The sales team of Melissa Palmer and Melissa Prunzik has joined the Mt. Lebanon office of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services. Palmer is a Vermont Drive resident with prior corporate experience with Restoration Hardware and All-Clad Cookware. Prunzik is a resident of Upper St. Clair with extensive experience in commercial real estate.
Bianca LoVerde, D.O., has joined the staff of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh specializing in neonatal-perinatal medicine. LoVerde, of Birch Avenue, is board-certified in pediatrics. She received her medical degree from West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, did her residency at University of Toledo and completed fellowships at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. Her research interests have included improving breast feeding rates in the neonatal intensive care unit, nutrition in extremely preterm infants and increasing resident confidence and competence in neonatal resuscitation.
Lucy Fischer, Magnolia Place, has received the Provost Award for Distinguished Mentoring from the University of Pittsburgh. Fischer has directed Pitt’s Film Studies Program for 30 years and, under her leadership, the program expanded considerably, including offering its own degree programs through a PhD. Fischer has published seven monographs and four edited books, and her essays have been anthologized 30 times in scholarly volumes. Fischer served as president of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies from 2001 to 2003 and received its Distinguished Service Award.
W.M. Nzambi, certified financial planner and president of Mariner Financial Group, www.marinerfinancialgroup.com [1], was a professional contributor to the ninth edition of Personal Financial Planning Theory and Practice. The textbook is used in education requirement programs throughout the country for financial advisors seeking board certification by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards. Nzambi, Terrace Drive, has served as an adjunct faculty member at Duquesne University School of Business.
Mt. Lebanon graduate Jason Bacha, Class of 1998, has an Outstanding Science Alumni Award from Penn State’s Eberly College of Science. Bacha, a pediatrician, is medical director and co-clinical director for the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative (BIPAI) and Texas Children’s Hospital Global Health Corporation programs in Tanzania. He supervises clinical research projects, oversees the program’s core pediatric HIV/AIDS activities, and has helped create additional clinical programs focusing on childhood tuberculosis, malnutrition and oncology care in Tanzania. Previously, Bacha has worked with children in Haiti, Kenya, and Malawi.
Bacha graduated from Penn State in 2002 with a bachelor’s degree in biology. He then obtained a master’s in clinical research and a doctor of medicine degree from the University of Michigan, where he received a Certificate of Research Excellence. He was also named Outstanding Pediatric Resident at the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital in Stanford, California.