included Dr. Christopher E. Gross ’01 and Michael Ryan Robinson ’01. Howland is currently serving as vice president of entertainment banking at Torrey Pines Bank, a division of Western Alliance Bank. Ellen C. (Ziegler) Johnson—–see Timothy K. Johnson ’98 Caroline F. (Cannizzaro) Newell joined the University of Chicago Law School as chief of staff to Dean Thomas J. Miles in April 2019.
2002
Augusto O. “Gus” Delgado and Katherine C. “Kat” (Adams) Delgado, Esq., announced the birth of their first child, Calliope, in 2017. Kat Delgado earned her JD and MS in marriage and family counseling at St. Thomas University and her LLM in taxation at the University of Washington. She is an associate attorney at the Women’s Divorce and Family Law Group by Haid & Teich. Gus Delgado attended DePaul University and is a national admissions advisor at American InterContinental University. The two didn’t know each other as Ramblers, but started dating in 2010 when mutual friends introduced them. Joseph B. Kennedy and his wife celebrated the birth of their son, Emmett Joseph Kennedy, in September 2018. Samantha H. Simpson ran as a Democratic candidate for the Illinois House 31st District in the 2020 primary election. She is a consulting manager for Deloitte. She served as senior business relationship manager and product director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2012 to 2018 and communications and policy manager for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office from 2009 to 2010. She earned her MA in public policy continued on page 18
Matthew A. Cherry ‘99 (above left) and his producer, Karen Rupert Toliver, celebrated their Oscar win for Hair Love at the 92nd Annual Academy Awards in February 2020
An Oscar-Winning Ode to Black Hair and Black Fatherhood
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HE MULTITALENTED Matthew A. Cherry ’99—–a former NFL wide receiver turned filmmaker—–brought some much-needed diversity to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ pantheon of award-winning films in February 2020 with his Oscar win for Best Animated Short Film. Cherry and his producer shared the spotlight as they accepted the award for Hair Love—–a seven-minute animated film about a black father who learns how to style his young daughter’s hair while his wife is in the hospital. “I just want to say that Hair Love was done because we wanted to see more representation in animation—–we wanted to normalize black hair,” Cherry noted in —– J OR DA N P E E LE his acceptance speech. Actor and Filmmaker The Twitterverse lit up after the awards ceremony with retweets of Cherry’s prescient tweet from 2012: “I’m gonna be nominated for an Oscar one day. Already claiming it.” View Cherry’s Oscar-winning film—–which he cowrote, directed and coproduced—–at matthewcherry.com/hair-love. In 2019, Hair Love was adapted into a best-selling children’s book written by Cherry and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. 4
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Matthew leads the ranks of new creatives who are telling unique stories of the Black experience. We need this.
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Dr. Samir K. Shah and his wife celebrated the birth of their son, Roshan, in June 2018. Shah, a vascular surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, started a research program to investigate patient-centered outcomes after lower extremity arterial procedures. His research earned him the Tipping Point Award from the Center of Surgery and Public Health, a joint venture between the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School.
SPRING 2020
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