Amy Wilen-Buckman received the Philadelphia Public Relations Association’s 2024 PRoActive Community Service Award. The award is given to a PR professional who dedicates their time to support the betterment of their community and serves as an exemplary model of selfless service. Buckman is the Director of School and Community Relations for the Lower Merion School District.
Matthew Rolnick recently tag teamed with Hulk Hogan to join Real American Beer. Matthew is the Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Events. Real American Beer has secured retail partnerships with ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, Albertsons, Safeway, Sam’s Club, Total Wine & More, Walmart and more. The product is an “American-style” light lager brewed with 100% North American ingredients. Real American Beer’s mission is to bring America together, one beer at a time.
Leigh Ann Winick was named Lead Medical Producer for CBS Network News. She was previously medical producer for CBS Mornings. Earlier this year, Winick was awarded Best Television report from the American Association for Cancer Research.
Susanni Douville is retiring from the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine on July 31, 2024, after 26 years as a career law clerk to three successive U.S. Magistrate Judges. After obtaining her M.S.J. from Medill in 1980, she worked as a copy editor at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, The Washington Post, and the Hartford Courant before switching career gears and obtaining her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1990. She looks forward to decompressing, spending more time with family and friends, including her husband, John R. Hull, Jr., and daughters Kate and Christie Hull, and being able to savor sunrises (with coffee) and sunsets (with wine) at home in Harpswell, Maine, instead of commuting on I-295.
Ian Douglass was inducted into the Pro Wrestling Authors Hall of Fame in June.
Bill Healy (MSJ ’09), Dana Brozost-Kelleher (MSJ ’19) and Alison Flowers (MSJ ’09) were all part of a team Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting and a Peabody Award win last week for the podcast “You Didn’t See Nothin” by the Invisible Institute and USG Audio. The podcast also won the International Documentary Award for Best Audio Documentary, an Ellie Award, Lisagor Awards, among other honors.
Kari Neumeyer (MSJ ’01) produced FISH WAR, a documentary film that premiered at the 2024 Seattle International Film Festival. The film highlights the violent struggle faced by Indigenous nations to exercise their treaty-protected rights to harvest salmon in the Pacific Northwest. The battle led to a Supreme Court decision that continues to protect treaty rights and the environment. For more: fishwarmovie.com
Lisa’s MeatingPod podcast, covering the meat and the alt-meat industries, in April 2024 took home its third Jesse H. Neal Award in four years for “Best Podcast” in its category — this, for a production only four years old! Chris Scott is the podcast’s producer, and Lisa is its editor in chief. The Neals program is managed by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).
Sean Collins Walsh was part of a team of reporters at The Philadelphia Inquirer who won the Toner Prize for Excellence in Local Political Reporting for coverage of the 2023 mayoral election in Philadelphia.
More info: https://newhouse.syracuse.edu/centers/robin-toner-program-in-political-reporting/toner-prizes/
Yvette Walker was named VP Editorial Page Editor at the Kansas City Star to lead an award-winning team in 2023. She left academia, where she previously was assistant dean at the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma.
Coming back to the news industry, this time in the Opinion section, was unexpected but welcomed, she said. It is the second stint at The Star, working in features and news in the early 2000s.
“It really just feels like coming home,” she told The Star. “People like to hear what we’re thinking,” she said. “… We are helping people make decisions about their daily lives through the information that we’re imparting online and in the paper. Opinion does that, too, but in a way that the audience can really understand what we’re thinking and how we’re thinking about it. So that’s a little different, but really so enticing to me.”