Congratulations to the Tisch alumni named on the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 List! The annual list highlights today's brightest young entrepreneurs, leaders, and stars.
This year, six Tisch alumni were recognized across four categories: Art & Style, Games, Hollywood & Entertainment, and Music. See the Tisch alumni below and click here for the full list.
Art & Style
Anatola Araba '21 (BFA, Kanbar Institute, Film & TV)
Anatola Araba is a filmmaker and founder of her studio, Reimagine Story Lab. Her films and multimedia creations have been exhibited at the MoMA and she recently made history when her art was sent to space on NASA's first Moon mission since 1972. The project, "Afro Algorithms," was a 3D animated short film in the Afrofuturist genre that explored artificial intelligence and bias.
Aidan Cullen (Photography & Imaging)
Aidan Cullen and Alex Gruszynski cofounded Nova, an app that initially started as a private Instagram page sharing job postings for creative freelancers. Since launching the app this year, the two have connected creatives in 250 cities around the world, leading to 17,000 new jobs. Nova has raised $1.9 million in pre-seed funding.
Games
Noelle Mazurek '18 (BFA, NYU Game Center)
Noelle Mazurek is the game producer for characters on "Diablo IV," a bestselling action RPG made by Blizzard Entertainment. For the game's "Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred" expansion, she led production for the player rewards & customization initiative and the art for its new player class. Mazurek founded the corporate LGBTQ+ group at Blizzard's New York office, and mentors early-career developers from marginalized communities. She was recognized by Future Class at The Game Awards, as a Next Gen Leader by the IDGA Foundation, and was a finalist for the Game Developer of the Year award at The GameHers Awards in 2024.
Hollywood & Entertainment
Phillip Braun '17 (BFA, Kanbar Institute, Film & TV)
Phillip Braun runs development and production for Mucho Mas Media, an independent studio that "empowers and supports the stories of Latino communities and filmmakers." With Mucho Mas, he produced the films "Rosario" and "Jenni," and executive produced the Netflix film "The Long Game," which premiered at SXSW, and Amazon Prime's "The Black Demon." He has several projects in development, including a remake of the 1987 Chicano classic "La Bamba"; "Myrtis," based on the Texas Monthly article "The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo"; and the slasher film "Zeus," among others.
Music
Danny Garcia '19 (BFA, Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music)
In 2023, Danny Garcia launched SongTools, a marketing automation platform designed to help emerging artists take promotion into their own hands. The NYU alum has successfully raised $3.8 million in funding through a combination of accelerator, angel investor, and venture capital for the platform offering artists the tools needed to improve SEO, launch landing pages for branding, and organize campaign assets through tiered subscription options. For $5 a day, users can have their music added to playlists. $10 a day unlocks more advanced digital marketing campaign options.
Zoe Wrenn (Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music)
Self-taught coder Zoe Wrenn played around with an AI-driven software she built from scratch and created a song called "Hailey" in 2020. Unexpectedly, it went No.2 on Billboard's Digital Chart and garnered over 30 millions plays. Today, that same software—upgraded with eight proprietary machine learning models—is available to artists everywhere who can use it to play around with melodies, get assistance brainstorming lyrics and self-produce their music. Called Tamber, the "Adobe Creative Suite of music" has attracted investors like M13 and Rackhouse VC and secured $3 million in funding in its first round.
*We apologize for any omissions. Please send edits or additions to tsoa.alumni@nyu.edu.