Commencement Day also included two graduates who received prestigious alumni awards. Reginald Wilcox was named the Bette Ann Harris '83 Distinguished Alumni Award recipient while Sarah Peifer took home the Emerging Leader Award. 

The Emerging Leader Alumni Award is for an alumnus who graduated within the past 10 years. For the past seven years, Peifer (MS-NU ’16) has distinguished her time at South Shore Health by contributions to psychiatric care, healthcare innovation, and education. She is the Lead Emergency Department Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner and in 2021, implemented the HEADS-ED tool, a mental health and addiction screening tool for children and young people, which significantly reduced pediatric psychiatric boarding times. Earlier this year, Peifer was promoted to Director of Psychiatric Advanced Practice Clinicians. 

The highest form of recognition awarded to a graduate of the Institute, the Bette Ann Harris '83 Distinguished Alumni Award is named in honor of the Institute’s first master's degree graduate. 

The career of Wilcox (DPT ’04, MS-PT ’05) is distinguished by contributions to advancing patient care, outstanding leadership skills, and commitment to teaching.  A board-certified orthopaedic physical therapist at Brigham & Women’s Hospital (where he has been since 2001), Wilcox’ clinical focus work is on lower extremity sports injuries, shoulder dysfunction and the postoperative shoulder procedures. In 2017, he was named Executive Director of the hospital’s Department of Rehabilitation Services. 

“B.A. Harris has been instrumental in shaping my professional journey,” said Wilcox. “She was the first professor I met at MGH IHP back in 1999, served as my thesis advisor, and inspired me to consider a move back to an academic medical center nearly 24 years ago—a decision that led me to Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Receiving an award named in her honor, twenty-five years after we first met, is a profound privilege. I was truly humbled and honored to accept this recognition.”