Gates Foundation bids adieu to Gayle
Seattle The doctor who led the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s fight against AIDS and TB is leaving to become president and chief executive officer of CARE USA.
Dr. Helene Gayle will oversee an annual budget of $624 million and a staff of 12,000 in 70 countries.
In her five years as director of HIV, tuberculosis and reproductive health at the Gates Foundation, Gayle led a $200 million program to keep AIDS from overwhelming India, helped draft a plan to find an HIV vaccine and ramped up TB prevention, treatment and research. Projects in her $1.5 billion portfolio touch a range of people from truck drivers in Botswana to sex workers in China.
Patty Stonesifer, foundation co-chairwoman and president, said she will miss Gayle’s leadership, intelligence and humor. “We are grateful for her many contributions,” Stonesifer said.
Gayle’s departure from the world’s largest philanthropy leaves two top jobs there unfilled.
In September, Dr. Richard Klausner resigned as the foundation’s executive director of global health. Klausner is under congressional investigation for alleged conflict of interest in a $40 million contract awarded to Harvard University when he was director of the National Cancer Institute.
Skeleton of whale now Makah museum piece
Neah Bay, Wash. Six years after the Makah Indians renewed their ancient whaling tradition with the first kill in more than 70 years, that landmark animal’s 30-foot skeleton has been cleaned and preserved, wired together and hung in the tribe’s museum.
It was a labor of love for Neah Bay High School students and teacher Bill Monette, who took on the stinky chore of cleaning the 600 pounds of bones and cataloguing them in preparation for their assembly at the Makah Cultural and Research Center.
“To see it now in the museum is awesome,” said Jeanie Thompson, 20, a museum employee who worked on the bones for two years while a student. “Cleaning it was a different experience, but I liked learning it. I helped supervise the project by keeping track of who was doing what jobs along with cleaning and cataloguing.”
For whaling crew member Andy Noel, seeing the skeleton of the gray whale — taken May 17, 1999 — on display at the museum is a beginning, not an end. “It’s great to have our bones here. But we need more bones to add to them,” he said.
Legal challenges from animal-welfare activists, focused on oversight by the National Marine Fisheries Service, have tied up any future hunts in court.