This year marks the 20th anniversary of UW Communication’s Alumni Hall of Fame and Alumni of Distinction event, to be held November 7.
Each year, the Department of Communication honors outstanding alumni who are making a difference in their careers and communities by inducting them into the Department’s Alumni Hall of Fame. This award is for outstanding alumni who have distinguished themselves through acts of service and their professional achievements since graduating from the University of Washington. We also recognize our exceptional recent graduates through the CommLeader award, Excellence in Mentorship Award, and Early Career Award.
We will share highlights from the ceremony later this quarter.
Meet this year’s honorees!
2024 Alumni Hall of Fame inductees
Susannah Frame is the Chief Investigative Reporter and Head of Journalist Development at KING 5. Her stories have exposed many wrongs, including homeland security breaches, injustices faced by injured workers, the violation of civil rights of people with disabilities and the mismanagement of nuclear waste.
Susannah has won many of the most prestigious national awards that honor journalism in the public interest. Those include three George Foster Peabody Awards, three national Edward R. Murrow Awards, a national Emmy Award, and a du-Pont Columbia Award, considered the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. She’s also won more than 70 regional journalism awards, including 30 regional Emmys, as well as several civic awards such as Governmental Reporter of the Year from the Municipal League.
Susannah’s investigations have led to numerous changes in public policy, congressional and Department of Justice investigations, federal indictments and created new state laws.
Susannah is a frequent guest lecturer for groups such as the Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc., the Society of Professional Journalists, the Washington State Bar Association, and the University of Washington Department of Communication.
Austin Jenkins covers infrastructure and the disruption industry for Pluribus News, a digital-only startup focused on emerging policy trends in states and state legislatures. Austin is also the longtime host of “Inside Olympia” on TVW, the state’s C-SPAN network. Previously, Austin spent nearly two decades covering the Washington State legislature and state politics for the Northwest News Network, a regional consortium of NPR stations. His reporting has been recognized with awards from the Association of Capitol Reporters and Editors, Public Radio News Directors Incorporated and the Society of Professional Journalists. Before joining the Northwest News Network, Austin worked as a television reporter in Seattle, Portland, Boise, Casper and Bozeman. He earned his B.A. in government from Connecticut College and his Master in Communication from the Communication Leadership program at the University of Washington.
Victor Pickard is the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where he co-directs the Media, Inequality & Change (MIC) Center. Previously he taught at NYU and the University of Virginia and held visiting appointments at Cornell, Goldsmiths, and LSE. Prior to his academic positions, he worked on media policy in Washington, D.C. as a Senior Research Fellow at the think tank New America and as a Policy Fellow for Congresswoman Diane Watson. Pickard’s research on media history, media activism, and media’s normative role in democratic societies has been published in more than 150 articles, essays, and book chapters. He has authored or edited six books, including the award-winning monographs America’s Battle for Media Democracy and Democracy Without Journalism? Pickard chairs the board of directors for the media reform organization Free Press and serves as a judge for the annual Izzy Awards for independent journalism. He often writes for popular venues such as The Guardian, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Jacobin, and The Nation, and is frequently interviewed about his research in leading news organizations such as NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
2024 Alumni of Distinction Honorees
Gaylene Meyer is the Vice President of Global Marketing and Demand at Impinj, the leading provider of RAIN RFID products and solutions for the Internet of Things. Gaylene serves on the Gage Academy of Art board of trustees to support the mission of making quality art education accessible to everyone. Prior to Impinj, she led marketing for the retail and manufacturing industries at Lexmark International and was Director of Marketing at AccessVia. Gaylene holds a Master’s degree in communication from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Arts from Seattle Pacific University. She loves spending time outdoors with family and friends in all seasons.
Erika is currently the Director of Academic Services in the Department of Communication with over a decade’s experience in academic advising at the University of Washington. In this role Erika is focused on managing advising for prospective and current undergraduate students within the Communication and Journalism and Public Interest Communication (JPIC) majors, curriculum planning, and programming for the access, retention, and completion of student’s degrees. Erika is truly passionate about education and serving communities around her, especially with the development and advancement in higher education.
Erika received her Master of Education in Leadership in Higher Education from the UW College of Education. Prior to her graduate work, Erika received her Bachelor of Arts in Communication with minors in Education, Learning, and Society (ELS) and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies (GWSS) from UW. Outside of work her hobbies include boxing, playing pinball, and exploring new places.