People & Profiles
The Metzger family’s efforts to cut down on household waste led Ryan Metzger ’01, ’09 MBA to co-found Ridwell, a multicity recycling operation. Since 2018, Ridwell has helped divert more than 21 million pounds of plastic and other hard-to-recycle materials from the waste stream.
Erica Bethe Levin ’05 founded Globowl, a company that creates baby and toddler food featuring flavors from around the world. Diversifying babies’ palates early on can help stave off picky eating and mitigate food allergies down the road, she says.
Northwestern community members share the wisdom they learned the hard way.
Northwestern professor Melissa Foster ’96, ’01 MMus believes rap music should be accessible to everyone. She explains why she finds the genre so inspiring — and why learning its history is critical to becoming a good rapper.
In her senior honors thesis, art history major Elizabeth Dudley explores the influence of technology — from the invention of the sewing machine to the rise of social media — on fashion and aesthetic trends. She focuses on cottagecore, an aesthetic reflecting a pastoral way of life that exploded in popularity during the pandemic.
Since 2019 Marc McClellan ’81, a resident of Palm Springs, Calif., has served as president of the NU Club of Coachella Valley, a small but active group that has hosted game watch parties and cultural events, receptions for the Northwestern softball team and alumni filmmakers, and joint gatherings with other Northwestern groups to expand the club’s reach and unite Wildcats in the area.
When his dreams of directing theater fizzled, Art Johnston ’75 MFA instead took up the fight for queer rights in Chicago. Together with his husband, Pep Peña, he co-founded Sidetrack, an innovative gay bar that’s now the largest in the Midwest, and lobbied for passage of groundbreaking civil rights laws that have made Chicago a welcoming place for the LGBTQIA+ community.
Maya-Camille Broussard ’04 MA is the owner of the Chicago-based bakery Justice of the Pies and a star on the Netflix show Bake Squad. In this Q&A, she discusses the inspiration behind her pie flavors, the social issues close to her heart and how she’s worked to make her bakery an accessible place for people living with disabilities.
As dean of career programs and continuing education and director of apprenticeship partnerships at Olive-Harvey College, Cheryl Freeman-Smith ’92 creates opportunities for students from low-income communities to gain the specialized skills required for the modern economy.
University Archives is home to documents, artifacts and mementos that showcase the rich history of Northwestern and its community, “items that will help people better understand the University we love,” says University Historian Kevin Leonard ’77, ’82 MA. The collections span 25,000 linear feet and include everything from a limited-edition Northwestern University Barbie to a real taxidermized wildcat.
