Forbes magazine highlighted 23 NYU alumni and one incoming assistant professor in this year’s edition of its “30 Under 30” list. University community members under 30 years old earned spots on 14 of the list’s 20 categories, with remarkable contributions to their fields spanning from artificial intelligence research to media production.

The media category included five NYU alumni, including Stern alum Jacklyn Dallas for her popular YouTube channel on the tech industry, author and social media influencer Aija Mayrock, and Steinhardt alum Chloe Xiang, editor-in-chief of Keke Magazine. In an interview with WSN, Xiang said that she founded Keke Magazine as a high school student in 2017 after growing up feeling underrepresented in the media as an Asian American woman. 

“The main objective of Keke Magazine is for an honest and unfiltered reflection of women and non-binary people,” Xiang said. “It was really a grassroots organization from someone who was inspired and learned from being on the internet.”

As an NYU student, Xiang said that her communications, photography and feminist studies professors further exposed her to the misrepresentation of marginalized groups in mainstream media, inspiring the content she continued to publish in Keke Magazine. 

The magazine has published three issues and covered an array of stories related to feminism, including profiles on up-and-coming artists and advocacy for abortion rights. Keke Magazine also has a free zine library that accepts entries from feminist readers.

“Both socially and academically, being at NYU was really powerful and motivating for me,” Xiang said. “I was exposed to various media that I could use to spread information and the way that visuals and written texts could combine and be shared online.”

CAS alum Kiara Cristina Ventura was similarly inspired by the lack of representation she saw in the media to create Processa, an art studio in Queens. After graduating in 2018 with degrees in journalism and art history, Ventura was included in Forbes’ art & style list this year.

“I love art and art history and I loved learning in the classes,” Ventura said. “But at the same time, I couldn’t help notice I wasn’t learning about any Black and brown artists.” 

Since founding Processa in 2015, Ventura has focused on spotlighting artists of color and in marginalized communities. She has curated 13 exhibitions, including ones featuring Caribbean artists’ work made from materials like sand and coconuts and a meditation space filled with sculptures and installations. Now, she said she hopes to expand Processa’s international presence with exhibitions and gallery shows around the world. 

“This is advice that I usually give people that want to start curating and getting into just exhibition-making — start curating in any space you can find, literally any space that you could find,” Ventura said. “Whether that’s a living room in an apartment, whether that’s your dorm room, whether that’s a closet. You could even put together an exhibition in the digital format of a website.”

Forbes also named Tisch alum Anatola Araba, a three-dimensional animated filmmaker, and former Tisch student Aidan Cullen — who created Nova, an app to connect creative brands with freelancers — on its 2025 arts & style list. 

Justin Bui, an incoming assistant professor, was the only NYU affiliate featured in the science category. Bui was recognized for his research on the decarbonization process through electrochemical technologies, which could allow the ocean to absorb more of the atmosphere’s carbon. He will begin teaching chemical and biomedical engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering in 2026. 

In an interview with WSN, Bui explained that developing methods to both remove carbon from the atmosphere, as well as capture carbon from the ocean, are both necessary initiatives to offset the effects of global warming. He added that this technology is just a “band-aid for a larger problem” and that carbon dioxide emissions must be regulated and omitted from their root sources. 

“It’s important that the NYUs of the world exist — schools that are really interested in making sure technologies are pushed out into the real world,” Bui said. “This is a team effort. No one person is going to solve our climate crisis by themselves, and so I think just finding people with the right skills to work together on these problems is the key.” 

Contact Nikhil Shah at [email protected].