Our Shining Lights
Here is a sampling of Lawrentians—some recent grads, some many years removed from their time on campus—who represent our shining lights. This list could go on for many pages, but we wanted to highlight 20 who represent (or represented) the brilliance we see from our alumni every day.
The former Lawrence College football player would become the third coach in the history of the Green Bay Packers. His tenure lasted from 1954 to 1957. While his teams did not put up impressive records, he was instrumental in drafting players who would go on to establish the Packers as a dynasty in the 1960s, among them Forrest Gregg, Bart Starr, Paul Hornung, and Ray Nitschke. He later returned to the Packers as a scout. He died in 1983.
The founder and chair of Old World Industries, president of Caerus Foundation, Inc., and founder of Three Lakes Foundation, has been a generous philanthropist for decades and has long advocated for education initiatives. Hurvis was a member of the Lawrence Board of Trustees from 1990-2002 and was elected trustee emeritus in 2003. He has served Lawrence as a class agent and More Light! campaign event volunteer as well as a member of the steering and gift committees for his 40th reunion. He has generously supported numerous Lawrence projects and initiatives over the years, among them the Warch Campus Center, Hurvis Crossing land bridge, the Lawrence Fellows Program, the Posse Program and conservatory ensemble tours.
Hurvis has received numerous awards including the Gertrude B. Jupp Outstanding Service Award, and the BUILDer for Life award.
She served prominent roles in the federal government during the 1980s and ’90s. She was named to the Postal Rate Commission in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter and served as its chair from 1981 to 1989. She was then named chair of the Federal Trade Commission in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush, serving until 1995. She died in 2004. Photo credit: Kris Peterson
He was one of the giants of biochemistry. His research on the structure of ribosomes earned him the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Thomas A. Steitz Hall of Science on the Lawrence campus was named in his honor in 2010. He died in 2018.
A longtime television director and producer in Los Angeles, she worked on such iconic shows as Family Ties, Murphy Brown, Northern Exposure, Spin City, Arrested Development, The Bernie Mac Show, Gilmore Girls, and The Middle. She’s been nominated for an Emmy Award four times and was nominated for two and won the 2002 OFTA for Best Direction in a Comedy Series for her work on Gilmore Girls.
An icon of the opera world, Duesing has been an in-demand baritone for five decades. He’s performed on the world’s biggest stages and took home a Grammy Award in 1993.
The music buff turned his love of the blues into Alligator Records, a Chicago-based record label that marked its 50th year in 2021. He is a legend in the world of the blues, recording and supporting such artists as Albert Collins, Marcia Ball, Robert Cray, Koko Taylor, Shemekia Copeland, and Charlie Musselwhite, among others.
He is a former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, having served from 2004 to 2008. He is the first African American to serve on the state’s Supreme Court.
The longtime journalist—he reported for the Boston Globe and Associated Press, covering five presidential elections—flew around the world (and then some) after becoming the senior communications officer for Secretary of State John Kerry, who had been appointed by President Barack Obama. He served from 2013 to 2017, accompanying Kerry as he traveled the globe. Johnson would document the journey in a 2019 book, Window Seat on the World.
A successful businesswoman and politician, she would serve as Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor from 2003 to 2011. She co-founded Issue One, a nonprofit focused on reducing the influence of well-financed special interests in politics, and served as president and CEO of Americans for Campaign Reform.
A New York Times-bestselling author, she writes comics for Marvel and has been honored many times over for her Monstress comics series from Image Comics. Her Marvel comics have included X-23, Black Widow, Han Solo, Dark Wolverine, and Astonishing X-Men. The Monstress series has earned her multiple Hugo Awards, British Fantasy Awards, the Harvey Award, and five Eisner Awards. She also teaches comic book writing at MIT.
The longtime television journalist for ABC News currently serves as a senior national correspondent for the network. He has worked as a chief foreign correspondent and chief White House correspondent and previously co-anchored ABC’s Nightline news program.
The actor and director has had a long and impressive Hollywood career, starring in such films as Singles, The Amazing Spider-Man, Longtime Companion, Roger Dodger, and Secret Lives of Dentists. He also had a number of recurring roles in television, including House of Cards. He’s directed Big Night, Off the Map, and Company Retreat. His father was the legendary actor George C. Scott, and his mother was the legendary actress Colleen Dewhurst, a Milwaukee-Downer alumna and former Lawrence trustee.
A gifted lyric soprano, she has earned worldwide praise, performing on the biggest opera stages in the world. A longtime resident of Germany, she continues to deliver stunning performances on both sides of the Atlantic.
The senior vice president of finance and CFO for African Development Bank Group in South Africa, she was recently listed as one of the 100 most influential African women in 2020 by Avance Media.
A native of India, she set her 2019 debut novel, The Far Field, in Bangalore, a metropolitan area in southern India where she grew up, and the more remote, mountainous regions of Kashmir. The novel was immediately lauded by critics, earning stellar praise from major publications, being long-listed for the Carnegie medal in fiction, and short-listed for the JCB Prize for Literature, among other honors.
Acclaimed Bhutanese filmmaker, and 2022 Academy Award nominee, he receiving an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Lawrence in 2024. Dorji’s debut film, Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, drew international acclaim, earning major awards at film festivals and receiving a 2022 Oscar nomination in the Best International Feature Film category. Dorji followed that with the release in 2023 of The Monk and the Gun, a satire also filmed in Bhutan. It won awards at multiple film festivals and was shortlisted for a 2024 Oscar. Variety magazine selected it as the fifth best film of 2023 in its annual best films of the year feature.