Outstanding in Her Field
Tamerra Griffin (B.A., ’12) is a women’s soccer writer for The Athletic, the online sports publication of The New York Times. At SFSU, she played for the women’s soccer team.
“Looking back on it now, everything that I did at State very much informed the way that I do journalism now,” says Griffin, whose campus activities also included the Golden Gate Xpress newspaper and magazine and a spoken-word poetry club. “I still think that my journalism education at State is the best that I could have had at the time.”
Following graduate school at New York University, Griffin moved to Kenya, where she covered news across East and Southern Africa. She later switched to reporting on soccer for her lifelong love of the sport and its global influence.
“I think about soccer as a lens for global storytelling,” she says. “You can use soccer to tell a story about a nation, women’s rights, the local economy or immigration.”
’80s
Bruce Borowsky (M.A., ’89) is a filmmaker and the film commissioner of Boulder County in Colorado. He is excited about the annual Sundance Film Festival moving to Boulder and looks forward to getting Sundance involved in the Boulder community.
’90s
Myla Ramos (B.A., ’94), founder and CEO of SearchPros, is an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2025 Bay Area winner. She celebrates 20 years in business, with over 20,000 job placements in Sacramento.
’00s
Paul Yep (B.S., ’01) was appointed interim chief of the San Francisco Police Department in January. He met his wife, Mei Ling Tang (B.S., ’98), while both were students in SFSU’s College of Business.
’00s
LeRoid David (B.A., ’02) won the FIFA 26 World Cup Host City Poster Contest. The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors honored him in August with a formal resolution in recognition of his achievement.
’00s
For Poh Si Teng (B.A., ’07), our campus fostered her journalistic pursuits from the classroom to Malcolm X Plaza. She won her first Emmy Award this year as an executive producer of “Patrice: The Movie,” honored for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.
’10s
Justin Maxon (B.A., '19) is a 2025 Guggenheim fellow for his project to develop training materials for medical professionals to establish best practices for fentanyl addiction treatment. He is lecturer faculty at Cal Poly Humboldt.
Suzanne Jackson (B.A., ’66) is the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “San Francisco is my city. My parents brought me here when I was nine months old, and it’s where I had my first Art classes in college,” she tells Vogue.
Laurie Marker (attended, ’70 – ’71) is the founder and executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia.
Kenneth Fong (B.S., ’71; M.A., ’74) has funded over 20 recipients of the Kenneth S. Fong Translational Research Award. This fall, a campus symposium showcased the impact of the award, which supports research collaborations between faculty.
Tony Hanley (B.A., ’71) is a retired shipping executive. He serves as secretary of the board of directors of Heritage at the Marina, a condominium complex in San Francisco for senior citizens.
Carolyn Bass (M.A., ’80) is a San Francisco-based voiceover artist, lifelong learner, storyteller and advocate for community engagement. She contributed a chapter to “Unstoppable: Stories of Grit, Determination and Perseverance” (Successbooks, 2025).
Mike Mosher (B.A ., ’83; MFA, ’88) retired from Saginaw Valley State University, where for 24 years as an Art professor he taught what he explored at SFSU: community murals, comics and user-experience design. “San Francisco was the best place to encounter all of those!” he says.
Susannah Israel’s (B.A., ’86; MFA, ’00) sculpture work was featured at the 2025 International Visual Literacy Conference in Mexico.
Alex Carig (B.A., ’82) directed the independent film “A Long Road to Tao,” now available on Amazon Prime Video. It won the Grand Prize for Best Feature at the 2025 Marina Del Rey Film Festival. The film follows a struggling young writer and surfer who immerses himself in Taoism and Native American spirituality to try to comprehend the significance of his best friend dying of AIDS.
Lucie Faulknor (B.A., ’87) is the co-director of “Free for All: The Public Library,” a documentary that aired on the “Independent Lens” series on PBS.
Shirley Lowe (M.A., ’92) is a retiree living in San Francisco who enjoys bicycling. She was an adjunct professor of Microbiology at University of California, San Francisco.
Lisa Thompson (B.S., ’92; M.S., ’96) is a professor of Family Health Care Nursing at University of California, San Francisco.
Barbara McVeigh (B.A., ’94) is the director of “Gaza By No Other Name: Jimmy Carter’s Vision.” It screened in Dublin, Ireland, on Sept. 6. She was invited by the European Council to speak at the World Forum for Democracy in France in November 2025 about her efforts to celebrate Carter’s policies and approach to peace and diplomacy.
Kirby Wright (MFA, ’94) has recently written stories in literary magazines published by Binghamton University, Chatham University, University of Baltimore and University of Canberra in Australia. The stories are set in his home state of Hawaii.
Michael Sacramento (B.A., ’96) is a member of the 2727 Artist Co-op in Berkeley. The 2727 gallery featured his mixed-media art in its recent exhibitions “Water” and “Sense of Place.”
Michael Loleng (B.A., ’97) won the 2025 Racquet Sports Professionals Association (RSPA) NorCal Diversity Award. He is Asian American Task Force chair and Northern California chapter president of the RSPA. He also serves on the diversity, equity and inclusion committee of the U.S. Tennis Association Northern California.
Zeke Pinheiro (B.A., ’01) is an editor at Industrial Light & Magic.
Krystina Sibley (B.A., ’02) has been promoted to director of content and communications at Promova, a womanowned marketing agency driving media presence and revenue for professional services companies. Sibley credits the Department of Journalism for instilling in her excellence in writing, research and strategic thinking.
Karen Lissy Fonthal (B.S., ’03) is the CEO of INTEDCO, a company that helps individuals and institutions validate foreign degrees and navigate U.S. educational and regulatory systems. She is also president of the Orange County Women’s Entrepreneur Network.
Joseph Jelincic (B.A., ’07) is the California State University system’s associate vice chancellor for labor relations and collective bargaining.
Zach Mack (B.A., ’09) is a podcast producer, storyteller and host for Vox Media and National Public Radio’s “Embedded” and “This American Life.” He appeared on PBS’ “News Hour”
Alyssa Royce (B.A., ’13) married Zachary Leonard in March. Over 30 SFSU alumni attended their wedding in Burlingame, ranging from the Class of 1960 to the Class of 2020.
Eileen Gonzales (M.S., ’14) is an assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy at SFSU. She recently co-authored major research papers in the journals Nature and Science.
Juan Acosta (B.A., ’19) is a 2025 California Legislative LGBTQ+ Caucus Pride honoree. He is an advocate for LGBTQ+ youth mental health.
Chris Pestano (M.S., ’25) is pursuing a career in quantum computing. He is a computer systems engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Eduardo Rodriguez (B.S., ’25) is a corporate banking trainee at Tasi Bank’s San Francisco headquarters.