Melissa Avilés-Ramos, a Metropolis Faculty graduate, is elevating scholar achievement as chancellor of New York Metropolis public faculties. Helen Arteaga, the CEO of NYC Well being + Hospitals/Elmhurst and a graduate of CUNY’s Graduate College of Public Well being and Well being Coverage, is increasing New Yorkers’ entry to high quality well being care. And Zach Reyes, a Queens Faculty graduate who’s the lead designer for streetwear model Solely NY, is giving us new methods to rejoice our metropolis’s unmistakable spirit.
They’re all amongst CUNY’s second annual Alumni 50 Underneath 50 – a exceptional group who collectively exhibit the affect our graduates have on our metropolis’s financial and civic life, its tradition, creativity and relentless ahead movement.
Lots of this 12 months’s honorees are paying ahead the alternatives they obtained at CUNY by opening doorways for others. Kalani Leifer, a Lehman Faculty graduate, based a corporation referred to as COOP Careers to assist underemployed graduates of public schools nationwide land higher jobs. And Monique Francis, a four-time CUNY graduate who now leads CUNY Citizenship Now!, is increasing entry to authorized companies for hundreds of immigrant New Yorkers, simply as this system as soon as supported her personal path to citizenship.
Different members of the 2025 Alumni 50 Underneath 50 are powering New York’s financial system: Faculty of Staten Island graduate Ilir Sela constructed Slice, a digital pizza ordering platform that now helps greater than 14,000 family-owned pizzerias — like these operated by his father and grandfather — harness expertise to compete for a wholesome slice of the pie.
This 12 months’s honorees embrace metropolis and state legislators, healthcare innovators, tech builders, content material creators, artists, designers, authorized advocates, entrepreneurs and cultural innovators. These graduates present how our schools broaden prospects for the complete metropolis.
And they’re a mirrored image of CUNY’s bigger alumni neighborhood — in New York and around the globe, greater than 1.6 million robust. Many see their alumni connection as a lifelong engagement with CUNY and an opportunity to mentor, advise, rent and put money into one another and the subsequent technology of CUNY graduates.
And whereas our 50 Underneath 50 record spotlights the rising technology, CUNY’s alumni story spans generations. Its inspiring tales embrace these of graduates like David Yuen Kwong Lu, a Vietnam veteran who returned to varsity in his 50s and graduated from New York Metropolis Faculty of Know-how in 1999. He died in 2022 and this month, his property gifted Metropolis Tech $2.86 million as a thanks for altering Yuen’s life. It was a putting instance of the connection many CUNY graduates keep with their schools and the college.
A CUNY diploma isn’t the end line — it’s the springboard. Our alumni are proof that when New York invests in accessible, inexpensive, high-quality larger training, the returns on that funding ripple throughout our metropolis.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The Metropolis College of New York (CUNY), the biggest city public college system in america.
