FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                               CONTACT:   

Jane L. Anderson
                                                                                    (202) 347-5543

Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medals To Go To Rita Hauser, John Mendelsohn, And Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg

WASHINGTON, D.C. Feb. 23, 2005--The Fulbright Association announced today that its 2005 Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medals will be awarded on May 17 to Rita Hauser, president of the Hauser Foundation, New York, N.Y., and former member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and Intelligence Oversight Board; John Mendelsohn, president of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston Texas; and Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, president and CEO of Strategic Investment Group, Arlington, Va., and chair of the Washington National Opera Executive Committee. The awards will be presented at a dinner in the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C.

“These distinguished Fulbright alumni have exhibited extraordinary leadership in their chosen fields and enriched the lives of their communities and our country through their civic and philanthropic activities,” said R. Fenton-May, president of the Fulbright Association.

The Lifetime Achievement Medal is awarded periodically to Fulbright alumni whose career accomplishments and civic and cultural contributions are judged to have expanded the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy, and perception. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R.-Tex); Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences; and Moisés Naím, editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine, will speak. An ensemble of the Youth Orchestra of the Americas will perform. Ms. Ochoa-Brillembourg is founding chair man of the orchestra.

Rita Hauser, a Fulbright fellow in France in 1954-55, chairs the International Peace Academy, a research body affiliated with the United Nations. Ms. Hauser, an international lawyer, was the founding chair of the Advisory Board of the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy. She is a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the RAND Corporation, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, among other organizations. In 1997, she and her husband founded the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University, where she sits on the Visiting Committee of the John F. Kennedy School.

John Mendelsohn was a Fulbright fellow in Scotland in 1958-59. Since 1996, he has led the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, named by U.S. News & World Report the nation’s top cancer hospital in four of the past five years. Dr. Mendelsohn has been at the forefront of research demonstrating how growth factors regulate the proliferation of cancer cells by activating receptors on cell surfaces. He led translational research that developed a specific monoclonal antibody (cetuximab, Erbitux™) to block the receptor for epidermal growth factor. Erbitux™ was approved last year by the FDA as a new treatment of advanced colorectal cancer.

Hilda Ochoa-Brillimbourg, who was a Fulbright fellow from Venezuela studying public administration at Harvard University in 1971-72, founded Strategic Investment Group, a group of affiliated investment management firms. She also serves as managing director of Emerging Markets Investment Corporation and Emerging Markets Management, LLC. She was chief investment officer of the Pension Investment Division at the World Bank. Ms. Ochoa-Brillembourg is a director of the McGraw Hill Companies, General Mills, Inc., the World Bank/International Monetary Fund Credit Union, and the Harvard Management Company, Inc. She is also a director and Executive Committee member of the National Symphony Orchestra and an Advisory Board member of the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

The Fulbright Association is a private, nonprofit organization of Fulbright alumni and friends committed to advancing international education and people-to-people diplomacy. It has 48 chapters throughout the United States and international initiatives with some 65 sister Fulbright alumni organizations abroad. The Fulbright Association inaugurated the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal in 2000 to recognize the important role Fulbright grantees have had in creating a better future for communities throughout the world.

Medal recipients in 2000 were Arlene Alda, children’s book author and photographer; Barbara Knowles Debs, former president of Manhattanville College and the New York Historical Society; and Richard A. Debs, founding president of Morgan Stanley International. In 2002 Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline; Thomas R. Pickering, senior vice president for international relations of the Boeing Company and former under secretary of state for political affairs; and Ruth J. Simmons, president of Brown University, received medals. All recipients are Fulbright alumni.

The Fulbright Program is an international educational and cultural exchange initiative created in 1946 by legislation sponsored by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. There are Fulbright exchanges between the United States and more than 140 other countries. There are more than 250,000 Fulbright alumni throughout the world.

-FA-