UChicagoans and Olympians

Two alumni competed in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. John Jayne, AB’19, represented the United States in judo. He upset number 9 ranked Christian Parlati of Italy in the men’s 90-kg round of 32. Later, competing in the round of 16 against South Korea’s Juyeop Han, Jayne lost the match by a small margin. Jesse Ssengonzi, AB’24, represented Uganda in swimming, coming in second in his 100-meter butterfly heat and setting a new national record for Uganda in the event—a record he previously held.

Writ large

From May to September, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum exhibited a retrospective of work by text-based conceptual artist Jenny Holzer, EX’74. Including works from all six decades of the artist’s career, Jenny Holzer: Light Line had as its focal point a reprisal of her 1989 installation of text on LED screens along the ramp of the Guggenheim’s central rotunda. The rotunda installation, previously covering only three levels of the ramp, rose to all six levels and featured additional text drawn from Holzer’s best-known works, including Truisms and Inflammatory Essays, both written in the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition also showed installations of some of her other works, including the recent Cursed (2022).

From black beans to coffee beans

On September 9 Brian Niccol, MBA’03, became CEO and board chair of Starbucks. Niccol was previously CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill, a position he had held since 2018. Before that he spent three years as head of Taco Bell. In his six years with Chipotle, Niccol oversaw a shift to more drive-through restaurants and improvements to the chain’s loyalty program. During that time, stock prices increased from $6.40 in 2018 to a high of $68.55 in summer 2024. At Starbucks he takes the helm of a larger company struggling with declining sales and pressure from investors.

Royal recognition

Bill Browder, AB’85, was made a Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George by the King of England for his work in service to human rights, anticorruption, and international affairs. Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, once a major foreign investor in Russia. In 2008 Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer hired by Hermitage, uncovered tax fraud by Russian government officials, which led to his arrest and subsequent death in a Moscow jail. Browder founded the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign to lobby governments for sanctions against those who abuse human rights. He helped the United States pass the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012 and, in 2016, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. Similar legislation has since been enacted in Canada, the United Kingdom, the Baltic states, the European Union, and Australia.

Knight-Hennessy scholar

Umar Siddiqi, AB’24, who majored in biology with an immunology specialization, was named a Knight-Hennessy Scholar at Stanford, where he started medical school this fall. Siddiqi, who received a Barry Goldwater Scholarship in 2023, is interested in developing new mechanical circulatory support devices to treat patients with serious heart failure. Such technologies, he believes, could be scalable and more accessible than current options. At UChicago he worked closely with Valluvan Jeevanandam, chief of cardiac surgery at UChicago Medicine, and designed and built prototypes of medical devices such as left ventricular assist devices.

Street heat

Andre Castro, AB’22 (Class of 2021), competed in NASCAR’s 2024 Chicago Street Race on July 6. He drove in the Xfinity Series race, the Loop 110, representing eRacing Association and UChicago. He came in 35th, completing 34 of the 50 laps on streets near Grant Park, but he was involved in a crash and had to leave the race. Castro made his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut in this same race last year. In May he was named a finalist for the 2025–26 IMSA (International Motor Sports Association) Diverse Driver Development Scholarship, which provides funding and training to assist a racer in competing in an IMSA racing series.