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Lake Forest College welcomes Dr. Rolande Hodel, President and Founder of AIDSfreeAFRICA. At this special event, Dr. Hodel will share her experiences navigating through various obstacles and situations including being a woman in a STEM career field, an immigrant from Germany, and having a blue-collar family upbringing. Dr. Hodel will introduce LFC students to AIDSfreeAFRICA, a nonprofit organization she founded after seeing an opportunity to apply a career in pharmaceuticals into an international context. She will inform us on the barriers she encountered, how she gained support, and what she envisions as the future of the organization.

Her presentation will carry powerful lessons for us about creating goals, following your passions, and developing the legacy you want to leave upon the world. This presentation will significantly benefit LFC students seeking careers in STEM, nonprofits, public service, international relations, and politics.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Rolande R. Hodel received the 2009 Astellas USA Foundation Humanitarian Award for her work as founder and president of AIDSfreeAFRICA, a non-profit organization based in New York. Born in Germany, she is a US citizen and a legal resident of Cameroon. She has worked for companies such as BASF/Germany, Nanocrystals Technology/NY, Pharmaceutical Discovery Corporation/NY (today Mannkind/CT) and Emisphere Technologies/NY. She received her Masters of Science in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Kansas in 1995 and her Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the City University of New York in 2005. Dr. Hodel serves on the board of directors of Chemists Without Borders, and is active at the local, national, and international levels within the American Chemical Society (ACS).