katy travis and jesse and so special thanks to them for pulling this together. we were traveling catherine my colleague, and i were traveling in january to liberia and sierra leone, and in the course of that we met this remarkable person tolbert, who is an assistant minister of health, deputy chief medical officer, and most importantly, head of the incident management system in liberia, which is the central and most important institution driving the response and control of ebola in liberia. tom frieden when he has visited liberia at various points, has declared that this is the most important person in liberia. now maybe that's it arguable and in deference to the president and others but one thing that became very clear was that tolbert was indefatigable. he trained as a lawyer and at the university of liberia. he went on to pursue his interests in humanitarian law at johns hopkins at emory and elsewhere and then came to bloomberg school to complete a master in public health and then as he will describe, as an a ministerial official, he became at the center of t