Category: Featured Class Notes

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.

Kristin Thorne (MSJ05) won an Emmy Award for her True-crime series, Missing, which airs on Hulu and across all ABC7NY platforms. Kristin is an investigative reporter with WABC Channel 7 Eyewitness News in New York.

Marissa Mitchell won the regional Emmy for “Best Host” from the National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Mitchell is an anchor/host for FOX 5 Morning and “Good Day DC.” This Fall, Mitchell was also selected to launch and serve as the lead host of the station’s new daytime talk and lifestyle show, “LION Lunch Hour.”

After leading marketing functions in several global consumer electronics companies for the past few years, Danny co-founded Nisplay, a portable tennis ball machine, aiming to lower the barrier for people to learn how to play tennis.

James and the team behind FRONTLINE’s Un(re)solved won a 2022 News and Documentary Emmy Award for Best Interactive Media: Innovation. The multiplatform investigation also earned a National Edward R. Murrow Award and two Online Journalism Awards, including one for Excellence in Audio Digital Storytelling, Limited Series. The project examines the U.S. government’s efforts to investigate dozens of cold case murders that date back to the civil rights era.

Seth Bernstein (BSJ 13, MS IMC 20) is a two-time Northwestern and Medill alum with marketing and communications experience across a variety of industries, including financial services, health care, academia and Major League Baseball. He recently began a new role as a Second Vice President and Client Communications Manager at Northern Trust after managing corporate and executive social media channels for 14 months at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. Outside of work, Seth runs his own growing social media brand, @EatWithSeth, creating content that showcases local restaurants – and those he visits while traveling – on both Instagram and TikTok.