King’s College to honor six alumni on Thursday

WILKES-BARRE — King’s College will give six alumni the Alumni Award on Thursday, recognizing that they “demonstrated remarkable contributions to their professional fields, to the communities in which they live and to King’s College,” according to a media release.

The awards and the winners:

• Outstanding Professional Achievement (arts and sciences), will go to 1992 graduate Dr. James Post, “a physician whose path to medicine was greatly influenced by a life-altering injury to his spinal cord which left him paralyzed at the age of 14.”

Post graduated summa cum laude with his Bachelor of Science, and went on to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, graduating in the top 10% of his class. He completed residencies in internal medicine and nephrology at Lenox Hill Hospital. He currently works as a kidney specialist and is the Chief of Internal Medicine at James J. Peters VA Medical Center in Bronx, NY.

He’s also assistant professor of medicine in both Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons as well as the Nephrology Division of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Dr. Post and his wife, Saretha, have two children and reside in New York City.

• Outstanding Professional Achievement (business) will go to 1975 graduate Gary Neilson, “an advisor, strategist, and author who has spent decades working with Fortune 500 companies and executives to address their operating model transformation challenges.” He has worked as a principal with Strategy&, the global strategy consulting team at PwC U.S. (PricewaterhouseCoopers). A Mountain Top native, Neilson graduated from King’s at the top of his class, earning a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and the S. Idris Ley Memorial Award for Highest Academic Achievement. He spent three years at Arthur Young & Company in Philadelphia and then went on to earn an MBA at Columbia Business School in New York, where he received the Wall Street Journal Award for Highest Academic Achievement in Finance. He joined Booz Allen Hamilton as a strategy consultant before finishing his career with PwC. Neilson and his wife Trudy have two children and split their time between Chicago, Illinois and Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

• The Robert J. Ell Alumni Award for Outstanding Service to Alma Mater, named for the school’s first director of alumni relations and given for “extraordinary service, dedication, and commitment to King’s College” will go to 2007 graduate Paul Psak, Jr. Psak earned a bachelor of science in accounting and serves as the Managing Director of Vatera Capital Management, a healthcare focused venture capital adviser. “He has been an integral participant in the McGowan School of Business Forums as both a student and as an alumnus, attending each year’s mentoring event and acting as a co-chair for the 2017 Forum held in New York City.” He was a member of the Executive Committee of the King’s College New York City Alumni Club, working with club members to plan and execute events and initiatives, “helping Kings’ Alumni stay in touch with their classmates and alma mater.” Psak lives in West Palm Beach, Florida with his wife Courtney and sons, Paul and Andrew.

• A Service to Society Award, for “selfless and caring personal commitment to benefit others,” will go to 1968 graduate Dr. Thomas Brady, “a pioneer in the field of magnetic resonance and positron imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, where Dr. Brady holds a named chair in radiology.” Dr. Brady served as the founding director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Center, “which was the site of many significant scientific discoveries surrounding angiography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, and tractography and high angular diffusion imaging.” He has served as a mentor to more than 200 medical and graduate students, residents, and postdoctoral fellows, as well as staff from Radiology, Cardiology, Neurology, and Surgery. He received the 2011 William Silen Lifetime Achievement Award in Mentoring from Harvard Medical School, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from King’s College in 1992. Dr. Brady and his wife Lynn reside in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• A Service to Society Award also will go to 1968 graduate Dr. Edward Nardell, “professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School based at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, with a primary appointment in Dr. Paul Farmer’s Division of Global Health Equity, and a secondary clinical appointment in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine.” Nardell is also in the departments of Environmental Health and Immunology and Infectious diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health. He devoted years to tuberculosis transmission control research through Partners In Health, “a Boston-based nonprofit health care organization that works to provide improved healthcare for the poor in countries such as Haiti, Peru, Russia, and Rwanda.” He also has been a principal investigator for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Gates Foundation, and USAID. Dr. Nardell is the founder and co-director “of a unique, two-week course for health professionals, architects, and engineers that focuses on the construction of safer health care facilities in Africa, Asia, and other high-risk settings.” He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

• The Leo Award, to someone within 15 years of their graduation “who has demonstrated outstanding achievement in his or her professional or community activities,” will go to 2005 graduate Amy Gravino. Leo is the college mascot, suggesting “the energy, pride, and sense of purpose that the recipient personifies.”

Gravino “is an educator, advocate, writer, and speaker who specializes in issues affecting adults with autism spectrum disorders.” In 1994 at age 11 she was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. She graduated King’s with a bachelor of arts in English, then earned her Master of Arts in Applied Behavior Analysis from Caldwell College. She created “a professional life that involves speaking engagements and publications in a wide variety of media.

She also works as an educator specializing in issues that affect people with autism, specifically those that center around dating and intimacy.” Gravino was featured in the 2006 documentary film Normal People Scare Me, and in 2017 in an online segment for CBS News as one of 20 “Inspiring People on the Autism Spectrum,” alongside Temple Grandin and Susan Boyle.

Gravino conducts workshops and presentations for organizations, schools, and parents of individuals on the autism spectrum, as well as consults with organizations regarding the hiring and training of individuals on the spectrum.