{"68887":{"#nid":"68887","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Ortega Commitment Supports ISyE Chair, Cuban Students","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGratitude is a powerful motivating force for most Georgia Tech\ndonors, and this is especially true for Humberto J. Ortega, IE 1964, MS IE\n1968, and his wife, Kathryn \u201cKatey\u201d Ayers, of West New York, New Jersey.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003EA native of Cuba, Ortega\nattended Acadamia Valma\u00f1a, a private elementary and secondary education school\nin Havana. At the age of 16, following his graduation, he and his mother agreed\nthe best course of action would be for him to attend college in the United\nStates. His mother\u2014who left Cuba shorty after the revolution that brought Fidel\nCastro to power\u2014found a placement service in Cuba to help determine colleges\nthat matched his aptitude, and Georgia Tech turned out to be just the right fit.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cGeorgia Tech gave a\ntremendous amount of assistance to Cuban \u00e9migr\u00e9 students in the 1960s,\nincluding me,\u201d Ortega said. \u201cI still remember a group of us sitting in the\noffice of the late A. P. (Neil) de Rosa, director of placement, receiving his\nreassurance that the loan program for Cuban students would be soon forthcoming.\nI have always been very grateful for that assistance and I wanted to find a way\nto express my gratitude that would also help other students of Cuban descent.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003EBecause of the profound\nsense of gratitude that both Ortega and Ayers feel toward their respective alma\nmaters, they are endowing chairs at each institution: Ayers at Johns Hopkins\nUniversity and Ortega at Georgia Tech. \u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003EAyers\u2019 endowment funds a\nchair in the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing in gratitude for her\nbasic nursing education, which set her on a lifelong path in a career she\nloves.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003EOrtega recently made a\nseven-figure bequest commitment, the bulk of which will fully endow the\nHumberto J. Ortega Chair in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and\nSystems Engineering.\u0026nbsp; The chair holder\nwill be an eminent teacher-scholar in an area of study to be determined by the\nschool chair and the dean of the College of Engineering. \u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003EOrtega\u2019s commitment also\nestablishes the Humberto J. Ortega Endowment Fund for the support of\nReconstruyendo El Puente (Rebuilding the Bridge), a scholarship fund that\nsupports \u003Cbr \/\u003E\nGeorgia Tech students of Cuban descent. Ortega first heard of the program from\nfellow alumni in Miami who started and are spearheading the effort to provide\nsupport for this group of students, expected to swell in the future as the\nisland nation returns to normalcy after the Castro era. A 2007 \u003Cem\u003EPhilanthropy\nQuarterly\u003C\/em\u003E story about a commitment to the program from Teresita and Juan A.\nMichelena, ME 1962, also strongly influenced \u003Cbr \/\u003E\nhis decision.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003EOrtega retired as a senior\nstaff engineer from ExxonMobil Research and Engineering in 2000 following a\n32-year career in Information Systems Technology. Ayers, a psychiatric nurse\npractitioner, holds a nursing diploma from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing as\nwell as bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees in advanced practice psychiatric\nnursing from New York University. She also holds a post-master\u2019s certificate as\na psychiatric nurse practitioner from Columbia University. Ayers previously\nserved as director of the Mental Health Department at Ryan Community Health\nCenter in New York and as a psychiatric nurse practitioner at Mount Sinai\nHospital in New York. After retiring from Mount Sinai in 2004, she taught at\nseveral local nursing schools before returning to direct patient care in her\nown private practice, Katey Ayers Health Consultants. She currently is on the\nmedical staff of Christ Hospital in Jersey City and has a contract with Christ\nHospital to provide services as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, using her\nSpanish language skills to treat the large, diversified Hispanic population of\nHudson County, New Jersey, where she and Ortega live. \u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\n\n\n\u003Cp\u003E(This article first appeared in the Winter 2011\nissue of \u003Cem\u003ECampaign Quarterly\u003C\/em\u003E.)\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGratitude is a powerful motivating force for most Georgia Tech\ndonors, and this is especially true for Humberto J. Ortega, IE 1964, MS IE\n1968, and his wife, Kathryn \u201cKatey\u201d Ayers, of West New York, New Jersey.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"27511","created_gmt":"2011-07-22 12:10:18","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:09:48","author":"Ashley Daniel","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2011-07-22T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2011-07-22T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"68888":{"id":"68888","type":"image","title":"Ortega Commitment Supports ISyE Chair, Cuban Students","body":null,"created":"1449177214","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:13:34","changed":"1475894599","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:43:19","alt":"Ortega Commitment Supports ISyE Chair, Cuban Students","file":{"fid":"192679","name":"isye_ups.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/isye_ups_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/isye_ups_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2802324,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/isye_ups_0.jpg?itok=6HPOPCIY"}}},"media_ids":["68888"],"groups":[{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"}],"categories":[{"id":"130","name":"Alumni"}],"keywords":[{"id":"13672","name":"College of Engineering; H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering; Donald Ratliff; Supply Chain and Logistics Center; World Economic Forum"},{"id":"1139","name":"georgia tech alumni"},{"id":"13715","name":"Humberto J. Ortega"},{"id":"13716","name":"Kathryn Ayers"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:barbara.christopher@isye.gatech.edu\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBarbara Christopher\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIndustrial and Systems Engineering\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404.385.3102\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}