Luminaries return to campus each year to share their advice, insights, and perspective on leading successful, meaningful lives. In doing so, the Luminaries model the ways in which a liberal arts education can lead to many different careers and forms of success.
Read more about our Spring 2026 College Luminaries below.
Erica Anderson has spent more than 15 years operating at the intersection of media, technology, and consumer brands—driving impact inside some of the world’s most influential companies, including Twitter, Google, CBS News, MTV News, and Vox Media. A few of Anderson's notable accomplishments include being employee #300 at Twitter, where they worked on a global effort to integrate Twitter into newsrooms; working for Katie Couric at CBS Evening News; and traveling the world for Google on a mission to combat misinformation.
Now, as a founder, Anderson is in their fourth year bootstrapping The New Savant, an indie fragrance brand, which has found an immediate product market fit in a $44B global industry.
Kevin Asbell is the chief operating officer for the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, where he oversees all aspects of the association’s business operations. His responsibilities include staff management, parade development, event operations, strategic partnerships, community relations, and the maintenance of technology platforms. Additionally, Asbell handles all legal matters for the association, including contract negotiation and drafting, and coordination with outside counsel as necessary.
Elizabeth C. Babcock is a distinguished museum executive and cultural anthropologist serving as president and chief executive officer of the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. She assumed this leadership role in October 2025 following a global search and unanimous approval by the Adler’s Board of Trustees.
Babcock brings more than two decades of strategic leadership in major cultural and educational institutions. Most recently, she was the founding director of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in Washington, D.C., where she led the development of vision, campaigns, and national partnerships for the landmark national museum.
Sougwen 愫君 Chung (b. 1985) is a Chinese-Canadian artist and researcher, widely regarded as a pioneer in human–machine collaboration. Their work MEMORY (Drawing Operations Unit: Generation_2) is part of the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the first AI model to be collected by a major cultural institution.
Chung's multidisciplinary practice spans installation, drawing, performance, and sculpture in dialogue with robotics, machine learning, and bio-sensing. Through these interwoven forms, they investigate the shifting relationships between the gesture of the hand and the gesture of the machine. Their work conceives collaboration as an evolving coaesthetic system, in which human, machine, and environment co-produce open choreographies of perception and meaning.
If you have any questions about the Luminaries Program, either as an interested student or alum, please e-mail Director of Alumni Engagement Vanessa Cloe.
