Five Alumni Named to Crain’s Chicago Business ‘40 Under 40’
Five Northwestern University alumni have been named to Crain’s Chicago Business “40 Under 40” Class of 2022.
The honorees, all leaders in health care, public policy, law, and marketing, were selected by a committee of Chicago-based executives. Also recognized is Jong Yoon Lee, software engineering advisor in the University’s Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics.
Alumni honorees are:
- Bradley Akubuiro ’11
- Erin Amico ’11 MBA
- Drew Beres ’13 JD
- Samen Vohra ’04
- Deborah Witzburg ’10 JD
Bradley Akubuiro ’11: Calm amid the Storm
A nationally recognized expert and columnist whose views have been published in Business Insider, Forbes, and Inc. Magazine, Akubuiro received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, where he currently lectures and serves on the Board of Advisers.
Drawn to communications and advocacy as a Northwestern student, Akubuiro introduced himself to the Reverend Jesse Jackson at a press conference and went on to do public policy research for the Rainbow Push Coalition, an international human and civil rights organization.
Today, Akubuiro is a partner and Chicago office head of Bully Pulpit Interactive (BPI), a communications agency founded by leaders of former President Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. He was recruited to BPI from Boeing, where as chief spokesman and head of global media relations, he handled the 2020 return to service of the 737 Max after two fatal crashes.
“People are looking for stability,” he said. “You don’t have all the answers. But people need to have confidence in you to get them the right solution.”
Learn more about Bradley Akubuiro
Erin Amico ’11 MBA: Curious by Nature
In 2022, Amico became the first African American and third woman to lead the 165-year-old Chicago Academy of Sciences/Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in the Chicago neighborhood of Lincoln Park. In addition to earning an MBA in marketing from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, she holds a master’s from Cambridge University and a bachelor’s in international studies from Middlebury College.
In a sense, leading the museum is a dream job for the native Chicagoan after a career spent largely in tech and marketing. The daughter of a neurologist, Amico would engage in dinner-table discussions with her father about science, and Jane Goodall was her childhood hero.
She’s still learning at the Notebaert, a hub for the study of Chicago and the Midwest’s vast biodiversity. “That’s been really rewarding,” she said. She plans to put her tech experience to use by expanding the museum’s audience through digital platforms.
Amico is also cognizant of the milestone she has achieved as the first Black woman to be CEO of the Notebaert. She feels a sense of duty, she said, “to try to be a role model to future generations of leaders, especially in institutions across Chicago.”
Drew Beres ’13 JD: Law, Finance, and Public Policy
Beres is a cofounder and managing partner of Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres LLC, a boutique corporate law firm. Before and after graduating from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, he worked in Chicago’s City Hall for Ron Huberman, chief of staff for then Mayor Richard M. Daley, and as general counsel to city Treasurer Kurt Summers. He followed Huberman to Chicago Public Schools, where he worked to reduce violence in the city’s schools.
In addition to his law degree from Northwestern, he holds a master’s from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s in political science and English from the University of Michigan.
Samen Vohra ’04: Focusing on Public Health
Public health—always a challenge—became even more fraught with the COVID-19 pandemic and then the emerging threat of monkeypox. Even so, Vohra “couldn’t say no” when Governor JB Pritzker ’93 JD asked him in 2022 to lead the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Describing Vohra as a leader in state and national health policy, Pritzker said, “His experience and education transcend sectors and fields, bringing a well-rounded perspective to this agency.”
A graduate of Northwestern with a bachelor’s in political science and science in human culture, Vohra went on to earn dual degrees in law and medicine from Southern Illinois University (SIU). While completing his residency in pediatrics at University of Chicago Medicine, he also earned a master’s in public policy there. After residency, he was a practicing pediatrician at SIU Medicine and founding chair of the college’s department of population science and policy.
“It was hard to always grasp what a job looked like, so I’ve moved more to what kind of impact I want to make,” Vohra said. “Now I’m in a position where I can be in the room when big decisions from a state or federal perspective are being made.”
Deborah Witzburg ’10 JD: Seeking Systemic Change
With her bachelor’s degree in anthropology in hand from Brown University, Witzburg—a Massachusetts native—headed west to Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. She wanted to be in a big city, she said, “and I wanted to go somewhere that I thought was serious about public service work.”
That focus on public service and how law can play a positive role in civic life led in 2022 to her appointment to lead Chicago’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), in essence the city’s top internal watchdog. She came to the position from that of deputy IG for public safety, a post she held in the aftermath of the shooting of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police.
Witzburg believes her study of human behavior and culture serves her well. Her job is to get “insiders” to talk and to use what she learns to enable systemic change. “The city of Chicago operates within a deficit of legitimacy,” she said. “It’s a decades-old problem.”
After graduating from Northwestern Pritzker Law, Witzburg went to work in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, where she learned a big lesson: Not only can one person make a difference, but “you can make a difference from within the system.”
Read more about Deborah Witzburg
Jong Yoon Lee: Innovating Where Healthcare Meets Technology
While he was still at the University of Illinois, Lee became an undergraduate research assistant with Rogers Research Group, a biotech startup spun out of the lab of Northwestern’s John Rogers, the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics (QSIB) at Northwestern.
QSIB research focuses on wearable technology to improve patient monitoring, care, and outcomes. “The fact that I would be able to directly impact lives really got me to the health-care world,” said Lee, who collaborates with QSIB post-docs, graduate students, and clinical researchers to develop wireless bio-sensors.
After his graduation from Illinois, he was a cofounder, along with Rogers, of Sibel Health and the company’s principal software engineer. In June, he was named chief technology officer.
Lee has been instrumental in developing Sibel’s wearable sensors, allowing physicians to remotely monitor patients’ vital signs—heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, and more. In 2021, the company received premarketing clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration for its ANNE One, a flexible, wireless vital signs monitoring platform.