November
4, 2015
I
am pleased to report that Carrie Hessler-Radelet, Director of the Peace
Corps, will serve as our 2016 Commencement Speaker on May 14, 2016 in the Jane
P. Batten Student Center.
Special
thanks to VWC’s Peace Corp Prep Program Coordinator and Professor of
History Dr. Clay Drees for his efforts in facilitating Ms. Hessler-Radelet as
our speaker. Dr. Drees story about his experience as a Peace Corps
Volunteer in Sierra Leone (1977-1979) is featured on our website.
Virginia
Wesleyan is the only college or university in Coastal Virginia and one of only
25 such institutions nationwide to offer its students the opportunity to study
and achieve internationally recognized certification in an official Peace Corps
Prep Program. This program is promoted on our website at http://www.vwc.edu/peace-
The Peace Corps Prep Program (PCPP) represents a formal
partnership between Virginia Wesleyan and the U.S. Peace Corps to help prepare
students for service as Peace Corps Volunteers or for professional careers in
service organizations and other international agencies. We are delighted that Ms.
Hessler-Radelet accepted our invitation to serve as our commencement speaker
and we look forward to her address to our graduates on this monumental day.
Ms.
Hessler-Radelet was sworn into office as the 19th Director of the Peace Corps
in 2014. In the years prior, she served as Peace Corps acting director and
deputy director. She began her career in international development as a
Peace Corps Volunteer in Western Samoa, teaching secondary school English. From
there, she went on to spend over two decades working in public health, focusing
on HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health, before returning to the Peace Corps.
As
head of the Peace Corps, Hessler-Radelet has led historic reforms to modernize
and strengthen the Peace Corps to meet the challenges and opportunities of the
21st century. She has spearheaded a sweeping effort to revamp the Peace Corps’
Volunteer application and selection process and revitalize recruitment and
outreach to field a Volunteer force that represents the best and brightest the
U.S. has to offer. As deputy director, she led the rollout of the Focus
In/Train Up initiative, which provides targeted technical training to
Volunteers to increase their capacity-building abilities.
Under
Hessler-Radelet’s leadership, the Peace Corps has dramatically improved the
support it provides to Volunteers in the field. She has championed the health
and safety of Volunteers, leading targeted initiatives to improve resources and
reduce risk, as well as overseeing the implementation of requirements codified
in the 2011 Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act.
During
Hessler-Radelet’s tenure, the Peace Corps undertook a comprehensive agency
assessment and reform effort—the first of its kind since the agency’s founding.
Since then, the Peace Corps has strategically targeted its resources and
country presence to maximize impact and embraced new technology to create a
culture of innovation and excellence. Hessler-Radelet was also instrumental in
creating the Peace Corps Office of Global Health and HIV, which expands and
strengthens the agency’s HIV-education and prevention programs, and the Global
Health Service Partnership, which sends physicians and nurses to teach in
developing countries.
Previously,
Hessler-Radelet served as vice president and director of the Washington, D.C.
office of John Snow Inc., a global public-health organization, where she oversaw
the management of health programs in more than 85 countries. She was actively
involved in the establishment of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief
(PEPFAR) and served as a primary author of PEPFAR’s first strategic plan. She
served as a Johns Hopkins Fellow with USAID in Indonesia, where she assisted
the Indonesian government in developing and implementing its first national
AIDS strategy, and founded the Special Olympics in The Gambia in 1986, which
remains active to this day.
Hessler-Radelet
holds a Master of Science in health policy and management from the Harvard
School of Public Health and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Boston
University. She and her husband, Steve Radelet, have two children. Four
generations of Hessler-Radelet’s family have served as Peace Corps Volunteers.
We
look forward to welcoming her to our campus on May 14.
