Benoit Denizet-Lewis, an associate professor at Emerson College and a longtime writer with The New York Times Magazine, received a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The award will allow Denizet-Lewis to take a one-year leave from Emerson to complete his fourth book, “We Don’t Know You Anymore,” about transformation and identity change in turbulent times. The book will be published by William Morrow in the USA and Penguin Press in the UK.
Brett Kurland was named an assistant dean at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication in December 2021.
As assistant dean, Kurland oversees the school’s 11 capstone professional immersion programs, Cronkite’s signature faculty-led, student-powered experiences in which students learn by doing. These hands-on experiences include daily news and sports operations, a strategic communications agency, a content creation studio, and an innovation and entrepreneurship lab. Kurland also leads training and onboarding for faculty associates, helping them learn everything from school policies to best practices in teaching.
He also helps lead the Cronkite School’s bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in sports journalism, including oversight and management of sports journalism curriculum, course design, hiring, training, and supervising faculty, and managing student award submissions.
Kurland, a professor of practice at Cronkite since 2014, is the lead instructor for Multimedia Journalism Skills, a foundational, intensive first-semester class for all Cronkite graduate students pursuing master’s degrees in mass communication, master’s degrees in investigative journalism and master’s degrees in sports journalism in which students learn how to write, capture and produce photo, video, audio, social, and web content.
In June 2023, David Plazas (MSJ, ’00) received the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence in Editorial Writing. Plazas, the Opinion and Engagement Director of The Tennessean, advocated for LGBTQ+ rights in a state whose lawmakers have been intent on restricting them. SPJ has granted this prize since 1932 to recognize excellence in journalism.
https://www.spj.org/sdxa22.asp
Vidya Krishnamurthy was named Chief Communications Officer and Senior Adviser to the President at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a private charitable foundation in Menlo Park, CA. She was previously Director of Communications at the same organization, and before that, was the first-ever Communications Director at the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, where she served for nearly a decade.
Marc Schreiber was named president of the St. Louis Sports Commission. Schreiber has been with the organization since 1998. He also serves as the executive producer and co-creator of the Musial Awards, which celebrate the year’s greatest moments of sportsmanship and those in sports who embody class and character. The Musial Awards are televised nationally on CBS.
The Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) has named Nekoro Gomes Vice President of Communications for the region’s leading business advocacy organization. Gomes, who will officially join GBC in mid-April, will lead the organization’s newly combined communications and events staff and will work with GBC’s board and leadership team to reposition the regional marketing and economic branding message. One of his first assignments will be to lead the new branding of GBC to more accurately reflect the organization following its merger with the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore (EAGB). Gomes brings over a decade of experience developing and executing integrated marketing campaigns and shaping the narrative around pressing public policy challenges. Most recently, he served as Marketing Strategy Director for the New York City Housing Authority. Prior to NYCHA, Gomes was a Creative Marketing Strategist with the New York City-based strategic communications and reputation management firm Rubenstein. The formative start of his career began at City Limits where Gomes progressed from Community Engagement Manager to Director of Marketing and Audience Development.
Joseph Bustos, Medill Class of 2006, was awarded the Jim Davenport Award for Excellence in Government Reporting for his work in 2022 at the annual South Carolina Press Association news contest on March 10, 2023.
Bustos’ reporting in 2022 ranged from the race for the governor’s office to the nitty gritty of state government, including efforts to address the state’s teacher shortage, the debate over state employee pay and leadership changes within the State House.
See his work here
Neil Foote has jumped from the classroom to the administration of the University of North Texas New College, which is expanding its footprint with a brand new standalone campus in Frisco, Texas, one of the nation’s fastest-growing community colleges located just north of Dallas. He has worked as Associate Dean, Research, External Affairs, and Community Engagement. He now leads the internal and external marketing outreach as well as builds partnerships with local businesses and organizations to create more enriching, project-based, experiential research and learning. He was also elected as Board Chair of Forefront Living, a Dallas-based organization that provides active independent and assisted living, long-term care, Alzheimer’s and memory care, skilled nursing and rehabilitation therapies, hospice, and palliative care.
Kevin Reece is a 51-time Regional Emmy winner, currently at WFAA-TV in Dallas, where he recently received repeat Emmys for Reporter, Writer, and Video Journalist. Choosing to pick up a camera again late in his career, he has received the Lone Star Emmy for Video Journalist every year since 2015. And most of the credit goes to that sweltering camera-toting summer with Medill in D.C.
After graduating from Medill, Jamie went to Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, where she met her husband! They just graduated from Northwestern Law and got married in NYC a week after taking the bar. They are now both working at big law firms in the city.