The Kiwanis Club of Nashville, founded in 1916, has elected its officers for 2011-2012.

Serving a one-year term, they are:

Betty Lou Burnett, president, senior recruiter of The Search Firm, Inc.

President-elect: Joseph “Joe” P. White, president of NovaCopy, Inc.

First vice president: Stephen Frohsin, principal of Woodmont Investment Counsel, LLC

Second vice president: Missy Acosta, vice president of marketing of Delta Dental of Tennessee

Treasurer: Ronda Pitts, CPA, partner of Kraft CPAs, PLLC

Secretary: Mike Forster, financial advisor of Morgan Keegan

Chaplain: Bill Kirby Jr., owner of Russell Montgomery & Associates OI Partners

Sergeant-at-arms: Matt Shorter, Nashville sales manager of NovaCopy, Inc.

Immediate past president: Judy Fisher, Belmont University

Board of directors appointed serve a one-year term are:

Joy Allison, consultant; David Bullock, counsel of Miller & Martin PLLC; Faye Silva, executive recruiter, Deloitte; Andres Tapia, bank support manager of Avenue Bank.

Board members appointed to serve a two-year term are:

Thomas H. Wood, director of campus enhancement, Lipscomb University; Ed Van Voorhees, owner of CitruSolutions of Middle Tenn.; Pam Simmons, real estate sales associate, Prudential Woodmont; M.J. Garrett, principal and vice president of sales of Grand Avenue Limousine (Franklin resident).

Celebrating its 95th anniversary, Kiwanis Club of Nashville is composed of more than 200 business leaders in Middle Tennessee, representing numerous professions, including health care, law, accounting, banking, real estate, and retail. Its club members make an impact on the Nashville community by performing many worthy community service projects to serve children and young adults.

Neal & Harwell adds associate

Andrew Warth has joined Neal & Harwell, PLC as an associate. Warth’s practice focuses on civil and criminal litigation.

Prior to joining Neal & Harwell, Warth was a law clerk for The Hon. Aleta A. Trauger, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, Nashville, from 2008-2011.

From 2006 to 2008, Warth was an associate in the Dallas, TX, office of international law firm Jones Day. His practice at Jones Day focused on commercial litigation and included experience in securities law and class action litigation.

Warth received his J.D. from the Vanderbilt in 2006 where he was inducted to the Order of the Coif and received the Stanley D. Rose Memorial Book Award for the best legal history paper. He received a B.A. cum laude in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2002.

Symphony hires, promotes staff

Erin Wenzel has joined the Nashville Symphony staff as senior director of development. She spent three seasons as development director for Overture Center for the Arts, a performing arts complex in Madison, Wisc., and was development officer for Madison Repertory Theater from 2006 to 2008. Wenzel spent 10 years as a stage manager based in Chicago, where she worked with Steppenwolf, Victory Gardens and Chicago Shakespeare theaters.

Hayden Pruett joined Nashville Symphony as major gifts officer in September 2011. Before moving from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, she served as Property Casualty Insurers’ manager of political affairs. As a Republican fundraiser, she has worked with candidates and elected officials in the House, Senate and Executive branches.

Maribeth Stahl was promoted to director of corporate relations and grants from her previous position of manager of sponsorships and grants. Stahl spent six years with the Toledo Symphony in a variety of marketing and corporate development roles.

Baptist Hospital nurse wins THA honor

Jennifer Elliott, director of nursing for emergency, critical care and patient access at Baptist Hospital, recently received the 2011 Executive Nurse of Distinction Award. The award is part of the Tennessee Hospital Association’s (THA) Awards of Excellence, presented at its 73rd annual meeting.

During her 10-year tenure at Baptist, Elliott has held several nursing leadership positions. As emergency department director, she has advanced the nursing profession by encouraging staff to obtain multiple certifications, arrhythmia training and critical care courses. She recently led the development of Baptist Hospital’s ONE Call Access Center, a patient transfer center staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by experienced critical care RNs. The center is designed to expedite transfers from critical access and acute care facilities, skilled nursing facilities and direct admissions from physician offices when medical needs exceed the services they can provide.

Elliott received an associate’s degree in nursing at Tennessee State University and a bachelor’s degree in health care administration at Ashford University.

Smith Seckman Reid gets a ‘threepeat’

For the third consecutive year, Smith Seckman Reid, Inc., an engineering design and facility consulting firm, has been named the country’s best multi-discipline A/E services firm to work for.

SSR ranked No. 1 among multi-discipline firms with more than 300 employees. Judging criteria was based on workplace practices, employee benefits and employee retention rates.

The Best Firms To Work For ranking is done by ZweigWhite, a management consulting and research firm. The annual ranking identifies the top industry firms in civil engineering, structural engineering, multidiscipline A/E services, environmental service, and architecture.

Catholic Charities gets development director

Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Inc. has announced the appointment of Laura Jumonville as the agency’s inaugural development director.

A 15-year veteran in the development field, Jumonville’s prior experience includes work with University School of Nashville, The Nature Conservancy and the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission. She has had involvement with identifying and securing major gifts, supporting annual and multi-year campaigns, planning and coordinating special events, and donor management. She is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Summit Medical Center welcomes new surgeon

Brandon Harrell, M.D., general surgeon has joined The Surgical Clinic at Summit Medical Center.

Harrell received his medical degree from the Texas A&M University Health Science Center College of Medicine. He then completed his residency in general surgery at the Scott and White Hospital in Temple, TX.

Dr. Harrell is board certified by the American Board of Surgery and is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

Cell Biology society honors VUMC’s Wente

Susan Wente, Ph.D., associate vice chancellor for research and professor of cell & developmental biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, is the recipient of the 2011 Women in Cell Biology Senior Career Recognition Award from the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB).

The award is given to senior researchers “whose outstanding scientific achievements are coupled with a long-standing record of support for women in science and by mentorship of both men and women in scientific careers.”

The award, which includes a $1,000 check, will be presented Dec. 6 at the ASCB annual meeting in Denver.

As senior associate dean for biomedical sciences, Wente oversees the basic science training of more than 700 graduate students and 500 postdoctoral research fellows at the Medical Center. As associate vice chancellor for Research, she is involved in strategic planning and ensuring that the infrastructure is in place to support cutting-edge research.

VUMC’s Marnett lauded by chemical society

Lawrence Marnett, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology, is the first recipient of the George and Christine Sosnovsky Award for Cancer Research from the American Chemical Society.

The award recognizes “outstanding achievements in the elucidation of the chemical and biochemical pathways underlying human cancers, leading to the discovery and development of improved cancer therapeutics.”

The award, which includes a $5,000 prize, will be presented during the ACS national meeting in San Diego in March.

Nephrology Associates adds three in Midstate

Nephrology Associates has added Dr. Anisa Iona Nayeem, Dr. Shilpa Reddy Carlson and Dr. Saadia Kahn to its team of experienced kidney disease specialists. Nayeem, a board certified nephrologist, will serves the Winchester and Tullahoma offices. Previously, she served as attending nephrologist at Summit Nephrology Medical Group in Grass Valley, Calif. She was also a hospitalist at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and a staff physician for the kidney transplant division at the University of California-Davis in Sacramento. She received a master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, a bachelor’s degree from Emory University in Atlanta.

Carlson will serve patients at the Springfield office. Prior to joining Nephrology Associates, Carlson completed a nephrology fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where she conducted research on familial hyperaldosteronism. Carlson completed her residency at Virginia Commonwealth University and earned her medical degree from Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Mo. Her bachelor’s degree is from from Vanderbilt.

Kahn will care for patients at the practice’s Lebanon location. She has served as a nephrology fellow at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. Her medical experience extends to psychiatry work at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and substance abuse research at the VA Hospital in Birmingham. She also has served as a house surgeon at Holy Family Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan.

Kahn completed her internal medicine residency at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, and earned her medical and bachelor’s degrees from Allama Iqbal Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan.