Wagner School’s Katherine Otto to Deliver Commencement Speech Today

By Robert Polner

      Katherine E. Otto, who graduates today from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and delivers the Commencement speech for the Class of 2009, is both a full-time employee and a full-time student who finished her M.P.A. with a perfect grade point average. Otto says her schoolwork complemented her job at Keep A Child Alive, an organization that provides care and treatment to children worldwide afflicted with HIV/AIDS.
      “In my Wagner courses, I’m studying such things as health policy and how to run an organization,” she says. “And when I’m working at my job, I’m dealing with those issues in real time and actually applying what I’ve been learning.”
      Born at the peak of the AIDS crisis, Otto, 22, who’s from Rhode Island, worked during high school at a hospice for people with the disease. She attended NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences, earning a B.A. in 2008, worked on public health education programs in West Africa, and enrolled in Wagner classes during her senior year.
      Otto has led the creation of a network of 315 campus chapters for Keep A Child Alive, where she started out as an intern. She is now expanding the network into middle and high schools, houses of worship, athletic teams, and more. Meanwhile, she has been awarded a Henry Luce Scholarship and will spend the next academic year in Indonesia working with the government and community organizations to respond to HIV/AIDS.
      “Strong communities,” she says, noting the global economic downturn, “are the most important thing we all can be building right now.”