Dr. Gary Gitnick
Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases
UCLA
(view bio)
Donald E. Graham
Chairman & CEO
The Washington Post Company
(view bio)
Natala K. Hart
Senior Advisor for Economic Access
The Ohio State University
(view bio)
Biographies
Dr. Gitnick is Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. He heads the largest gastroenterology division in the world with 60 full-time faculty members, 200 employees and a multimillion dollar budget. He received his Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine degrees at the University of Chicago, after which he completed an internship at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. From there he completed Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology subspecialty training at the Mayo Clinic and also spent three years as a Research Associate at the National Institutes of Health. He joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1969. He was Chief of Staff of the UCLA Medical Center and was Medical Director of the UCLA Health Care Programs. Dr. Gitnick has produced over 300 publications and is the author or editor of 63 books including the textbooks "Principles and Practices of Gastroenterology and Hepatology" and "Diseases of the Liver and Biliary Tract." Dr. Gitnick is President of the Medical Board of California. Dr. Gitnick has partnered with the Fulfillment Fund since 1973. As founder and innovator of the Fulfillment Fund, Dr. Gitnick has seen his vision of providing long-term educational mentoring to disadvantaged students result in an enterprise that serves 3,000 youths annually. Fulfillment students represent L.A. County's lowest-income and most underserved neighborhoods. More than 95 percent of mentored Fulfillment students graduate from high school, and most matriculate to college.
Donald E. Graham became chief executive officer of The Washington Post Company in May 1991 and chairman of the board in September 1993. He also is chairman of The Washington Post newspaper. He was publisher of The Post from January 1979 until September 2000.
Graham was born on April 22, 1945, in Baltimore, Maryland, a son of Philip L. and Katharine Meyer Graham. His father was publisher of The Washington Post from 1946 until 1961 and president of The Washington Post Company from 1947 until his death in 1963. His mother, Katharine Graham, served in a variety of executive positions from 1963 until her death in 2001. Eugene Meyer, Graham’s grandfather, purchased The Washington Post at a bankruptcy sale in 1933.
After graduating in 1966 from Harvard College, where he was president of the Harvard Crimson, Graham was drafted and served as an information specialist with the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He was a patrolman with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department from January 1969 to June 1970. Graham joined The Washington Post newspaper in 1971 as a reporter and subsequently held several news and business positions at the newspaper and at Newsweek. He was named executive vice president and general manager of the newspaper in 1976.
He was elected a director of The Washington Post Company in 1974 and served as president from May 1991 to September 1993.
Graham and his wife, Mary, have four children and live in Washington, D.C.
Graham serves as a director of BrassRing, Inc., and as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. He is president of the District of Columbia College Access Program and a trustee of the Federal City Council in Washington, DC. Graham is a member of the board of directors of The Summit Fund of Washington.
Natala "Tally" Hart has served students seeking access to higher education throughout her career. Her current position as Senior Advisor for Economic Access at Ohio State University focuses on projects and research to encourage more needy students in fourth to tenth grade to take the right steps to go to college and more needy undergraduates to go onto graduate or professional programs. She currently serves on the Student Access and Success Coordinating Council of Ohio, the National College Access Board of Advisors, Simple Tuition Advisory Board, and the Noel Levitz Access Advisory Board. Tally has led research on student aid’s role in retention and developed financial literacy programs for OSU students that have served as a model for other colleges and Universities as well. Beyond work, she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Vision and Vocation Center and works to assist prevention of blindness, especially macular degeneration.