Alumni in the News: July 13, 2026

Lions are getting those Emmy noms! The HBO comedy Hacks scored 24 nominations, including three for director, writer and producer Lucia Aniello ’04; Aniello has previously won four Emmys for the series. Tim Carvell ’95 is poised to add two more awards — for Outstanding Variety Series and Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for Last Week Tonight — to his multi-Emmy collection; Ramin Hedayati ’02 also stands to win two more Outstanding Variety Series awards as executive producer of The Daily Show and its spinoff, Desi Lydic Foxsplains. Five shows nominated for Outstanding Drama or Outstanding Comedy Series feature alumni: The Pitt (actress Supriya Ganesh ’19); Your Friends and Neighbors (actress Amanda Peet ’94); The Bear (actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach ’99, who previously won two Best Supporting Actor Emmys for his role); A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (director and co-executive producer Sarah Adina Smith ’05); and Paradise (visual effects editor Joanna Phillips ’12). And two alumni-helmed shows received Creative Arts Emmy nominations: IT: Welcome to Derry, co-created by Jason Fuchs ’09, for Outstanding Title Design and Outstanding Special Visual Effects In A Season Or In A Movie; and Ponies, co-created by Susana Fogel ’02, for Outstanding Title Design. The 78th Primetime Emmy Awards will be broadcast live from Los Angeles on Monday, Sept. 14; the 2026 Creative Arts Emmys will be awarded over two nights, Saturday, Sept 5–Sunday, Sept. 6.

Rep. Jerrold R. Nadler ’69 (D-N.Y.) wrote the July 10 New York Times guest essay “Penn Station Won’t Fund Itself.” Nadler, who announced last year that he would not seek reelection, has represented the Manhattan district that includes the transit hub since the 1990s.

On July 6 it was announced that Blondell Pinnock ’90 was named senior executive director of LISC New York, a community investment program that has delivered more than $4.7 billion to advance housing, businesses, health, education and jobs across the state. Pinnock most recently served as president and CEO of Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation in Brooklyn.

Tennis phenom Michael Zheng ’26’s strong showing at Wimbledon ended on July 3, after he was defeated by number 3-ranked Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime. Zheng began his run by winning three matches in a row, advancing to take down top-ranked British player Cameron Norrie; it was both Zheng’s first career win at Wimbledon and his first win over a top-50-ranked player.

Riley Jones ’17, who recently earned an Ed.D. in leadership from Harvard, is planning, financing and producing the People’s 250 Assembly, which will take place in Philadelphia later this summer. Jones aims to use music, dance and art to frame conversations on how people envision our country’s future.

More Lions recently appeared in the Times: on June 16, Ellen Reid ’05 was included on the list “The Best Classical Music and Opera of 2026, So Far”; evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin ’82, who recently became president of the National Academy of Sciences, was featured in the June 12 Q&A “Neil Shubin on Trusted Science in a ‘Deeply Partisan Age’”; former U.S. attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. ’73, LAW’76 wrote the May 18 guest essay “This Redistricting Chaos Must End”; editor Leon Wieseltier ’74 was quoted in Maureen Dowd’s May 16 op-ed “What A.I. Kant Do”; and the first novel by writer Bindu Bansinath ’18, Men Like Ours, was reviewed by Dwight Garner on May 11.