A storied legacy

South Side historian Timuel Black, AM’54, has been inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. Born in Alabama and raised in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, Black taught high school and led the Chicago chapter of the Negro American Labor Council, helping organize the city’s participation in the 1963 March on Washington. He was an early supporter of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor; advised Barack Obama on South Side politics before his first run for office; and fought against discriminatory voting practices in the 2000 presidential election. His oral history Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s First Wave of Black Migration (Northwestern University Press, 2003) collects interviews with Black Chicagoans who fled Jim Crow segregation in the South, while his memoir Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black (Northwestern University Press, 2019) recounts his life as an educator and activist. Black died in 2021 at the age of 102.

Finance film

The documentary Tune Out the Noise (2023), released on YouTube this March, follows a group who met at the University of Chicago and developed the science of data-driven investing. With this approach, they went on to found the investment firm Dimensional Fund Advisors. Directed by Academy Award–winning documentarian Errol Morris, the film features Nobel laureates Eugene Fama, MBA’63, PhD’64, the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, and Myron Scholes, MBA’64, PhD’70; Trustee Emeritus David Booth, MBA’71; Rex Sinquefield, MBA’72; Jeanne Sinquefield, AM’71, PhD’72, MBA’79; and Roger Ibbotson, PhD’74. Produced by Fourth Floor Productions and Moxie Pictures, Tune Out the Noise won the 2023 Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival’s DOC LA Cinephile Award and the 2023 Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival Award for Best Feature Documentary.

Beard winners

Nicola Twilley, AM’01, and Ian Urbina, AM’97, were each honored with a 2025 James Beard Media Award. The awards recognize excellence in food- and drink-related writing and broadcast media. Twilley won the Literary Writing prize for her book Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves (Penguin Press, 2024), a chronicle of the history and present-day challenge of keeping food cold. Urbina was recognized alongside the staff of the Outlaw Ocean Project—a nonprofit journalism organization focusing on human rights and environmental issues in maritime industries, which he founded and directs—for two articles highlighting labor abuse in the seafood industry.

Library leadership

Carla D. Hayden, AM’77, PhD’87, has been appointed a senior fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In this yearlong role, she will conduct research and advise the foundation’s leadership on strengthening support for libraries and other public knowledge institutions. From 2016 to 2025 Hayden served as the 14th Librarian of Congress, expanding digital initiatives and broadening public engagement. Prior to that she led Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library system for 23 years and served as president of the American Library Association from 2003 to 2004.

Veteran vim

Three alumnae were named to Forbes’s 50 Over 50, the magazine’s list of women business owners, investors, entrepreneurs, artists, and cultural leaders at the height of their careers. On the Investment list, Sheffali Welch, AB’94, was recognized for her leadership at the Clearing House, a banking association and payments company, and Karen Kerr, PhD’95, was honored for founding the investment firm Exposition Ventures. On the Lifestyle list, Katherine E. Fleming, AM’89, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, was cited for protecting the Getty Villa during the Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles and launching a relief fund for artists and cultural workers affected by the fires.

Running star

Rob Gagliardi, AB’99, earned the Abbott World Marathon Majors Six Star Medal after completing the Tokyo Marathon in March in just over three hours. The medal is awarded to those who complete the original six major marathons, held in Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York. The Tokyo Marathon, held annually since 2007, had over 36,000 finishers this year, only about a quarter of whom completed the race in under four hours. Gagliardi completed all six Majors in four years, starting with the Chicago Marathon in 2021.