Alumni in the News: November 2

Eater New York interviewed Joanne Kwong ’97 for its October 30 article “NYC Institution Pearl River Mart Debuts Its First Food-Focused Store Inside Chelsea Market.” Kwong is president of the nearly 50-year-old iconic NYC Asian goods store, which recently launched its first foray into food products such as chili oil, sauces, bao and bubble tea.

On October 21, the National Endowment for the Arts announced the incoming class of NEA Jazz Masters, which includes radio host and jazz historian Phil Schaap ’73. NPR covered the news: “The A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy is awarded each year to a figure whose contribution occurs off the bandstand. Schaap, 69, who has been on the air at the Columbia University radio station WKCR for almost half a century, decisively fits the bill. ... Schaap has won six Grammy awards, either as a producer or for his liner notes, and taught jazz history at Columbia and elsewhere. As a curator at Jazz at Lincoln Center, he created that organization’s educational program Swing University.”

Magaly Colimon ’87 plays single-mother Antoinette Pierre in the new Netflix teen drama Grand Army, which premiered on October 16. From an October 22 Carib News article: “Off-screen Magaly is an award-winning playwright and Founder/Producing Artistic Director of Conch Shell Productions. A Yale School of Drama graduate, Ms. Colimon’s mission and passion is to infuse new Caribbean-American and Caribbean Diaspora voices into the American theater and film industry.”

Whitney Museum of American Art assistant curator Rujeko Hockley ’05 was part of a panel interviewed by The New York Times to discuss protest art. “The 25 Most Influential Works of American Protest Art Since World War II” was published on October 15, and looks at “the pieces that have not only best reflected the era, but have made an impact.”

On October 15, it was announced that Daniel Harlow ’06, an assistant professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was awarded a Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. The fellowships are awarded to early-career scientists and engineers, who each receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.

Lucea Suzan Kedron ’92 was selected for inclusion in the 2021 The Best Lawyers in America; these listings are based on a peer review survey of thousands of attorneys who vote on the legal abilities of others in their practice areas. Kedron is a partner at the Dallas firm Jackson Walker, and represents real estate developers, land owners and public entities in a variety of land use and real estate development issues.