Comic Book Writer (Red Sonja, Poison Ivy)

Amy Chu may not have followed the stereotypical Asian-American woman's career path, but this self-confessed soccer mom is enjoying a life that features lots of coffee, whiskey, and Comic Con panels

Terence O'Toole Murnin AB '84

We catch up with Amy Chu MBA '99 at Wizard World in New Orleans, where the renowned writer of comics including Red Sonja, KISS, and X-Files Deviations has just delighted her fans as a guest panelist at this convention celebrating the magnificence of the ever-expanding geek universe. And while Chu’s followers may know her as co-founder of Alpha Girls Comics and recognize her work for industry heavyweights DC and Marvel, including Poison Ivy, Ant-Man, Deadpool, Sensation Comics Wonder and Wonder Woman ’77, what they probably don’t know is that Chu possesses an MBA from Harvard Business School, as well as a joint S.B., IV Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Wellesley.

Writer & Producer, Kung Fu Panda 1, 2, & 3, Trolls

By Adrian Horton AB '17

To hear him tell it, Jonathan Aibel AB '91 always had a creative bent, though it took him nearly a quarter century to learn what a spec script was. Growing up in Demarest, New Jersey, right outside Manhattan, Aibel participated in theatre in high school, then continued indulging his creative side while at Harvard. The psychology major unofficially minored in music theory and a cappella (he was a four year member of the Din & Tonics), before penning the Hasting Pudding Theatricals show with a friend in his senior year.

Poet, Essayist, and Novelist (300 Arguments)

By Adrian Horton AB '17

Sarah Manguso AB '97 did not dream of writing while growing up in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She didn’t write creatively in high school. In fact, the first time this poet, essayist, and soon-to-be novelist remembers writing—or, as she says, “consciously writing in a directed way, thinking about myself as engaging in ‘writing,’”—was in college, when she began composing short poems. The shift to poetry was part of an unexpected course change for Manguso, who arrived at Harvard from Wellesley High School with pre-med ambitions. As a “middle class townie girl,” she recalls, “the only greater achievement than getting into Harvard that my family or I could imagine [was] becoming a doctor. So I set out to become a doctor.” (photo to the left by Andy Ryan)

Agent, Producer, Studio Executive (CAA, The Aviator, MGM, Universal)

By Dayna Wilkinson

When people want to hear your opinion, you don’t sugarcoat it or manipulate them.  You tell them the unvarnished truth in a way they can absorb and embrace.

When Sandy Climan was growing up in the Bronx, no one would have thought Variety would later call him “the consummate Hollywood insider.” He was the kid who went to math camp, won science competitions and graduated first in his class from the renowned Bronx High School of Science.  

“I grew up in a lower middle class, white-and-blue collar neighborhood,” Sandy says.  “I hardly ever left the Bronx and, of course, there was no internet then. I went to the movies all the time and watched television incessantly, including great PBS programming like Masterpiece Theatre, Greek dramas and Athol Fugard plays. The only way for me to travel and explore other cultures was through books, television and movies, and they informed me about worlds I had never seen.” 

Director & Producer (The Breach, Nashville, If I Stay)

By Nicole Torres AB '11

R.J. Cutler AB '83 has had a long and varied career spanning the worlds of theater, television, and film. He spent his early years after college in the theater, first at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, and later in New York working with the likes of Steven Sondheim, Bernadette Peters, and Kevin Spacey. His passion since the first grade and throughout college was theater, and initially he had no intention of transitioning to Hollywood.

The film that would ultimately spark his Hollywood career, the award-winning The War Room based on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, emerged from his own personal interest in politics. Cutler recalls, “In 1992, I got very caught up in the presidential election, really just as a citizen, and later that year had the idea to make a documentary about Clinton’s presidential campaign. That film became The War Room, which was directed by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus and produced by myself, Wendy Ettinger and Frazer Pennebaker, and it was through that experience that I was exposed to the whole world of independent film and documentary filmmaking.”  

Director of Photography for Lighting, Pixar

written & illustrated by Susan Bin AB '16

“When I was seven years old, some adult asked—you know how adults love to ask kids that—‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ I said, ‘I want to be an artist,’  and this person crushed my dreams without realizing it. ‘You want to be an artist? You can’t make a living being an artist!’”

Seven months after graduating from Harvard, Danielle Feinberg joined Pixar in 1997. Two decades later, she has an impressive roster that includes the world’s most beloved and popular films from A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Brave. After finishing work on Brave in 2012, Danielle Feinberg was attached to the upcoming Coco as the Director of Photography for Lighting.

As Director of Photography for Lighting, Danielle is responsible for the placement of icons of light in a virtual three-dimensional space. Pixar builds universes, Danielle lights those worlds, and we, the audience, see their cinematic screen projections: underwater ribbons of light for a clownfish to dart through, the ineffably translucency of Parisian fruits, stirring atmospheric canvasses of one robot’s epic.

Orchestra Conductor, The Great Music Series & State of Art 

By Dayna Wilkinson

“I’m already in the hot seat as a twenty-eight year old conductor, but I feel incredible joy at the insanely high level of playing and extreme responsiveness of a professional orchestra.”

“Both my parents are professional musicians,” says Yuga Cohler AB '11. “My mother’s a violinist and my father’s a clarinetist so I took up those instruments—it didn’t go well.” Fortunately, those were minor bumps in the road for Yuga, who started studying piano and music theory at age three. By age twelve, his primary instruments were oboe and piano.

“Shortly after starting on the oboe, I went to a music camp called Greenwood,” he says.  “That’s when I first discovered people my age who took music seriously.  It became a social thing—people I liked were also playing music, which made me like doing it more. By the time I was in my teens, I realized music was really great.” 

Yuga was interested in many different musical genres. “I really got into Eminem, then the underground hip hop scene. Also J-pop, Top 40 and musical theater for a while. Plus I listened to tons of classical records from my dad’s collection.”

Author of DARK CHAPTER, an upcoming novel based on her experience as a survivor of assault

By Nicole Torres AB '11

It’s Friday morning in Los Angeles and mid-afternoon in London, and Winnie M. Li AB '00 and I meet over Skype to discuss her upcoming novel Dark Chapter. (Photo credit: Grace Gelder)

Born in New Jersey, Winnie Li was drawn to literature and storytelling from a very young age. In particular, she had a fascination with Celtic culture and mythology that she can pin down to a very specific memory from her childhood. “I traced it back to one incident, I would’ve been quite young, like 6 or 7. I was in a travel agency in suburban New Jersey at the time and my mom was booking a holiday to Florida or something like that. I remember sitting and looking at all these different travel brochures and I found these glossy travel brochures about Ireland and Scotland and there were all these crumbling castles and I was fascinated with it.”

Agent & Partner, United Talent Agency

by Daniel Gale-Rosen AB '10

It all started with Lawrence of Arabia. Michael Sheresky MBA ‘97 was lucky enough to see the re-release of the epic in 70mm at the Ziegfield movie palace, and he says that was what set him on the path to his current life, as agent and partner at United Talent Agency. Day to day, he “represents writers, directors, and producers, and helps them put their movies together.”

Prior to watching that film, Sheresky had been thinking about a life in politics, or on Wall Street. He studied political science in his undergraduate career, though he did try his hand at making some movies. However, he says, “I didn’t think I was, frankly, talented enough. I thought I could have been proficient at it, but I didn’t think I could be great.”

Novelist (The Lockpicker, Triplines) & Writer (Snowfall, Justified, Awake)

By Nicole Torres AB '11

Born in New York City and raised in Long Island, Leonard Chang largely credits his love of literature to his mother. Growing up, Chang read a majority of her English and American novel collections which she had brought with her from Seoul to America.

While his amateur writing career began at the age of seven writing long letters to camp friends, his ‘aha’ moment, the moment he knew he wanted to be a writer, came in high school during a memorable interaction with his best friend Joe. Perhaps during a conversation about their futures, Joe remarked that he wanted to be a writer and a lightbulb went off in Leonard’s head. He thought, “You can do that?” and from that point on the seed of desire to become a writer was planted in his brain. During high school, the two of them embarked on a mission to co-write a novel together, and while Leonard remembers it as “youthful, ambitious, and terrible,” he also remembers it as “damn fun to write.”