A group of accomplished University of Chicago graduates will receive 2025 Alumni Awards, recognizing their outstanding professional achievement, service to society and contributions to the UChicago community.
The awards were announced by the UChicago Alumni and the Alumni Board. This year’s honorees span a wide range of fields, including theology, LGBTQ+ advocacy, sports journalism and private equity. The recipients of the Professional Achievement Award, Early Career Achievement Award and Recent Alumni Service Award will be honored during Alumni Weekend from May 1-4.
In addition, Assoc. Prof. Emeritus Stephen Pruett-Jones and Prof. Emeritus Donald G. York, PhD’71, will both be recognized with the Norman Maclean Faculty Award for extraordinary contributions to teaching and student experience.
Learn more about the 2025 Alumni Award honorees:
Professional Achievement Award
Melina Kibbe, AB’90, MD’94, is dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, the James Carroll Flippin Professor of Medical Science and the chief health affairs officer of UVA Health. Kibbe is an experienced vascular surgeon and a researcher whose lab focuses on developing novel drug-eluting therapies for patients with vascular disease.
She has written more than 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts, review articles, and book chapters, and she holds more than 10 patents or provisional patents. She has also received 24 awards for teaching excellence as a faculty member. Her research was recognized by former President Barack Obama with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2009. Kibbe is also editor-in-chief of JAMA Surgery, which is the top surgery journal in the world. She has served as president of the Association for Academic Surgery, the Midwestern Vascular Surgical Society, the Association of VA Surgeons and Surgical Biology Club II.
Throughout her career, Kibbe has been a tireless advocate for sex-inclusive biomedical research, as well as a strong promoter for women in surgery and for surgeon scientists.
She has received numerous awards in recognition of her work, including the AMWA Gender Equity Award, AMSA Women Leaders in Medicine Award, Association of VA Surgeons Presidential Citation, UChicago’s Distinguished Service Award and most recently the Virginia Business 2023 Women in Leadership award. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
Jennifer Levi, JD’92, has been a force in LGBTQ+ civil rights law for more than 25 years at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, or GLAD Law, where she serves as senior director of transgender and queer rights. In that role, she has pioneered litigation that has reshaped legal protections for transgender people in the U.S.
A professor at Western New England University Law School who also teaches at Duke University School of Law, Levi co-edited the first book on transgender family law.
Her strategic litigation has established precedents protecting transgender rights under federal sex discrimination laws and ensuring transgender students’ access to facilities and inclusion in all educational programming. Her prison advocacy includes successfully arguing for the transfer of a transgender woman from a men’s to a women’s facility.
In 2017, she led the fight against President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender military service, and she currently spearheads two cases challenging restrictions on transgender health care. One is aimed at Alabama’s law criminalizing medical care for transgender adolescents, and another Florida’s law restricting medical care for both transgender youth and adults.
While a law student at UChicago, she was also a member of the U.S. Women’s National Rugby team, which won the first-ever Women’s Rugby World Cup.
Emilie Townes, AB’77, AM’79, DMN’82, an American Baptist clergywoman, joined the Boston University School of Theology faculty in 2024. For a decade before that, she was the dean of the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University, where she was also the University Distinguished Professor of Womanist Ethics and Society and University Distinguished Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Over the course of her career, Townes has authored or co-edited several books and essay collections through the lens of womanism, which is a theological and ethical framework centering the perspectives of Black women. She has taught at a number of institutions, including Yale Divinity School, where she was the first African American and first woman to serve as associate dean for academic affairs.
In the fall of 2005, Townes became the first Black woman elected to the presidential line of the American Academy of Religion, where she served as president in 2008. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.
In 2022, she became the first Black woman to be president of the Society of Christian Ethics. She is the founder of the Womanist Leadership Hub that seeks to be a networking hub for Black women activists, clergy, laity, organizers, scholars and students to support justice-oriented work.
Early Career Achievement Award
Sarah Langs, AB’15, is a sportswriter and podcaster who began her media career at The Chicago Maroon, where she was a writer and editor all of her four years in the College.
Upon graduation, Langs joined ESPN as a researcher, working with the program Baseball Tonight for three seasons and becoming a regular contributor to the show’s podcast with sports journalist Buster Olney. She was in the ballpark for the Cubs’ dramatic Game 7 World Series win in 2016 to clinch their first title since 1908, researching for the postgame show on ESPN.
In 2019, Langs joined Major League Baseball as a researcher and reporter, making regular appearances on MLB Network and Sportsnet New York. In July 2021, she was part of the first all-female broadcast for an MLB game. She has earned respect throughout the industry for her analysis and baseball acumen and is known for saying “baseball is the best” as she shares her love for the game, especially on social media. She was honored by the Baseball Writers Association of America’s New York chapter, of which she is a member, in 2023.
In 2024, she received the Henry Chadwick Award from the Society for American Baseball Research. For the past two years, the society has sponsored the Sarah Langs Women in Baseball Analytics Scholarship for professional development.
Jane Lopes, AB’07, is a Nashville-based sommelier, author and importer. After graduating from UChicago, Lopes has built a career in the wine and hospitality industry that has spanned countries and disciplines.
Lopes worked at New York City’s Eleven Madison Park, Nashville’s The Catbird Seat, Chicago’s The Violet Hour, and most recently as the wine director at Attica, one of Australia’s most celebrated restaurants. She was featured on Esquire Network’s 2015 television series Uncorked about six sommeliers in pursuit of the Master Sommelier title, which Lopes attained in 2018—one of fewer than 300 people ever to do so.
In 2019, she published her first book, a personal and educational guide to wine called Vignette: Stories of Life and Wine in 100 Bottles. Through this book and other writings, Jane has written about issues in the wine industry, including mental and physical health, exploitation, sexual abuse and corruption.
In 2020, Lopes and her husband Jonathan Ross co-founded their Australian wine imports company, Legend. Her second book, How to Drink Australian, coauthored with her husband, published in 2023. She also proudly sits on the board of the nonprofit The Vinguard, which works to promote equity and sustainability in the wine industry.
Recent Alumni Service Award
Aaron Guo, AB’20, is the founder of ProSights, a Y Combinator–backed platform that automates workflows for private equity firms and investment banks. Before founding ProSights, he worked in private equity at Permira and in technology investment banking at Goldman Sachs, where he also led UChicago recruiting efforts and hosted panels for College students.
Guo is the co-chair of the Careers & Connections Committee for the New York Alumni Club, where he has served on the board for more than four years. During this time, he has organized programming such as quarterly brunches, social gatherings and alumni panels in the New York City area. These efforts have helped connect alumni across professional and social contexts while encouraging the development of future alumni leaders.
Guo graduated summa cum laude from UChicago with a bachelor’s in economics and was a three-time NCAA All-American and two-time school record holder as a member of the varsity swimming team.
Tomas Sutrinaitis, AB’15, is a finance professional with expertise in business development, strategic partnerships, and private investment and lending. Currently leading the Originations and Business Development function for Origami Capital Partners—a $1.3 billion private investment fund based in Chicago—Sutrinaitis plays a pivotal role in sourcing, analyzing, and executing complex debt and equity investments.
His expertise spans venture capital, growth-stage technology, and lower middle-market private equity, where he has been instrumental in expanding Origami’s investment pipeline and fostering strategic relationships. Prior to Origami, he held key roles at Silicon Valley Bank and J.P. Morgan’s Private Bank, where he managed multibillion-dollar client portfolios and advised high-profile technology startups, entrepreneurs and institutional investors.
As a member of the board of directors for the Alumni Club of Chicago, he strengthened alumni engagement and connections among graduates. While serving on the board, he conceptualized, organized and ran the UChicago Alumni & Friends 5K Run/Walk from 2020–23, raising more than $23,000 in support of the Odyssey Scholarship program. He is also a former UChicago varsity football class captain and UAA Conference All-Academic Award winner.