Burke Alumni, Mitchell Warren, was recently inducted into the Burke Hall of Fame for his lifelong accomplishments. He came to speak to a few of our students and shared that the school had not changed much since he had attended but his life certainly has.

“I haven’t been back in the school since I graduated and if you told me in 1984 that I would’ve had the career that I did I would’ve said no way” Warren said.

He shared one specific moment that shifted the entire course of his life.

“I ended up working for this organization that was helping to support the training of black South Africans to be doctors and nurses and pharmacists and in 1989 so I was 24 or 25 I went to South Africa for that job and it kind of changed my life.” Warren said.

The students in the room listened closely as he shared the overall experience in his line of work.

Warren told the students “I now have been running an organization for HIV prevention for 22 years so longer than any of you have been alive I’ve been running a small non-profit organization that works to accelerate the development of new prevention options to prevent HIV”

He explained in further detail what the role of his job is and what he does daily within his job.

“I talk about science with leading scientists around the world because my job is to try to translate really complex community perspectives into science to make science relevant to people and then try to translate really complex science back into communities to help them understand the scientific process so how clinical trials are done and how products get developed and I would never have thought that sitting in these rooms of Burke high school studying English and history that i would end up being someone who talks about viruses and pathogens and the science of it all” Warren said.

He told the students that Burke set him up for success in order to be where he is today.

“That’s one of the things that makes Burke great is that I was prepared for anything and I don’t think any teacher thought that is what I would do and I didn’t express that as an interest but the seeds of what you are able to do and that’s why I really loved English and history and communications if you can read and write and talk about things then you can do just about anything.” Warren said.