Meet the 2020 Class of 40 Under Forty

Before Adam Abrams 03C became a partner at the strategic communications firm Seven Letter, he walked the halls of the White House, serving as a spokesman and regional communications director for President Barack Obama. “At Emory, I don't think I could have ever dreamed that I would be working at the White House press office,” he recalls. “Finding that I was on a path that included both politics and writing, which is basically what I did in school, was really exciting. I was working with reporters every day, briefing the president and administration officials before interviews and big events, and finding compelling ways to reach the American people.” 

Soon after graduating from Emory with a degree in creative writing and a minor in political science, Abrams moved to Washington, DC, to work on John Kerry’s presidential campaign, which became a springboard for a career in political communications. He was part of the communications team that, in 2006, helped Democrats retake control of the US House of Representatives in 2006 and went on to serve as communications director for Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Murphy, the first Iraq war veteran elected to Congress. In the Obama White House, he managed communications for half the country.

At Seven Letter, Abrams works on communications strategy with nonprofits and companies. “Going from campaign politics and communications to the private sector, the through line is finding a way to talk about the things that matter to the people that matter,” he explains. “We help our clients tell their stories to the people they care about, whether that's through compelling writing, digital advertising, daily interactions with the press, or, in many cases, navigating a business-defining crisis or opportunity.”

Dr. Oluwatomiloba “Tomi” Mercy Ademokun 04PH has dedicated her career to helping address public health concerns among underserved vulnerable populations in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. Her interest in public health began while she was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Champaign and took a public health course as an elective. At the same time, her mother’s brother passed away from tuberculosis. “She was so upset. She told me, ‘This is preventable. There are free TB drugs,’” she remembers her mother saying. “They misdiagnosed him. So that spurred my interest in public health—why people die of preventable illnesses.” 

After graduating with an MPH from Emory, Ademokun won an Association of Schools of Public Health fellowship with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to work on the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program, helping launch the response to accelerate progress toward controlling the HIV and AIDS epidemic in her family’s home country of Nigeria. Since then, her work in infectious and chronic disease prevention has taken her to various countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and to the US State Department in Washington, DC. She also spent several years with international humanitarian agencies like Africare, and Oxfam UK, working with small-scale farmers on issues of food security and poverty eradication in Nigeria. In her current position as senior program manager at 2M Research, a contracting agency of the CDC in Atlanta, she manages 30 contractors, providing technical and administrative oversight. She is also the host of Wellness & Wahala podcast, which provides public health tips and discusses current affairs topics with subject matter experts. 

“My mom and daughter are my greatest inspiration,” Ademokun says. “My mom, Aina, was a single mom and worked hard to put me and my two other sisters through college. I am the first in my immediate family to hold a doctorate in public health. Also, my daughter, Princess Omolayo, is a great child of joy and always motivates me to push harder to do my best and be a great role model for her.”

A few years after graduating from Emory Law School during the 2008 financial crisis, Matthew Belz 05C 09L seized the opportunity to join the Department of Justice to bring relief to victims of mortgage fraud from the Great Recession. “It was timely,” he recalls, “that I was litigating cases about mortgage-backed securities when the Justice Department was ramping up fraud investigations into the origins of the crisis."

Hired by then-US Attorney Loretta Lynch, who would become President Obama’s Attorney General, Belz joined the President’s Financial Fraud Task Force at the US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn, NY. Belz was a lead attorney on a team that reached a $7.2 billion settlement with an international bank for residential mortgage-backed securities fraud that contributed to the crisis. “We were able to reach historic settlements that provided financial relief directly to communities around the country that were harmed by mortgage fraud. I was particularly proud that we were able to provide help directly to victims from the recession.” Belz and his team were awarded the US Department of Justice Director’s Award for their investigation.

Belz has since joined the US Attorney’s office in Sacramento, California, where he now investigates fraud related to some of today’s most pressing issues—the coronavirus pandemic and the opioid crisis. “We’re now working hard to recover money that people stole from the Paycheck Protection Program,” which offered relief to small businesses affected by the pandemic. On the opioid front, he explains, “We investigate distributors, pharmacies, and unfortunately, physicians who abandon their professional responsibilities to deal opioids.” Driving Belz’s work is his ability to have a real impact on people’s lives. “Knowing that we can recover money for victims or stop opioids from getting into the wrong hands really motivates me to work hard each day.”

Chrissybil Boulin 15C has been a professional educator for most of her life. This includes founding Merkabah International Foundation to support pre-existing schools in Haiti, serving as an United Nations Global Youth Ambassador for education, raising awareness about girl’s education issues and economic development as an Intel for Change Student Ambassador for India and starting Jump Start Tutors. 

“I started tutoring students when I was 12,” says Boulin. “My classmates’ parents would offer me $10 an hour to tutor their children.” Throughout her time at Emory and after graduation, she worked as an assistant teacher. “Education is multidimensional,” she continues. “There’s more to it than what they learn. I am interested in what kids do with what they learn.”

Boulin was attending a regional university in her home state of Florida and was overseas for a semester when she ran into a group of Emory students studying abroad. Their passion and engagement inspired her to transfer to Emory when she returned home. After graduation, she earned the degree of master in development economics from the University of Cambridge. It was there that she asked her career-defining question: “What is the key factor to help a community grow economically?”

The answer: education.

Chrissybil founded Jump Start Tutors, an in-home and online private tutoring company that serves students in grades PreK to 12 and specializes in test prep, homeschooling, college entrance and educational consulting. Serving hundreds of families in Florida and across the US  each year, Boulin is able to share her passion for learning to help students explore their academic interests while developing the transferrable skills needed to successfully navigate life after graduation.

As parents and students are adapting to learning challenges globally, Jump Start is redefining education by using data driven teaching methods to bridge the gap between classroom assignments and vocational skills and empowering students to achieve their fullest potential.  

In the middle of a public health crisis and a growing social justice movement, the work that Dr. Raphael Coleman 10C 13MPH is doing is more important than ever. As the director of Columbia Health Alice! Health Promotion at Columbia University, he advocates for health and well-being equity for marginalized students while interrogating the structures that have historically led to that inequity.

Coleman earned a PhD in counseling and student personnel services from the University of Georgia while serving as an associate director for community well-being in Emory’s Office of Health Promotion. He credits Emory for sparking his love of learning and collaboration, and he hopes that, when he is working with students and his colleagues, he can convince them of the power of working as a community. “Knowing how to leverage the perspectives and expertise of individuals and bringing them together to inform more robust and transformative solutions to very complex issues,” he says, “that's been the most rewarding because I am constantly learning and growing.”

An Episcopal Priest serving as Chief of Staff for a Diocese that covers southwest Texas and New Mexico, Lee Curtis 13T welcomes the challenges that arise when faith, culture, and justice overlap. Before the pandemic, he spread his time over two states and across the US-Mexico border, working to organize congregations and communities to be thriving, faithful witnesses to the Gospel in the Borderland. 

Canon Curtis credits the diversity of people around him at Candler School of Theology with preparing him for this role and encouraging him to find a place where he can make the greatest difference. “Had I not been blessed to learn alongside those with different traditions, different theologies, and different priorities than my own,” he says, “I would not have been nearly as ready to speak to those values and creeds and practices that I hold so dear.” He adds, “Candler equipped me to get the tools I need to go to where the work is. For that I’m deeply grateful.”

Always eager to learn and to help, Amos Davis 10L 10T doesn’t shy away from challenges that may further his development. He came to Candler School of Theology with an interdisciplinary degree in philosophy, religious studies, and psychology, and immediately enrolled in Emory School of Law. From there, his career took a course that excited his curiosity. “It is rare to accurately predict the direction your career will take,” he says. “But when opportunity knocks, don’t be scared to answer the door.”

Davis wants current students to explore everything Emory has to offer. “From varied coursework, to diverse student groups, to unique internships, Emory provided a wealth of opportunities to expand my horizons.” With an Emory Public Interest Committee grant, he did a summer internship with the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. and traveled to New York City to compete in the National Moot Court competition. He also interned with The Coca-Cola Company, where he was later offered a job as a food lawyer. “I responded, ‘Absolutely!’,” he says. “I then immediately Googled, ‘What is food law?’” He credits Emory for all the possibilities presented to him. “At Emory,” Davis says, “opportunity is there for the taking.”

As a patent attorney in one of Georgia’s top law firms, Kimberlynn Davis 08G concentrates on a range of high-level areas from patent prosecution in the pharmaceutical and chemical arts to portfolio strategy for companies, universities, and research institutions. By night, she is a heavily involved member of her local community, advocating for student resources and serving as a liaison between stakeholders in the local school district. When asked what she would do if she wasn’t a lawyer, she laughingly says, “I would be the permanent parent teacher organization president for my sons’ elementary school.” She credits her previous service in that position as providing the necessary foundation to understanding the inequalities in education for children across the school district and allowing her to strategize on developing systems to level the playing field. Her commitment and passion in education are evident in her education and youth focused pro bono practice and in her roles as a National Board Member and Chair of the Atlanta Advisory Board for Jumpstart (a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring all children enter Kindergarten prepared for success).

Prior to entering law, Dr. Davis earned a PhD in organic chemistry from Emory’s Laney Graduate School, where she designed and synthesized compounds for use in treating HIV-1 and cancer, and she served as an intern in Emory’s Office of Technology Transfer. When she follows a pursuit—whether it’s earning a doctorate, giving legal counsel, or promoting equality with respect to childhood education—she gives it her all. “The only way I know how to do it,” she says, “is to be right in there making the needed changes.”

Now putting those skills to work on Capitol Hill, Elizabeth Farrar 09C learned the fine art of delivering results during her four years on Emory’s undergraduate student government. Farrar served four terms on the Emory College Council, including one as president, and she’s happy to say that some of the programs that she helped put in place – like the Emory Experience shuttles that connect students to destinations around Atlanta – are still being kept up by current students. Farrar’s current job as deputy chief of staff to U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar is exactly the sort of opportunity that she dreamed of as an Emory undergraduate. In more than five years working for Senator Klobuchar, Farrar has also served as the senator’s legislative director and chief counsel, and during that time, Farrar has served as the lead staffer during two Supreme Court hearings and helped shepherd the passage dozens of bills on which the senator was the lead Democratic sponsor—including legislation to counter the opioid epidemic, address the rape kit backlog, and combat human trafficking.

A graduate of Georgetown Law, Farrar leveraged hard work and a commitment to public service throughout her career on Capitol Hill, also having worked for former U.S. Senator Kay Hagan and U.S. Congresswoman Diana DeGette. When she is not at work, you might find her maintaining flexibility and pursuing balance at a yoga class.

Connect with Elizabeth Farrar on LinkedIn.

A self-described lifelong learner Bradley Feinstein 06C completed a major in Psychology and Linguistics at Emory and a Masters in Industrial and Organizational Psychology at NYU, which drew him to business strategy. His eclectic curriculum vitae includes titles such as co-founder of Petstablished, management software for animal rescue organizations; co-founder and head of business development for Dropel Fabrics, a next-generation material platform for the circular economy; and the head of strategy and business development at ConsenSys, the software engineering leader of the blockchain space, where he architected a historic partnership with the NBA franchise Sacramento Kings, launching the first blockchain powered platform to verify game-worn memorabilia incorporating a digital proof of ownership. Bradley recently joined AWS as a Senior Startup ISV Success Manager.

In contrast with the wide-ranging breadth of his career, Feinstein maintains a stable, foundational, dependable core of Emory friends. “The people I became closest to have remained a central part of my life.” When current students seek professional advice, he offers this key insight, “Invest in your friends, because, quite frankly, they’re going to be your biggest supporters. But they’ll also be the ones who will tell you hard truths.”

Connect with Bradley on LinkedIn.

Ellen Gabler 03C exemplified excellence at Emory as a four-year member—and senior captain—of the varsity swim team, where she spent countless early mornings, late afternoons, and weekend hours preparing for perfection in the pool. She credits the efforts of a journalism ethics professor at Emory for sparking her interest in the field. Gabler was also “blown away” by the genuine attention and interest of her insightful academic adviser at Goizueta, who encouraged her to double major in business and journalism when it became evident that business wasn't really her thing.

No longer steeped in chlorine and pre-dawn laps, Gabler continues her relentless pursuit of excellence. At the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2014, she broke the national story reporting on fatal flaws in the nation’s newborn screening program, which earned her the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in National Reporting. Since joining The New York Times in 2017, Gabler has been part of the team of journalists awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for pioneering coverage of sexual harassment and misconduct. In 2019, she received the Gerald Loeb award, alongside two colleagues, for their article detailing how the chief executive of CBS tried to bury a sexual assault allegation to save his job.

Connect with Ellen on LinkedIn.

Anchored by humility and driven by a passion for excellence, Naval Officer Dan Giller 08C credits Emory with helping him discover a deep affinity for operating as part of a team, a realization that steered him toward a career in the military. Lieutenant Commander Giller found camaraderie in Kappa Sigma Fraternity, sang in the AHANA a cappella group, and competed with Juice—Emory’s ultimate club—all formative experiences that prepared him for sea. 

What he finds most rewarding about serving in the Navy is the way it unites Americans from varied backgrounds in unified pursuit of a common mission. Such a bond can only be understood by those who have deployed together. As a Commanding Officer, Giller is now responsible for cultivating this bond of trust. “The way to excel in my role,” he says, “is to understand that it is not about me. I would go anywhere with my sailors and do anything for them.” Non Sibi Sed Patriae.

“It’s been an amazing journey,” says Zulna Heriscar 12 WEBA, an avid traveler who has traversed more than three-quarters of the United States, as well as more than 35 countries across five continents. In her seventeen-year career at Microsoft, as she climbed the ranks, Heriscar moved cross-country five times, and worked in many notable divisions of the business—including Sales and Marketing for education, state and local government, health care, and Fortune 500 segments. “Having Emory on my resume—having worked with the professors and conquered the curriculum— has opened doors,” she says. “My Emory MBA is like a business passport.”

Heriscar remembers her first big meeting at Microsoft. The first-generation Haitian-American was young, female, Southern, and Black. There was no one else quite like her in the room. The first college graduate in her family, as well as the first person to work in corporate America, she attributes her hard work at Emory for helping her develop the confidence and skills to succeed. “I earned a seat at the table,” says Heriscar, who also credits John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg for their pioneering work to level the playing field. Now she is focused on creating seats for others.

“Mentorship has played a vital role in my career,” she says. As the one-time chair for Blacks at Microsoft – Career Development, she created mentorship opportunities that paired hundreds of minority students with Microsoft executives. While serving on boards that empower underrepresented minority women, Heriscar has also created a scholarship fund for women of Haitian-American descent. Continuing to frame her career in travel-related terms, Heriscar says she has not yet arrived. “I’m constantly trying to figure it out,” she continues, “but I feel like I've reached a level, where I can open the door for others.”

In his second year at Emory, Jeff Jackson 04C witnessed the attacks of 9/11 on television. A short while later, he enlisted in the Army Reserve and completed basic training the next summer. The year before entering law school, Jackson did a tour in Afghanistan. 

Now, serving his third term as a senator in the North Carolina General Assembly, Jackson recalls how he fell into his seat—almost by accident. “It’s been a wild ride,” says Jackson, who was working in the district attorney’s office in Gaston County, when the mayor of Charlotte was arrested by the FBI. After a state senator was appointed to be the new mayor, Jackson was tapped to take the open seat. When the session started two weeks later, 31-year-old Jackson was the youngest state senator in North Carolina. “I was about half the average age of my colleagues,” he says.

“You have got to take the work really seriously,” says Jackson. A Democrat in a heavily Republican state Jackson has established a reputation as someone who does not play games and believes in good faith partnership. “There's a shortage of people in legislative bodies who are interested in doing the work.”

Emory is where Jackson learned how hard he could work. “It was a challenge and work changes you,” says Jackson who says that he was surrounded by some of the smartest people he’s ever known. “My friends at Emory also showed me that you could be brilliant and still be a really compassionate person, as so many of them were clearly both.”

Not long ago, Jackson was talking with a voter and the gentleman asked him to sum up his philosophy in one sentence. “I thought for a minute and said, ‘Well, sir. I'm an honest and decent person.’ And the man laughed, saying ‘Well, then you got no chance, son.’” 

Since then, honesty and decency have been the official backbone of Jackson’s campaign.

When describing her winding career path and discussing her multiple degrees, Leslie Johnson 09Ox 11C 14PH 18L laughs. “It’s just being open to opportunities, connections, and a bit of serendipity,” Johnson says. Over the years, since entering Oxford as a first-year student, Johnson has mainly worked in research surrounding mental health. She spent 11 months in India researching how to effectively integrate mental health and diabetes treatment. Domestically, she has supported work to prevent and treat depression in people with epilepsy, particularly in the African American community. Globally, she is thinking about creative ways to broaden the mental health system to address the shortage of specialists.

There was also that summer she fell into a job interviewing people about trees for Indiana University Bloomington. “Specifically, they were looking at how trees in Atlanta bring communities together and encourage healthier environments,” says Johnson, adding that while not in her field of study, it was “a great experience.”

When considering her years of study at Emory, Johnson says that she initially enrolled in Oxford because it offered a unique educational model. “You immediately know everybody and everything,” says Johnson who keeps in touch with many of the faculty and friends she made at Oxford. “There is a small-town feeling, but it allows you to have input into what's going on with your education and your community.”

After completing her next two years on Emory’s Atlanta campus, Johnson continued studying with her adviser. Along with pursuing the study of qualitative research methods, she delved into the study of religion, ultimately completing her master’s of theology at St Andrews in Scotland as a Bobby Jones Fellow. “I was looking at how we interpret health narratives through art,” says Johnson. “I never had any intention of doing public health, but I guess the lesson here is, never say never.”

One of the main reasons Caren Kelleher 05B, founder and president of Gold Rush Vinyl, chose Emory was because of the region’s entertainment industry. With her background in both liberal arts and business, Caren had multiple internships which showed her what she didn't like to do, “which is just as important as finding out what you like to do,” she says.

Over the years, Kelleher has taken a winding road to her current hometown of Austin, Texas. From her first job at Paste Magazine in Atlanta and earning her MBA in Boston to serving as the first US employee for a music start-up based in London and the launch team of Google Music, the one thread that ties her whole journey together is a love of music and wanting to help musicians succeed in a tough industry. While holding these 9-5s, Kelleher started a pro bono music management company that was operational for seven years and eventually led her to her a-ha moment: while streaming is a profitable business for apps and a great service for consumers, these apps pay a pittance to the artists who are trying to make a living doing what they love.

“The average American band will make the same revenue if they sell 100 vinyl records as nearly 2.5 million YouTube streams,” says Kelleher. “For most bands, those numbers are not achievable.” Little by little, Kelleher recognized the potential for vinyl in today’s market, but it was a challenge to produce. “No one had really looked at it with fresh eyes for so long,” says Kelleher. As she thought about what she wanted to do next, vinyl kept coming up. “One afternoon at the gym, I got off the treadmill, wrote out the business plan for Gold Rush Vinyl, and took it to a bank the next day,” she recalls. She walked out of Wells Fargo with a commitment for the initial financing to build a new vinyl record factory.

“Most of what I learned about vinyl, I learned from library books and YouTube,” she says, deliberately choosing not to work with anyone who had worked with vinyl records before. Instead, she hired contractors who built breweries and distilleries. “I knew we wanted to be different from any other vinyl plant out there. To do that, I needed to hire people from complementary industries to think differently and improve the experience for artists.” This helped Gold Rush Vinyl earn a spot on Fast Company’s list of “Most Innovative Companies of 2020.”

“The thing I love most about entrepreneurship is creating jobs,” says Kelleher. “When I walk into the factory and see everybody bringing their own joy and quirks to the work, well, it’s just extremely rewarding.”

Growing up in a military family, Jon Keen 11MBA has public service in his genes. After finishing his undergraduate degree, he joined the army, leading troops on the ground in Afghanistan twice. That experience was where Keen got firsthand look at the operation side of the military, while seeing how policy decisions directly impact the soldiers. This sparked his interest in both the process and the challenges of policymaking, which ultimately lead him to his current position on the leadership team of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms.

With an interest in developing his skills in operational strategy and finance, Keen applied for a fellowship to the Goizueta School of Business, earned his MBA and then moved on to earn a second degree with a focus on policy, politics, and the public sector.

After spending several years as a consultant in the private sector, he was presented with an opportunity to work for the newly-elected mayor. ““I wanted to build off of my military experience by serving the public, and Mayor Bottoms was looking to expand beyond the traditional candidates,” says Keen. He joined the administration about four months after the mayor took office.

Building trust is core part of what we do every day—even if we are not the ones who eroded that trust,” says Keen, who quickly learned that city government has some key differences from his previous experience. “We started from a baseline of very low trust in government. adding the options for prioritization and focus are more limited than they are in the private sector. “You cannot just stop providing certain services. As an example, at the end of the day, we’ve got to keep picking up the trash,” he says. But, ultimately this is what makes his work so rewarding. “The mayor makes the decision, and the next day, we’re going out and executing it,” says Keen. “I can see the immediate impact of a discussion that we might have had with the mayor just hours before.”

Working 80-90 hours a week does not phase Zach Klempf 12C, who founded a software company in his early twenties. The idea for his company, Selly Automotive CRM, grew from his experiences as a full-time sales employee at a car dealership in Atlanta while also attending Emory full time. Klempf has always worked hard and, as he puts it, “learned by jumping right in.” As a junior in high school, he decided to take the GED exam so that he could fast-track his education and start earning an associate’s degree.

As a young entrepreneur, Klempf believes in taking risks and going off the beaten path. “Emory pushes you outside the box,” he says, reflecting on how he was able to apply things he learned in Emory’s Film and Media Management to marketing and the software industry. His advice to students is “don’t be afraid to move out of state or to take a job because your scared. You don’t want to look back with regret.” He adds, “you’re never too young.”

Connect with Zach on LinkedIn.

Ben Kobren 05C wants to make a difference. Before becoming the head of communications and policy at Color, a health technology company in the middle of the COVID-19 fight, he held various political and government positions including as an aide and press secretary to Hillary Clinton in her Senate office, during her first presidential campaign, and later when she became Secretary of State. Yet, he says that the job that shaped his career was his very first one that required waking at 3 a.m. every day to gather news clips for the then New York senator. “I never felt more informed and aware of what was going on in the world,” he says.

Being informed and involved are fundamental to Kobren, who also believes in helping others. “I’m inspired by the idea of leaving the world better than I found it,” he says. He attributes his approach to working with others to his time in college. “Professors at Emory are open and want to help,” he says. He continues to be open with others and is always looking for ways to help. His advice to students is simple: “Work hard and be nice to people. And don’t let anyone eat alone.” Then he adds, “Unless they want to.”

In high school, Breanna Lathrop 08N 08PH decided on a health career after volunteering at a free clinic in her Iowa hometown. “I remember feeling like the clinic providers were heroes,” she says. “They had skills and could actually make a difference.” Today Lathrop is a hero herself. With Emory degrees in nursing and health policy and a doctorate from Georgia Southern, she is a leader at The Good Samaritan Health Center in Atlanta and a champion for healthy communities. 

Good Samaritan provides health care to people in need. Lathrop is the chief operating officer and a family nurse practitioner. In addition to seeing patients and ensuring that the center runs smoothly, she works to improve health equity as an advocate and author. The book she co-wrote with Veronica Squires 06C, Good Samaritan’s chief administrative officer, explores how neighborhoods make people sick and offers ideas for creating change.

As a 2020 Culture of Health leader for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Lathrop co-founded a Coronavirus Support Network that connects communities nationwide with COVID-19 resources. Culture of Health prepares leaders to use their influence to ensure everyone has an opportunity for a healthy life.

Working what amounts to several full-time jobs, she relies on her three young children for inspiration. “Kids are born with goodness and openness that remind us we all still can change, and that is a great source of renewal for me. I really love what I do. In the face of brokenness and frustration, there’s something powerful about diving in and taking action.”

Read Lathrop’s article in Psychology Today.

Like many first-generation Chinese American children, Chris Lee 12G was raised to be high achieving. But unlike many of his peers, he bucked the parental pressure and direction. “My success started when I ignored my parents’ expectations for me and focused on the opportunities that excited me,” says Lee.

His drive ultimately led him to TI:GER® (Technology Innovation: Generating Economic Results), a graduate program collaboration between Emory Law and the Georgia Institute of Technology that focuses on transforming research into economically viable businesses. 

After the TI:GER network led him to private companies to learn the ins and outs of FDA approvals, and various technologies, Lee founded Vertera, a medical device company that developed and patented a revolutionary technology that allows orthopedic implants to integrate directly into the body.

When he sold the company, it was life-changing. Many on his staff became millionaires overnight. With his windfall, Lee founded The Woodbridge Foundation. “It’s an opportunity for me to pay it back to the two institutions that helped me get where I am,” says Lee who now spends much of his time looking at the work of professors and graduate students. “I look for technologies that not only have clinical impact, but also a clear path towards commercial success.” 

Lee also rewarded the support and patience of his parents, who had been covering his expenses for three years. After taking some time to savor the moment, his parents were finally able to retire in comfort.

Connect with Chris Lee on LinkedIn.

Yandong Liu 09G is excited by what’s next. After serving as chief technology officer of Strava, a technology devoted to building a community of athletes and tracking exercise and training regimens; vice president of engineering a NetEase, a leading technology company in China where he worked with teams to leverage the latest machine learning technologies to deliver highly personalized news-reading experiences; and an engineer at Uber, where he developed Michelangelo, the app’s revolutionary machine learning platform, Yandong is taking time to survey the landscape. 

“Machine learning wasn’t a big thing 13 years ago when I was at Emory,” he recalls. “It wasn’t sexy at all. Just a bunch of math formulas, it was pretty boring for most people,” he admits. “But I was always interested in it.”

His passion proved prescient as the importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning has exploded. “You can see now how quickly technology is being applied to all aspects of our daily lives, especially during COVID-19,” notes Yandong. “Food delivery, shopping recommendations, even the virtual background in your Zoom meeting are all examples of AI applications.” Machine learning, and particularly deep learning most recently—are the engine that drives these everyday apps. “Fundamentally tech should be applied to make your life better,” says Yandong.

Heeding his own career advice to “always follow your passion,” Yandong recently joined the Bay Area Emory Alumni Board where he is building connections with the Emory alumni network. As he contemplates his next move, he muses, “The world feels fresh.”

Connect with Yandong Liu on LinkedIn.

Read more about Yandong on strava.com.

By day, Justin Mahida 05C is a surgeon working to change health care for the better. By night, he is an entrepreneur who co-owns Law Bird, a craft cocktails and curated wine bar Esquire magazine rates among America’s best. “I’m happy about some of the things I’ve been able to do by taking the Emory spirit of leadership into the community where I live,” he says. “I think that’s important, and I hope that other alumni are able to embrace that, too.”

Mahida’s medical career was inspired by his late father, a physician known for kindness and expertise. In medical school, Justin was elected as the only student on the board of trustees of the American Medical Association. He represented physicians during the construction and passage of the Affordable Health Care Act under President Barack Obama. He also served on the board of Access Health Columbus, a private/public cooperative to improve patient outcomes in central Ohio.

Mahida’s business venture was inspired by meeting Adam Teeter 05C, a 2019 “40 Under Forty” honoree who co-founded VinePair, a digital media company celebrating the drinks industry. While Mahida cared for critical care patients on ventilators during the pandemic, Law Bird shifted to a unique, successful takeout-only model. 

Connect with Mahida on LinkedIn.

The son of Indian immigrants, Rohit Malhotra 08C was the first member of his family to attend college in the United States. He looks up to his parents, whom he describes as superheroes; his grandfather, a teacher who always made sure the neighbors had enough to eat; and President Jimmy Carter. Malhotra’s first languages were Hindi and Punjabi; he learned English, quickly, to help his parents navigate life in America.

At Emory, when he broke both legs in a dance competition (Google “bhangra pyramid”) and spent time in a wheelchair, he began reading, researching, and questioning the structures that cement people in generational poverty—both abroad and in his own backyard of Atlanta. In 2014 he founded the Center for Civic Innovation, where he works to address inequality and build connections between communities and elected officials. He has coached and raised more than $2 million to support 100+ local civic leaders and entrepreneurs in Atlanta.

Along the way, he founded an Emory student group supporting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, completed a fellowship in President Barack Obama’s White House, moved to Johannesburg to handle communications for the World Cup 1GOAL Campaign, and became student body president at Harvard, where he earned a master’s in public policy.

“It’s been a hell of a journey,” he says. “I’ve learned more than I could have ever imagined, and I’m still learning. The lives of involuntary martyrs like Breonna Taylor and Rayshard Brooks remind us that we still need to apply a lot more pressure to bend the arc of the universe toward real justice.”

See Malhotra’s entertaining and emotional TedX talk on restoring trust in government.

Growing up in a Black Baptist church in the South, a religious tradition not frequently known for embracing LGBTQ people, Brandon Maxwell 14T repeatedly heard the message that gay people couldn’t be Christians, let alone pastors. At Candler School of Theology, he began stepping outside that idea, embracing his own identity as a Black gay man, and understanding his calling within the church. Today he mentors students at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., and advises Columbia’s president on ways to build a strong, diverse community that prepares religious leaders for the difficult work of living faithfully in the world. 

“Sitting at this particular table gives me the opportunity to function as a pastor to students, which is one of my gifts and something that I love to do, and also to think creatively and improvise solutions that ultimately benefit people of color, gay folks, women, and other marginalized people,” Maxwell says. This summer, he helped create “Repairing the Breach: Deepening Columbia’s Commitment to Black People and Their Flourishing,” a strategy for addressing the ongoing aftermath of slavery. The plan includes providing full tuition and fees to all Black students admitted to master’s-level programs, renaming the school’s signature residence hall for leading Christian ethicist, Dr. Marcia Riggs, and other steps to disrupt cycles of oppression. 

To learn more about Maxwell, listen to his 2018 podcast interview with aijcast.

As half of an Emory power couple with a house full of healthy, rambunctious boys, Darren Mays 06MPH 09PHD is working to stamp out cancer from a wholly preventable cause: smoking. After 10 years on the faculty of Georgetown University, in August he moved to The Ohio State University, where he combines behavioral science with communications strategy and technology to convince people to stay away from tobacco. His wife, Margaret “Maggie” Gatti-Mays 07MPH, is a physician and researcher who specializes in breast cancer.

Darren’s research informed a proposed FDA rule requiring tobacco companies to display photos of the effects of smoking on their product packages. “We've been studying tobacco for a century,” he says, “but it's still such an important issue because it kills half a million people every year in the United States.” His ongoing work includes a support program that would send text messages to help people quit smoking and strategies to address the use of e-cigarettes and hookahs, currently popular among young people.

The couple met at Rollins School of Public Health, and together they are making serious contributions to the field of cancer research. He credits mentors at Rollins with helping to shape his career. As a young professor, he is beginning to see his own investments in mentoring pay off. “I’ve gotten to the point where my trainees are becoming successful. They're moving on to the next big thing in their careers, and that's why I do it. Seeing those outcomes has been rewarding.”

Follow Darren and Maggie on Twitter.

“Rachel, just do it!” Rachel Medbery 05C 09M 16MR 19MR probably never expected a fellow female surgeon to give her life-changing career advice in an elevator. Those four words inspired her to become a thoracic surgeon, filling a growing need for specialists who help treat lung cancer: the leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States.

Medbery’s dream of becoming a surgeon began after dissecting a frog in the fifth grade. She promptly let her parents in on her career plans, and through determination and hard work, she realized that childhood dream, becoming both the first doctor in her family and the first female thoracic surgeon in Central Texas. At Emory, Medbery became comfortable with who she was and found the strength to push onward, encouraged by cheerleaders every step of the way.

Medbery knows that she is making a difference, saying, “I can go home at the end of the day and know that I helped someone.” She also hopes her success inspires other girls to pursue their dreams, citing the growing need for thoracic surgeons in an aging society. Medbery is paving the way for other young women who wish to enter medicine or other male-dominated fields, showing how far a little perseverance can take them.

See Rachel Medbery speak about her experiences in this news segment from KXAN.

Heritage is often a source of pride, but for Beth Michel 12PH, her Tohono O’odham Nation citizenship and Hopi and Navajo affiliations also inspire and inform her professional life. During her time as a Deloitte consultant with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she worked to decolonize evaluation, centering the public health needs and perspectives of indigenous communities. At Emory, Michel guides selection of and advocates for indigenous students as the lead for Native American and Alaska Native outreach. 

Michel believes in the importance of acknowledging the history of spaces, such as the traditional lands of the Muscogee Creek Peoples, where Emory University is located. Her memories of Emory focus on the sense of community inspired by her classmates’ shared passion for improving their communities. That passion is reflected in her own work—whether in public health or higher education—to directly benefit tribal communities. 

Michel draws inspiration and strength from the work ethic of her parents and the resilience of her ancestors. As an Indigenous evaluator in the private sector for more than seven years, she grew her portfolio and became a trusted advisor for clients. Michel created more space for other Indigenous evaluators as chair of the Indigenous Peoples in Evaluation for the American Evaluation Association, a role she recently transitioned from.

Despite living and working far from her people, she looks forward to her next leadership position. She is honored to be a candidate for the Tohono O’odham Nation Institutional Review Board, viewing it as an opportunity to make significant contributions to her people from a distance. The board reviews and considers research proposals submitted to the tribe to protect the rights and welfare of the Tohono O’odham people.

Connect with Beth and Linkedin.

Since earning a PhD and a master’s from the Laney Graduate School, Vas Michopoulos 12G hasn’t slowed down. The tenure-track assistant professor has produced more than 125 publications from her work in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory School of Medicine and Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Her dedication is paying off: She has earned multiple awards, appointments, and National Institutes of Health grants along with thousands of citations. 

A self-described science geek, Michopoulos brings compassion to her research, centering her studies around communities and individuals traditionally underrepresented in biomedical research, including women and racial and ethnic groups. She currently leads a large research initiative into women’s mental health issues. In one of the initiative’s recent studies, she identified a potential link between inflammation and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. This research could eventually lead to improved prevention and intervention strategies.

Michopoulos embraces the unexpected as a key to success, following her father’s advice that anything worth doing probably comes with a bit of anxiety. For a scientist who studies risk and resilience, this adage comes in handy.

Born in Venezuela to Colombian parents, Julio Moreno 02Ox 04C has made a career of helping other immigrants navigate the US legal system. Shaped by life experiences and valuable hands-on internships and volunteer opportunities, he established his own Atlanta-based law practice in 2012. The Moreno Law Firm handles immigration cases in Georgia and nationwide, seeking to balance the scales for immigrants facing significant obstacles on their pathway towards a lawful status. 

His work has received national exposure from Rolling Stone, NPR, and The New York Times, highlighting his expertise in the complexities of the immigration system, including deportation and asylum cases. Driven by his commitment to family and community involvement, Julio strives to live up to the example of hard work and respect modeled by his parents. When he’s not fighting for his clients, Julio treasures spending time with his wife and two sons, traveling, and supporting the Atlanta United Football Club. 

Check out this NPR story featuring Julio for a glimpse into his immigration work.

With a master’s degree in health administration and a resume brimming with leadership roles, Lauren Morton 02C knows all about the bravery and strength expected of Black women. As it turns out, though, the bravest thing she’s done so far is to leave her successful career path to start a new one.

After graduating from Emory and earning her master’s, Morton began a career in hospital management and worked her way up through a series of leadership positions at Tenet Healthcare. Despite her success in the field, Morton’s faith and fond memories of Emory steered her toward more intimate grassroots community work. In her current role, she works to provide educational programming for people interested in personal growth and wellness. 

Morton has a deep appreciation for the arts, using visits to the High Museum and the Museum of Design Atlanta to decompress and always making a point to stop at local museums or art galleries when traveling. She’s also a cinephile and a true believer in the power of cinema to move and inspire. During the pandemic, Morton worked with her faith community to curate a film festival based on the podcast This Movie Changed Me.

Read Morton’s reflection for the High Museum, part of a series written by ministers in the Atlanta area.

Ariana Mullin 14G says that the best advice she received came from her grandmother. “Her mantra was ‘good, better, best, never let it rest, till your good is better and your better is best,’” Mullin says. She decided to become a research scientist after her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease when Ariana was 12 years old. 

“She instilled a relentless but playful work ethic in all of us, and taught us to leave the world a better place.” Now a neuroscientist and leader in the field of drug development, Ariana uses that work ethic to translate cutting-edge science into urgently needed therapeutics for neurological diseases. Until recently, she worked with a nonprofit focused on convening industry partners to accelerate the development of life-changing therapies for patients with Huntington’s disease. Now she works with one of those industry partners, working towards the approval of safe and effective therapeutics for several genetically defined neurological diseases. “This was an exciting opportunity to get closer to development programs and make a direct impact for patients and families affected.” She spends most of her free time hiking trails or hanging out at local breweries with her rescue dog, Rookie.

One of the most valuable skills that Dr. Andrew Murphy 03C 07M developed as an Emory medical student was the ability to actively listen to his patients. As a pediatric surgeon focused on the treatment of solid tumors, this skill helps him save lifetimes for patients at St. Jude Children Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. “In any interaction with a patient, colleague, subordinate, or superior, you need to be engaged in a listening mode to perceive what the problems are before you start talking,” he says.

Dr. Murphy decided to become a surgeon because of the collaborative, dedicated nature of the surgical teams he worked with while completing medical rotations at Grady Memorial Hospital, where he encountered patients whose life experiences differed greatly from his own. “Being in medicine opens your mind and heart up to a lot of problems that people experience that you don’t face in your daily life,” he says. “I am inspired by my patients who maintain hope, vigor, and happiness despite the difficult odds sometimes stacked against them.”

Rebecca Obeng 18MR 20F describes herself as someone who is “rooted in family, love, community, and culture with a drive to live up to her highest potential.” She is a gastrointestinal pathologist and assistant professor at Northwestern University. She also works with a team at Sub-Saharan Africa Healthcare Initiative (SsahiPath), a non-profit organization, to improve diagnostic services in Africa.

Dr. Obeng earned a master’s degree in public health from Harvard University in 2014 and in 2017, she joined SsahiPath while she was in medical residency at Emory. SsahiPath has given her the opportunity to combine her expertise in pathology with her long-standing passion for global health and eliminating health care disparities. As chief medical officer, she works with government health officials and laboratory leaders to conduct needs assessments and identify concrete actions they can take to improve their health services and patient care.

“I am proud to have a supportive village of family and friends who encourage me to push boundaries, challenge myself, and make an impact,” she says. “We can do anything we want to if we put our minds to it and if we have the right environment and support along the way.”

“If the entire world shared Asanka’s moral compass, intellect, and boundless enthusiasm, the world would have far fewer problems today.”

—Mike Goss
CFO, Conde Nast Publications
Former COO, Bain Capital

An honors graduate of the London School of Economics, Asanka Pathiraja 04C spent five years as a Wall Street corporate attorney at an Am Law 50 firm before transitioning to focus on investing in emerging technologies. Among other investments, he was an early seed funder of Builder.AI, winner of the AI Startup Award at the Europas 2020, and Virtualitics, which provides AI-enabled data analytics to Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Taittinger Gallery.

Pathiraja is active in several philanthropic causes, including Prince William’s wildlife conservation charity, Tusk, and his own charity, the Nishantha Fund—an education initiative founded in 2019 after the tragic death of Pathiraja’s cousin and aunt during the sectarian Easter bombings in Sri Lanka. In recognition of his contributions to Tusk, he was invited to attend a Jubilee dinner at Windsor Castle hosted by Prince William in 2015 and was later made a member of the Royal Enclosure at the Royal Ascot. In 2017, while running the world’s most exotic marathon in the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya to raise funds for Tusk, he became an honorary member of the Maasai tribe.

Pathiraja also works alongside his good friend and mentor Sir Richard Branson on a range of  global issues, including working to end the death penalty in Sri Lanka, advising on strategy for Branson’s leadership forum The New Now, and participating in extreme global endurance challenges to raise funds for Big Change. With Branson and friends, Pathiraja cycled the mountain stage of the Tour de France and completed an Ironman Triathlon in Sicily, finishing atop an active Mt. Etna. 

His advice to Emory students is to dream big and be relentless. “One thing I’ve seen is that irrespective of celebrity, fortune, or status, everyone goes through difficult times in pursuit of their dreams,” he says. “Persistence is everything.”

Brandi Ray 10MBA believes in paying it forward because without strong relationships, she might not be where she is now. Her career at PepsiCo began with an internship she earned after connecting with an Emory alumna at a recruiting event.

As senior director of marketing on the Cheetos brand, she has overseen innovative advertising strategies including a pop-up restaurant, a highly regarded show during New York Fashion Week, and a chart-topping Super Bowl commercial. She is most proud of how she has supported others through mentorship, her leadership of PepsiCo’s African American employee resource group, and her involvement in diversity recruiting. Most recently, she influenced the agenda on PepsiCo’s $430 million commitment to support the Black community over the next five years.

Ray credits much of her success to the training she received and the people she met at Emory, including her “Goizueta Dad,” the late Professor Earl Hill, to whom she dedicated this honor.

“No one can get anywhere on their own,” she says. “Make sure you’re building relationships, not only to help yourself, but more importantly to help others.”

Anyone savvy enough to succeed at Morgan Stanley should easily figure out their retirement rollover, right? When Romina Savova 08C left her job at the financier’s London office, she discovered she was not alone in her confusion over the British system of pension funds. Sorting out what she needed to know was the beginning of PensionBee, an app that today allows UK workers to easily track their retirement savings. Savova oversees investments of more than $1.3 billion, making her one of the few female CEOs in the country’s financial sector. 

Emory attracted Savova partly because Atlanta reminded her of her hometown of Pretoria, South Africa. Before graduating summa cum laude in international affairs and economics, she founded Model United Nations at Emory. Interest in diplomacy receded as she got a Harvard MBA and moved to London where fintech was the buzz. Entrepreneurship “usually looks a bit easier than it is,” she says. “And once you get into it, you will realize that it’s hard, but that’s okay because if it were easy, someone else would be doing it already.”

“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.” ― Audre Lorde 

When you see something wrong in the world, try to fix it. That’s what Isy India Thusi 03C lives by. It’s what she learned restarting the NAACP chapter at Emory, registering Black voters, and starting a poetry slam at a local juvenile detention center. This devotion to stopping injustice led Thusi to human rights law, working for the ACLU, and teaching subjects like criminal procedure and critical race theory. The killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor spotlighted her deep knowledge of policing and criminalization—topics she’s discussed in articles published or forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, Northwestern University Law Review, and Georgetown Law Journal.

“We're going to have to have uncomfortable conversations and actually deal with some of these root causes as opposed to trying to gloss over systemic injustices,” Thusi says. “I think it requires that everyone be willing to confront their role in maintaining social inequality and be accountable for promoting an antiracist agenda.” Her next endeavors are researching the policing of sex work in New Zealand and Sweden as a US Fulbright Global Scholar and finalizing a forthcoming book about the policing of sex work in South Africa.

In the early 2000s, Fusion brought college dance teams to Emory to create new forms of cultural dance. It was the first startup for Michael Wang 03OX 05C, an inventor and advanced practice clinician specializing in cardiothoracic surgery who fuses artificial intelligence to serve humanity. His company Inspiren makes a sensor that monitors a patient in bed, recording their physical movements, to help ensure patient safety and guide caregiving. Another company, MÓGŪ, makes a flameless, robotic system for preparing nutritious Chinese food; it was inspired by his family’s Long Island restaurant.  

A classically trained pianist, Wang began inventing by composing music in high school. He says that Fusion “made me realize I really enjoy the prospect of building a business, of bringing diverse people together in teams. It gave me the idea that perhaps the path of entrepreneurs is where my passion is.” Wang’s clinical expertise in cardiothoracic surgery, and direct patient care informed his work that led to patents on health care technology. “It’s important to pursue something that is truly worthy to you, something you truly believe in, and throw everything you have toward a noble cause,” Wang says. “That is something that's going to drive our society forward and allow us to become the best version of ourselves.”

Family fuels career aspirations for Kim Williams 09MBA. Her dad juggled three jobs, setting a high bar for hard work. She was a teenaged mother who went on to graduate from Vanderbilt, became a top performer at a Fortune 100 company, and completed the Evening MBA program at Goizueta Business School with a goal of working for herself. Williams struck out on her own with Beautycounter, a leading e-commerce platform which advocates for safe skin care, cosmetics and personal care products. “The contagious spirit of more than 50,000 Beautycounter independent owners propelled me to believe that I could succeed regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or background,” says Williams, who rose to the top 1 percent of earners—only the fourth Black woman to do so currently—and accelerated her father’s retirement.   

Williams recalls fondly her Emory evening classes with her daughter Arianna in tow and the faculty who welcomed the little girl. After Emory, Williams married, had two more children, and Arianna recently graduated from Princeton and is the founder of Brown Investors. “Emory was truly an extended family for me,” Williams says. “Family is all about unity.”