Alumni Accolades April 2014

Felix Lloyd (1994) and his wife Jordan appeared on the hit ABC show “Shark Tank” on April 18th to promote their company Zoobean, and won a $250,000 investment from Mark Cuban! Zoobean is a web service that recommends apps and books for children. Click here for the press release and here for an update since the show was aired.

Our very own Michael Tubbs (2008), City Councilman of his hometown Stockton, CA, is the subject of a Tribeca Film Fest movie “True Son” and was recently featured on HUFFPOST Live.

Michelle Peluso (1989) discussed her role as Chief Executive Officer of the Gilt Groupe and why she doesn’t have an office in this New York Times article.

Rock Ward (2013) was accepted into the Phillip Evans Scholars Program. He is one of only 8 freshmen at Swarthmore who will be given a grant to fund a project of his choosing that will benefit a community in Brazil this summer!

On March 6, 2014, Abdul Karim Khan (2011) won the Audience Choice Award at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis’ Ideas Solving Social and Economic Challenges (ISSEC) Competition. ISSEC is a student “pitch” competition that encourages IUPUI students to come up with innovative ideas to solve real-world problems. Khan, a junior at Purdue, pitched the idea of a web-based company known as My Size Now that would allow consumers to input their sizes into a database that then matches their sizes to perfectly fit clothing on websites they use regularly.  Check out Khan in the spotlight below or watch the pitch yourself!

Daniel McFarland (2011) was elected as the University of Arkansas Associated Student Government President for the 2014-2015 academic year and Cicely Shannon (2011) was chosen as his Chief of Staff!

Cicely Shannon (2011) was also chosen as a 2014 Truman Scholar. See the full list here.

Congratulations to Will Harlan (1993)! His book Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island hits the shelves this week at bookstores across the country. It has already been selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Award winner—one of their top 18 books of the summer (and the only biography). It has also received high praise from outdoor luminaries like Bill McKibben and Sylvia Earle, along with stellar reviews from bestselling author Christopher McDougall and National Geographic award-winning writers Jennifer Holland and Jon Bowermaster. You can buy Will’s book here.

Will tells us, “I’ve spent the past two decades writing this biography of the wildest woman in America, Carol Ruckdeschel. She eats road kill, wades into alligator dens, rides wild horses bareback, and lives in a ramshackle cabin that she built herself using driftwood that washed ashore. She’s had three husbands and many lovers, one of whom she shot and killed. A combination of Henry David Thoreau and Jane Goodall, Carol is a self-taught scientist who has become a tireless defender of sea turtles on Cumberland Island, a national park off the coast of Georgia. Untamed is a thrilling and inspiring real-life story of a gutsy, gritty individual standing her ground on a wild and controversial island.”

More about Will Harlan here.

Kate Gasparro (2010) is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. The NSF Fellowship is a prestigious and very competitive engineering fellowship that includes full tuition and fees as well as a $32,000 stipend.

Jeremiah Grant (2012) was selected as a 2014 Future Global Leader Fellow! FGL is an exclusive worldwide fraternity of 22 fellows from around the globe who are chosen as part of a three year fellowship program. Through this fellowship, Jeremiah will go on a backpacking expedition this summer in the Rocky Mountains with the National Outdoor Leadership School followed by a three-day leadership conference in Wyoming. After that, the next two years will be filled with internships abroad anywhere in the world of his choosing to study medicine.