Alumni on the Move: Summer 2025

Recognition and Honors

Kaitlin Balasaygun, '22 M.S., won a Sports Emmy in the Outstanding Live Special – Championship Event category for her work as a Content Associate on NBC’s broadcast of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad.

Jean Chapiro, '25 M.S., won the Live Action Award and Special Jury Award at the 2025 BAFTA Student Awards for producing the film Extremist, which follows a young Russian artist arrested after making an anti-war statement in a Moscow supermarket. The film also swept the 2025 Columbia University Film Festival, earning top honors including Best Film and Excellence in Producing.

Hanson Hosein, '94 M.S., premiered his documentary American Dignity at Cinema Village in New York City. The film reflects on the endurance of civil rights movements by following Charles Mauldin, who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, and Charles Douglas III, a new generation activist fighting for voting rights today.

Longtime Broadway producer Jeffrey Richards, '71 M.S., won the 2025 Tony Award for Best Musical for Maybe Happy Ending.

Newsroom Leadership and Fellowships

Gabbie Bhaskar, '20 M.S., joined The New York Times as a staff photographer, one of the few such roles at the paper and a major milestone in visual journalism.

Dana Edwards, '25 M.S.,  joined The Connecticut Mirror as their visuals fellow, where he is producing visual stories on how public policy impacts communities across the state. 

The Washington Post named Peter Finn, '87 M.S., as the organization’s International Editor, where he now oversees more than 60 journalists across 23 global bureaus. A Pulitzer finalist and award-winning foreign correspondent, Finn previously led the paper’s international investigations team and served as national security editor.

Tamia Fowlkes, '23 M.S., became a Widening the Pipeline Fellow with the National Press Foundation, which supports early-career journalists focused on public policy and political reporting.

Jaylen Green, '25 M.S., was selected as a 2025 global news intern at The Associated Press, where he will report on race and ethnicity from the New York bureau. 

June Kim, '23 M.S. Data Journalism, joined The New York Times as a graphics and multimedia editor on the Digital News Design team.

Shrai Popat, '19 M.S., joined the National Press Foundation’s Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship, a yearlong program for rising political reporters in Washington, D.C.

Cindy Shan, '25 M.S., joined the Ida B. Wells Society as an investigative intern at Snopes. She also earned First Place in the Student Category of the 2024 Health Journalism Awards for her Alzheimer’s reporting in the Bronx Bulletin and attended the Association of Health Care Journalists' 2025 conference in Los Angeles.

Vahini Shori, '25 M.S., joined Report for America as a faith and culture reporter in Alabama, covering how religion shapes social life, medical decisions and politics.

Julie Zeveloff West, '08 M.S., was promoted to Director of Editorial Product Strategy at Business Insider. She will oversee newsroom innovation, managing a cross-functional team responsible for editorial tools, workflows, creative strategy, audience development and special projects.

Coverage and Contributions

Ted Hesson, '07 M.S., reported on President Trump’s new “self-deportation” policy initiative for Reuters. As the outlet’s immigration reporter, Hesson covers U.S. immigration, asylum, and border enforcement policy from Washington, D.C.

Montieth Illingworth, '81 M.S., wrote a piece for PR Week focusing on how organizational leaders can, and must, respond to external pressures by remaining rooted in their core values and beliefs.

Martina Di Licosa, '25 M.S., reported on Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s $20 million-plus wedding in Venice for Forbes, detailing the luxury vendors, celebrity guests and security as well as the event’s economic impact on the city.

Ivan Nagy, '25 M.A. Politics, published two stories in The New World. One covers the illusion of safety for foreigners in Trump’s America; the other profiles Gergely Kovács, mayor of Budapest’s District XII, a piece first reported while at Columbia Journalism School.

Zeba Warsi, '22 M.A. Politics, contributed reporting and production to PBS NewsHour’s June 10 segment on Americans detained in Syria, including the story of Maryam Kamalmaz’s search for answers about her father’s death.