Kent Brantly

Class of 1999

Posted on September 10, 2018

1999 graduate and Ebola survivor, Kent Brantly, was recently awarded the Starkey Entrepreneurial Spirit Award (as featured in the July 2018 Indianapolis Monthly magazine). 

The Spirit Awards are given "to individuals who exhibit the entrepreneurial characteristics of courage, tenacity, and selflessness." The 2018 awards were focused on individuals who exemplify "serving the least of these."

Kent's article states:

Our 2018 Male Spirit Winner is Dr. Kent Brantly, an Indianapolis native, whose connections to Indiana included Heritage Christian School and the Indiana University School of Medicine. When Dr. Brantly moved to Monrovia, Liberia in 2013 with his wife and two children, they were on a path to fulfill their goal of living "lives of quiet service among people of great need." When the deadly Ebola outbreak came to them, their journey took and unexpected and disastrous turn. Dr. Brantly stated, "We chose to stay and join the fight knowing that it's possible we could die, but thinking that was incredibly unlikely." However, Dr. Brantly did contract the disease, and although he was on death's door, he was one of the very few who survived it. Dr. Brantly's character is defined by selflessness and courage, as "when only one dose of an experimental serum to treat Ebola was made available...Brantly turned it down and asked that [it] be given to his colleague." Somehow, Brantly survived through heroic medical intervention and, as he says, "a miracle of God."