Jim Yong Kim, co-founder of the global health nonprofit organization Partners in Health and former president of the World Bank Group, as well as one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” will speak at the inaugural Carl and Jean Grosz Health Sciences Lecture Series on Sept. 14. The event will be held at the Morrison Center and will be free and open to the public.
Kim was born in South Korea to parents who had fled the violence of the Korean War and grew up in Iowa, where his father was a practicing dentist and his mother was a philosopher and theologian. He graduated from Brown University, then became one of the first students to study jointly for a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in anthropology at Harvard University. While at Harvard, he and Paul Farmer co-founded Partners in Health to provide healthcare to poor communities on four continents.
He then served as Dartmouth College’s president from 2009-2012 until his presidential appointment to the World Bank Group from 2012-2019. He is now vice chairman and partner for Global Infrastructure Partners, which invests in infrastructure projects around the world. From 2003 to 2005, he served as director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department.
Kim received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and was recognized as one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by U.S. News and World Report and listed among the “World’s Most Powerful People” by Forbes.
The lecture series is made possible by the work and contributions of the late Idaho physician Carl Grosz and his wife of 58 years, Georgina “Jean.” The Grosz’s understood the value of the quality education and training provided by the College of Health Sciences. So they endowed the series to bring talented and thoughtful contributors to clinical fields to inspire Boise State students as they become future leaders in health
“Boise State and our students and faculty members in the College of Health Sciences are proud of, and very inspired by, innovative leaders who champion for others,” said Tim Dunnagan, the college’s dean. “The lives of Kim and Carl Grosz show just what’s possible when you think big, and outside yourself.”
Carl was born in 1931 in Casper, Wyo., and attended the University of Colorado and its medical school. He then served in the Air Force, commanding a medical unit in Korea before returning to the U.S. to complete a surgical residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital. At various points in his career, he taught surgery, served as a faculty member and served as chief of surgery at University Hospital in New York. He went on to a long and successful career in medicine in Idaho, working with Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center and St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center, before a subsequent chapter as a commercial dory fisherman based out of Newport, Ore.
The lives of doctors Grosz and Kim are driven by passion, community service and creativity in improving conditions for those around them. Most importantly, through their examples and now with the lecture series, they illustrate how others can carve a path of meaning and usefulness in their lives and careers.
RSVP for the free event
Jim Yong Kim will launch the Carl and Jean Grosz Health Sciences Lecture series, 6 p.m., Sept. 14, at the Morrison Center. Tickets are free, but an RSVP is required.