The University’s annual commemoration of its founding will be held Oct. 2 at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in St. Louis.
Highlights of the event will include the presentation of awards for distinguished alumni and faculty and a keynote address by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. In addition, the Board of Trustees will present the Robert S. Brookings Awards.
Founders Day is sponsored by the University’s Alumni Board of Governors.
Faculty members Thomas M. DeFer, Nicholas Dopuch, Milorad Dudukovic and Beata Grant will receive awards for outstanding commitment and dedication to the intellectual and personal development of students.
Recipients of the Robert S. Brookings Awards will be Lucy L. Lopata and Eric and Evelyn Newman.
The seven alumni who will receive awards are Joyce Barnathan, Thomas R. Green, Alphonso Jackson, William J. Marshall, William T. Shearer, Jerome J. Sincoff and Jess Yawitz.
Joyce Barnathan
A bachelor’s degree in Russian and Chinese area studies and a master’s degree in Asian studies, both in Arts & Sciences, combined with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri uniquely prepared Barnathan for a career in reporting on world affairs.
She joined the staff at Newsweek magazine in 1979 as a senior editorial assistant in the foreign department and worked her way through the ranks. In 1985, Barnathan became the Moscow bureau chief, covering many of the top stories of that era.
Since 1990, she has worked for BusinessWeek, with stints that include Hong Kong bureau manager and Asia regional editor. In addition to her editorial responsibilities, Barnathan oversaw the expansion of BusinessWeek’s network of news bureaus and correspondents in Asia.
In 1999, she was promoted to her current position as assistant managing editor, where she directs the editors and reporters who cover economics and finance, investing and personal business.
With five Overseas Press Club awards to her credit, including three as part of BusinessWeek’s Asia team, Barnathan’s reporting has contributed greatly to the world’s understanding of Asia.
Thomas R. Green
Upon receiving a degree in accounting from the University of Illinois, Green entered Washington University’s School of Law, where he earned a juris doctoris in 1955. After graduating, he became an assistant county counselor for St. Louis County, working on property and real-estate matters while maintaining a private practice.
During the 1960s and ’70s real estate boom in St. Louis, he began investing in real-estate developments and soon opened an office. He owns many developments in the metropolitan area and about 25 shopping centers here and throughout the country.
In addition to real-estate investments, Green is founder and director of Royal Bancshares and is founder and president of National States Insurance Co.
An active participant in a number of local and national Jewish organizations, Green has been associated with or has held leadership positions in the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, the Council of Jewish Federations, the United Jewish Appeal and Jewish Agency.
He is on the boards of the United Jewish Appeal and the Jerusalem Foundation. In addition, he served as chairman of the committee to build the Holocaust Museum of St. Louis and served as the museum’s first chairman.
As an alumnus, Green remains involved in leadership activities for the School of Law. He helped guide the Building for a New Century campaign and chaired the Kresge challenge campaign that secured funding for Anheuser-Busch Hall.
Furthermore, he serves on the school’s national council and the William Greenleaf Eliot Society membership committee. Green received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the law school in 1995.
During the Campaign for Washington University, the he and his wife established the Thomas and Karole Green Professorship in the School of Law.
Alphonso Jackson
Since graduating from the School of Law in 1973, Jackson has forged a distinguished career in both the private and public sectors.
A native of Texas, he stayed in St. Louis after graduation and took a job in academia. He became director of the Department of Public Safety for the city of St. Louis in 1977 and also served as deputy and interim executive director for the Housing Authority of St. Louis before joining the accounting firm of Laventhol and Horwarth as director of consultant services.
He left St. Louis for Washington, D.C., in 1987 to assume the directorship of the Department of Public and Assisted Housing, as well as chair of the District of Columbia’s Redevelopment Land Agency. Shortly thereafter, Jackson was appointed president and chief executive office of the housing authority for the city of Dallas, where under his leadership it was ranked as one of the best-managed large city housing agencies in the country.
He returned to the private sector as an executive with an energy company in Texas, but then joined the Bush administration in 2001 as Housing and Urban Development (HUD) deputy secretary and chief operating officer. He was sworn in as HUD’s 13th secretary in April 2004.
Throughout his career, Jackson has shared his expertise with many national and state commissions, and has served on several nonprofit boards and organizations, including the Dallas Citizen’s Council, Dallas Children’s Medical Center and the Nature Conservancy of Texas.
He has received the Chairman’s Award for Service to Boys & Girls Clubs of America, as well as honorary doctors of humane letters from several colleges and universities.
William J. Marshall
After earning bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University, Marshall joined the Olin School of Business as professor of finance. During his tenure in academe, he helped pioneer research on structured fixed-income products, particularly the concepts of immunization and dedication strategies for managed portfolios, together with Yawitz, his colleague.
In 1985, he and Yawitz left the University for Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York, where they built Goldman’s Financial Strategies Group, a team of leading economic, mathematical and statistical researchers. Marshall then became chief executive officer of Franklin Savings Association in Philadelphia.
In 1991, he joined Yawitz at National Investment Services of America, an institutional asset manager. A few years later, they purchased the majority of the assets of the company, naming the new entity NISA Investment Advisors, where Marshall serves as president and manages more than $25 billion in assets for 62 clients.
In addition to serving as an adjunct professor at the Olin School, as well as a fellow in the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy in Arts & Sciences, and the Center for Political Economy, Marshall continues to lecture and publish.
An active alumnus of the Olin School, he has helped judge the students’ annual Olin Cup Competition and is the co-founder of Investments Praxis, which offers hands-on investment learning experience. He also serves on the business school’s national council and is a lifetime member of the Eliot Society. In 1997, he received the Dean’s Medal from the Olin School.
William T. Shearer
After earning a medical degree from the University in 1970, Shearer completed his clinical training in pediatrics and allergy and immunology at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Barnes Hospital.
He joined the faculty in 1974, and since then his basic research has focused on immunoglobulin gene activation in HIV infection. His clinical research involves directing the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, where he teaches and practices medicine.
Shearer also directs the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group, an 18-center national research group devoted to the study of antiretroviral and immune-based therapies in HIV-infected children. In addition, he directs a research team working with the NASA’s National Space Biomedical Research Institute, to determine long-term effects of space travel on the human immune system.
Active in professional organizations, Shearer serves as director and chair of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology; director of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology; and chair of the academy’s Clinical and Laboratory Immunology Committee.
An active alumnus, he is past chair of the School of Medicine’s Eliot Society Membership Committee and Alumni Board. For eight years, he has provided leadership for the Houston Regional Cabinet and has chaired the Houston Regional Campaign Committee.
Shearer also serves on Houston’s Eliot Society Members Committee. He received the School of Medicine’s Alumni Achievement Award in 2000 and the Houston Regional Cabinet Award in 2003.
Jerome J. Sincoff
Sincoff graduated from the School of Architecture in 1956, and except for a three-year tour of duty with the U.S. Army’s Air Defense Command, he has practiced architecture with Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum Inc. (HOK).
The native St. Louisan began his career with HOK when it was still a small local firm. When Sincoff retired in 2001 as president and chief executive officer, it was the largest architectural design firm in the world.
Besides presiding over the firm’s significant expansion, Sincoff’s architectural contributions have made a major mark on the St. Louis landscape.
His projects include One Bell Corporate Center, the Nestle Purina headquarters, an Edward Jones building and the preservation of Union Station. He has left his mark on many American cities, including the nation’s capital, where he designed the National Air and Space Museum.
Among his highest honors is being designated a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He also was the first architect elected chairman of the Construction Industry Roundtable, served on the Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and is a member of the National Building Research Board.
Sincoff has served his alma mater as the Ethan A.H. Shepley Trustee on the Board of Trustees and as past chair of the Alumni Board of Governors. In addition, he chaired the School of Architecture’s national council and co-chaired the Sam Fox Arts Center capital campaign.
He has received architecture’s Distinguished Alumni Award and Dean’s Medal. The Sincoffs are Life Members of the Eliot Society, and they have provided a fund to support the Jerome J. and Suzanne M. Sincoff Endowed Scholarship.
Jess Yawitz
Yawitz studied and taught at the University for more than two decades. He earned bachelor’s (1968), master’s (1969) and doctoral (1972) degrees, all in economics in Arts & Sciences.
In 1971, he became assistant professor of business economics and finance in the Olin School and was promoted to professor eight years later. In 1981, he became the school’s first John E. Simon Professor of Finance.
Together with Marshall, Yawitz pioneered research on structured fixed income products, particularly concepts used to manage risk of pension liabilities. He founded and became the first director of the Olin School’s Institute of Banking and Financial Markets.
Leaving academia in 1985, he and Marshall created a Financial Strategies Group for Goldman Sachs & Co. Having purchased with Marshall the majority of the assets of the company and named it NISA Investment Advisors, Yawitz serves as chairman and chief executive officer.
In addition to his academic accomplishments at the University, Yawitz holds the career victories record for varsity wrestling.
He is a lifetime member of the Eliot Society, supports the University’s athletics program and has been a longtime member of the Endowment Committee.
In 1983, he received the University’s Distinguished Faculty Award.
(Editor’s note: The next issue of the Record will feature the Distinguished Faculty and the Robert S. Brookings awardees.)