Cornell Club of Greater Miami and the Florida Keys

Jennifer Valdes is currently an account executive at rbb Public Relations, a Coral Gables-based marketing public relations firm with a national reputation for delivering results.

Jennifer manages and works on travel, consumer and nonprofit accounts, representing local, national and international clients such as the Miami Marlins, Orange Bowl Committee, YMCA of Greater Miami, AMResorts, Homewood Suites by Hilton and PriceTravel. She is also a contributing blogger on rbb’s blog, Digital Park. Before joining rbb, Jennifer was communications coordinator for the University of Florida’s College of Fine Arts where she managed the College’s multiple publications and media relations for student, faculty and alumni events.

Jennifer obtained her bachelor’s degree in communications, along with a minor in AEM and concentration in Spanish from Cornell University in 2007. During her undergraduate studies, she spent a semester studying at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain.

A Miami native, Jennifer returned to the warm and sunny state of Florida upon graduation to continue her studies at the University of Florida’s School of Journalism & Communication. In 2009, she earned a master’s degree in mass communication with specializations in public relations and Latin American studies. Jennifer was invited to present her master’s thesis, “Images of Latin America: Managing Impressions through Tourism Websites,” at the 12th Annual International Public Relations Research Conference in Miami and at Cornell University’s “Regional Identity in Times of Globalization and Diaspora” Conference in Ithaca.

Jennifer currently serves as treasurer of the Public Relations Society of America’s Miami Chapter. In her free time, Jennifer enjoys cheering on the Florida Gators (including former Gator Tim Tebow), traveling the world and spending time with friends and family.

Would you like to attend the All Ivy+ Cultural Events? Please click the links below for ordering instructions.

Alvin Ailey All Ivy+ Cultural Series Updated

Come Fly Away All Ivy+ Cultural Series Updated

Lion King All Ivy+ Cultural Series

Dr. Carl E. Lewis is currently the Director of the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, and an adjunct professor at both the University of Miami and Florida International University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Systematic Botany at Cornell University in 2001. He performed his undergraduate studies at Connecticut College, where he graduated with a degree in Botany, with a concentration in Chemistry, in 1995.

Dr. Lewis has been extensively published, penning articles ranging from the origins of endemic flora in the Galapagos Islands in the Journal of Biogeography to molecular phylogenetic studies of West Indian Palms in The Botanical Review. He has traveled the world, giving presentations to scientific conferences in Vancouver, Chicago, Dublin, and right here in Miami.

Dr. Lewis has also helped guide future professionals in his area of expertise. Over the last several years, he has lead graduate student committees during their Ph.D. or Masters pursuits.

Alejandro Badia, MD, FACS is a hand and upper extremity surgeon expert. He is the Chief of Hand Surgery at Baptist Hospital in Miami and a member of the ASSH, AAHS, AAOS as well as honorary member of many foreign hand surgery societies.

Dr. Badia graduated from Cornell in 1985, where he received a degree in physiology. He was also a member of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity, and the rugby and water polo teams. Dr. Badia then went on to complete his medical degree at New York University and subsequently moved back to Miami to begin his practice.

In 2008, he completed the Badia Hand to Shoulder Center, a fully integrated clinical facility for the upper limb encompassing digital radiography, MRI extremity imaging, Integra rehabilitation facility, OrthoNow walk in medical center and the Surgery Center at Doral.

He currently leads an active international hand fellowship, serves on the editorial board of two hand journals, and organizes a yearly Miami meeting for surgeons/therapists that are devoted to upper limb arthroscopy and arthroplasty.

Enrique Martínez Celaya

Internationally renowned artist Enrique Martínez Celaya, Cornell College of Engineering 1986 is this month’s Spotlight Alumnus.

Enrique Martínez Celaya, trained both as an artist and as a scientist, works in painting, sculpture, photography, teaching, lecturing, and writing, enlisting these diverse practices to create projects for museums and galleries around the world as well as for such non-art venues as the Berliner Philharmonie and the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in New York. His work is represented in twenty-seven museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Germany. Martínez Celaya is the author of a collection of critical writings and interviews, two books of poetry, and is the editor of a selection of poems by Charles Baudelaire and an anthology of aesthetics. He has also published four scientific papers on superconductivity and lasers, and is the inventor of an often-cited patent. Martínez Celaya lectures on topics ranging from literature to the relationship between art and science at international forums including the American Academy of Berlin, the Aspen Institute, and the Contemporary Art Society, London. He was honored as the second Presidential Professor in the history of the University of Nebraska, and taught as a tenured professor in the faculty of Pomona College and Claremont Graduate University.

Enrique Martínez Celaya was born in Habana on June 9th, 1964, five years after the end of the Cuban Revolution, and he migrated to Spain in 1972. After a second migration with his family to Puerto Rico in 1975, Martínez Celaya initiated his formal training as an apprentice to a painter. In high school he pursued his childhood interest in science, winning fourteen science prizes, including first prize in the Department of Energy’s National Science Fair for a laser communication system. Along with his interest in art and science, he wrote poetry and essays, the latter influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings would exert an abiding force on his work throughout his career. He studied Applied Physics at Cornell University and, supported by a fellowship from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, pursued a Ph.D. in Quantum Electronics at the University of California, Berkeley, before his decision to leave a career in science for art. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine and received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Santa Barbara with the department’s highest distinction. Martínez Celaya maintains a studio and imprint, Whale & Star, in the Design District in Miami, and lives in Delray Beach.

His work will be presented at the Miami Art Museum this year(for the second time) with a two-room installation inspired by Beethoven’s convalescence and death in Vienna, Austria, in 1827. The title, Schneebett (“Snow-bed”), is from a poem by Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, a meditation on death. It will be installed in the Anchor Gallery section of the museum’s Permanent Collection installation and will be shown October 14, 2011- January 1, 2012. Be sure to come to visit the museum during this show.