Northwestern’s 2025 Alumni Medalists embody leadership, service and lifelong impact.
In October the Northwestern Alumni Association will bestow its greatest honor — the Alumni Medal — on four alumni for their professional achievement and service to the University.
Even as a boy growing up in Peoria, Ill., in the early 1960s, Bon French had his eye on Northwestern.
“I knew it was an outstanding school,” says French, whose parents met and earned their undergraduate degrees at the University. French remembers paging through Northwestern alumni magazines and seeing pictures of the brand-new Lakefill, a project that nearly doubled the size of the Evanston campus. “I thought, ‘This is a progressive university that is expanding and building for the future,’” he says.
As an undergraduate, French majored in economics in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He joined the swim team and Beta Theta Pi fraternity. French was also accepted into a 3-2 program, which enabled him to earn both his bachelor’s degree and his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management in just five years.
“Kellogg was a great experience — it changed my life for sure,” French says. Rigorous courses in management, leadership, accounting, organizational behavior, finance and more prepared him for a business career. After graduation, when French joined the bond department at Connecticut General Life Insurance Co., “everything I’d learned in school was directly applicable to my work,” he says.
Since 1980 French has enjoyed a remarkable career at Adams Street Partners, a pioneer in the field of private equity and venture capital. Under his leadership as CEO, executive chairman and now chairman, the company has become one of the most respected private-markets investment management firms, growing from a single office in Chicago to 15 locations around the world. With more than $63 billion in assets under management, Adams Street consistently delivers high returns to clients.
Whether French is managing a large global buyout or raising venture capital for a startup, working with privately held companies holds a special appeal. “I love that we have to think long-term,” he says. “We’re making commitments to companies, funds and partnerships that can go on for 15 or 20 years. We have to stay involved with each business and make it better.”
French has stayed involved with Northwestern, too, as an extraordinarily committed volunteer since 1996. He was appointed to the Board of Trustees in 2004, chairing the investment committee from 2014 to 2020, and became a life trustee in 2023. From 2019 to 2021 he co-chaired We Will. The Campaign for Northwestern, which significantly increased student financial aid and expanded Northwestern’s research enterprise.
Today he is a member of both the Kellogg School of Management’s Full Circle Campaign Committee and Global Advisory Board. French has served on more than two dozen committees at Northwestern, chaired several undergraduate and Kellogg class Reunions, and been a frequent guest lecturer at the University.
Together with his late wife, Hollis “Holly” S. French, he has made significant gifts to Northwestern. Their philanthropy has included a transformational bequest commitment that will benefit Kellogg and other University programs, as well as additional gifts to Kellogg, Weinberg College, Athletics and Recreation, and other areas. Through his philanthropy and service, French hopes to make Northwestern a better place. Evoking the optimism he has felt about the University since childhood, he says, “I’m excited for Northwestern’s future. It’s clearly an institution that has been and will continue to be on the rise.”
Over her 40-year career in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, Barbara Stewart has led and served vastly different organizations — from one of the country’s largest banking institutions to a federal agency focused on service and volunteerism. But in each setting, as her roles shifted and responsibilities grew, she discovered a common thread that made the work worthwhile.
“The best part of leading is seeing members of the team flourish,” Stewart says. “In so many ways, being a leader is about providing resources and helping people do their best.”
For Stewart, successful leadership often means setting a vision and then getting out of the way. “People do their best work when you trust them, when you believe in them and when they share the vision of what you want to accomplish,” she says.
After earning an undergraduate degree in political science, Stewart landed a James H. Dunn Jr. Memorial Fellowship to work in the Illinois state government, where she observed inspiring leaders up close. She went on to work for a governor and two lieutenant governors and later worked in government relations for Commonwealth Edison Co.
To bolster her business background, Stewart enrolled in the Kellogg School of Management’s evening MBA program. She says a class on servant leadership — the practice of putting the needs of employees first to help them grow — had a lasting impact on her thinking. After a stint at a public relations firm, she spent a decade as senior vice president for government relations at JPMorgan Chase and its predecessor Bank One.
Both her education and extensive experience serving on and leading nonprofit boards in Chicago and Baltimore shaped the skill set and priorities Stewart brought to her next venture. In 2012 she and her husband, Peter Bowe, founded the Bowe Stewart Foundation, which focuses on strengthening civic education and civil engagement and closing the opportunity gap through grantmaking and organizational partnerships.
In 2018 Stewart was tapped by President Donald Trump and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as CEO of AmeriCorps, a federal agency supporting service and volunteerism. During her three-year tenure, which she calls “a huge challenge and a huge opportunity,” Stewart led the agency (previously known as the Corporation for National and Community Service) through a period of transition and transformation, addressing many of the organization’s long-standing operational challenges and preparing AmeriCorps for future growth.
The experience reinforced a lesson Stewart learned from her mother, an active local volunteer. “There are so many benefits of volunteering in your community that range from personal mental health to developing skills to, importantly, making an impact on the people you’re serving,” Stewart says. “Never underestimate what can be accomplished through service.”
Stewart contributes to the Northwestern community as a member of the Kellogg Executive Women’s Network and the N Club. She also has served as president of the NU Club of Chicago, as a member of the Northwestern Alumni Association Board of Directors and her undergraduate Reunion committees, and in other volunteer roles.
Looking back, Stewart says she is grateful for the work ethic and intellectual curiosity she developed at Northwestern — and the friendships she made along the way. “The time you invest in your relationships has a greater impact than anything else,” she says.
If you’re a sports fan, chances are you’ve started your mornings with Mike Greenberg, who has been on the air for nearly 30 years. An award-winning sports journalist, he hosts ESPN’s weekday morning show Get Up and the network’s Sunday NFL Countdown. From 2000 to 2017 he co-hosted the popular ESPN Radio program Mike & Mike in the Morning alongside Mike Golic.
Greenberg earned his undergraduate degree in journalism and landed his first job in television after working as a radio reporter. He attributes his success and opportunities in the industry to his education at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, which “got me in the door — and made sure I knew what to do once I got in.”
As a student in the 1980s, Greenberg took a writing class where he learned a foundational skill that has served him well throughout his career: to ask questions that start with “W” words, including who, what, when, where and why. He also became a die-hard Wildcats fan. He remembers arriving early to Northwestern basketball games, cheering for the players, sitting behind the visitors’ bench and “yelling all sorts of things that I’ve now had to apologize for to the head coaches of the other Big Ten teams,” he confesses. He stormed the court with other students the night the ’Cats beat Indiana, the defending national champions, in 1988.
After college, as a sports reporter for Chicago-area TV and radio stations, Greenberg was assigned to cover events such as the World Series and Super Bowl as well as the Chicago Bulls. Led by superstar Michael Jordan, the red-hot team won six NBA championships in the 1990s. “It was the most electric experience in the world,” Greenberg recalls. “It was like covering the Beatles.”
By the time he joined ESPN in 1996, Greenberg felt well prepared to thrive in sports media. He anchored ESPN’s SportsCenter and NBA Countdown and began hosting its coverage of the NFL draft — his favorite assignment to this day. He also became the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers, including Why My Wife Thinks I’m an Idiot: The Life and Times of a Sportscaster Dad and All You Could Ask For. Greenberg was inducted into the Medill Hall of Achievement in 2015, the National Association of Broadcasters’ Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2016 and the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
Both personal and professional ties have helped “Greeny,” as he is known in the sports world, stay close to Northwestern. He and his wife, Stacy Steponate Greenberg ’95 MS, raised their two children — Nikki ’23 and Stephen ’25 — on Wildcats athletics. He has also spoken at several Northwestern athletics events over the years, including the Northwestern Alumni Association N Zone event ahead of the 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in Salt Lake City. He recalls the men’s basketball team beating Vanderbilt to win its first-ever game in the tournament as his “favorite day as a Northwestern sports fan,” sharing the experience with his children along with Northwestern students and alumni.
In 2017 the couple endowed the Stacy Steponate and Mike Greenberg Scholarship to support undergraduate Medill students with financial need. And Greenberg gave the convocation address to the Medill class of 2022, an assignment he calls “the greatest honor I’ve ever received in my life.”
In a career he describes as “a magic carpet ride,” Greenberg has covered heart-stopping and historic sporting events. He has rubbed elbows with sports legends and U.S. presidents and run the bases at Yankee Stadium. And now, he is more excited than ever to be in the middle of the action as the highlights unfold. “I’ve loved it all,” he says, “and I don’t feel anywhere near done.”
When Judy Toland chose chemical engineering as her major at Northwestern, she was motivated by both passion and practicality. Toland loved and had a talent for science and math, and she also knew engineering “teaches you how to think and problem-solve — and it’s a great foundation for anything you want to do in life.”
Thirty years ago, Toland never could have guessed that doing “anything” would mean having a career that has spanned five industries — tech, chemical, automotive, financial services, and health and wellness — and five Fortune 500 companies. She is currently vice president for global audience marketing at Meta, the technology company behind Facebook, Instagram and other products and services used daily by more than 3 billion people.
Toland straddles both the advertising and AI/Llama sides of Meta (Llama is a family of large AI language models) and directs large advertiser, agency, partner and developer audience marketing as well as product marketing, strategy, brand, activation and execution across the company’s business brands globally. She also has headed Meta’s Chicago office since 2020.
How did the McCormick School of Engineering graduate become a top marketing executive? Toland’s journey began at Ford Motor Co. and its spinoff, automotive components maker Visteon, where in the late 1990s and early 2000s she helped design interiors for cars, including a luxury SUV. “I always found myself thinking, ‘Who’s driving this car? What do they want and need in this car?’” she says.
Propelled by her interest in the customer experience, Toland earned an MBA from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and made “a wonderful pivot” to marketing and sales, working at Wells Fargo and GE Capital before joining Meta in 2019. She has received many industry awards for her contributions and was recently named the 2025 Advertising Woman of the Year by the Chicago Advertising Federation. Still, she says, her engineering background informs the way she approaches her work, “and I think it makes me a better marketer and leader.”
Reflecting on her career, Toland is proud “that every team I’ve had the honor of leading has been more diverse after I left,” she says. “More people from different walks of life are involved in the work.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, Toland’s focus on inclusion fit well with Meta’s efforts to train small businesses to use digital marketing platforms to keep their operations afloat. She is executive sponsor of Meta Elevate, which is a growth program for underserved small businesses and creators.
Toland traces her own success to lessons she learned at Northwestern about excellence and resilience. And whether she was collaborating with a lab partner or fellow members of the National Society of Black Engineers, she says, “Northwestern also taught me that things are better in community.”
Toland is a member of the Northwestern University Black Alumni Association (NUBAA) and served on her 25th and 30th Reunion committees. In February she participated in the Lavin Bernick Executive Chat Series at the Kellogg School of Management and has been a guest speaker for classes across Northwestern.
Building community and mentoring others are Toland’s favorite ways of giving back, she says. “Honestly, at this point after 31 years — having achieved most of my corporate objectives and earning the titles and roles I wanted — it’s all about helping someone else.”
The Medalists will participate in a livestreamed panel discussion on Oct. 3. Learn more.
Check out these related stories...
Barry Joseph ’91 has a long-running fascination with fizzy drinks, particularly seltzer, and he wants others to learn all about its effervescent history. In summer 2024 Joseph launched the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum, a partnership with the oldest seltzer factory in New York City.
Stephen Polozie ’96 JD shares the serendipitous way he met his future wife on a campus tour.
Kellogg School of Management professor and Apostolic Church of God pastor Nicholas Pearce finds common ground — and inspiration — in the pulpit, the classroom and the boardroom.
Reader Responses
No one has commented on this page yet.
Submit a Response