A very rare entry from inside the US for me. Came down to Atlanta last week to do some work for the CDC Foundation. I worked for them this past summer in Kenya, so it was interesting to see the other side of things here in the US. Spent the week interviewing and photographing scientists and researchers at the CDC labs, which are as impressive as you’d expect them to be. Thursday last week I interviewed Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot, and a major contributor to the CDC.
But today, I spoke with Dr. Joe Boone, who had worked for the CDC for 32 years. Now he works for a science and technology company here in Atlanta as a sort of relationship manager between the CDC and the company he works for. During his time at the CDC he worked with a woman named Louise Martin – a veterinarian for the CDC who was killed in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi in 1998. After her death, friends and colleagues started an endowment to honor her memory, which pays the way for African girls to go to school each year. Dr. Boone has encouraged his new employer to contribute to the fund, which is managed by the CDC Foundation.
The story is interesting to me in particular because I know the girls who are going to school in Kenya thanks to the Martin Scholarship. I met them on my trip there last summer. It is, from the shiny glass and steel office buildings of down town Atlanta, one of those brief melding of your two worlds that you experience when you do this sort of work long enough – a connection to some part of what feels like another life when you leave someplace like Africa and come back to the US.
November 5th, 2009 | by David in Travel
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