WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the President’s Commission on White House
Fellowships announced the appointment of the 2012-2013 Class of White
House Fellows. The Fellows come from diverse backgrounds, varied
professions, and have all shown a strong commitment to public service
and leadership. The 2012-2013 Class of Fellows and their biographies are
included in the following pages.
The White House Fellows Program was created in 1964 by President Lyndon
B. Johnson to give promising American leaders “first hand, high-level
experience with the workings of the Federal government, and to increase
their sense of participation in national affairs.” This unique
opportunity to work within our nation’s government is designed to
encourage active citizenship and a lifelong commitment to service. The
Fellows also take part in an education program designed to broaden their
knowledge of leadership, policy formulation, and current affairs.
Community service is another essential element of the program, and
Fellows participate in service projects throughout the year in the
Washington, DC area.
Selection as a White House Fellow is highly competitive and based on a
record of professional achievement, evidence of leadership potential,
and a proven commitment to public service. Each Fellow must possess the
knowledge and skills necessary to contribute meaningfully at senior
levels in the Federal government. Throughout its history, the program
has fostered leaders in many fields, including leaders in government,
business, media, medicine, education, diplomacy and the military.
Additional information about the White House Fellows program is
available at
2012-2013 Class of White House Fellows
Elliot Ackerman, Washington, DC, is the Chief
Operating Officer for Americans Elect, an initiative that offers a
nonpartisan platform for individuals to run for elected office. Prior
to this, he served as a Marine Corps Infantry Officer and Special
Operations Officer, and later as a Paramilitary Case Officer in the
Central Intelligence Agency. Over the course of eight years, he
conducted multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle
East. He also participated in post-Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
As a Special Operations Officer, Elliot led a team of fourteen Marines
who served as the primary combat advisors to a 700-man Afghan commando
battalion. As an Infantry Officer, Elliot led a 46-man rifle platoon
during the November 2004 Battle of Fallujah. Elliot holds a Master’s
degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School, and earned
his undergraduate degree, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa
from Tufts University. He has served on the board of the Afghan
Scholars Initiative and as an advisor to the No Greater Sacrifice
Scholarship Fund. His published works have appeared in Politico, Comparative Strategy Journal, and The Marine Corps Gazette among others. Elliot’s military awards include the Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart.
Archie Bates, Bessemer, AL, is a United States Army
Major who most recently served as the Executive Officer to the Director
of Army Human Resources Policy, responsible for strategy and policy
development. Previously, he served as Assistant Professor at the United
States Military Academy, where he was director of Leadership and
Management courses, Academic Liaison between the dean and the head
football coach, and Officer-in-charge of Special Olympics. He has
lectured internationally on leadership and co-authored a book chapter.
Archie deployed to Baghdad with the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division
and was responsible for the individual readiness of over 8,000
Soldiers. Archie graduated from the United States Military Academy with
a B.S. in Management and earned the Superintendent’s Award for
Academic, Military and Physical Excellence. He also earned a Ph.D. and a
M.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from University of
Maryland. Archie’s awards include the Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious
Service Medal, Major General Newman Award for Leadership Excellence, and
the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal. An avid athlete,
Archie played collegiate and semi-professional football, ran a marathon
to raise funds for cancer research, and participated in weightlifting
competitions. He enjoys supporting his wife’s teaching career and
coaching his two sons’ football teams.
Ariel Grace Batungbacal, Marietta, GA, is a Major in
the U.S. Air Force; and served as the Joint Staff J2/Director of
Intelligence’s Deputy Executive Assistant. Prior to that, she was
Branch Chief for Middle East Strategy, leading intelligence efforts for
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's policy development. She
served over five years in overseas assignments, supporting military
operations in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, including three
deployments supporting Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom. She
received the National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Award, and several
military decorations to include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal
and two AF Meritorious Service Medals. Ariel currently serves as a
founding board member for The Doolittle Foundation. She has committed
approximately 3,000 hours over the last decade to community
organizations that cultivate women leaders, such as Junior League,
Daughters of the American Revolution, and Hermandad de Sigma Iota Alpha,
Inc. She is a Southern California Leadership Network Fellow, and a
Junior League Board Fellow. Ariel received an Executive Master’s in
Leadership from Georgetown University where her research on women in
leadership was showcased. She earned a M.A. in Diplomacy from Norwich
University, B.A. in Chinese and B.A. in Government/Politics from the
University of Maryland, College Park.
Dave Chokshi, Baton Rouge, LA, is a primary care
physician with interests in public health and innovation in health care
delivery. He recently completed internal medicine residency at Brigham
& Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He practiced at the
Southern Jamaica Plain Health Center, where he was a member of the Youth
Health Equity Collaborative. Dave's prior work experience spans the
public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including positions with the New
York City Department of Health, the Louisiana Department of Health, a
startup clinical software company, and with nonprofit organizations
seeking to advance global health. Dave helped grow the nonprofit
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), dedicated to
improving access to medicines in developing countries; he was a founding
member of UAEM's Board of Directors. He has done clinical work in
Guatemala, Peru, Botswana, Ghana, and India. Dave has written
extensively on medicine and public health in journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Health Affairs, and Nature.
He is a Rhodes Scholar, a Truman Scholar, a Soros Fellow, and a Gamble
Scholar. He received his M.D. with distinction from Penn, an M.Sc in
global public health from Oxford, and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Duke.
Chris Domencic, Export, PA, is a Lieutenant Commander
in the United States Navy and a U.S. Navy SEAL. He began his
fourteen-year career in the Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer stationed
aboard the USS Carter Hall where he was named the TYCOM Junior Ship
Handler of the Year for COMPHIBRON TWO. As a SEAL, he has deployed to
Central and South America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East including
four deployments to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring
Freedom and two deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
During these deployments he conducted numerous counternarcotic,
counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and other special operations missions
and served as a Joint Special Operations Task Force Commander. He also
served for several years at the Naval Special Warfare Development
Group. His military decorations include four Bronze Stars including two
with the combat distinguishing “V” device. He graduated with honors
from the United States Naval Academy with a B.S. in Oceanography and
received an M.P.P. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs at Princeton University.
Mark Hanis, Plantation, FL, is the co-founder and
board member of United to End Genocide which empowers all sectors
(public, private, citizen) to prevent and stop mass atrocities. As the
founding President for over six years, Mark transitioned UEG from a
student group into a multimillion dollar non-profit whose impact
included establishing over one thousand student chapters, playing key
roles in passing state and federal legislation, and acquiring and
merging other organizations in the same sector. He is currently
co-founding an organization to address the unnecessary deaths due to a
shortage of transplantable organs. Mark graduated from Swarthmore
College with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Public
Policy. In 2003, Mark worked for the Office of the Prosecutor at the
Special Court for Sierra Leone. He is the grandchild of four Holocaust
survivors and was raised in Quito, Ecuador. Mark has been awarded
several fellowships for social entrepreneurship, including Ashoka,
Echoing Green, Draper Richards Kaplan, and Hunt Alternatives Prime
Movers. Mark was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic
Forum. Mark serves on the Board of Stakeholders of the University of
Pacific's Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and is an advisory
board member of Generation Citizen.
Bethany Rubin Henderson, Baton Rouge, LA, is a social
entrepreneur. She founded and leads City Hall Fellows, a non-partisan
service corps empowering the next generation to lead America’s cities.
Over 5 years, Bethany grew City Hall Fellows from a one-page sketch to
an impactful venture, raising over $4,000,000 in public and private
funding. Seven cohorts of City Hall Fellows to date have saved city
agencies over $10,000,000, piloted ground-breaking anti-obesity and
renewable energy programs, project managed civil service and financial
system modernization efforts, and much more. Bethany has been awarded
an Echoing Green Fellowship, and has been named to Next American City
magazine’s 2010 list of 33 emerging urban leaders; New Leaders Council’s
40 Under 40 Progressive Political Entrepreneurs of 2011; and
babble.com’s 2011 Mominee of the Year (Politics). Prior to launching
City Hall Fellows, Bethany was a litigator at Quinn Emanuel, where she
won an award from the California State Bar Association for pro bono
representation of special education students. Bethany previously was a
New York City Urban Fellow during Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s
administration. She received a J.D. from Harvard Law School and both an
M.A. and B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude) in
Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Originally from
Baton Rouge, LA, Bethany now lives just outside Washington, DC with her
husband and two young daughters.
Candice Jones, Chicago, IL, is Executive Director of
the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission. She manages a state
commission tasked with the distribution of Federal Title II block grant
funds. Prior to joining the Commission, Candice was a Juvenile Justice
Program Officer in the MacArthur Foundation’s US Programs. In that role
she managed a grant portfolio in excess of $40 million including two
intensive strategies: to improve racial and ethnic disparities; and to
improve the quality of juvenile indigent defense. Before joining the
Foundation, she worked as a litigator at Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum
& Nagelberg, focusing on complex commercial litigation. She
identified and piloted a restorative justice program in an area high
school that served pregnant and parenting young women, while at the
firm. Candice has provided criminal defense representation to youth and
adults at the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Division and the
Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem, both in New York. She has
also worked in Japan as an English Language Instructor and in Chicago as
a rape crisis advocate. Her bachelor’s degree is in Political Science
and African & African-American Studies from Washington University in
St. Louis and her J.D. from New York University School of Law.
Kermit Jones, South Haven, MI, recently finished his
M.P.A., with a regional specialization in South Asia, at Columbia’s
School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). There, he founded a
chapter of Developments in Literacy (DIL), a non-profit that has
educated over 16,000 elementary school students in Pakistan and led a
team that advised on technology use and teacher training. He also
served on a team that worked with the NYC Office of Management and
Budget to evaluate and to advise on ways to streamline the design
process in their $ 8 billion annual capital infrastructure investment
portfolio. Before SIPA he served in the U.S. Navy as a flight surgeon
for a Marine helicopter casualty evacuation squadron in Al Habbaniyah,
Iraq, providing primary care for his squadron, HMM-364 (“Purple Foxes”),
and emergency care for U.S. and Iraqi nationals. Prior to military
service, Kermit worked as a primary care physician with a rural health
service at Christian Medical College in Vellore, India. He studied the
legal implications of trade and AIDS-related public health legislation
at the World Health Organization in Geneva, and was a Mordecai scholar
at Duke University, where he received his M.D. and J.D. He is
conversational in Urdu, Hindi, and Spanish.
Amen Ra Mashariki, Chicago, IL, is a computer
scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
(JHU APL). As a senior bioinformatics researcher at JHU APL he develops
and utilizes smart algorithms that explore biological data in search of
complex associations and relationships in order to provide insight into
common biological diagnostics and clinical trends. Prior to academia,
Amen has spent 7 years in the technical industry as a senior software
engineer for Motorola. He has authored 5 patent disclosures, and
received the prestigious Chicago Museum of Science ‘Top Technology
Innovators’ award. Over the last 8 years Amen has spent his summers
teaching advanced computer science courses for 7th – 10th graders at the
Johns Hopkins University Center For Talented Youth program. Amen earned
his doctorate degree from Morgan State University, his Master’s degree
in computer science from Howard University, and also his bachelor’s
degree in computer science from Lincoln University.
Anne O’Connell, West Haven, CT, is a Lieutenant
Commander in the United States Coast Guard. She has commanded four Coast
Guard ships, including one in the Middle East conducting international
security missions as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation
Enduring Freedom. Most recently, she commanded a ship in the Caribbean
responsible for regional security priorities including counter-narcotic,
anti-human trafficking, and other operations. She has also served as an
aide-de-camp to the second-in-command of the Coast Guard. Anne’s
accomplishments have been featured in the Coast Guard’s “Leaders of
Today” panel at the Coast Guard Academy’s Women’s History Exhibit. Her
volunteer work includes co-founding the Massachusetts chapter of the
veterans’ support organization Team Red, White and Blue, and assisting
animal rescue groups in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Anne’s military
decorations include four Coast Guard Commendation medals, the Iraqi
Campaign medal and multiple unit awards. She received a Bachelor of
Science degree with honors from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy where she
was a member of the National Political Science Honor Society and a
Second Team All-American in Rowing. Anne also holds a Master in Public
Administration degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School
of Government.
Missy Ryan, Washington, DC, is a journalist who has
been posted in the Middle East and Latin America. Prior to beginning the
fellowship, Missy wrote about U.S. policy on Afghanistan/Pakistan and
military affairs for Thomson Reuters, receiving along with two
colleagues a 2012 New York Press Club award for political coverage.
Missy was posted in Baghdad for 20 months, where she served as
correspondent and deputy bureau chief for Reuters. She also served as
Reuters’ acting bureau chief for Mexico and Central America. Missy spent
about five years after college in Latin America, where she worked with
an indigenous women’s business cooperative in southern Chile and worked
as a journalist in Argentina and Peru. She was selected for a year-long
fellowship from the Inter-American Press Association. Missy has also
reported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon and
Libya, including covering the final days of the Gaddafi regime in 2011.
In addition to Reuters, her articles have appeared in the Boston Globe,
World Policy Journal, and National Journal. Missy is a term member of
the Council on Foreign Relations, and speaks Arabic and Spanish. She
obtained a BA from Georgetown University, taking part in the honors
English program and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government.
Carolyn Snyder, Bethesda, MD, is the Director of
Delaware’s Division of Energy & Climate in the Department of Natural
Resources and Environmental Control. She serves as Delaware’s chief
policy expert on energy and climate issues and manages over $70 million
in programs that help residents and businesses save money through clean
energy and energy efficiency. She also leads the development of
Delaware’s first comprehensive climate change impacts and vulnerability
assessment. Prior to state government, Carolyn spent seven years
working on climate science and energy policy at academic institutions
around the world. Her research seeks to better characterize important
uncertainties in our understanding of future climate change to enable
more effective decision-making. She earned a Ph.D. from Stanford
University in Environment and Resources, where she was a National
Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. Carolyn was awarded the Lieberman
fellowship in recognition of her service and leadership on
interdisciplinary education, student healthcare policy, and mentorship
in the Stanford community. She is a Marshall and a Goldwater Scholar
who received an M.Sc. in Environmental Change and Management from the
University of Oxford, an M.Phil. in Quaternary Science from the
University of Cambridge, and a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, in Biology and
Geology from Amherst College.
Anand Veeravagu, Palo Alto, CA, is a Neurosurgeon in
training at Stanford University SOM. He most recently served as Chief
Neurosurgery Resident at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Hospital caring
for soldiers returning from Afghanistan with traumatic brain and spinal
cord injuries. Anand is focused on advancing minimally invasive
diagnostic and surgical techniques for diseases of the central nervous
system. In 2006, Anand developed a novel radiotherapeutic to treat
Glioblastoma Multiforme, a malignant brain tumor. He has published over
50 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts and has written for the
Huffington Post. In 2011 Anand staffed the CURE Neurosurgical Hospital
in Uganda and organized medical relief missions for the Tsunami of 2004.
Anand has received over 30 awards for his leadership, research and
promotion of healthcare access to underserved populations. In 2012 Anand
received the Gold Foundation's Humanism and Excellence in Teaching
Award for his commitment to mentorship. Anand’s research employs
national databases to evaluate trends in health resource utilization to
provide guidelines for policy reform. Anand has been accepted to the
Stanford GSB MBA program, received his M.D. from Stanford University and
graduated with honors from Johns Hopkins University with a B.S in
Biomedical Engineering and minor in Multicultural and Regional Studies.
Jason Washington, Texarkana, TX, is a Senior Policy
Advisor for Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake of Baltimore, Maryland. He
is a member of the Mayor’s Office of Government Relations where his
responsibilities include developing and managing the City’s legislative
portfolio including the education, finance and economic development
legislative portfolio. He currently chairs the Mayor’s School
Construction Taskforce, a joint taskforce with Baltimore City Public
Schools, created to develop a fiscally prudent plan to modernize City
Schools’ infrastructure. Prior to public service, Jason served as
Baltimore City’s Get-Out-The-Vote Director for the Maryland Democratic
Party, Deputy Campaign Director for State Senator Bill Ferguson, an
associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, and a 7th-Grade Teacher at John
Marshall Middle School in Houston, Texas as part of Teach For America.
He serves as chair of the AnBryce Foundation Advisory Council, treasurer
of the New York University School of Law Black, Latino, Asian,
Pacific-Islander Alumni Association and a board member of the Way to
Work. Jason received a B.S. in Biology, cum Laude, from
Morehouse College, an M.Ed. in General Education from the University of
St. Thomas, and a J.D. from New York University School of Law where he
was the recipient of the AnBryce Scholarship, Malcolm X Leadership Award
and the Vanderbilt Medal.
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