2006
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer to Speak at Commencement
Ms. Laurie Garrett will be the keynote speaker at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health's commencement, to be held on Saturday, May 13. Ms. Garrett was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1996 for her coverage of the Ebola outbreak in Zaire.
As a medical and science writer for Newsday in New York City, Ms. Garrett became the only writer ever to have been awarded all three of the Big "Ps" of journalism: The Peabody, The Polk (twice) and The Pulitzer. Ms. Garrett has received numerous other honors, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science Special Citation for Outstanding Journalism, the Times Mirror Journalist of the Year Award, the American Public Health Association Presidential Citation, and the UC Berkeley National Public Health Hero award.
In addition to her many achievements as a radio and newspaper journalist, Ms. Garrett has enjoyed considerable success with other forms of media, such as her widely acclaimed best-selling work of nonfiction, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (which also served as the basis of a four-hour documentary that she co-produced for Turner Broadcasting) and Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health.
In March 2004, Ms. Garrett took the position of senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an expert on global health with a particular focus on newly emerging and re-emerging diseases and their effects on foreign policy and national security.
Ms. Garrett has been honored with two doctorates in humane letters honoris causa, from Wesleyan Illinois University and the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.