2019 MacRae

Dr. Benjamin Doz, Rotary Club of Edmonton West, District 5370

Ophthalmologist who has led service teams that provide eye care in Guatemala annually since 1998 - 2019 Zone 28 selectee.
 
Edmonton Optometrist Dr. Ben Doz and his wife Marley were married in 1998 and had planned their honeymoon to Egypt, Greece and Turkey. Instead, they travelled to Huehuetenango Guatemala where they met Ophthalmologist Dr. Carlos Solorzano and his wife Katyna, and worked with them providing eye care for people in remote Guatemalan villages. That was the beginning of a beautiful relationship between the members of the Rotary Club of Huehuetenango and the Rotary Club of Edmonton West.  Many life-long friendships between members of the two clubs have sprung from this trip.
 
For 23 years, Dr. Doz has annually recruited and trained a team from Edmonton to travel to Guatemala to assist Dr. Solorzano, his family and members of the Huehuetenango club. The Huehuetenango club is the lead club for this project, and they do an enormous amount of preparatory work prior to the Canadians’ arrival, as well as providing doctors and logistical support for the clinics.
Together the joint team provides eye clinics in remote towns and villages in North-West Guatemala that have helped to improve the lives of literally thousands of Guatemalan residents and families.
 
The majority of the patients treated at the clinics are Indigenous. They are extremely poor, and have neither the access to, nor the capacity to pay for health care, especially for specialized services such as eye care. The service provided is, as a result, highly sought after. Typically there are long lineups of people waiting many hours to access the opportunity to be seen by one of these doctors.
 
Each patient receives a full eye exam and individual treatment. The team treats simple and complex issues with many cases of problems such cases of cataracts, glaucoma, and a multitude of issues not common in Canada. The team also provides glasses to many of the patients ranging from simple readers to prescription glasses. Dr. Doz’s office prepares an average of 250 pairs of prescription glasses each year and sends them back to Guatemala to be delivered to the patients.
All of these services are provided to the Guatemalan people free of charge. Dr. Doz and his clinic shoulder a large amount of the total mission costs. While the Edmonton West club provides significant financial support for the project, the Canadian Rotarians pay their own travel expenses.
 
Dr. Doz is a long time and distinguished member of the Rotary Club of Edmonton West. He has served on the Board in a variety of capacities, including Club President in 2009-2010.
 
In addition to his organizational skills and humanitarian effort, Dr. Doz and Marley create an amazingly positive atmosphere of good humour and teamwork that makes people want to join them, and provides the patients with a very positive experience. He is a shining example of Rotary’s Fourth Objective “The advancement of international understanding, goodwill and peace through a world of fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service,“  and has clearly strengthened the bond of peace and goodwill between Canada and Guatemala.
 

Emily Gould, Rotary Club of Lebanon, NH, District 7850

Co-director of African Peace Partners, founding member of Mediators Beyond Borders - 2019 Zone 32 selectee.  
 
Emily Gould is faculty for Global Restorative Justice, an online offering at Vermont Law School that focuses on the country of Rwanda and how it employed restorative justice to recover from the genocide of 1994. Professor Gould serves as a law reform consultant to Rwanda on the issue of alternative dispute resolution, including mediation and restorative justice.  Funded by the JAMS foundation, the Netherlands and the European Union, this consultancy additionally focuses on creating trauma - informed justice procedures. She is a co-founder of African Peace Partners, a U.S. non-profit that supports community mediation in Rwanda. Her work in Rwanda began as a project of Mediators Beyond Borders International, of which she is a founding member.
 
In June 2020, the Ministry of Justice of Rwanda adopted an ADR policy authored by Professor Gould for the Institute of Legal Practice and Development in Kigali. The policy will be considered by the President's Cabinet for adoption by the country in the summer of 2020. In June of 2020, Professor Gould was the recipient of the Donald MacRae Peace Award from Rotary International for her work in Rwanda.
 
In her legal career, Gould served as an Assistant District Attorney for Middlesex County, MA, Director of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in the Vermont Office of the Attorney General, and General Counsel to the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.  Over the last 15 years, she has mediated a wide range of disputes across many sectors including commercial enterprises, non-profit organizations, employment, agriculture, education, family and public policy. She has served as an assistant panel member of the Vermont Board of Professional Responsibility, is a past section chair of the Association for Conflict Resolution and Dispute Resolution Section of the Vermont Bar Association.
 
In addition to Vermont Law School, Professor Gould has been a lecturer in law and associate research scholar at Columbia Law School in the field of lawyer leadership development. She was among those at CLS who created and delivered a flagship course in Columbia Law School’s Leadership Initiative, Lawyer Leadership: Leading Self, Leading Others, Leading Change, a 5-credit experiential course offered for the first time in 2018. She also teaches law reform and policy development in Rwanda at Columbia Law School.
 
When she is not teaching or working in Rwanda, Professor Gould works as a leadership development coach, consultant and trainer to lawyers, law firms and legal institutions. She authored The Empathy Debate: The role of Empathy in Law, Mediation, and the New Professionalism in the Vermont Bar Journal (Fall, 2010) and graduated from Barnard College and Northeastern University Law School. She lives in Montpelier, Vermont.