Maret is proud to announce the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award recipients, Dr. Phoebe Aron ’09 and Dr. Rinad Beidas ’99.

The Distinguished Alumni Award was created by the Maret Alumni Council in 2011 to celebrate the incredible accomplishments of our former students. Head of School Dennis Bisgaard will present the award on the evening of May 18 at the 2024 Reunion Celebration.

Dr. Phoebe Aron ’09 is a climate change scientist and water resource management engineer. She is a senior principal scientist at Hazen and Sawyer, a leading national environmental engineering consulting firm focused on water supply and water quality challenges. Aron leads Hazen’s applied research program on water resources and climate change to help clients ensure that drinking water and other water resources are safe, reliable, and sustainably managed. She directs a team of data scientists and engineers who use cutting-edge climate models to help solve some of the most complex water challenges we face today. Before joining Hazen, Aron worked as a water science researcher at the US Geological Survey, University of Michigan, and DC Water. She also leads wilderness trips all around the world, combining a love of being outdoors with a passion for leadership education.

Aron holds a BA in chemistry, environmental studies, and history from Bowdoin College and an MS and a PhD in earth and environmental sciences from the University of Michigan. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Michigan.

Aron received the University of Michigan Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship Award and the John Dorr Graduate Academic Achievement Award in recognition of outstanding doctoral research that was unusually creative, ambitious, and impactful. Maret holds a very special place in Aron’s heart. She is a Maret lifer; met her husband, Dylan Reffe, also a 2009 Maret grad, in fourth grade; got engaged on the roof of Woodley; and held her wedding rehearsal dinner on the Maret front field. She lives in Silver Spring, MD.

Dr. Rinad S. Beidas ’99 specializes in the nascent but growing field of implementation science, which strives to translate research into reality. “I feel passionate about implementation science as a tool to amplify the needs of our communities and ensure everyone has equitable access to benefit from scientific discoveries,” she says. Beidas is chair and Ralph Seal Paffenbarger professor of Medical Social Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and is one of a small number of women and an even smaller number of non-MDs to chair a department at a medical school. Previously, she served as founding director of the University of Pennsylvania Implementation Science Center at the Leonard Davis Institute and director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit.

Beidas's research improves the quality and equity of health care and health outcomes across areas that include firearm safety, cancer, HIV, and cardiovascular disease. She has published 300 peer-reviewed publications and led NIH grants totaling approximately 31 million dollars. She is an associate editor for Implementation Science and Implementation Science Communications, the flagship journals for the field.

Beidas holds a BA in psychology from Colgate University and a PhD in psychology from Temple University. She is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies President’s New Researcher Award; the American Psychological Foundation Diane J. Willis Early Career Award; the Perelman School of Medicine Marjorie Bowman New Investigator Research Award; and the Acenda Institute Research Pioneer Award.