Dot and Zac Walker III ’60 receive Elon Medallions

The longtime university supporters received Elon’s highest honor during the annual Night of the Phoenix celebration.

Zac and Dot Walker are honored by Elon University President Leo M. Lambert (l) and Director of Athletics Dave Blank (r).

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In appreciation for their devotion and generous support to Phoenix athletics as well as scholarships and campus facilities, Zac Walker III ’60 and his wife, Dot, received Elon Medallions Feb. 22 during the Night of the Phoenix event.

Elon Medallions are awarded every year in recognition of individuals who have contributed outstanding service to Elon over the course of many years.

For more than a quarter century, the Walkers have stood among Elon’s most faithful benefactors.

A proud member of Elon’s Class of 1960, Zac Walker carries on the legacy of excellence established by his father, Zachary Walker, Jr., a 1930 Elon alumnus and football star, and his uncle, D.C. “Peahead” Walker, one of Elon’s all-time great coaches.

The couple has endowed several scholarships at the university, including the Catherine N. Walker Scholarship in honor of Zac’s mother to assist education majors, the D.C. “Peahead” Walker Athletic Scholarship, and the Zachary T. Walker, Jr. Football Scholarship, helping to put the lives of young men and women on a path for success.

They have also generously supported other important university initiatives, such as the construction of the Ernest A. Koury, Sr. Business Center, Rhodes Stadium, Alumni Field House and Hunt Softball Park, helping to complete Elon’s North Athletics Complex and keep the university competitive in Division I athletics.

Since joining Elon’s Board of Trustees in 1991, Zac has played a vital leadership role at the university, serving with distinction as chair and vice chair of the board and currently as chair of the board’s athletics policy committee, helping to ensure that Elon remains a model of academic and athletic integrity.

During Zac’s tenure as chair of the board from 2003 to 2005, the university advanced in significant ways, including beginning competition in the Southern Conference, gaining AACSB International accreditation at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, and the historic vote by trustees to establish a School of Law in downtown Greensboro, N.C., which marked the beginning of a new era in Elon’s history.

In recognition of their generosity to Elon, several prominent athletic sites have been named in their honor, including the Walker Room and Terrace in Alumni Field House, named by the Walkers in memory of Zac’s father and uncle, and the Walker-Chandler Lounge in Woods Center at Rhodes Stadium, as well as Zac Walker Drive leading to the field house.

Zac and Dot Walker are founding members of the Phoenix Club’s IMPACT Circle, which recognizes the university’s most generous athletics donors, and have received several awards in recognition of their commitment to Elon student-athletes, including the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Service to Elon Award and the Southern Conference Distinguished Service Award.

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by Keren Rivas, Staff Last Updated - 2/26/2013

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Bonnie McElveen-Hunter to receive Elon medal

The founder & CEO of Pace Communications will be honored in April with the Elon University Medal for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Ambassador Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, the founder and CEO of Pace Communications and the chairman of the board of the American Red Cross

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Ambassador Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, the founder and CEO of Pace Communications and the chairman of the board of the American Red Cross, will be honored April 10 with the Elon University Medal for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

The ceremony takes place at 5:30 p.m. in the LaRose Digital Theatre. A reception will be held starting an hour earlier. Sponsored by the Doherty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, the program is free and open to the public.

The Elon University Medal for Entrepreneurial Leadership is given to recognize an entrepreneur who is a leader in his or her industry and who exemplifies the values of Elon University, including integrity, innovation and creativity, passion for lifelong learning, and a commitment to building a dynamic community.

Pace Communications is the largest custom content agency in the nation, serving Fortune 500 and other market leading companies such as Southwest Airlines, US Airways, Carlson Rezidor Hotels, Wells Fargo, Toyota, Verizon Wireless, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and USAA, making Hunter one of the nation’s most successful women entrepreneurs, ranked by Working Woman Magazine as one of the top 175 women-owned businesses in America.

During her term as U.S. Ambassador to Finland, Hunter led several initiatives to success, including the Women Business Leaders Summit in Helsinki in 2002 for women from the Baltic Region and Russia. Another successful summit was held two years later in Riga, Latvia, and a third in 2007 in Amman, Jordan for women from Iraq, Palestine, Syria and other Middle East nations which continued into Bahrain and Dubai in the fall of 2008. These summits helped to advance entrepreneurship and encourage businesswomen from the Baltic Region to the Middle East to launch or expand business opportunities in their native countries.

In 2003, she initiated Stop Child Trafficking: End Modern-Day Slavery and Children of Karelia. The program helped Finnish and Russian charities assist children at risk from drugs, crime, HIV/AIDS and trafficking. For her exceptional and outstanding services, the President of Finland awarded her one of Finland’s highest honors — the Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion.

Hunter was originally appointed by President George W. Bush as national chairman of the board of the American Red Cross in 2004, which marked the first time a woman has been named to that position, and is now serving her third three-year term. In 2007 she co-founded The Tiffany Circle Society of Women Leaders, which has grown to include 63 Chapters nationwide. In 2011, all Tiffany Circle Chapters combined raised more than $33 million for the American Red Cross

As a long-time philanthropist and charitable-cause activist, Hunter has served as a member of the International Board of Directors of Habitat for Humanity, chaired the Alexis de Tocqueville Society, served on the United Way of America Board as a member of its National Leadership Council, and founded the United Way Billion Dollar National Women’s Leadership Initiative which to date has raised $1 billion.

She currently serves on numerous boards, including the Blair House Restoration Fund, the Kennedy Center National Committee for the Performing Arts, the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts, Washington National Opera, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication and the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Hunter also has supported Elon University in a variety of ways, including service as an inaugural member of the Elon University School of Law Advisory Board. Hunter was a featured speaker in February 2008 as part of the Joseph M. Bryan Distinguished Leadership Lecture Series.

Hunter is married to Bynum Merritt Hunter, an attorney with the law firm of Smith Moore Leatherwood. They have a 29-year-old son, Bynum Merritt Hunter, Jr., a 2005 graduate of Williams College.

Past recipients of the Elon University Medal for Entrepreneurial Leadership include:

2009 - Jim Goodnight, CEO and Founder, SAS
2010 - Bernard A. Harris, Jr., CEO and Managing Partner, Vesalius Ventures, Inc.
2012 - Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Founder of the Grameen Bank and Chairman of the Yunus Centre

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by Eric Townsend, Staff Last Updated - 2/21/2013

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O�Malley to receive 2013 Endocrine Regulation Prize of Fondation IPSEN

HOUSTON -- (November 16, 2012) -- Dr. Bert O’Malley, chair of molecular and cellular biology at Baylor College of Medicine, will receive the 2013 Endocrine Regulation Prize of the Fondation IPSEN at the 15th European Congress of Endocrinology in Copenhagen, Denmark, on April 29.

This prize, established in 2002, is awarded by La Fondation IPSEN to a researcher or a physician who has carried out work essential to a better understanding of the role of endocrine and neuroendocrine interactions in regulating the body’s major metabolic functions. It is bestowed for a particularly significant body of work rather than a single discovery.

O’Malley, recipient of the 2007 National Medal of Science, has centered his research around steroid hormones and determined how they work on the cell nucleus, genes and the level of gene expression. His laboratory discovered the first steroid receptor coactivator, and he has gone on to elucidate the function of these "master regulators" in both normal and cancer cells. He is known as the father of the field of molecular endocrinology.

"Dr. O’Malley’s ongoing work in the laboratory and his contributions to understanding the activity of hormones in the brain has shed new light on reproductive medicine, cancer as well as the normal operations of the cell," said Dr. Paul Klotman, president of Baylor College of Medicine. "The faculty and College congratulate him on this important recognition of his contributions to the field."

O’Malley, associate director of the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center at BCM, is also known for his contributions to education. He has graduated more than 250 students and postdoctoral fellows, who now serve as professors, chief executive officers and deans of their own institutions around the world.

He has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Academy of Microbiology. He has been inducted into the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland.

He is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and many awards, among them the 2011 Ernst Schering Prize, the Ernst Oppenheimer Award, the Gregory Pincus Memorial Medal, the Lila Gruber Cancer Award, the Borden Award, the Dickson Prize in Medicine, the Axel Munthe Award, the Bicentennial Medallion of Distinction (University of Pittsburgh), the Eastman Kodak Award, the Doisy Lectures Award, the D.R. Edwards Medal, the Fred Conrad Koch Medal, the Endocrine Transatlantic Medal, the Rodbell Award, the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize in Biology, the Brinker International Award in Breast Cancer, the George W. Beadle Award, the Solomon Berson Distinguished Lectureship from the American Physiological Society, the Pioneer Award, the Biolink Scientist of the Year Award, the Vanderbilt Distinguished Medical Award (Alumni Association), the Bowman Distinguished Geneticist Award, the Pasarow Award in Cancer Research, the Carl G. Hartman Award, Pink Ribbon Hero Award for Cancer Research, the National Medal of Science Award, the Women in Endocrinology Award, the Steven C. Beering Award, the Allan Munck Prize, and the R. H. Williams Award. He has published more than 650 papers and holds 22 patents in the fields of gene regulation, molecular endocrinology and steroid receptor action.

He heads one of the longest running National Institutes of Health Reproductive Training Grants and Center Programs in the United States. He is a Distinguished Professor and Scholar at BCM where he is valued for his administrative skills and continues to participate as an award-winning teacher in multiple yearly courses. He holds the Thomas C. Thompson Chair in Cell Biology

Established in 1983 under the aegis of the Fondation de France, the mission of the Fondation IPSEN is to contribute to the development and dissemination of scientific knowledge. The long-standing action of the Fondation IPSEN aims at fostering the interaction between researchers and clinical practitioners, which is indispensable due to the extreme specialization of these professions.

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