50 FAMOUS IU ALUMNI C-E
John Chambers Bob Chapek Internet Pioneer Disney CEO
When the internet was ascending Hammond, Indiana-born Bob from a niche service to a household Chapek grew up vacationing at utility, John T. Chambers Disney World. Just last year, headed up software company he became the CEO of the Cisco Systems as its executive entire Disney mass media and chairman and CEO. He is credited entertainment conglomerate, with steering the company into perhaps an unexpected destiny becoming a global technological for a man who, in the late 1970s, giant, growing annual revenues focused on microbiology as an from $70 million to $40 billion undergraduate at IU. over his 20 years at the He later earned his M.B.A. company (1995–2015). from Michigan State University, Chambers’ predilection for the then worked for the H.J. Heinz business of technology began Company and advertising firm right after he earned his M.B.A J. Walter Thompson before in finance and management joining Disney as the Buena Vista from the IU School of Business Home Entertainment division’s in 1975. He began his career as marketing director in 1993. a computer salesman at IBM Over the last three decades, before moving on to Wang Hammond headed up Disney’s Computers, where he became consumer products, then vice president of U.S. operations. parks and resorts—overseeing He now serves as chairman their largest expansion in the emeritus of Cisco Systems and is a company’s history—before he became CEO, right at the dawn of Photo by Jérémy Barande/Ecole member of the board of directors of Polytechnique Universiteé Paris-Saclay Quantum Metric, a Colorado-based the COVID-19 pandemic. —T.Z.T. (CC BY-SA 2.0) digital development company. Photo courtesy of The Walt Disney Company —T.Z.T.
Suzanne Collins Hunger Games Author Laverne Cox Actor & LGBTQ+ Suzanne Collins is the author of Advocate The New York Times Best-Selling The Hunger Games trilogy and Laverne Cox is probably most its recently released prequel, recognized for her role as Sophia Songbirds and Snakes. Together, Burset on the Netflix seriesOrange the books have sold more than 100 Is the New Black. In 2014, that million copies worldwide. character was named “the most A 1985 IU graduate with a double dynamic transgender character in major in telecommunications history” by Time magazine. and theater, Collins got her start Cox is the first transgender writing for children’s television. woman to star in a mainstream She worked on several Nickelodeon TV drama and the first to receive shows, including the Emmy- a Primetime Emmy nomination. nominated Clarissa Explains It All In 2014 she was included in the and The Mystery Files of Shelby annual Root 100, a list that honors Woo. The first book in her first Black “leaders, innovators, and young adult series, The Underland culture shapers” age 45 and Chronicles (also a NYT Best Seller), younger. In 2018 she received was released in 2003. the Claire Skiffington Vanguard Collins and her husband, Award from the Transgender Charles Pryor, have established an Law Center for her work for the IU scholarship for undergraduate transgender community. students majoring in theater and Cox, 49, attended IU for two drama. Pryor is also an alum of years before transferring to the school’s theater program. The Marymount Manhattan College, couple met at IU. —C.S. where she graduated with a B.F.A. Photo by Todd Plitt in dance. —C.S. Photo by Luke Fontana
82 Bloom | August/September 2021 | magbloom.com 50 FAMOUS IU ALUMNI C-E
Mark Cuban Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur extraordinaire Mark Cuban, 63, is worth more than $4 billion, placing him 655th on Forbes magazine’s 2021 World’s Billionaires List. A Pittsburgh native, Cuban worked his way through college by providing disco lessons, among other endeavors, and graduated from the IU School of Business in 1981 with a B.S. in marketing. In 1995, Cuban and fellow IU alum Todd Wagner started broadcast.com, then sold it four years later to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Cuban now owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and is a “shark” investor on the reality television show Shark Tank. He also owns film distributor Magnolia Pictures, started the Fallen Patriot Fund, and has written two books, among countless other endeavors. Cuban gifted IU Athletics $5 million in 2005 to create the Mark Cuban Center for Sports Media and Technology. —R.M.
Photo by William Foley Photo courtesy of IU Archives
Dick Enberg Janie Fricke Sportscaster Singer Dick Enberg earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in health and physical Born in South Whitley, Indiana, education at IU in the early 1960s, but singer Janie Fricke is a 1972 a class in sports broadcasting, followed graduate of IU, where she was a by announcing gigs for the Little 500 member of the Singing Hoosiers. bicycle race and Hoosier basketball and She got her professional start football, ended up defining his career. singing commercial jingles, most Enberg worked as a sportscaster notably for Coca-Cola and Red for six decades, beginning on a local Lobster (“Red Lobster, for the Los Angeles station, then gradually seafood lover in you.”). stepping up to NBC Sports, CBS Sports, Moving to Nashville, Tennessee, and ESPN before settling back into Fricke joined the Lea Jane Singers, play-by-play broadcasting for the San a vocal ensemble that backed Diego Padres. up some of the biggest names in A prosaic broadcaster who waxed country music. By age 30, she was poetic in television essays in his later one of Nashville’s most sought- years, his signature line was “Oh, my!”— after backup singers. By the 1980s, also the title of his 2004 biography. He she was dominating the charts died in 2017 at age 82. —T.Z.T. and winning awards, such as her back-to-back Female Vocalist of the Year wins from the Country Music Association in 1982 and 1983. Fricke is still active in the music industry and lives with her family in Texas. —C.S.
Courtesy photo
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