Jennifer Napier-Pearce BA’91 is the new chief of staff of The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation. Napier-Pearce supports the foundation’s mission of improving the quality of life across Utah. She most recently served as a senior advisor and director of communications to Governor Spencer Cox and was previously executive editor of The Salt Lake Tribune.
Several alumni participated in the recent U alum panel and networking event “From the U to Hollywood” in Los Angeles, including panelists Jeffery McFarland JD’91, an entertainment litigation attorney; Rick Page BA’94, a cinematographer who has worked on shows such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine; Jeff Dixon BA’99, whose Emmy-nominated animated show Curses! premiered last year on AppleTV+; and Stephanie Groff BA’21, a writer who recently sold a show to Sony. The panel discussion was moderated by Jared Ruga MFA’16 MBA’16 JD’16, an Emmy-winning and GLAAD-nominated producer.
Thomas Wei-Tsu Tang BS’94 is founder and president of Apantac LLC, a global leader in design and development of image signal processing equipment. The company’s clients include TV stations, news studios, and sports broadcasters like ESPN and Fox Sports, along with large social media companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon, which use Apantac products for their worldwide global event centers. Tang and his siblings recently gave back to the U and honored their parents, Dr. Mei-Chun Tang and Pi-Yung Chen, with a permanent named space in the Stewart Building, currently being renovated.
Jonathan Judge HBS’98 was appointed to the board of directors for Waymaker, a nonprofit organization that provides counseling, education, shelter, conflict resolution, and support services to struggling Orange County children and families. Judge is head of the Private Labor and Employment Group’s advice and counsel team at Atkinson, Andelson, Loya, Ruud & Romo, where he represents employers in both the private and public sectors in employment advice and counsel matters.
Pamela Balluck MFA’00 PhD’08 won first place for short fiction in the Utah Original Writing Competition with her entry “Phone In Hand.” Balluck serves as an associate editor for the University of Rhode Island’s Ocean State Review and teaches writing at the U. Her essay “Parts of a Chair” previously won the Southeast Review’s Narrative Nonfiction Contest, and her fiction has been published in the Western Humanities Review (as winner of the Competition for Utah Writers), has been a finalist in SER’s World’s Best Short-Short Story Competition, and can also be found in PANK, Night Train, Freight Stories, The Way We Sleep, Prompt Press, and Green Mountains Review, among other journals and anthologies.
Pete Johnson BA’03 is currently president and CEO of Koloma, Inc., which is pioneering clean energy through geologic hydrogen—a naturally occurring hydrogen source in the Earth’s mantle that could be a powerful tool to help move toward lower carbon energy forms. A Salt Lake native, Johnson was greatly inspired to “do great things” by East High teachers and later motivated by U professors to start his journey into physics and energy. He went on to earn a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Stanford, found and build several leading companies, and work as a venture capitalist and investor in Silicon Valley before his latest endeavor.
Wade Hunt BA’04 has been named president of MultiCare Deaconess and Valley hospitals, building relationships throughout the Inland Northwest. Hunt served the last three years as president of MultiCare Pulse Heart Institute, where he oversaw growth across key areas, and previously spent four years as Deaconess Hospital’s chief operating officer. Before joining MultiCare’s team in 2017, Hunt served as the chief operating officer and interim chief executive officer for PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver, Washington. In addition to his undergraduate degree, he holds a Master of Health Administration from Saint Louis University.
Margot Singer PhD’05 has a new memoir-in-essays, Secret Agent Man, an exploration of family history, memory, and the meaning of home. A professor of creative writing at Denison University, Singer is the author of a novel, Underground Fugue, and a linked short story collection, The Pale of Settlement. She is also the co-author, with Nicole Walker MFA’01 PhD’06, of Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction. She is the recipient of the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, the Reform Judaism Prize, the Glasgow Prize, and the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, as well as grants from the NEA and the Ohio Arts Council.
Taner Paşamehmetoğlu BA’13 is an award-winning multidisciplinary visual artist. Most recently, he completed a one-year artist residency with the City of Sacramento, working with its Office of Climate Action and Sustainability to engage and enlighten the community on climate-related issues. Previously, he worked with Real Salt Lake, several creative advertising agencies, and the Utah Division of Highway Safety and Utah Division of Natural Resources on impactful cause-marketing campaigns. At the U, he was a photojournalist and photo editor for The Daily Utah Chronicle.
Virginia LeBaron PhD’13 published Caring in Context: An Ethnography of Cancer Nursing in India, which is based on her research as a Fulbright Fellow during her time as a doctoral student at the U’s College of Nursing. The book details “how most of the world experiences cancer, and how nurses bear witness and respond to the suffering of others when they have little means to help—or for complex reasons, choose not to.”
Kelsie Green MBA’16 is the new chief executive officer and chief nursing officer for Cache Valley Hospital. Green holds a BSN from Boise State University in addition to her degree from the U, where she has been serving as an adjunct professor. She was recently assistant vice president of HCA Healthcare’s Virtual Patient Logistic Center.
Nancy E. Rivera MFA’16 received the Jay and Susie Tyrrell Excellence in Works by Hand Award for her series “No Present To Remember.” Rivera’s work combines family photographs from her childhood in Mexico with salt from Utah’s Great Salt Lake and Bonneville Salt Flats. According to Rivera, each piece in the collection “is a reflection on how these disparate landscapes have shaped my identity and experiences over the years.”
Marcus Williams BS’19, most recently a safety with the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens, has opened MW Athletix, a multi-sport performance training center where young athletes can train with some of the same professionals who helped found his career in the Eastvale/Corona, California, area. Already the founder of the Marked As Winners Foundation—which offers football camps, cheerleading camps, a celebrity golf tournament, academic scholarships, mental health courses, financial literacy programs, and academic success events for ages 10 and up to the youth of Eastvale/Corona and surrounding communities—Williams is continuing his commitment to giving back to the community he loves.
Kyra Shimogori BFA’21 BS’21 is a member of the Corps de Ballet at Ballet Tucson, where she also works as a part-time marketing manager. She also manages the ARBICO Organics “Easy Organic Gardener” podcast, organizing guests, recording audio, and writing summaries and copy. Prior to Ballet Tucson, she was a trainee with Ballet Idaho. At the U, she danced in classical ballets and performed in original works. Shimogori also took on leadership roles in the School of Dance’s Character Dance Ensemble.
Gianna Cefalu BS’21 is the new sports director of WJBF on NewsChannel 6 in Augusta, Georgia, where she covers sports including the Masters, SEC, and ACC. Previously, she was a sports director in Lewiston, Idaho. At the U, she was a sportswriter for The Daily Utah Chronicle, a co-host for the K-UTE radio show “All Things Sports,” and executive director for a local feature show called “Short Sports.”
Talïn Tanielian BA’14 worked on the Oscar-shortlisted animated short I’m Hip as a compositor, special effects animator, colorist, color key artist, shot planner, crew organizer, production manager, and editor. A first-generation Armenian American, Tanielian holds an MFA in animation and illustration from California University of the Arts, Long Beach, and has also studied at Gobelins L’École de L’Image in Paris. Her MFA thesis film Jinja—a short that she wrote, directed, animated, and illustrated—was accepted to several festivals across the country and worldwide, winning for Best Animated Short at Japan Web Fest. “Travels to Japan had inspired me to deep dive more into Japanese folklore surrounding spirits and religion,” she notes. “My film had themes about Shintoism, moving away from home, and embracing our differences.”
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