Benefit Honorees

2010 Distinguished Child Advocate Award

The 2010 Distinguished Child Advocate Award will be presented to Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the Emmy®-award winning chief medical correspondent for the Health, Medical & Wellness unit at CNN.  Gupta is a member of the staff and faculty at the Emory University School of Medicine and is associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital.

Children’s Law Center is proud to recognize Gupta’s commitment to deepening the public’s understanding of how health problems impact children – particularly poor children – more than others.  Throughout his career, Gupta has spotlighted a range of health issues that impact children’s wellbeing, including asthma, housing conditions, autism, obesity, and global health epidemics, such as H1N1.

Gupta leads the network's reporting on breaking medical news, anchors the weekend medical affairs program SANJAY GUPTA MD, and contributes to CNN’s American Morning, Anderson Cooper 360°, and documentary programming.

In 2006, Gupta contributed to CNN's Peabody Award-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, breaking the news that official reports that Charity Hospital in New Orleans had been evacuated were incorrect, and revealing that more than 200 patients remained there for five days after the storm made landfall. The "Charity Hospital" reporting for Anderson Cooper 360° resulted in his 2006 News & Documentary Emmy® for Outstanding Feature Story. In 2004, Gupta was sent to Sri Lanka to cover the tsunami disaster that took more than 155,000 lives in South Asia, contributing to the 2005 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award for CNN. In 2009, he won both the first Health Communications Achievement Award from the American Medical Association’s Medical Communications Conference and the Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award from the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC).

He is married to Rebecca Olson Gupta, a family law attorney, and has three daughters.

2010 Children's Pro Bono Champion Award
For its exemplary corporate volunteerism, Children’s Law Center has named Covington & Burling LLP the inaugural winner of the 2010 Children's Pro Bono Champion Award.  Every year for the past seven years, Covington has sent a full-time lawyer and paralegal to work at no cost to CLC.

During their six month tenure, these individuals become an integral part of our team of lawyers, investigators and staff who work tirelessly to address the unmet legal service needs of DC's poor and at-risk children and families.

In addition to this demonstrated commitment to serving DC's children, the firm's employees regularly volunteer as pro bono attorneys for low-income caregivers of at-risk children in adoption, guardianship and custody cases – giving children the best health advocates of all, committed and caring families.  Tony Herman, a senior litigation partner at Covington, lends further support in his role as a  member of CLC's board of directors.

Covington has sent an unqualified message that community service is a full-time commitment, not an occasional whim.  For this reason, CLC is proud to honor Covington with the 2010 Children's Pro Bono Champion Award.