Whether it was pushing for policy change, making meaningful art, or helping student-athletes be their best, the following Kenyon community members earned accolades in 2023.
Jacob Yandura ’09
One month after Jacob Yandura graduated from Kenyon — and shortly after the original two-act musical “Morning’s Song” featuring his music was performed in Rosse Hall — he told Columbus Monthly that he planned to become a Broadway musical composer. Fourteen years later, he is living his Broadway dream after writing the score for the hit musical, “How To Dance In Ohio,” which premiered at the Belasco Theatre earlier this month. Based on the 2015 award-winning HBO documentary of the same name, the musical takes place at a Columbus counseling center and follows a group of autistic young adults as they prepare for a spring formal dance. The show has been praised for its inclusive and neurodiversity-affirming approach — from casting seven openly autistic actors to play the autistic lead characters (a Broadway first) to making the theatergoing experience accessible and comfortable for neurodivergent and neurotypical audience members.
Kefa Memeh ’22
Artist Kefa Memeh ’22 made a splash in the media without her name ever being mentioned. But anyone who picked up a copy of the February issue of Architectural Digest featuring the Los Angeles home of actors and producers Viola Davis and Julius Tennon couldn’t help but be struck by Memeh’s striking art displayed prominently on the wall behind the Hollywood power couple on the magazine’s cover. “This is the craziest way to start the new year and i’m just at a loss for words!” Memeh wrote on social media at the time. The native of Nigeria, who has said that she likes to incorporate Nigerian culture in her art, was a studio art major whose work was featured earlier in Kenyon Alumni Magazine.
Raya Kenney ’24
Raya Kenney attended the State of the Union in February as the guest of Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a supporter of her idea to create a memorial on federal land dedicated to the women who worked on the home front during World War II. In January, The Washington Post profiled Kenney’s pursuit of the National Memorial to the Women Who Worked on the Home Front — which started as an idea for a project in fifth grade — after President Joe Biden approved creating the memorial as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill. Now, Kenney is working on fundraising for the memorial. “I want to highlight how few women are represented in the National Mall space,” she said in the spring. “While the likelihood of that being accepted is slim, I have decided to shoot for the stars anyway.”
John Green ’00
Author John Green has a long history as leader of the Nerdfighters, the online community of fans he and his “Vlogbrother” Hank built through their YouTube videos. This year, Green lived one of the Nerdfighter mantras — “do not forget to be awesome” — as he became a prominent champion for public health, zeroing in on tuberculosis, which in 2021 infected an estimated 10.6 million people and killed 1.6 million, according to the World Health Organization. Beginning “with barely contained rage” in a July video that went viral, Green used his platform to urge drugmaker Johnson & Johnson to make generic treatment for TB available in almost every country with a high burden of tuberculosis — and it worked. Green then took his advocacy all the way to the United Nations in September. He testified about the challenge of getting treatment where it is needed most as an issue of justice and, naturally, made a video about it. We detect no fault in that star.
Leah Missik ’10
In early 2023, the State of Washington enacted groundbreaking legislation capping industrial carbon emissions and funding renewable energy projects. At the center of the discussion was Leah Missik. As the senior Washington policy manager for the nonprofit organization Climate Solutions, Missik advocates for renewable energy policy changes in her state. On NPR’s All Things Considered, Missik discussed the projects — biofuels and fleets of electric buses, for example — that the new law will fund. And in a Seattle Times op-ed, Missik argued that oil industry profits, not climate regulations, push energy prices upward. Missik travels the state frequently to share her climate and transportation expertise — from previewing electric street sweepers to joining a climate change panel hosted by Gov. Jay Inslee. “Washingtonians deserve better,” Missik wrote in her op-ed. “We can and should demand better consumer protections alongside our progress toward a clean future: something the legislature should pursue.”
Bill Watterson ’80
“Long ago, the forest was dark and deep.” So begins “The Mysteries,” a new “fable for grown ups” written by Bill Watterson ’80 in collaboration with artist John Kascht. Widely beloved for his comic strip “Calvin and Hobbes,” published from 1985-1995, and known to value a quiet life away from the press, this book is Watterson’s first major publication in decades. Those used to Watterson’s cartooning style will find “The Mysteries” to be a departure — clean, recognizable characters and poignant witticisms are replaced with ambiguity and murky shadows. (Kascht worked figures from clay to pair with Watterson’s paintings and backgrounds). In a video timed to release with the book’s October launch, clips of model-making, collaging and sketching illuminate the process of creating visuals for Watterson’s self-declared “unillustratable” story. A New York Times, USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller, The New Yorker notes that “the story finds a distinctive and unsettling path to its final three words, which are “happily ever after.’”
Shaka Smart ’99
The head men’s basketball coach at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Shaka Smart was named national coach of the year by the Associated Press in March. That honor was a slam dunk after the Golden Eagles won the Big East regular-season title and tournament championship with a squad that was picked to finish ninth in the 11-team league. In addressing the media, Smart gave a big shout out to Bill Brown, his first coach at Kenyon, saying, ”[H]e sparked something in me that has me sitting up here today.” The all-time assists leader for Kenyon — where he was a three-year team captain — Smart followed things up this season by beating top-ranked Kansas in November and leading Marquette to a top-10 ranking. He is a former coach at the University of Texas, where he guided the Longhorns to a Big 12 tournament title, and Virginia Commonwealth University, whose team he led to an improbable Final Four in 2011.
Arjav Ezekiel ’10
Arjav Ezekiel’s restaurant Birdie’s in Austin, Texas, has been named the 2023 Restaurant of the Year by Food & Wine Magazine and was featured on “CBS Saturday Morning,” earning him a place on our list for the second time in three years. Opened in 2021 with wife and partner Tracy Malechek-Ezekiel — she is chef, he is beverage director and “front-of-house dream weaver,” according to Food & Wine — Birdie’s stands out as much for its seasonal and flavorful menu and “deeply interesting and approachable” wine program as for its co-owners’ dedication to work-life balance. In a departure from standard restaurant industry practices, Birdie’s team members receive health insurance, paid family leave and four weeks of paid vacation. The perpetual lines out the door suggest that pairing superior food and wine with a focus on staff well-being can indeed be a recipe for success.
Aspen Golann ’10
Studio art major Aspen Golann — a furniture maker, artist and educator whose work draws from the intersections of iconic American furniture practices, identity politics and contemporary craft — was recognized this year for her efforts to encourage marginalized makers to engage with traditional craft practices. Trained as a 17th-19th century woodworker, the Maine resident was honored in May by the prestigious Maxwell/Hanrahan Awards in Craft, which comes with a $100,000 prize. And in September, Golann’s work was spotlighted in House Beautiful magazine. Golann is the founder of the Chairmakers Toolbox, a nonprofit that mentors historically excluded chair and tool makers with a mission of addressing the barriers to education and community to build the future of green woodworking, which uses unseasoned timber.
Anthony Hecht
Nearly two decades after his death — and during the centennial of his birth — Pulitzer Prize-winner and former poet laureate Anthony Hecht received renewed praise for his contribution to literature from the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal with the release of two new books this year: “Late Romance: Anthony Hecht—A Poet's Life” by David Yezzi (St. Martin’s Press) and “Collected Poems of Anthony Hecht: Including Late and Uncollected Work” (Knopf). As an infantryman in World War II, Hecht bore witness to the horrors of the Holocaust, which he would later evoke in his poetry. Known for his mastery of formal verse, having studied at Kenyon with John Crowe Ransom as a special student from 1946-47, Hecht once described his own work as having “a certain amount of darkness.” But it was his ability to so succinctly capture both the dark and light that continues to affirm Hecht’s place among the finest poets of the 20th century.
Adam Gilson, Yvonne Johnson, Abigail Serfass, Ryan E. Smith, Carolyn Ten Eyck ’18, Molly Vogel ’00 and Elizabeth Weinstein contributed reporting.