Alumni in the News: January 6, 2025

Two Lions took home top honors at the 82nd Annual Golden Globes on Jan. 5. Shōgun, co-created by Justin Marks ’02, won several awards, including Best Television Series – Drama. Hacks, co-created by Lucia Aniello ’04, who is also a director, writer and executive producer on the show, also took home several Globes, including Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy.

In other entertainment news, a number of Columbia filmmakers, including Sam Bisbee ’90; Gigi Pritzker Pucker ’14, SW’21; Bill Condon ’76; Erik Feig ’92; Meera Menon ’06; and Isaak Popkin ’24, will be showing work at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off on Thursday, Jan. 23.

Trisha Mukherjee ’21, JRN’24 was the 2024 winner of an annual journalism contest held by New York Times opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof that helps to promote global issues; Mukherjee traveled with Kristof to Mauritius to report and write the Jan. 4 Op-Ed “The Shame That Keeps Millions of Girls Out of School.”

The end of the year brought 2024 Best Books honors for several alumni writers: NPR recognized Nathalie Alonso ’08 on its best kid books list; the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2024 included Atossa Araxia Abrahamian ’08, JRN 11; Jonathan Blitzer ’07; Kelly Link ’91; Kevin Fedarko ’88; and Kevin Baker ’80. Blitzer and Lucy Sante ’76 made the Times’ “10 Best Books of 2024” in the nonfiction category.

On Dec. 10 it was announced that 21 Columbians were named to the 2025 Forbes “30 Under 30” list, including Joon Baek ’21, co-founder of Youth for Privacy, in the Education category; Deja Foxx ’23, founder of GenZ Girl Gang, in the Media category; Nikita Singareddy ’17, co-founder of Fortuna Health, in the Healthcare category; investor Zehra Naqvi ’21 in the Venture Capital category; and Hannah Friedman’19, SPS’21, founding principal of Planeteer Capital, and Ankit Singhal ’26, co-founder of Anthrogen, in the Energy and Green Tech category.

Asher Grodman ’10, a star of the CBS show Ghosts, was nominated on Dec. 5 for a 2025 Critics Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Golden Globe winners Shōgun and Hacks are also nominated for Best Drama Series and Best Comedy Series, respectively. The 30th annual Critics Choice award show will be telecast on Sunday, Jan. 12.

A Nov. 27 New York Times article, “The Land That Allowed Ken Burns To Raise the Dead,” featured the filmmaker’s younger brother, writer and documentarian Ric Burns ’78. The story detailed the elder Burns’ home in Walpole, N.H., as well as the brothers’ childhood in Ann Arbor.