Featured Profiles

Anyone who knows Johns Hopkins knows a thing or two about our students, faculty, alumni, and friends.

Johns Hopkins is a community of knowledge seekers.  We're a group of people who aren't satisfied with “good enough.” There’s even a “Hopkins type” if you will: thoughtful, curious, and a little impatient with the status quo.

Our students, teachers, researchers, and clinicans are supported by a worldwide network of friends and alumni, men and women who give but who also volunteer their time and serve as ambassadors for Johns Hopkins. In a very real sense, the achievements of Johns Hopkins are their achievements. Our successes are their successes.

Among the hundreds of examples of philanthropy in action we could cite, here are a few examples of Hopkins pioneers pushing frontiers, from music to medicine, from West Baltimore to West Africa.

To comment on these profiles, e-mail us at giving@jhu.edu.

	Esen Akpek, Med ’99, director of the Ocular Surface Disease and Dry Eye Clinic at the Wilmer Eye Institute, is one of only a handful of surgeons in the world who performs artificial corneal transplants.
	Richard Bauer was in his prime when multiple sclerosis robbed him of movement. With the help of others, he fought back.
	Jerome "Axle" Brown, A&S '09, came to Johns Hopkins with a commitment to serving others. He left with a guiding passion.
	Matt Carvin, Peab ’05, founded The Creative Access, Peabody’s first student-run community engagement initiative. Matt started the program in 2004 as a way for Peabody undergraduate and graduate students to use music to promote positive change in the lives of their audiences.
	Britni Crocker, Engr '09, led a student team at the Whiting School of Engineering as they created a low-cost detection kit for preeclampsia that could save tens of thousands of lives in developing parts of the world. Now this new graduate is off to tackle brain damage.
	Bill Ginder, Bus '54, earned his bachelor’s degree in business at Johns Hopkins by attending classes part-time at night. He was able to apply what he was learning in the evenings to the work he was doing each day. In 1989, Bill and his wife created the William M. and Katherine B. Ginder Lecture Fund to allow today's Carey Business School students the same opportunity.
	Taylor Hanex, Peab '75, '78 (MM), received financial aid as a 19-year-old Peabody piano student in 1974. To return that act of kindness, in 1991, she established the John J. Hanex Memorial Scholarship to support current Peabody musicians.
	Richard Macksey, A&S '53, '57, beloved teacher and mentor for more than half a century, bequeathed his collection of 70,000 books, manuscripts, and art work to the Sheridan Libraries.
	Nirosha Mahendraratnam, A&S '09, Charles D. Miller Scholar and LeRoy and Helen Sheats Scholar, had opportunities as a student at Johns Hopkins that she wouldn’t have had if she had attended another university. Financial aid allowed her to work with the doctors at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution, which gave her insight on how she can help the larger community.
	Rajesh Panjabi, SPH ’06, was one of the first Sommer Scholars at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He co-founded a local non-governmental organization, Tiyatien Health, which runs a hospital and trains community-based health care workers who provide care for people too sick or too remote to reach the clinic.
	Jessica Turral, A&S ’09, was a member of the first class of Baltimore Scholars. The program, established in 2005, offers full-tuition scholarships to Baltimore City public school graduates accepted to Johns Hopkins for undergraduate studies.
	Mick Webster, A&S ’59, and his wife, Nancy, chose his 50th class reunion to set up a bequest benefiting the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. In addition, they pledged funds to be used immediately to support undergraduate education.
	Sara Wilhide was a precocious toddler, but also a very sick little girl. When Sara died, the Wilhide family vowed to keep alive the love she gave and the hope she inspired. The new Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center, scheduled to open in 2011, will be home to Sara's Garden. It will give families the chance to let their kids play and simply be kids.