With a 2025 Best Reporter Emmy in Texas, Kevin is now a 58x Regional Emmy winner, 13x Regional Edward R. Murrow Award winner, 4x Best Reporter from the Headliners Foundation of Texas, recipient of multiple Best Reporter distinctions from the Texas Associated Press Broadcasters, and recognized as one of the top Solo Video Journalists in the U.S. by the National Press Photographers Association.
Brooke Brower joined Johns Hopkins University as the director of an initiative on democracy reforms for the recently established School of Government and Policy. From 2023 to 2025, he was the executive producer of ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, earning four Emmy nominations and maintaining the show’s #1 position among total viewers during his tenure.
Manasi Kaushik is an MSJ’17 graduate who is a marketing professional and an actor.
She along with a fellow wildcat worked on a feature film together called ‘Early Days’. The film is about the impact of social media in the lives of young adults. The film premiered at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Dec 2025 and has been nominated for best film debut and best screenplay at the New York Indian Film Festival, happening May 29-31 in New York. It will be screened on May 30 at 12:30 PM in Theatre 4, Village East by Angelika, New York, NY.
Jill Vanneman ’79 of Seattle has written a memoir published in June 2026 by SheWrites Press called “The Perfection Campaign A Daughter’s Search for Acceptance.” Told with biting humor, tenderness, and grit, The Perfection Campaign is part survival story, part love letter to the messy, magnificent act of becoming yourself. It’s a memoir for anyone who’s ever tried to shrink to fit someone else’s definition of “enough”—and finally decided to take up all the space they deserve.
Medill graduate Kyra Kyles and her sister, Kozi Kyles, co-produced/directed/wrote a buzzy fictional horror comedy podcast, “Home for the Holidays.” Spanning Christmas, New Year’s and Thanksgiving, this trilogy features an array of talent from across the country and the audio engineering skills of fellow Northwestern grad, Casey Baker. Fans of anthology series from “The Twilight Zone” to “The Outer Limits” to “Tales from the Crypt” (and “Hood”) can take a listen to Season 1 and then subscribe to stay on top of new releases: https://bit.ly/4qssCls Available on Apple, Spotify, iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Kirshenbaum published “Miami Road: A Son’s Memoir,” a book about his family’s life on Chicago’s once heavily Jewish West Side and in his hometown of Benton Harbor, Michigan, and touching on his Northwestern years. Kirshenbaum was a feature writer and columnist at the Minneapolis Tribune, staff writer at Time and for 30 years a writer and editor at Sports Illustrated. He is an inductee in Medill’s Hall of Achievement. In 2022, he came out of retirement to write a 50th anniversary reminiscence for Sports Illustrated of his experiences covering the 1972 Munich Olympics at which Mark Spitz’s heroics were eclipsed by a terrorist attack that shocked the world. Michael Korda, author and former editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster, says of Miami Road: “I enjoyed this book enormously. Written with a remarkable combination of frankness and love. A family story well told.”
Alice Foeller’s TEDx Talk was chosen as a TED Editor’s Pick in 2025, and she published a book this summer. Alice’s book, The Art of Compassion: Supporting Friends Through Dark Times, is a handbook for being helpful to someone who is grieving. Grief research is artful woven into Alice’s personal narrative of losing her husband to suicide in 2023.
Sharon Yoo won a National Edward R. Murrow Award for KING 5 in Seattle. Sharon will travel to New York City next week to accept the award at the 2025 National Edward R. Murrow Awards Gala. The honor is for her 30-minute documentary, “The Buffalo Hunt,” in the category of Excellence in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Large Market Television.
In the documentary, Sharon and a photojournalist follow the Kalispel Indian Tribe as members prepare for Indigenous People’s Day through their annual buffalo hunt. The tradition honors their ancestors, culture and is a vehicle to help heal wounds from the past.
Lisa Parker is the new director of the Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence at DePaul University, where she teaches Advanced Reporting. Lisa joined DePaul after a career as a consumer investigative reporter, most recently for 27 years at NBC Chicago. In a major serendipity, this year Lisa taught alongside her favorite former Medill instructor Rick Brown!
Renee Cordes, deputy editor at Mainebiz, won three Gold Awards from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers in the 2025 Editorial Excellence Awards. Her first-place finishes were for Best Feature Single Story, Best Explanatory Journalism and Best Beat Reporting, Economics and Finance. Mainebiz, part of New England Business Media, is based in Portland, Maine. Renee, who spent most of her professional career in Europe, joined Mainebiz in 2017 as a senior writer and was promoted to deputy editor in early 2025.