Page Classification

Name

Greg Beck

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

Director of Integrated Development, FHI 360After volunteering for the Peace Corps in Nepal, Greg Beck continued his education in the International Development track of the Environmental Resources Engineering graduate program.Currently, Beck is FHI 360’s Director of Integrated Development where he leads a corporate initiative to generate evidence and foster global learning on integrated development solutions.Before joining FHI 360, Beck served in the Obama Administration as Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Asia Bureau for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he managed more than $2 billion in funding for development programming and policy in East Asia and the Pacific. Additionally, Beck presided over the reopening of the Burma (Myanmar) mission after a 24-year closure and chaired the U.S. government’s interagency committee that planned and launched President Barack Obama’s Partnership for Growth in the Philippines.Beck also brings many years of field and senior leadership experience from the International Rescue Committee, Community Housing Foundation, USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives and the Peace Corps that he speaks to in his recent TEDx talk. He has worked in Africa, the Caucasus, Asia and the Balkans and led large emergency responses around the globe.Beck has a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service and International Politics from Penn State University.

Page Classification

Name

Ken Pimlott

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

Ken Pimlott is currently the director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the highlight of a career that began 33 years ago as a reserve firefighter in Contra Costa County, California.Ken is highly focused on the protection of citizens and natural resources. He has championed local control of fire prevention through fuels management, land recovery, and reforestation. Throughout his career, Ken has focused on gaining broad experience in all areas of fire management, including command and control, cooperative fire protection programs, training, and safety.In the face of historic droughts and a dramatic increase in the occurrence of massive wildfires, Ken has been able to leverage cooperation and integration among federal, state, and local firefighters. In 2016, he was recognized with the California State Association of Counties Distinguished Service Award.

Page Classification

Name

Michael T. Rains

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

A widely respected leader in linking environmental health with community stability, Michael Rains led a career that spanned nearly half a century with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.Michael rose through the ranks of the Forest Service to become a deputy chief after starting his career as a wildland forest firefighter in the ‘60s.Leadership and a determination to advance land management were hallmarks of Michael’s work, along with a passion for improving the lives of people in both rural and urban areas. He retired from the Forest Service in 2016 after several accomplishments, including serving as the agency’s lead on developing the National Fire Plan, and working closely on the Living Memorial Project dedicated to the events of Sept. 11, 2001.Along the way, Michael earned a Master of Education and now teaches math and science to middle school students in Pennsylvania. He’s also a 2012 recipient of the Presidential Rank Award, which honors high-performing federal employees for extraordinary accomplishment. He remains a registered professional forester in California.

Page Classification

Name

Kellie Johnson

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

Having served most recently as assistant disciplinary counsel at the Oregon State Bar, Kellie Johnson has had a long career fighting for social justice and equality.After earning her Juris Doctorate from the University of Oregon and finishing her clerkship, Kellie Johnson spent 13 years as a prosecutor for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office (Oregon), specializing in domestic violence and gang crimes. Her work was noticed, and led to her current position at the Oregon State Bar.She drew upon the strength and character of her mother and grandmother in pursuing academic excellence at HSU, where she was a top student in the Department of Political Science. She was also an exchange student at Guangxi University in China.Kellie ensures she gives back to her community by serving on numerous boards, associations, and advisory committees. Her goals are to advance diversity and inclusion in the legal community and the criminal justice system. She’s also a frequent lecturer to national and regional audiences, focusing her talks on criminal law, trial practice, and lawyer ethics. Kellie is also a recipient of the Judge Mercedes Deiz award for her work in advancing minorities and women in the legal profession.

Page Classification

Name

Brandie Wilson

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

Brandie Wilson is founder and executive director of the Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction (HACHR). The nonprofit seeks to improve Humboldt County’s overall rating on the Healthy Communities Index, which includes overdose deaths, mental illness, suicide, and homelessness rates.Through HACHR, Wilson works to provide critical services and programs. She started the successful Syringe Exchange Program, which serves hundreds of consumers each week, ensuring the life-saving drug Naloxone is distributed throughout Northern California with training on how to administer the drug and reverse an overdose, and created an Overdose Awareness Day of education and action.Wilson was the first to notice a disturbing local trend: methamphetamine laced with the dangerous narcotic fentanyl. Wilson quickly began educating those who use drugs on the danger, saving even more lives. She also created a system to test drugs for the presence of fentanyl, which is fueling an opioid crisis in California and across the country. 

Page Classification

Name

Craig Tucker

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

Craig Tucker (’74, Zoology) is recognized as a leader in warmwater aquaculture and is considered by many as the father of the catfish industry. His career has focused on farming North American catfishes, considered the largest and most important aquaculture sector in the country and a critical economic development activity in the rural southeastern region. His work addresses improving farm efficiency and managing the environmental impacts of farming activities.In 1980 he became the first scientist in Mississippi State University’s aquaculture research program. Tucker’s research helped the catfish industry grow from a local farming activity to the largest producer of cultured seafood in the United States.Tucker has authored or co-authored nine books and more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. Tucker, who retired from MSU in 2012, feels that his time at HSU prepared him for this journey. “Attending an intimate, teaching-focused college seems to give people social skills, confidence, and a way of learning that serves them throughout life.” Since retirement, Tucker has been serving as the lead researcher for the USDA-ARS Warmwater Aquaculture Research Unit. In 2017 he was named a Fellow of the World Aquaculture Society and was recognized as Alumnus of the Year for the Auburn University College of Agriculture.

Page Classification

Name

Tim Rine

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

Tim Rine is the executive director of the North Coast Clinics Network (NCCN), a consortium of community health centers that support vulnerable and underserved residents in Humboldt, Del Norte, and Trinity counties. Under Rine’s leadership, NCCN became a recognized leader in California for its regional coordination of quality rural health care.Rine has secured more than $12 million in funding to help improve health care access and outcomes in the region. Rine facilitated a County Organized Health System model for managed care—a move that brought in millions of new health care dollars in the community. Rine says HSU fostered his commitment to serving the community’s vulnerable population through the healthcare system. “My experience at Humboldt State University was instrumental in laying the foundation for exploring an early career in rural health care and social justice.”

Page Classification

Name

Eliberto “Eddie” Ramos

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

Eliberto “Eddie” Ramos is a Psychiatric Social Worker for Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Court Linkage Program within superior courts. Serving as a bridge between the courts, the community, and the clients within the Los Angeles criminal justice system, he works on alternative sentencing and rehabilitation plans for adult offenders. He has helped community organizations develop and implement prevention and intervention strategies that target at- or high-risk adolescent populations to reduce community violence. His knowledge and effectiveness in his fields has led to numerous invitations as a presenter and keynote speaker at colleges, universities, and conferences.His dedication to community service carries into his personal life through the years he worked for the R.M. Pyles Boys Camp, a wilderness camp promoting leadership and character development for low-income, disadvantaged boys. Ramos, who attended the camp as a youth, and is now on the board of directors, credits it with helping him on the path to HSU. “I just want to find ways, either through interventions, camp programs or rehabilitation to help preserve young adolescent lives.”

Page Classification

Name

Jennifer Kho

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

The managing editor of the HuffPost, Jennifer Kho (‘99, Journalism) has made her mark in journalism not only as a reporter and editor, but also as a newsroom leader for major media publications throughout the country.  After graduating from Humboldt State, Kho received a master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley in 2003. She became a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times’ community newspapers and the Fremont Argus in the San Francisco Bay Area. She covered the tech world for Red Herring magazine and was the founding editor of the sustainable business site, Greentech Media. Her writing and photography also has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes.com.She became the managing editor of the Guardian US from 2015 to 2017. During her tenure, she guided the online publication through an increasingly difficult media landscape in the United States. She helped foreign correspondents deal with death threats, created ethical and journalistic standards, and helped investigate a freelancer suspected of fabricating stories.The skills she gained at HSU have helped her become a major player in U.S. journalism and she is an inspiration to current and future journalism students.

Page Classification

Name

Corey Gray

Award or Scholarship

Awards

Title of project and host mentor

A member of the Siksika Nation (Northern Blackfoot) of Alberta, Corey Gray (‘97, Physics & Applied Mathematics) currently supervises the operator crew for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Washington, where he’s worked since 1998. He was part of a team that directly detected gravitational waves from the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light years away. The discovery, which supports Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017.As an HSU student he was an active member of the Indian Natural Resource Science & Engineering Program (INRSEP), American Indian Alliance, and HSU Student Drum. Through INRSEP, he made a deep connection with his heritage. “I really appreciated the opportunity to learn about my Native background,” Gray says.His commitment to community continues today. Recognizing the need to recruit Native American youth into STEM fields, he serves as a positive role model for underrepresented youth. He also recruited his mother, Sharon Yellowfly, to translate LIGO press releases into the Blackfoot language. He is an active member of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, and the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics, and Native Americans in Science.