Introduction Of Honored Guest by Paul H. Ward, MD

It is with great pleasure that I present to you the first elected President of the new American Laryngological Voice Research and Education Foundation. Many of us had the pleasure of meeting her last year, when she participated and led us toward the establishment of the Foundation.

She has received so many honors there would be no meeting if I read them all. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1968. She served on the faculty of the University of Michigan, then Harvard, until she became President of Radcliffe College, serving from 1972 to 1989. She is currently Executive Vice President of TIAA-CREF, where many of us have academic retirement funds. She serves on a lengthy list of boards of directors, both public and academic.

It is just great to have Dr Matina Horner join us as an Honored Guest and future active participant in the American Laryngological Association. Please join me in welcoming her.

Remarks Of Honored Guest: Matina Horner, PhD

President, American Laryngological Voice Education And Research Foundation, Inc

Thank you so much, Dr Ward, for your kind words, and all of you for your warm welcome. I am delighted to be here and very pleased to have been asked to join the launching team of the American Laryngological Voice Education and Research Foundation (ALVER) and look forward to working with everyone here to ensure that we have a successful launch and don't end up with "mission impossible."

The creation of ALVER is an important step, in my opinion, in implementing one of the key strategic opportunities that Dr Bailey outlined for the ALA in his impressive Presidential Address. An opportunity and a challenge has been endorsed, embraced, and carried forward by Drs Neel, Ward, the ALA Council, Dr Myers, and I hope by all of you. The ultimate success of this ambitious project will, of course, depend on the degree of commitment and effort each of us here dedicates to it on an ongoing basis despite, or maybe because of, all the distraction and enormous effort now needed by all of us to paddle our respective laryngology or other health care canoe safely through the chaotic white water of today's rapidly changing health care system. Support for medical education and research, as Dr Ward indicated, especially in specialty and subspecialty fields of medicine, is in increasing jeopardy and faces major challenges as new health care delivery paradigms aimed at containing costs emerge and confront us.

I am and always have been a firm believer in the adage that the best way to predict the future is to create it. I can think of no more worthy or effective mission for ensuring the future vitality, quality, and contributions of this specialty than to first identify and-then to actively mentor and support the work of some of the most promising of the next generation of skilled and dedicated professionals in the field, especially those who manifest a passion for pursuing the many as yet unsolved mysteries of that wonderful box, the larynx, and associated voice disorders.

When Chevalier Jackson, my secret love, received the Bigelow Medal for "Conspicuous Achievement in the Broad Field of Surgical Science" from the Boston Surgical Society in 1928, he was complimented as having the hands of a magician and the heart of a philanthropist. In the spirit of that remark, I would urge each of you who regularly make magic with your hands for the benefit of your patients to generously free your hearts' philanthropic tendencies for the benefit of the future well-being and quality of your chosen profession by filling out the pledge cards quite generously. Again, I thank you for the honor you have given me and the chance to work with you on this really splendid mission.