Melissa Avilés-Ramos, a City College graduate, is raising student achievement as chancellor of New York City public schools. Helen Arteaga, the CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst and a graduate of CUNY’s Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, is expanding New Yorkers’ access to quality health care. And Zach Reyes, a Queens College graduate who is the lead designer for streetwear brand Only NY, is giving us new ways to celebrate our city’s unmistakable spirit.
They are all among CUNY’s second annual Alumni 50 Under 50 – a remarkable group who together demonstrate the impact our graduates have on our city’s economic and civic life, its culture, creativity and relentless forward motion.
Many of this year’s honorees are paying forward the opportunities they received at CUNY by opening doors for others. Kalani Leifer, a Lehman College graduate, founded an organization called COOP Careers to help underemployed graduates of public colleges nationwide land better jobs. And Monique Francis, a four-time CUNY graduate who now leads CUNY Citizenship Now!, is expanding access to legal services for thousands of immigrant New Yorkers, just as the program once supported her own path to citizenship.
Other members of the 2025 Alumni 50 Under 50 are powering New York’s economy: College of Staten Island graduate Ilir Sela built Slice, a digital pizza ordering platform that now helps more than 14,000 family-owned pizzerias — like those operated by his father and grandfather — harness technology to compete for a healthy slice of the pie.
This year’s honorees include city and state legislators, healthcare innovators, tech builders, content creators, artists, designers, legal advocates, entrepreneurs and cultural innovators. These graduates show how our colleges expand possibilities for the entire city.
And they are a reflection of CUNY’s larger alumni community — in New York and around the world, more than 1.6 million strong. Many see their alumni connection as a lifelong engagement with CUNY and a chance to mentor, advise, hire and invest in each other and the next generation of CUNY graduates.
Through networking and mentorship events, a centralized CUNY Alumni Network, our new “Alumni Insider” newsletter and the annual Alumni 50 Under 50 honors, we are tapping CUNY’s reach to show current students and recent graduates that a CUNY education continues to open doors and offer a supportive community long after graduation.
And while our 50 Under 50 list spotlights the rising generation, CUNY’s alumni story spans generations. Its inspiring stories include those of graduates like David Yuen Kwong Lu, a Vietnam veteran who returned to college in his 50s and graduated from New York City College of Technology in 1999. He died in 2022 and this month, his estate gifted City Tech $2.86 million as a thank you for changing Yuen’s life. It was a striking example of the connection many CUNY graduates maintain with their colleges and the university.
A CUNY degree isn’t the finish line — it’s the springboard. Our alumni are proof that when New York invests in accessible, affordable, high-quality higher education, the returns on that investment ripple across our city.
Are you a CUNY grad? If so, don’t wait to get involved! Join the CUNY Alumni Network’s LinkedIn and Facebook groups and follow @cunyalumni on Instagram.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the United States.
