Two Duke alumni join White House fellows

Two Duke alumni have been appointed to the 2012-2013 Class of White House Fellows.

Dave Chokshi, Trinity ’03 and Kermit Jones, Law and Medical School ’05, were named by the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships Tuesday, among 15 total fellows. Created in 1964 by former President Lyndon Johnson, the White House Fellows Program was designed to give promising American leaders “first hand, high-level experience with the workings of the Federal government and to increase their sense of participation in national affairs.”

The program is meant to encourage active citizenship and dedication to community service, giving fellows the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of current events and policy formulation. Fellows are selected based on their professional achievements, their demonstrated leadership capabilities and their dedication to public service.

Chokshi, a primary care physician from Baton Rouge, La., graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Duke, where he was an A. B. Duke Scholar. He earned his M.D. with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Sc in global public health from the University of Oxford. He is a Rhodes Scholar, a Truman Scholar, a Soros Fellow and a Gamble Scholar.

Chokshi recently finished his internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He has worked with the New York City Department of Health, the Louisiana Department of Health and a clinical software startup company, and has done work for multiple nonprofit organizations aimed at improving global health. Chokshi is a founding member of the board of directors for Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, a nonprofit which seeks to provide better access to medicine for developing countries. He has clinical experience in Peru, Guatemala, India, Botswana and Ghana, and he is published in multiple journals on medicine and public health.

Jones, a Mordecai Scholar during his time at the Duke, received his degrees in medicine and law from Duke in 2005. He recently completed his M.P.A. from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where he launched a chapter of Developments in Literacy—a nonprofit organization that has educated more than 16,000 elementary school students in Pakistan and provided guidance on technology use and teacher training.

Before attending Columbia, Jones served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Navy, operating with a Marine helicopter casualty evacuation squadron in Iraq. Before his military service, Jones worked as a primary care physician with a rural health service at Christian Medical College in Vellore, India. He also studied AIDS-related public health legislation and the legal consequences of trade at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.