John Tamagni ’56 has been elected chair of the Brooklyn Museum board of trustees. Tamagni, who grew up in Brooklyn and frequented the museum when his mother studied art at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, is also the chairman of investment management firm Castleton Partners and an overseer of the Hood Museum of Art.

Chuck Hobbie ’67 and Ami Richardson ’91 have been appointed associate general counsels of the Peace Corps, based in Washington, D.C. They join diversity outreach specialist Kiva Wilson ’04 and director of recruitment Shari Hubert ’92.

Nadia Dombrowski ’83 has earned the 2011 Pamela L. Carter Transformative Leadership Award from InsideCounsel magazine, honoring her commitment to advancing the empowerment of women in corporate law. Dombrowski is the senior vice president and lead region counsel of U.S. markets for MasterCard Worldwide, based in Purchase, New York.

Tom Avril ’89, a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, has earned a Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award from the Foundation for Biomedical Research, given for reporting that enhances public understanding of how the use of animals leads to medical and scientific discoveries. Avril won the award for a June 2010 article that explained how doctors are using fruit-fly genes to better understand how certain diseases develop in the flies and in humans, since they share a number of genetic similarities.

David Farmer ’75 has been named Volunteer Coach of the Year by the U.S. Olympic Committee. Farmer has been the coach of the Aurora (Colorado) Saracens High School rugby club for four years—and last year earned Rugby Colorado 2010 Coach of the Year honors.

Trevor Rees-Jones ’73, a Dallas businessman and Dartmouth trustee, has received the 2011 Robert S. Folsom Leadership Award from the Methodist Health System Foundation. He was honored in part for his work with the Rees-Jones Foundation, which he developed in 2006 to aid the underserved, particularly children and families, of North Texas.

Adam Nelson ’97—who has won two Olympic silver medals, a world title and three world silver medals in shot put—earned his fifth U.S. title this summer at the U.S. track and field championships. The Watkinsville, Georgia, resident will next throw at the biennial world championships (his sixth time) at the end of the summer.

Willis Newton ’71, the chief financial officer of San Francisco-based First Republic Bank for the past 19 years, has been named Chief Financial Officer of the Year by the San Francisco Business Times.

Rukmini Callimachi ’95, a prize-winning correspondent for the Associated Press, has been named chief of bureau for the news cooperative for West Africa. Callimachi, who began her journalism career in 2001 as a freelance reporter in New Delhi, India, will oversee two dozen countries in West Africa from the AP’s bureau in Dakar, Senegal.

Jonathan Cedar ’03, the founder and CEO of Brooklyn-based cookstove developer BioLite, was named to Businessweek’s list of “America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs 2011.” BioLite’s $40 stove is designed to capture waste heat to generate electricity, which then powers a fan to cut toxic smoke emissions by 95 percent—and greatly reduce air pollution in developing countries. Cedar’s company also won the 2011 St. Andrew’s Prize for the Environment, a joint initiative by the University of St. Andrews and Conoco-Phillips to recognize significant contributions to environmental conservation.