Nine Medill alumni join 2025 Hall of Achievement
May 22 induction ceremony will honor alumni leaders across industries
EVANSTON, ILL. -- Nine alumni will join the 2025 Hall of Achievement class at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. This is the highest honor Medill bestows on its graduates.
“Our Hall of Achievement class this year showcases the breadth and depth of the contributions Medill graduates make to the world,” said Medill Dean Charles Whitaker. “They have a profound effect on media, major brands, and even Hollywood. I could not be more proud of my fellow alumni and excited to welcome them home to campus.”
This year’s inductees are:
Melissa Bell (MSJ06)
Bell is the CEO of Chicago Public Media, the nonprofit news organization working to create a healthy local news infrastructure for the Chicago region, including the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, WBEZ’s 91.5 radio station, and Vocalo, the digital music station.
Before coming to Chicago Public Media, Bell was the co-founder of Vox and served as the publisher of Vox Media, overseeing its stable of publications. Under her leadership, Vox Media’s platforms reached up to 130 million people each month, gained 350 million social media followers, and earned 6 billion monthly video views and 36 million monthly podcast downloads.
She also previously worked at The Washington Post as director of platforms. In 2023, she served as a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, where she studied the impact of news avoidance on local journalism in the United States.
Anupama Chopra (MSJ91)
Chopra is a film critic, national award-winning book author and journalist. She is the editor of The Hollywood Reporter India, founder of Film Companion Studios and chairperson of the Film Critics Guild. She has covered cinema since 1993 in multiple mediums – print, television and digital. She has worked with India Today, NDTV 2/7, Star World. She also has written about cinema for various international publications including The New York Times and Sight and Sound.
Chopra has authored several books, including “King of Bollywood - Shah Rukh Khan” and “The Seductive World of Indian Cinema,” which was featured on the Editor’s Choice list of the New York Times Sunday book review and translated into German, Indonesian and Polish.
Alan K. Cubbage (MSJ78, MSA87)
Cubbage is a writer and editor. He served for 21 years as Northwestern University’s vice president for University Relations before his retirement in 2019. In that capacity, Cubbage oversaw Northwestern’s key communications efforts, including print publications, the University website, the alumni magazine, media relations and internal communications. Cubbage directed all of Northwestern’s crisis communications, providing counsel to the president and other leaders and also serving as the University’s spokesperson.
Cubbage taught strategic communications in the Integrated Marketing Communications undergraduate certificate program at Medill. He is the author of “Transforming a University: Northwestern in the New Millennium.” He started his career as a reporter and editor on weekly newspapers in rural Iowa and then worked for the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago, covering a variety of beats.
In addition to his Medill degrees, he earned a J.D. from Drake University Law School and is a member of the Illinois Bar.
Maurice DuBois (BSJ87)
DuBois is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and co-anchor of the "CBS Evening News."
He previously served as co-anchor of CBS New York's (WCBS) 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts. He has contributed reporting across CBS News programs and platforms, including 60 Minutes Sports, "CBS News Sunday Morning," "48 Hours," "CBS Mornings" and the CBS News 24/7 Streaming Network. He has hosted specials on mental health, kids and violence, breast cancer and ticker-tape parades and telethons.
Before joining CBS, DuBois worked at NBC News, and he appeared on "Today," "Weekend Today," "Dateline NBC," MSNBC and NBC News at Sunrise. He has worked at stations in Chicago, Seattle and Sacramento.
DuBois has won several journalism and community awards, including five Emmys. He's also been recognized with honors from The Associated Press, The New York State Broadcasters Association and The New York Association of Black Journalists, which honored him with its Trailblazer Award.
Mark Fainaru-Wada (BSJ89)
Fainaru-Wada has been an investigative reporter with ESPN since 2007 and is the co-author of two New York Times best-sellers, “League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth,” and “Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports.”
“League of Denial,” written with Fainaru-Wada’s brother/colleague Steve Fainaru, won the 2014 PEN Award for Literary Sports Writing. The brothers, who reported dozens of exclusive stories on the topic for ESPN, also served as reporters and writers on a companion documentary for PBS’s award-winning program “Frontline.” The documentary won the prestigious George Polk and Peabody awards, and Fainaru-Wada earned another Peabody for related work with ESPN colleagues.
At the San Francisco Chronicle, Fainaru-Wada and colleague Lance Williams earned a Polk Award and a string of other national honors in 2004 and 2005 for their coverage of the BALCO steroids scandal. In May 2006, Fainaru-Wada and Williams were issued subpoenas to testify before a grand jury investigating the sources of some of the information they published in The Chronicle and their book. The reporters vowed not to reveal their sources and were sentenced to up to 18 months in prison; the government ultimately dropped the subpoenas while the case was on appeal.
Georgina Flores (MSIMC02)
Flores is Chief Marketing Officer for Encore, the largest global meeting and events production company, where she is responsible for global brand and marketing strategy, corporate communications, customer experience and creative sales enablement.
Prior to Encore, Flores was vice president of marketing at Aetna, a CVS Health company. She also spent more than 18 years at Allstate, where she rose through the ranks to Vice President, Consumer Marketing. Among her roles at Allstate, she built the multicultural marketing practice, earning a Cannes Lion and multiple EFFIE awards for advertising effectiveness.
She is a fellow of Leadership Greater Chicago, an organization that cultivates Chicago’s business, public and civic leaders through a deeper understanding of the issues facing the community. Flores was named to the Advertising Age 40 Under 40 list in 2013, and she was inducted into the American Advertising Federation (AAF) Advertising Hall of Achievement in 2012, including being awarded the coveted Jack Avrett Volunteer Spirit Award for her commitment to reaching under-represented communities through advertising and community activation.
Susan Howe (BSJ91)
Howe is Chief Executive Officer of The Weber Shandwick Collective (TWSC), the leading global communications and strategic advisory network. Under her leadership, TWSC serves Fortune 500 companies across every major industry sector, earning recognition such as PRWeek’s Global Agency of the Year and PRovoke’s Global Agency of the Decade, as well as being named to Ad Age’s Agency A-list and Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies. TWSC was also the most recognized agency at the Cannes Lions International Festivity of Creativity 2023-2024.
Howe was recognized as Global Agency Professional of the Year by PRWeek, Campaign US’s Female Frontier and PRWeek’s Women of Distinction. She is a member of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women community and CNBC’s CEO Council.
Tom Philp (BSJ83)
Philp, an opinion writer for the Sacramento Bee, has more than 40 years of journalism and policy experience in California. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for editorial writing.
He also was honored with three national awards for editorial writing for a series on the financial abuses of local water districts.
After beginning a career in journalism, Philp served as strategic communications and policy adviser for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, serving 19 million people and six counties. He then returned to the Sacramento Bee where he writes on state and local policy issues.
William Weinbaum (BSJ82, MSJ83)
Weinbaum is a digital journalist and television news, feature, investigative and documentary producer and director for ESPN. Before joining ESPN in 1995, he was a producer for This Week in Baseball, Major League Baseball Magazine, and news and events coverage for more than 150 Sports Newsatellite subscriber stations.
For collaborative and individual work on subjects such as health, safety, race relations and corruption, he has received a CableACE Award, Dateline Award, NABJ Salute to Excellence Award, National Headliner Award and Telly Award, as well as multiple Sports Emmys®; Deadline Club awards; New York Festivals awards; Military Reporters & Editors Association awards; Peabody awards and Silurians Press Club awards.
Weinbaum and his colleagues have also been honored by the Education Writers Association, Investigative Reporters & Editors, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, National Council on Problem Gambling, New York Press Club, Northeastern University’s Center for the Study of Sport in Society and the United States Tennis Writers Association.