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The resignation of Gordon MacInnes as the Assistant Commissioner of Education is fueling speculation that he will challenge GOP State Senator Anthony Bucco in the 25th district. MacInnes, who served in the State Senate before losing to Bucco in 1997, has not announced his future plans. The 65-year-old Democrat, who has spent five years administering the state's Abbott district program, was elected to the State Assembly in the 1973 Democratic landslide. He lost his bid for a second term two years later, and then went to the Senate in a major upset when he defeated Majority Leader John Dorsey in 1993. In 2003, his wife, Blair MacInnes, won 45% in her race against Bucco.

Rhonda Ross, daughter of the legendary songstress, Diana Ross, is a writer, vocalist and an actress. Her most famous acting credit is on *Another World*, as Toni Burrell. She played the role from 1997 to 1999 and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award. Rhonda is also very passionate about real estate. She currently works for Citi- Habitats, in New York City, where she sells and rents homes. A graduate of Brown University, she is married to jazz musician Rodney Kendrick, and together their most recent albums are top sellers on CDbaby.com and other music sites.

Alvin Poussaint is Director of the Media Center of the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston. He is also a Professor of Psychiatry and Faculty Associate Dean for Student Affairs at Harvard Medical School. He is co-author of Raising Black Children, and Lay My Burden Down. Poussaint is an expert on race relations in America, the dynamics of prejudice, and issues of diversity as our society becomes increasingly multicultural. He was a script consultant to NBC's The Cosby Show and continues to consult to the media as an advocate of more responsible programming.

Jim Yong Kim is a Korean American physician, and 17th President of Dartmouth College. He has been a Professor of Medicine and Social Medicine and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Director of the Francois Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and is a former director of the World Health Organization HIV/AIDS department. Kim co-founded the nonprofit medical organization Partners in Health. He is the first Asian American to assume the post of president at an Ivy League institution.

Dr. David D. Ho is the Scientific Director and CEO of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, and Irene Diamond Professor and Physician at the Rockefeller University, New York. He attended the MIT and the California Institute of Technology, receiving his BSc degree with highest honors from the latter in 1974. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1978, and did his clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at the UCLA School of Medicine and at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Ho has been at the forefront of AIDS research for three decades and is credited worldwide with fundamentally changing the way scientists look at the AIDS virus, initiating a crucial shift in the treatment paradigm to hitting the virus early and hard with a combination of antiretroviral drugs. Dr. Ho heads an alliance of Chinese and American organizations dedicated to helping address the HIV/AIDS crisis in China. His leadership was instrumental in helping China to rectify its AIDS policies and to implement a number of treatment and prevention programs. In addition, he was a key figure involved in setting up the HKU AIDS Institute in 2007 and establishing an ongoing strategic partnership with the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center/China AIDS Initiative. In recognition of his contributions to medicine and the global community, HKU will confer upon him the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa.

Heidi Behforouz is the founder and executive director of Prevention and Access to Care and Treatment, which serves Boston's sickest and most marginalized AIDS patients. One of the trickiest things about running a public health project is proving that it works. Prevention and Access to Care and Treatment (PACT), which Behforouz founded in 1997, is rare in that it shows measurable results. Using a standardized model of intervention, PACT-trained community health workers help inner-city AIDS patients, usually black or Latino, visiting them daily to make sure they take their meds and accompanying them to doctor's visits. These are disenfranchised patients many of whom are also burdened with other problems such as abusive relationships, substance abuse, and depression who, despite having had conventional case managers in the past, are sick and dying. PACT community health workers go a step further, forming a surrogate support network for the patient. "There is power [in] knowing the context of the person's life," says Behforouz. Having a health advocate pays off: 75% of PACT patients improve dramatically, according to internal data that Behforouz and her team collected. But what really sets PACT apart and why it's being replicated by other US cities (including Baltimore, New York, and Miami) and even in Peru is a twenty-five-point curriculum (including written modules and a patient workbook) that staff and patient work on together. The curriculum covers topics such as how to take antiretroviral medications, know what both a CD4 count and a viral load are, and how to schedule and prepare for appointments. Behforouz has also been asked to adapt the PACT model for other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, that disproportionately affect the poor.

John (Jack) McNally first began working for John Kennedy during the 1956 Democratic National Convention while Director of the Young Democrats of Worcester County. Having then been heavily involved in Kennedys 1960 Presidential campaign, President-elect Kennedy appointed him Staff Assistant for Congressional Liaisons. He was responsible for Public Relations, the scheduling and planning of all Presidential travel, and the administrative and fiscal affairs of the White House. He also oversaw the arrangements for President Kennedys funeral in 1963. He remained at the White House until 1965, when he returned to his native Massachusetts to work for the Small Business Administration for the New England region. He has been a director and member of numerous commerce and community organizations since his time in the White House.

A former aide to President John F. Kennedy, Daly became the director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on January 1, 1988, and executive director of the Kennedy Library Foundation in 1994. He played a leadership role in making the national memorial to President Kennedy one of the country's leading centers for public discourse and the exchange of ideas. During his tenure at the Kennedy Library, Daly helped bring to fruition several major projects including the construction of the Stephen Smith Center which opened in February 1991; the construction of the Fallon Pier with the University of Massachusetts Boston which opened in 1992; and the construction and opening of the new museum that was dedicated by President Bill Clinton in October 1993. In addition, Daly participated in the establishment of the Profile in Courage Award, the endowment of several major research fellowships, computerization of the Library's work force, and expansion of the Library's educational programs. Mr. Daly, who shares his birthday with President John F. Kennedy, was born in Dublin, Ireland on May 29, 1927 and is a naturalized US citizen. Daly graduated with honors from Yale University in 1949 with a degree in international relations and from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1959.

Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History. He taught history at Cambridge (1966-76), Oxford (1976-1980) and art history and history at Harvard (1980-1993) before coming to Columbia. He has also taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and has delivered the George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures at Cambridge, the Tanner Lectures and the Finzi-Contini Lecture at Yale on the epic tradition in English history. Last fall he delivered the Andrew Mellon Lectures on the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington on "Really Old Masters: Late Style from Titian to de Kooning". His books have been translated into fifteen languages and include *Patriots and Libeators: Revolution and Government in the Netherlands 1780-1813* (1977); *Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel *(1979) , *The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age*; (1987) *Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution* (1989), *Landscape and Memory *(1995); *Rembrandt's Eyes* (1999); the *History of Britain* trilogy (2000-2002); *Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution *(2006), and *The Power of Art* (2007). In 1991 he published the twinned novellas, *Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations*.