Recent grads make their mark
A look at alumni from various schools and colleges who who are pushing the boundaries in their specific fields.
Wendell Willkie once said “education is the mother of leadership.” Every year, the UO hands out degrees to the next generation of innovators, scholars, educators, and general difference-makers. Many of them credit the UO and their specific school of learning—of which the UO has nine colleges in total—with giving them the skills to move forward in their lives and careers. We highlight nine recent graduates who are pushing the boundaries in their specific fields and making their mark.
College of Arts and Sciences
Rudy Omri, MS ’16 (geography)
Masrudy Omri’s passion for sustainability started with making maps. As a GE in the InfoGraphics Lab he helped create a major project: tracking wildlife migrations across Wyoming. The project, called Wild Migrations: Atlas of Wyoming’s Ungulates, was a huge success, later landing him a summer internship with the New York Times.
Through that internship, he explored the connection between graphics journalism and cartography and eventually made his way to Singapore to networking and gaining experience. After a few years working on top geography projects focusing on sustainability. Putting the mapmaking skills he developed in the lab at the UO, Omri now works at Planet, where he helps customers use satellite images for crucial purposes such as detecting early wildfire hot spots.
“It’s not just a matter of making beautiful things,” Omri says. “Mapmaking is about getting an accurate dataset and being precise.”
Charles H. Lundquist College of Business
Harrison Stevens, BS ’20 (business administration) and Eduardo Olivares, class of 2022 (advertising)
With a shared love for thrifting, Harrison Stevens and current student Eduardo Olivares combined their skills to create N.E.S.T (Neighborhood Eugene Sustainability Team) in January 2021. Across from the Duck Store, the pair have curated the largest selection of vintage UO apparel, including unique and hard-to-find pieces.
Founded on Steven’s belief that “the T-shirts of tomorrow are the T-shirts of today,” N.E.S.T was built from the ground up, without investors or support from relatives. Pieces from the collection have been spotted on the backs of De’Anthony Thomas, Jaylan Jeffers, and Sedona Prince, among others.
Harrison Stevens (left), Eduardo Olivares (right); Photo credit: Kevin Wang, Daily Emerald
College of Design
Tracie Jackson, BA ’17 (industrial and product design)
At age 14, Tracie Jackson saw the Nike corporation’s N7 logo for the first time and instantly knew that she wanted to become an N7 designer. A fourth-generation Native artist raised on Navajo Reservations in Northern Arizona, she now focuses on culture, sport, and design as the leader of the N7 design team in Beaverton.
Jackson has led the creative direction for many of N7’s collections including their 2019 holiday collaboration with Pendleton Woolen Mills where portions of the proceeds benefit the N7 and American Indian College funds. She has been a speaker on Native issues at the Teen Vogue Summit, where she explored the concept of the Modern Matriarch, and in 2021, started her own online shop called Rezilient Soles.
College of Education
Tyler Sumpter, MED ’21 (curriculum and teaching)
Tyler Sumpter joined the Sapsik’wałá master’s program for the representation, but she didn’t have another Native American instructor until her sophomore year of college. In a video from Education Week Sumpter said she “wanted to be that visible person who looks like (the students she teaches), who came from similar places and knows where they’re coming from.”
Sumpter teaches history at the QUileute Tribal School in La Push, Washington. She hopes to create more opportunities for her students to participate in the cultural activities that she missed out on as a kid, and dreams of someday becoming a professor who teaches other native people about education, like those who inspired her through the Sapsik’wałá program.
Robert D. Clark Honors College
Namratha Somayajula, BA ’17 (Clark Honors College, international studies)
Long before she could articulate her advocacy for human rights, Namratha Somayajula was witnessing injustices firsthand. When her family temporarily moved to India in 2005, she became aware of the importance of water rights after seeing individuals barred from water access following the monsoon season.
After meaningful experiences with the UO’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program as well as a fellowship for ReThink Media, Somayajula now works for Human Rights Watch, an international organization that has investigated human rights issues in more than 100 countries. She has helped prepare reports on the deregulation of the coal industry and its effects on worker’s health and access to clean water in Appalachian coal towns. Her focus is assisting researchers working on poverty, inequality, and corporate accountability issues as they pursue legal advocacy and policy changes, and she frequently writes about environmental justice and worker’s rights.
College of Music and Dance
Katie Scherman, MFA ’15 (dance)
A former teaching fellow, winner of the UO’s 2015 Graduate Emerging Artist Award, and a dancer who has held multiple residencies all over the country, Scherman’s choreography is making waves across the globe. From 2017 to 2018, she was a BodyVox Resident Artist in Portland, where she premiered “To Have it All,” before launching her individual project, Katie Sherman + Artists, where she hinges on collaboration, movement research, and artistic contribution.
Focusing primarily on contemporary ballet with philosophies inspired by Alonzo King and Piña Bausch, Scherman is a guest teacher at Studio Architanz in Tokyo, Japan. Her teachings value individuality, artistic risk-taking, curiosity, and problem-solving and her work “three” was a New Dance Asia prize winner. She works to help students find their autonomy and potential through movement while dreaming of one day opening her own company.
School of Law
Anne Marie Burke, JD ’21
Anne Marie Burke is a first-generation law student and Chinese adoptee from the one-child policy who is making waves as the new Spurs Sports and Entertainment legal associate where she advises various departments on the latest laws and policies. She is proving that women and people from minority groups can be successful in the white, male-dominated sports industry.
During her time at Oregon Law, she held internships with the UO Athletic Compliance Department and an externship with the Pac-12 Conference. In addition, she served as a staff editor for the Legal Research and Writing Program, where she published “Raising the Bar: Increasing Protection for Athletes in the Olympic Movement from Sexual Harassment and Abuse,” which was published in the Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport. All three years of law school, she held a representative position on the Student Bar Association and the Dean’s Student Advisory Committee where she advocated for fellow students. Burke is passionate about fighting against social injustice and racial discrimination, and has most recently been a Minoru Yasui Fellow championing these efforts.
Graduate School
Emily Darchuk, MBA ’18
Emily Darchuk’s work in the MBA program taught her a lot about how to convert ideas into real-world solutions. That’s why she founded Wheyward Spirit, a company that turns natural waste from the dairy industry into a delightful alcoholic beverage that helps save the planet while you drink it.
“It all stemmed from a New Venture class. You learn about identifying a problem and a value proposition and I came into the program knowing this was something I could do and the class was a catalyst to go for it,” says Darchuk.
Her company has been featured in Forbes and Inc. Magazine and, since graduating, Durchuk has been working full-time building the brand, educating others about where their alcohol comes from, and working to network and pitch her company around the world. Her next move includes building a team, finding investments, and identifying the steps to make alcohol alternatives like hers a commercial success.