Georgie Ann Geyer
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1981
Journalist, Author, Columnist
Georgie Anne Geyer was an American journalist born in Chicago, IL, who covered the world as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News and then became a syndicated columnist for the Universal Press Syndicate. Her columns focused on foreign affairs issues and appeared in approximately 120 newspapers in North and South America.
She graduated from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University in 1956. She attended the University of Vienna on a Fulbright Scholarship and spoke Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Russian.
D. 5/15/2019
from Wikipedia
Mabel Smythe-Haith
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1983
MA 1940 American diplomat
In 1962 President John F. Kennedy appointed Smythe to the State Department’s Advisory Council for African American Affairs. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter selected her as the U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon and the Republic of Equatorial Guina. She was also appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. From 1981 to1985 she taught at Northwestern and served as the Melville J. Heskovits Professor and director of African studies. Following her 1985 retirement, she became a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
D. 2/7/2006
Wendy Lee Gramm
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1988
Ph.D. 1971 in economics, American Economist and former Chair of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission Gramm held several positions in President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush’s administrations, including executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, head of the White House Office of Management and Budget’s regulatory review office, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Economics, head of the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) from 1985 to 1988, and head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from 1988 to 1993. After a lobbying campaign and President Bill Clinton’s election, she resigned from CFTC and took a seat on the Enron Board of Directors and served on Enron’s Audit Committee. Gramm also served as a director of the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative women’s group, and sat on the boards of Iowa Beef Processors, INVESCO Funds, Longitude, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and State Farm Insurance Companies.
Sherry Lansing
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1989
SOC BSS 1966 cum laude
Hollywood film producer, and former President of Productions 20th Century Fox. During her nearly 30-year career in the film industry, Lansing was involved in the production, marketing and distribution of more than 200 films, including three Academy Award-winning movies: “Forrest Gump” (1994), “Braveheart” (1995), and “Titanic” (1997). In 1984 she became the first woman to head a major film studio when she took the top job at 20th Century Fox. As an independent producer, she was responsible for such successful films as “Fatal Attraction” (1987), “The Accused” (1988), “Black Rain” (1989), “School Ties” (1992) and “Indecent Proposal” (1993). In 1992 Lansing was named Chair and CEO of Paramount Pictures, where she began a creative and successful 12-year tenure. She is the first female movie studio head to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. While best known for her long and successful career as a studio executive, she also spent four years after college teaching high school English and math at public schools throughout the Los Angeles area. A believer in the power of education, she is the CEO of The Sherry Lansing Foundation and sits on many boards, including The Carter Center, the Entertainment Industry Foundation, and the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She also is a Trustee of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles, where she co-founded the scholarship program.
Laura S. Washington
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 2002
Print and Broadcast Journalist
Laura S. Washington (BSJ78, MSJ80) is a member of the inaugural class of the Medill Hall of Achievement of 1997.
Washington is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a political analyst at ABC 7, Chicago’s network affiliate. Washington was also the longtime editor and publisher of The Chicago Reporter, a nationally recognized investigative monthly specializing in racial issues and urban affairs.
Her column has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times since 2001. She is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio and Chicago Public Radio. She has also written a column for the Chicago Tribune. In 1985, Washington was appointed deputy press secretary to Mayor Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor. She also served as a producer for the investigative unit at CBS-2/Chicago, correspondent for “Chicago Tonight” on WTTW-TV, and wrote an op-ed column for the Chicago Tribune.
She has been honored with more than two dozen local and national awards for her work, including two Chicago Emmys, the Peter Lisagor Award and the Racial Justice Award from the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago. In 1999, the Chicago Community Trust awarded her a Community Service Fellowship, for "exemplary service, commitment and leadership in individuals from the nonprofit sector."
Newsweek magazine named Washington one of the nation's "100 People to Watch" in the 21st Century. Newsweek said: "her style of investigative journalism has made (the Reporter) a powerful and award-winning voice."
She is a member of the Chicago chapter of the National Associations of Black Journalists and serves on the board of the Field Museum. Washington. She is widely quoted and featured in the national media, including Time magazine, The New York Times, NBC Nightly News and PBS News Hour and the BBC. She speaks frequently to local and national audiences.
Sondra Gair
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1992
Northwestern University, School of Speech, BSS 1945
Public affairs Chicago radio talk show host Gair was a veteran Chicago-based broadcast journalist best known for her public affairs talk show, Midday with Sondra Gair, which aired on WBEZ and focused on international news from 1986 until her death in May 1994. She began her local radio career in the 1940s, appearing on soap operas, dramas and comedy shows, including WGN radio’s Theater of the Air the Colgate Comedy Hour, Ma Perkins, Bachelor’s Children, Woman in White and Corliss Archer. She became a star on a CBS show titled, Meet Miss Sherlock, about a female version of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Gair became interested in news reporting, and in 1975 she joined WBEZ-FM in Chicago, primarily doing on-air interviews, which later led to her popular midday show.
D. 5/25/1994
Barbara Uehling
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1985
MA 1956; Ph.D. in experimental psychology1958, Chancellor and Professor of the University of Missouri and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Uehling was the first woman in the United States to lead a land-grant university. In 1981 she served as the third Chancellor and 17th chief executive officer of the University of Missouri (MU) campus in Columbia, Mo. During her tenure as Chancellor, she prioritized campus restoration. She left MU in 1987, to become Chancellor of the University of California. She later served as a senior visiting fellow on the American Council of Education in Washington, D.C. She met her first husband, Edward Uehling, while she was a Ph.D. student at Northwestern in 1958. She retired from the University of California in 1994.
D. 1/2/2020
Phyllis Elliott Oakley
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1993
State Department Spokesman
Oakley was the 13th Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research from 1997 to 1999, after a long career at the State Department. She died of a heart attack in Washington, D.C., on January 22, 2022, at the age of 87.
Lynn Nesbit
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1994
Nesbit co-founded Janklow & Nesbit Associates in 1989. It is one of the largest and most powerful literary agencies in the world. In 2019 she won the Maxwell E. Perkins Award, which recognizes an editor, publisher, or agent who over the course of his or her career has discovered, nurtured, and championed writers of fiction in the United States. Lynn currently represents both fiction and nonfiction writers from Ronan Farrow to Gay Talese.
Mary Zimmerman
Distinguished Alumnae Award Recipient, 1999
Zimmerman is a writer and director of theatre specializing in the adaptation of classic stories of world literature for the stage. Her work is known for its striking visual nature, vivid storytelling, and sensitivity to the original text. She has earned national and international recognition in the form of numerous awards, Shakespeare including the Tony, Obie and Drama Desk Awards for her own Metamorphoses, which she developed at Northwestern, as well as the 1998 MacArthur Fellowship (the "Genius" grant). Other acclaimed works she adapted and directed include Journey to the West (named Best Production of the Year by Time Magazine), The Odyssey, The Arabian Nights, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Eleven Rooms of Proust, The White Snake, The Mirror of the Invisible World, Candide, The Jungle Book, Treasure Island and The Steadfast Tin Soldier.
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She is an ensemble member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Manilow Resident Director at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, and also serves as the Jaharis Family Foundation Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University.