Immigrant of the Day: Jim Yong Kim (South Korea)

Dr. Jim Yong Kim is a Professor of Medicine and Socia Medicine and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Director of the Francois Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and a former director of the World Health Organizatiom HIV/AIDS department.

On March 2, 2009, Kim was named the 17th President of Dartmouth College, a position he will formally assume on July 1, 2009. Kim became the first Asian-American to head an Ivy League school.  (Bill Hing blogged yesterday on a racist e-mail about the appointment.). 

Born in Seoul, Korea in 1959, Jim Yong Kim moved with his family to the United States at age 5 and grew up in Muscatine, Iowa. His father, a dentist, taught at the University of Iowa, where his mother received her Ph.D. in philosophy.  Kim attended Muscatine High School, where he was valedictorian and president of his class and played quarterback for the football team. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown and later earned an M.D. and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard.

In 2003, Kim received a MacArthur Foundation grant.  He was named one of America’s 25 Best Leaders by US News & World Report in 2005.  In 2006. Kim was listed as one of the top 100 most influential people by Time.

KJ