Category: Featured Class Notes

In April, Susan Howe was named to the PR Week “Hall of Femme,” along with 27 other women leaders in the public relations industry. The award recognizes female leaders who demonstrate commitment to mentorship and the advancement of women in the field. Howe is currently Chief Growth Officer at Weber Shandwick, a leading global communications agency. She serves as Chair of Northwestern’s Council of 100, a group dedicated to supporting Northwestern women in their careers.

Collin Hansen was promoted in January 2021 to vice president of content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition (TGC), one of the largest Christian websites in the world. This year he also published Gospelbound: Living with Resolute Hope in an Anxious Age (Multnomah), written with TGC senior writer Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra (MSJ05).

His Gospelbound podcast in April 2021 featured an interview with Northwestern President Morton Schapiro and Gary Saul Morson, Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities. In January 2022 he will begin teaching cultural apologetics as an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.

John Eligon was named Johannesburg Bureau Chief for the New York Times. Eligon had been working as a national correspondent covering race and inequality in the United States.

Eligon joined The Times in 2005 and spent his first two years on Sports before going to Metro, where he helped cover the trial of Brooke Astor’s son and the sexual assault investigation into Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

In 2012, he went to Kansas City to cover the Midwest and arrived in the middle of a drought. When Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 and the Black Lives Matter movement thrust issues of race and inequity to the front of the national conversation, his beat transitioned from covering the region to covering race in America.

“John is a brilliant and generous colleague who spots good stories everywhere,” said Jia Lynn Yang, the NYT National editor. “He has practically moved to Minneapolis to produce one powerful story after another on the reverberations of George Floyd’s killing. John’s stories are special, and readers of International are in for a real treat.”

Source: NYT announcement

Summer Nettles is producing and directing a six-episode docuseries entitled “She Quit” that will air on Rocky Mountain PBS. The series focuses on the exit of Black women from the traditional workforce due to its negative impact on their health, financial and emotional wellbeing. Nettles hopes to complete the series by September of 2021. She’s currently seeking donors and sponsors to help bring these stories to life. To learn more about the series, share a story or donate reach out to her at Summer@GreaterPurposeMedia.com.

Gina Gibbs Foster has been named Vice President of Corporate Communications for Staples, headquartered in Framingham, Mass. In this role, Gina is responsible for leading the public relations strategy for the company’s external and internal stakeholders. In addition to serving as a key adviser to the CEO and Senior Leadership Team of Staples, Gina provides oversight for all aspects of media relations, issues and crisis management, employee communications, financial communications, corporate reputation and branding. Prior to joining Staples, Gina progressed through a series of Public Affairs and Corporate Communications management roles of increasing responsibility at The Dow Chemical Company, Linde plc, and Messer Americas. She earned a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Administration from Northwestern University in 2014.

Melissa Grady who has served as the CMO of Cadillac since 2019, was named to the third-annual Forbes CMO Next list. This honor spotlights innovative marketing leaders who are transforming or redefining their role. Grady was recognized for her collaborations with stars such as Spike Lee and Timothée Chalamet as well as her modernization of Cadillac’s digital marketing and ability to adapt during the pandemic.

Read more about Grady’s honor

Tyler Pager joined The Washington Post in March to cover the White House. He previously covered the White House for Politico.

The Southern Environmental Law Center awarded Tony Bartelme its 2021 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award for his stories about climate change, including threats to the Santee River Delta ecosystem and a rare bird, the eastern black rail. Bartelme is a special projects reporter for The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina.

Roy Harris will have his 12th annual Pulitzer Prize preview published by Poynter.org in April. Roy retired in 2013 after a reporting and editing career at The Wall Street Journal, and later The Economist Group’s CFO Magazine. He began contributing to Poynter in 2003, and began previewing the Pulitzers for Poynter in 2009. Columbia U. Press brought out Roy’s book Pulitzer’s Gold in an updated new edition for the Pulitzer Prize centennial in 2016. www.pulitzersgold.com.

The world premiere of Alex Gruhin’s play, “Missed Connections,” received rave reviews this past weekend from Chris Jones at the Chicago Tribune and Catey Sullivan at the Chicago Sun-Times (3.5/4 stars). Limited tickets remain for the balance of the run at Chicago’s MacArthur and multi-Jeff Award winning A Red Orchid Theatre.

“Missed Connections” is a live, interactive play with magic, conceived for virtual experience, and runs online, “in Chicago” through February 28th, 2021 for 24 performances. The play, a magician’s cosmic love story inspired by the work of Haruki Murakami, Marshall McLuhan and Derren Brown, takes 25 audience members on a roundtrip voyage to the stars in search of the invisible thread that connects them all.

Tickets for the virtual production, $25/household, are available now at A Red Orchid Theatre’s website: https://aredorchidtheatre.org/missed-connections/