Award winners Jim Cavale ’05, Barbara Bonfield ’58 and Kate Hayden ’06
UMNAA Honors Alumni for Career Achievements As UM alumni gather each February to reunite with their classmates and current students during Homecoming week, the National Alumni Association honors three alumni whose careers and accomplishments reflect positively on the University. Each year, the UMNAA recognizes an alumnus under the age of 35 whose early career and community achievements have reflected positively at the local, state or national level. Dr. Kate Hayden was this year’s recipient of the 2018 Nathalie Molton Gibbons Young Alumni Achievement Award. After graduating from UM with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and biology in 2006, Hayden worked briefly as an analytical chemist for Avanti Polar Lipids, Inc. in Alabaster. She later enrolled at UAB to continue her education in biophysical chemistry. While there, Hayden and a group of her associates and peers co-founded the biotech startup Blondin Bioscience, where she spent
12 | Montevallo Today
four years as director of research working to develop improved diagnostics to better treat cancer patients. In 2014, Hayden earned her doctorate in biophysical chemistry and accepted a position at Birmingham Southern College as an assistant professor of chemistry in 2015. There, she continues to mentor college students on research and internship opportunities while also teaching biochemistry, advanced biochemistry and medicinal chemistry. In 2016, she was honored as a Rising Star in Healthcare by the Birmingham Business Journal and an Innovator Changing the South by Southern Living magazine. The UMNAA similarly recognizes an alumnus over the age of 35 for his or her career accomplishments. The recipient of that honor, the Nathalie Molton Gibbons Alumni Achievement Award, was Jim Cavale. After walking across the stage at Flowerhill in 2005 with a degree in mass communication,
Cavale moved to Birmingham, became director of broadcasting for the Gulf South Conference and started the online streaming video production company J. Anthony Productions. In 2010, Cavale joined his neighborhood Iron Tribe Fitness gym. He struck a fast friendship with the gym’s founder, Forrest Walden, and personally oversaw the opening of Iron Tribe’s second location. With success at their backs, Walden and Cavale partnered as CEO and president of Iron Tribe respectively, with plans to make the fitness centers a nationally recognized brand. Now, those looking to get fit can walk into more than 40 Iron Tribe Fitness locations nationwide. After years of success with Iron Tribe Fitness, Cavale stepped down from his position with the gym franchise in September 2016. Now he is using his expertise for two new projects: GLOW, an on-demand beauty service Cavale co-founded with his wife, Yazmin, and Influencer (INFLCR), a web-based product that