nation as is the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. As the CEO of Baylor College of Medicine, he oversees approximately 15,000 employees, 3,500 students, residents and fellows, and is responsible for the Baylor medical staff at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, Texas Children’s Hospital, the DeBakey VA Medical Center, Ben Taub Hospital and its affiliated clinics, the Menninger Clinic and the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. He serves on the Board of Directors of  St. Luke’s Health System and the Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, the College’s jointly owned and governed private adult hospital. The enterprise revenue is over $2 billion dollars with net assets of approximately $2 billion.
 

Kenneth L. Mattox, MD
Baylor College of Medicine, Professor and Vice Chairman of Surgery
Ben Taub General Hospital, Chief of the Surgery Service

Kenneth L. Mattox, M.D., is one of the most recognized surgeons around the world. He is Distinguished Service Professor of the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and Chief of Staff/Chief of Surgery at the Ben Taub Hospital, Houston, Texas. He helped develop the internationally renowned Ben Taub General Hospital Emergency Center and its equally respected Trauma Center. His reputation as an innovator in trauma care is worldwide. He has made original and significant contributions in trauma resuscitation, trauma systems, thoracic trauma, vascular injury, autotransfusion, complex abdominal trauma and multi-system trauma. His research in preoperative fluid restriction for penetrating trauma shook the foundation of surgical doctrine in this area. His textbook, Trauma, is an international best seller, now in its 8^th edition, and he is co-editor of the Sabiston’s Textbook of Surgery, recognized throughout the world. He is co-editor of the second edition of Rich’s Vascular Trauma.  A fifth book, History of Surgery in Houston, recounts the last 50 years of Houston’s impressive and colorful surgical heritage.  He co-authored the unique, international best seller, Top Knife, a practical guide to trauma care, translated into nine foreign languages. He frequently receives emails from physicians in war zones who refer to this “little book” as their Bible in the OR.

Authoring over 600 articles and more than 1000 abstracts, he has also served on six Editorial Boards and has been an Editorial Reviewer for 15 other journals.  He has been a visiting professor or consultant to more than 800 medical schools, hospitals or health care systems throughout the world.  For the past eighteen years, he has been Program Director of the Las Vegas Trauma, Critical Care, and Acute Care Surgery Course, the best attended and most acclaimed trauma conference in the world.  In 2008, he added the directorship of another international conference to his “docket,” Medical Disaster Response.  In its inaugural year, the course sold out.  Doctor Mattox is a member of over 30 professional organizations and is Past President of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, Past Secretary-Treasurer of the Michael E. DeBakey International Surgical Society, and Past President of the Houston Surgical Society and Texas Surgical Society.  He also served as Vice President of the American College of Surgeons and the American Surgical Association.

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https://portal.clubrunner.ca/50025/Event/5890-district-conference-(horseshoe-bay)

David J. Firestein
President and CEO, George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations

David J. Firestein is the inaugural president and CEO of the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations (Bush China Foundation) and a founding and current member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.

Prior to joining the Bush China Foundation, Firestein was the founding executive director of The University of Texas at Austin’s (UT) China Public Policy Center (CPPC) and a clinical professor at UT’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. Before moving to UT, Firestein served as senior vice president and Perot Fellow at the New York City-based EastWest Institute (EWI), where he led the Institute’s track 2 diplomacy work in the areas of U.S.-China relations, East Asian security and U.S.-Russia relations; Firestein, who held EWI’s lone endowed chair, remains one of the longest-serving senior executives in EWI history.

A decorated career U.S. diplomat from 1992–2010, Firestein specialized primarily in U.S.-China relations. Among the honors Firestein garnered during his diplomatic career were the Secretary of State’s Award for Public Outreach (2006) and the Linguist of the Year Award (1997). Toward the end of his State Department career, Firestein served as an elected member of the Board of Governors of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the union and professional association of the United States Foreign Service; in this capacity, he represented and worked to advance the interests of several thousand State Department constituents. He also served as the elected president of the large community associations of the U.S. embassies in Beijing and Moscow.

Firestein is the author or co-author of three books on China, including two China-published Chinese-language best-sellers, as well as a large number of China-focused monographs, policy reports and articles (and publications on non-China-related topics). As a writer, Firestein broke new ground in a number of ways: in the mid-1990s, he became the first foreign citizen to have a regular column in a People’s Republic of China newspaper and the first foreign diplomat (and perhaps the first foreign citizen) to publish an original book in the country, among other milestones. Firestein is a prolific public speaker and frequent commentator in the U.S. and Chinese media. The Voice of America’s Mandarin Service wrote in 2016 that Firestein is “one of the world’s best non-native speakers of Mandarin Chinese”; early in his career, he interpreted for dozens of top-level U.S. and Chinese leaders and officials. (Firestein also speaks Russian.)
In the years since he left the State Department, Firestein has produced path-breaking Capitol Hill testimony, thought leadership and scholarship on a wide range of topics, including U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, U.S.-China trade, the role of national exceptionalism as a driver of major international conflict, the value of government, U.S. public diplomacy in the wake of 9/11, and the use of contemporary country music as presidential campaign communication. Numerous incumbent and former U.S secretaries of state and national security advisors from both sides of the partisan aisle – along with multiple other incumbent and former U.S. Cabinet members, members of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. combatant commanders and other prominent U.S. figures – have lauded Firestein’s contributions and achievements in the area of U.S.-China relations.

In recent years, Firestein periodically has been invited to brief significant swaths of the U.S. investment community, including via the 20-20 Investment Association and the Pacific Pension & Investment Institute which together represent well over $30 trillion under management, on China and U.S.-China relations.

Firestein currently serves on the boards of directors or advisors of over a dozen foreign affairs-focused, business-focused, China-focused, and Texas-focused U.S. non-profit organizations. Of particular note, Firestein is one of the few Americans who is concurrently formally affiliated with two different U.S. presidential legacy entities (the Bush China Foundation; and the LBJ School of Public Affairs, where he serves on the Dean’s Advisory Council). Firestein is also the only non-profit executive ever elected to the Board of Directors of the Texas Association of Business, Texas’ influential chamber of commerce. And he is a member of the founding, and current, board of directors of the U.S. Heartland–China Association, where he serves as the inaugural chairman of the policy committee.

Firestein was a member of the graduate faculty of the University of Texas at Austin for a total of four academic years, most recently from 2017 to 2019. He was also the first foreign diplomat ever to teach courses and coach debate at MGIMO (now, MGIMO University), Russia’s premier foreign affairs training ground.
A native of Austin, Texas and current resident of the Austin area, Firestein holds a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and two master’s degrees from The University of Texas at Austin, as well as various advanced training certifications from the National Foreign Affairs Training Center of the U.S. Department of State.

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