The University Sunrise Rotary Club program on January 19, 2023, will feature a presentation author and educator Kristin Orloff.  Ms. Orloff will tell us the story of Reza Abedi and his daring 1979 escape from Iran. Reza survived The 1979 Revolution and made international news when he defected, with the help of brave American wrestlers, during the World Wrestling Tournament in 1982.

The Zoom connection opens at 7 a.m. and the meeting will run from 730 a.m. until 830 a.m.

No reservation is required: just click here Thursday morning!

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My journey into all things Iranian began sitting next to Reza Abedi at a Little League game in 2004. Reza and I taught at the same high school and since our sons played together, we found ourselves having a casual conversation on a lovely Spring Saturday.

A conversation that would change my life.

Reza shared with me that he “ran to third base” the first time he hit a baseball. After we had a good-natured laugh, Reza began to share his story. What I did not understand at the time was that I, too, couldn’t find my way to first base.

My absolute ignorance regarding Iranian identity, culture, history and politics sent me running to third. As Reza told his story to me, I knew I had to share it. And not just his journey, but my own.

Reza, one of 10 children born in Kermanshah in 1960, survived The 1979 Revolution, The Iran-Iraq War and made international news when he defected during the World Wrestling Tournament in 1982.

Then there’s my story–a girl from white-picket fence America in a household of 2.2 children, gold shag carpet and a station wagon. 

Reza’s story had to be told, not only for Reza, but also for the millions of Americans who are just like me–who are running to third base. For whom, Iran has been banished to the 1979 shadows of blindfolded hostages and flaming American flags.

The heart in Reza’s narrative connects humanity. The author’s perspective makes meaning of its place in history.

Kristin Orloff holds a Master’s Degree in Education and a B.A. in Language Arts. She currently serves as a school site administrator and project manager for her local college. She has published several works, mentors young writers, and is an active member of her local writing community.

Currently, she is proud of her two top published stories ~ each of which humanizes world-altering events. With humor and humility, Orloff is able to take complex historical circumstances and connect her audience through brilliant characters.

‘Harmony’ is based on the events of 2008 wherein a middle-class family struggles to survive not just financial ruin, but deception, the crushing of dreams and even murder. Popular with book clubs, Harmony will not only make you laugh, but touch your heart in places you’ll be grateful to reawaken.

In the nonfiction narrative ‘American Wings, Iranian Roots’, her passionate commitment to create opportunities for authentic conversation regarding Iranian culture, history and identity began with a simple conversation at a Little League field. This conversation, with gold medal wrestler and hall of fame coach Reza Abedi, has since changed lives of her readers. Like Kite Runner, Three Cups of Tea and Funny with Farsi, this story makes foreign familiar.

She knew these stories needed to be told. She does so with a confidence of her craft and an authenticity only her experience could achieve.

I think the best way to help the members to become introduced to our story is through our website www.AmericanWingsIranianRoots.com.

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Chris Ajemian is VP of Customer, Legal & Regulatory affairs at CTFusion, a fusion energy company in Seattle, WA.  Chris works with utilities to explain the benefits of fusion energy, is CTFusion’s legal officer, and handles regulatory policy with the NRC.  He also works in environmental politics and seeks to generate social license for fusion energy. 

Prior to CTFusion, Chris consulted in clean energy and nuclear nonproliferation for Pacific Northwest National laboratory.  He was a foreign policy planner and corporate lawyer.  He has worked on three U.S. presidential campaigns, John Kerry 2004, Barack Obama 2008 and 2012 on a variety of foreign policy and energy issues.

Democratizing Environmentalism: How people empowered with small technologies are solving the planet’s biggest environmental problems

From climate change to ocean plastic, small technologies like smartphones and AI-enabled thermostats are solving problems that have resisted political solutions. From Fiji to Ghana and the United States, environmental innovators are tackling the planet’s biggest problems, removing millions of pounds of plastic from the ocean and rewarding people from reducing CO2 emissions. Todd will talk about this emerging movement and how you can be part of it.

With more than two decades in environmental policy, Todd Myers’s experience includes work on a range of environmental issues, including climate policy, forest health, old-growth forests, and salmon recovery. A former member of the executive team at the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, he is a member of the Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Council and is the environmental director at the Washington Policy Center, a public policy think tank in Seattle.

His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Seattle Times, and USA Today, and he has appeared on numerous news networks including CNBC, Fox News, the BBC, and CNN. He served as vice president of the Northwest Association of Biomedical Research and received their Distinguished Service Award in 2018 for his support of bioscience. He has also served as president of the Prescription Drug Assistance Foundation, a nonprofit providing medicines to low-income patients.

In 2021, Myers served as president of his local beekeeping club in his quest to build an army of stinging insects at his command. He has a bachelor’s degree in politics from Whitman College and a master’s degree in Russian/International Studies from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He and his wife Maria live in the Cascade Mountains in Washington state with 200,000 honeybees, and he claims to make an amazing pasta carbonara and an incredible dirty vodka martini with blue-cheese-stuffed olives.

For this talk by Dr. Mayer, he will discuss the “syndemic” that we’re seeing–and he will tell us why we will see more. There are some fascinating and challenging features of the whole set: Monkeypox, Influenza, and COVID.

It is hard to imagine anyone more qualified to speak about the pandemic.  Jonathan Mayer is a Professor of Epidemiology and Geography at the University of Washington.  He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine, (Division of Infectious Diseases), Department of Family Medicine, and in Health Services, Global Health. He is Program Director, joint degree: MPH in Epidemiology/PhD Biocultural Anthropology.

This the sixth time we have asked him back to talk about the pandemic. Why? Here is a typical comment:

Dr. Mayer was fantastic.  He is incredibly knowledgeable about this topic and has the rare ability to communicate a complex topic to an audience.

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Lee Otis is the immediate past chair of the Board of E8. E8 is an international, Seattle-based community whose mission is to accelerate the transition to a prosperous and cleaner world by investing in and fostering emerging cleantech enterprises. Its flexible, investor-centric platform supports different types of investors and asset classes, including direct angel for-profit investing, pooled investing in expertly managed VC funds such as the E8 Fund and via syndication.

For over 25 years, Lee has been committed to the conservation of our planet and invested in solutions that help protect it and advocate for its care. Lee is an environmental scientist, sustainable and clean-energy consultant. She is a former US EPA scientist, and geographic information systems (GIS) consultant, she has combined her scientific and digital technology experiences to make investments in clean technology startups.

Lee has degrees in Geology/Anthropology and a Masters in Science in Environmental Management from the University of San Francisco.

Lee has five children ranging in ages 20-28, three are currently in colleges, UW, WSU, and Purdue. Two graduates are professionals working as consultants in energy and sustainability in the PNW and helping build sustainable housing for the homeless in the Bay Area.

The University Sunrise Rotary Club program this week will feature a presentation by Dr. Bruce Balick, Professor Emeritus in Astronomy at the University of Washington.  Dr. Balick’s topic is “Beyond Space and Time.” Dr. Balick has been so popular with the Club that this will the third time he has addressed us. The Zoom connection opens at 7 a.m. and the meeting will run from 730 a.m. until 830 a.m. No reservation is required: just click here Thursday morning!

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From a cosmic perspective, the Earth and the entire Universe is but a pebble in the vast ocean of possible realities.  How do we know that?  How far an we see?  Where do we come from? Were we the long-debated Something from Nothing? These are the simple yet profound questions (not all with answers) that drive the quest to probe our cosmic past and to predict our cosmic future.

Balick joined the UW Astronomy Department in 1975. Subsequently he served as its chair, became active in faculty governance, and participated in the design of new instrumentation for Hubble. Since his retirement in 2014, Balick continues to publish research papers using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and to supervise astronomy undergraduates in research and public outreach.

He is a coauthor on a research paper based on one of the newly released images from the James Webb telescope.

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Jenny Andrews, Executive Director, Malaria Partners International

• Graduated from Miami University (the Ohio one!) with a bachelor’s degree in biology and the University of Oregon with a master’s degree in Business Administration.
• Spent most of my career working in the nonprofit sector for organizations including the Girls Scouts and World Visions.
• In 1997, co-founded a business called Verus which built websites and web solutions in the healthcare industry. Verus was one of Deloitte’s “Fast 500” companies in 2000 and the Puget Sound Business Journal’s “100 Fastest Growing Companies” three years running. Sold the company in 2007, just before The Great Recession”.
• Became interested in global health because of my first trip to Ethiopia to vaccinate children against polio. Involved in over a dozen Rotary International service projects in various countries in Africa and Asia.
• Worked in the global health field since 2007 and currently serve as Executive Director of Malaria Partners International.

Malaria Partners International

Malaria Partners International is a non-for-profit organization run by Rotarians and community leaders. We focus on advocacy within the Rotary community and on projects and large-scale programs in the regions where malaria is most prevalent. Malaria Partners International works in close alignment with national malaria control programs in endemic countries and has established chapter organizations in Zambia and Uganda. Our efforts, in concert with our strategic partners, can reduce malaria morbidity and mortality through multi-faceted efforts at the national, provincial and community level.

We work to ignite an international Rotarian campaign for the global eradication of malaria. We advocate for support of Malaria elimination through presentations at numerous Rotary clubs throughout the U.S. and Africa. In addition, we participate in international malaria advocacy events to bring visibility and funding for malaria prevention and treatment.

Our vision is that malaria is eliminated worldwide.

Following the merger in March 2022, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center is now an independent, nonprofit, unified adult cancer care and research center that is clinically integrated with UW Medicine, a world leader in clinical care, research, and learning. Together, their fully integrated research and clinical care teams seek to discover new cures to the world’s deadliest diseases and make life beyond cancer a reality, a reality now supercharged by gifts from the Sloan Foundation and the Bezos family. Join us and choose to learn more about our new patient-supportive services, our continued leadership in the field of microbiome and viral research, our field-defining immunotherapy work, and the promise of precision oncology.

Dr. Amitabha (Uh-Myth-aabh) “Guppy” Gupta got his Ph.D. in Cellular, Molecular, and Biophysical Sciences from Columbia University before moving to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to do his post-doctoral research. While he was doing his American Cancer Society-funded research and applying to be a teacher at a small liberal arts school, the Hutch convinced him to stay and talk about their research. He currently serves as the Scientific Content Strategist for the Philanthropy Department, where he keeps his finger on the pulse of the research going on at the Hutch and helps translate it to the general public.

Dr. Denise Buenrostro (Boo-en-rose-trow) was born and raised in Chula Vista, CA. She is a scientist, a cancer survivor, dance enthusiast and dog lover. After finishing her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University’s Cancer Biology Program, she began a post-doctoral fellowship at Fred Hutch in Aude Chapuis’ lab in the Program in Immunology to study and improve immunotherapies. She has since transitioned into a role in Hutch’s philanthropy department with the hope of continuing to engage with external partners, particularly underserved communities.