Vera Drew (BA '11) is an editor, director, and producer. For her work on Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America, she became one of the first openly transgender women to earn an Emmy nomination for editing. She also recently helped launch Tim and Eric’s streaming TV network, Channel 5, for which she wrote and directed four series and hours of original content. Prior to that, she was a contributor to Highland Park TV and Everything Is Terrible. Born and raised in Chicago, she has been making funny, spooky, and/or queer short films and music videos for most of her life.

Following a win at last year’s Campus 1871 competition, PhD students Badar Al Lawati and Redar Ismail applied for and received a $100,000 credit grant via the Google Cloud Platform for Startups program. The team is using this credit, in addition to the technical support and mentoring opportunities accompanied by the monetary prize, to build out BridgeLink, their refugee-hiring platform.

Nina Keoborakot (BS UxD ’19) is a User Experience Designer at Pitney Bowes. “The faculty in the School of Design made an outstanding difference during my undergrad experience in UxD--they led me to resources, research opportunities, and guided my career exploration. I feel confident that I will succeed as a UX Designer in the workforce.”