Social Issues
Louis A. Simpson ’58 was a big believer in giving everyone access to education.
Tech giant IBM has made a generous gift to endow two computer science professorships in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering in honor of Virginia M. “Ginni” Rometty ʼ79, ʼ15 H, the first woman to lead the company.
Determined to help other Latinx and first-generation college students like her, Xiomara Contreras ’17 became a mentor for the NAA’s Affinity Leaders and Learners (ALL) Mentorship Program. The program matches students to alumni with similar backgrounds, experiences and identities.
Jenny Hagel ’09 MFA has been nominated for multiple Emmy Awards for her work as a comedy writer for Late Night With Seth Meyers. She has also written for the Golden Globe Awards and shows like truTV’s long-running hit Impractical Jokers.
A year out of Northwestern, Keith Miller ’10 was working at a youth mentoring organization and moonlighting as a model in New York City when he wrote a manuscript focused on Jay, a queer African American young man coming of age in the Deep South in the early 2000s. Now that manuscript is the basis for an animated short film and a two-book deal with Harper Collins.
After a treacherous 45-day climb, Chris Bombardier reached the 29,032-foot summit of Mount Everest in May 2017. It was numbingly cold, but Bombardier felt nothing but pride in what he had accomplished for the hemophilia community: He became the first person with the bleeding disorder to climb the world’s tallest mountain, knowing full well that an accident on the ascent could lead to a dire situation.
Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Sumbul Siddiqui and her family immigrated to the U.S. when she was a child and found affordable housing in Cambridge, Mass.
As a child, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate was surrounded by music, theater and his Chickasaw culture. His father, who is Chickasaw, is a classically trained pianist, and his mother, who is Manx Irish, was a dancer and choreographer — so it was little wonder that Tate immersed himself in music.
Northwestern alumni are applying their journalism training to podcasting. Whether they’re transporting us to faraway places, helping us understand all sides of a complex situation or digging into a single story to shed light on broader social issues, these alumni are delivering diverse, compelling experiences straight to your earbuds.
Most LGBTQIA individuals face challenges when trying to access high-quality care, leading to poorer health outcomes. Northwestern researchers are coming together to study these communities, remove barriers to care, and develop groundbreaking interventions to improve health.
