People
In Check Please, an award-winning short film by Shane Chung ’24, two co-workers who share Korean heritage fight each other for the right to pay the bill at a restaurant, using Jackie Chan–inspired martial arts.
How would you describe the Mona Lisa or Dalí’s famous melting clocks painting to a toddler? Thanks to MuseKat, an app developed by Bethany Marzewski Crystal ’09, the answers are right at your fingertips.
Rachel Sillcocks is co-owner and co-founder of the Michelin-starred San Francisco restaurant Hilda and Jesse, which started as a pop-up and is now well-known for its whimsically styled interior and eclectic dinner and brunch menus.
Sports executive, actor and former professional soccer player Andy McDermott is founder and CEO of Intentional Sports. The organization’s world-class facility offers free or low-cost sports activities and other programming to kids on Chicago’s northwest side.
Following her sold-out off-Broadway performances in New York City, Liz Coin ’19 is bringing her one-woman show, Lizzy Sunshine, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The show explores what it’s like to be the little sister of someone struggling with addiction.
In December Northwestern art history assistant professor Antawan Byrd ’13 MA, ’22 PhD launched Project a Black Planet at the Art Institute of Chicago, the first major exhibit to examine Pan-Africanism, a cultural movement and ideology that promotes Black unity across Africa and the African diaspora.
As an undergrad, Julia Starzyk Kersey ’99 raised money for the American Heart Association through Radiothon, an annual fundraising event in honor of an undergraduate student who died of cardiac arrhythmia. Kersey carries campus tradition with her today as a national marketing and communications director for the American Heart Association.
Melissa Harris ’02 had just joined the Chicago Tribune as a columnist in 2009 when a colleague recommended she read the 1967 Division Street: America, a book which contains oral histories from 71 Chicagoans interviewed in the late ’60s. Years later, when Harris learned that the audio tapes of the original interviews were being digitized by the Library of Congress, she reached out to Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mary Schmich, and after some consideration they decided to make a podcast.
By day, Amanda Dunlap edits film trailers for Disney, but by night, she’s a true-crime junkie. Dunlap ’06 took inspiration for her debut novel from stories of real-life “resurrection men,” grave robbers who sold stolen corpses to medical schools in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the early 19th century.
Uncover more about Dunlap’s novel and the history of body-snatching.
Veteran Lauren Wright Kimball ’05, ’05 MS says it’s been the “privilege of a lifetime” to help create the Military and Family Helpline, a new resource for military veterans and active-duty personnel who live in Nebraska and Iowa. Kimball, who is chief strategy officer at United Way of the Midlands, helped establish the support line in collaboration with the Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs and Offutt Air Force Base.
