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People & Profiles

One Lucky Duck

Spring 2019
Hannah Chung ’12 hopes to make the treatment of childhood cancer a little more bearable. The co-founder of Sproutel, Chung works alongside CEO and co-founder Aaron Horowitz ’12 to design products that make a meaningful health impact on the lives of patients.

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duck on box
Since returning home to China seven years ago, Bozhong Xue has revitalized the NU Club of Beijing, interviewed prospective students as a member of the Alumni Admission Council, recruited high school students to volunteer for the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra concert last spring and supported international student scholarships at the Bienen School of Music. For his efforts, Xue received the inaugural Northwestern Alumni Association President’s Award in September.

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bozhong xue

Say Cheesecake

Spring 2019
Marc Schulman, president of Eli’s Cheesecake, oversees an operation that produces 20,000 desserts daily and served cheesecake for the inaugurations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ’06 H. Schulman is also an outspoken advocate for career and technical education.

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marc schulman
Growing up in Burlingame, Calif., Rebecca Friedman ’15, ’15 CERT loved her hometown hockey team, the San Jose Sharks. The now 25-year-old says that it was her childhood dream to work for the NHL.

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rebecca friedman
Record producer-songwriter-mixer Thom Russo knows talent when he hears it. Last spring his manager sent him two songs recorded by a 20-year-old student who’s attending the Brit School, a free performing arts and technology academy in south London.

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russo soundboard
Longtime audio engineer and professor Benj Kanters now focuses on hearing conservation.

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benj kanters NYT
Miki Sawada '09 is a nomad, often spending a month or more on the road. But wherever she goes, she is never far from a piano. During three weeks in August and September 2017, Sawada crisscrossed the largest U.S.

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miki sawada
The former viola performance major turned Broadway star won the 2018 Tony Award for best performance by an actress in a musical for “The Band’s Visit.” In this interview she shares how she transitioned from music performance to theater, how she focuses her creative energies and the life lessons she learned at Northwestern.

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tony award winner katrina lenk
A few years back, classmates Hana Schank ’93 and Elizabeth Wallace ’93 met for dinner and realized that they were both orbiting around a crisis. Since their undergraduate days, they had been told to dream big.

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schank and wallace
Throughout a life dedicated to education and the struggle for equality, Johnnetta Cole ’59 MA, ’67 PhD, ’92 H has drawn on her training as an anthropologist to ask fundamental questions about humankind.Questions like “What makes us similar and different?” and “Where do systems of inequality come from?” have shaped a remarkable career in education and the arts. “Even today, when I’m not teaching cultural anthropology and doing fieldwork in some part of the world, I continue to wear what is like a pair of glasses — anthropological lenses through which I see and try to understand the world,” Cole says.

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johnnetta cole 2018 alumni medalist