ILSI president Dr. Jim Stanley is pleased to announce that Dr. Eileen Kennedy will become the new ILSI Global Executive Director beginning March 18, 2002. In announcing the appointment, Dr. Stanley cited Dr. Kennedy's many qualifications, among them her grasp of the scientific issues of interest to ILSI, strong managerial skills, and international experience with nutrition and food security. In accepting the position, Dr. Kennedy said, "These are exciting times. So much of what ILSI is doing is addressing the worldwide agenda on biotechnology, nutrition, and food safety. ILSI's network of branches and its work with global organizations like FAO and WHO are well respected. In the 1990s I sat on an advisory panel that evaluated ILSI's work in international nutrition, so I know firsthand how effective ILSI is in forging public-private partnerships globally."

Dr. Kennedy held positions at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) from 1979 to 1981 and from 1994 to 2001. She served as chief of the Nutrition Policy Branch in the Food and Nutrition Service; executive director of the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion; and Deputy Under Secretary of Research, Education, and Economics. In the 1980s and 1990s, she designed and supervised programs on food security and nutrition in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for the International Food Policy Research Institute, in Washington, D.C. Throughout her professional career, Dr. Kennedy has held adjunct academic appointments at Tufts University, Harvard University, Cornell University, and Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Kennedy's research work on the Commercialization of Agriculture in Kenya is well known internationally, and did make a major contribution to the body of knowledge in Kenya, particularly, among policy makers, on the effect sugarcane cashcroping was having on child health. Ruth Oniang'o (AJFNS Editor-in-Chief) credits Dr. Kennedy with paving the way for her into international nutrition.

Dr. Kennedy participated in the National Academy of Sciences' International Food and Nutrition Forum, White House National Science and Technology Council (where she co-chaired working groups on food safety research and on plant genomics), Joint Institute for Food Safety Research, USDA Biotechnology Communications Committee, White House Biotechnology Subcommittee, United Nations Subcommittee on Nutrition, and many more. A graduate of Hunter College in New York City, Dr. Kennedy earned master's degrees in nutrition from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Pennsylvania State University School of Public Health, and earned a doctor of science degree in nutrition from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Kennedy can be reached at 202/659-0074 or ekennedy@ilsi.org.

When she was nineteen months old an illness left Helen deaf, blind, and mute. Though a wild, destructive child, she showed such signs of intelligence that her mother sent for a special teacher. The teacher, young Anne Sullivan, herself formerly blind, managed to break through to communicate with Helen. The child loved to learn, and her remarkable achievements in reading, writing and even speaking soon made her internationally famous.

Helen earned a bachelor's degree at Radcliffe, where Anne Sullivan accompanied her to every class and spelled the lectures into her hand. She wrote poetry, toured on the Chatauqua lecture circuit, and published an autobiography, The Story of My Life. Helen became a member of the Socialist Party. She also supported controversial groups like the Industrial Workers of the World, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Margaret Sanger's birth control crusade.

In the 1920s, the newly established American Foundation for the Blind asked Helen Keller to help them raise funds. She was living testimony to the capabilities of a group once assumed to be retarded and helpless, and she spent most of the rest of her life as the most prominent advocate for the needs and rights of the handicapped. She lobbied for measures to aid the blind, including reading services and Social Security acceptance.

Those people whose only experience of her is "The Miracle Worker" will be surprised to discover her many dimensions. As miraculous as learning language may seem, that achievement of Keller's belongs to the 19th century. It was also a co-production with her patient and persevering teacher, Anne Sullivan. Helen Keller's greater achievement came after Sullivan, her companion and protector, died in 1936. Keller would live 32 more years and in that time would prove that the disabled can be independent. She was once asked how disabled veterans of World War II should be treated and said that they do "not want to be treated as heroes. They want to be able to live naturally and to be treated as human beings."

Sources:
- National Women's Hall of Fame - Women of the Hall http://www.greatwomen.org
- Time 100: Heroes & Icons - Helen Keller http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile

Helen Keller Worldwide and Helen Keller International (HKI) are living tribute to a most remarkable woman - Ed.

BACK TO TOP