“I’ve taken what I learned in that rehearsal room about respect and group dynamics into every people-sharing-space situation since,” says AMY GOLDWASSER, who in this issue profiles Aaron Feinstein ’01, M.F.A. ’04, founder of the neurodiverse theater group Actionplay in New York City. “It’s about encouraging each individual’s particular obsessions and uniquely weird and wonderful point of view, rather than trying to make anyone conform to the whole. The unexpected is not only expected but celebrated.” Goldwasser has edited and written for publications that include The New Yorker, Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler, and she is the founder of the New York naming and creative strategy studio Ghost of Honor. She has taught in high schools and universities, and since the 2007 publication of her first book, RED: Teenage Girls in America Write On What Fires Up Their Lives Today, she has led writing workshops for young people.

Award-winning Latina illustrator LORIS LORA created the colorful art for our story on UCLA’s wide-ranging efforts to make its campus the healthiest in the nation. She was impressed when she learned about the many contributions UCLA makes toward fostering a healthier community, both in Westwood and all across Southern California. A multidisciplinary artist, Lora has collaborated with a wide range of clients, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Brain & Life magazine and Sierra magazine. She has received recognition from the Society of Illustrators and the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, and she was the recipient of Youth Illustrator Honor in 2022 Pura Belpré honors for May Your Life Be Deliciosa, by Michael Genhart, and another in 2023 for Phenomenal AOC: The Roots and Rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by Anika Aldamuy Denise.

Locally based photographer SPENCER LOWELL toured a host of UCLA sites to capture images of the valuable cultural artifacts being preserved by some of the university’s most dedicated scholars. The treasure hunt took him to the UCLA Library Preservation and Conservation Department’s lab, where, he says, “I was captivated by an original first edition of Dracula with a note from the author, Bram Stoker, signed in 1899.” From there, Lowell was off to the Film & Television Archive, where extreme measures are taken to protect flammable celluloid film, including dividing the vaults to prevent a fire from destroying the entire collection. In the ethnomusicology department, he was able to listen to tape recordings by ethnomusicologists in the field. Lowell’s work —which explores the connections between technology, science and art — has appeared in National Geographic, Time, Wired and The New York Times. He has collaborated with Apple, IBM, Meta and other clients, and he is currently working on his first book, titled Tomorrow’s Yesterday.

The goal of our Forward Thinker column is to have two great minds — a seasoned interviewer and a trailblazing UCLA academic — come together for a conversation we all want to eavesdrop on. In this issue, writer and educator JOSEPH EARL THOMAS provides just that in his conversation with UCLA philosophy professor Paul Taylor about Black representation in cinema, among other topics. “I’m always interested in how Black thought operates under different disciplinary umbrellas and across mediums toward the more unified task,” Thomas says. “I was reminded while working on this story specifically, that there continues to be an inexhaustible wealth of inquiry within the objects most of us would otherwise discard.” Thomas is the author of Sink, a memoir longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; the novel God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, which in December won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize; and the forthcoming story collection Leviathan Beach. A contributor to The Paris Review, among other publications, Thomas teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College and courses in Black studies and video games at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.

“As a longtime resident of Los Angeles, I’ve seen the homelessness crisis visibly worsen across the city,” says ROBERT ITO, who in this issue profiles Bruin Lourdes Castro Ramírez, who was handpicked by L.A. mayor Karen Bass to address — and offer solutions for — this difficult issue, and who has recently taken on a new role to do it. “One reads about people working to increase affordable housing and to get folks off the streets, but you rarely get to meet one of them,” Ito says. “I found Lourdes to be incredibly warm and down to earth. I also got a taste of just how much work and sweat goes into what can be a thankless and often misunderstood job.” A veteran arts contributor to The New York Times, Ito served for a decade as an editor at Los Angeles Magazine. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, The California Sunday Magazine, Mother Jones and Alta Journal.

“I love the peculiar challenge,” says award-winning photographer and writer GIONCARLO VALENTINE, “of navigating the personas and personalities of public-facing artists, performers and thinkers.” Valentine trained his lens on just such a man for this assignment, UCLA’s Presidential Professor of Philosophy and this issue’s Forward Thinker, Paul Taylor. Valentine’s photographic work examines issues faced by marginalized populations, most often focusing on the experiences of Black/LGBTQIA+ communities. As an essayist, he aims to unpack personal histories, agitate notions around gender and identity, and highlight the contributions of Black artists. Valentine’s work has been collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art, and his photos have appeared on the covers of Rolling Stone, Esquire, Variety and WSJ Magazine, as well as within the pages of The New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, American Vogue and People. He also writes about photography for The New Yorker.

Read more from UCLA Magazine’s Winter 2025 issue.