KSG honors alumni with public service awards

Three alumni have been named recipients of the 2001 Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Alumni Achievement Award. The winners – Douglas Bereuter, Anne Reed, and Barbara Roberts – were honored at a dinner at KSG on Friday, Oct. 26.

Each year, the school honors a small group of alumni whose work in public service has made an exemplary impact on the world. Alumni or members of the KSG community nominate candidates, who are then selected by alumni to receive the award.

This year’s recipients

Congressman Douglas K. Bereuter (R – Neb.), M.C.P. ’66, M.P.A. ’73, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1979 and has been consistently reelected with at least 60 percent of the vote. He holds a number of committee assignments in Washington, D.C., including chair of the U.S. House Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and vice chair of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Rep. Bereuter also served as vice chair of the International Relations Committee from 1995 to 2000.

Anne F. Reed, M.P.A. ’81, has been recognized as being at the top of the information technology field, having spent more than 20 years using her expertise for the public good. As chief information officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Reed has taken the lead in laying the groundwork for e-government, updating business processes to take advantage of new technologies. In 1999, Reed became chair of the general administration board of the USDA’s Graduate School, which trains more than 140,000 students each year from across the United States. Reed is currently vice president of Governmental Global Industry Group at Electronic Data Systems (EDS).

Barbara Roberts, State and Local Program (S&L) ’89, was the first woman elected governor of Oregon. During her four – year term (1991-95), the National Alumni Achievement Awards Alliance for Business named Oregon “State of the Year” (1991). Oregon was also recognized as one of the top-10 best-managed states in the nation by Financial World Magazine in 1993. Roberts previously served in the Oregon House of Representatives and as secretary of state. She is currently associate director of the Leadership Institute of the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University.

Two other alumni were also recognized with Rising Star Awards – a new award that honors younger alumni who are doing extraordinary work in public service at a relatively early stage in their careers.

This year’s Rising Star winner

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Claudio Orrego M.P.P. ’95 has dedicated himself to public service in Chile since graduating from KSG, having served in President Ricardo Lagos’ cabinet as minister of housing and urban development and public properties. Among his successful initiatives in this position were a new housing policy for the poor that makes stronger use of the private sector, new building codes, and an online system for tracking housing subsidies.

Brett Peiser M.P.P. ’96 is the founder and principal of South Boston Harbor Academy Charter School, one of the most successful charter schools in the state with 240 students in grades 5 through 10. A college preparatory public school, Harbor Academy now has some of the highest scores in the city on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests. Due to the rapid success of this school, Peiser has also founded Edward Brooke Charter School, which will open in Boston in September 2002.

Both the KSG Alumni Achievement Awards and Rising Star Awards were presented during the School’s Public Service Celebration on Oct. 26-27. The two-day event included a public service address by Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, a breakfast meeting with Kennedy School Dean Joseph S. Nye, and various discussion panels featuring KSG faculty and fellows.