It’s a Friday afternoon in the middle of January, and Tunji Balogun ’04 is multi-tasking. He has one hand on the wheel of his car and a Zoom call going on his phone, as he navigates to a local In-N-Out Burger for his first real meal of the day. His schedule as the CEO and chairman of Def Jam Recordings does this, sometimes: keeps him busy enough that he can’t fit in lunch until after 3 p.m.

On this particular Friday, though, Los Angeles is still reeling from the spate of wildfires that have burned up tens of thousands of acres of land across the county. The sky is blue, but you can still taste the ash in the air. So as he drives, Balogun is reflecting on his place in the order of things: what it means to dedicate your life and career to creativity when the world is quite literally burning around you.

“I would say I’ve dedicated my career to trying to uplift forward-thinking, cutting-edge artists making Black music,” he says. To him, Black music is a loose and expansive category that cuts across genres, encompassing dance, R&B and pop as well as dancehall, reggae and hip-hop.

Balogun says that the fires that surround his city bring his vision of the power of art into clear focus. “In a chaotic, wild world, people need healthy forms of escape,” he says. “Music is one of humanity’s creations that brings us closer together [and] serves as a healing force. My approach has been to try to do my part and leave a legacy that I can be proud of.”
He’s done plenty of legacy-building in the first decade of his career. Since his first internship at Warner Records, which Balogun landed while still at Pomona, he’s helped launch the careers of artists including Kendrick Lamar, Khalid, Bryson Tiller, Doja Cat and SZA. Now his role at Def Jam means he’s in charge of shepherding the work of hip-hop luminaries such as LL Cool J and Public Enemy’s Chuck D as well as newcomers like Elmiene, who Balogun says has “one of the best voices I’ve heard in my life.”

But becoming one of music’s most influential tastemakers wasn’t the plan when he first got into the business. During that Warner internship, Balogun wasn’t thinking about eventually elevating into the executive suite—he wanted to learn the ropes in order to break through himself as a rapper.

But as soon as he got into the boardroom, Balogun realized that most of the other people there were business majors, not music obsessives. He, on the other hand, was already scouring the internet for up-and-coming acts at a time when that wasn’t yet common. He had an enthusiast’s deep-rooted knowledge combined with a fan’s earnest love of the work. And as Balogun surveyed the landscape around him, it became clear that he probably could have a bigger impact helping facilitate others’ careers than narrowly focusing on his own.

He felt like his liberal arts background made him particularly well-suited to the task. “I’m a studious, well-educated Nigerian-American kid who went to schools like Deerfield and Pomona,” he says now. “I’ve always kind of had dual citizenship. I’m in the creative community, but I also can go into board meetings and talk about quarterly finance projections.” That flexibility made him an ideal “translator” between corporate and creative.

He also felt a responsibility as a Black man in an industry that has historically exploited Black artists. “Something I noticed when I got my first internship was [that] there are a lot of artists who look like me, but not a lot of executives,” he recalls. “So there’s always been a goal in the back of my head to be an advocate and a strong voice for people who don’t really have a lot of people advocating for them.”

He’s been able to do that for many artists over the years—but often at the cost of his own creative pursuits. Dedicating himself to his job means that Balogun rarely makes his own music anymore. So he scratches that particular itch by collaborating with the artists he signs. It doesn’t always happen—Balogun never wants to insert his opinion where it’s not welcome. But “there are artists who I get really close with, and there would be a level of comfort where they knew that I made music, and then I could contribute as a songwriter,” Balogun says.

Sometimes that goes far enough that he earns an official songwriting credit, as he did on K CAMP’s double-platinum hit “Comfortable.” But more often he’s just in the studio spitballing, being part of the give-and-take of making something new. “Most of the time I won’t ask for or take credit,” Balogun acknowledges. “You’re my artist. If you win, I win.”

After his time at Warner Brothers, Balogun found his way to A&R Interscope, and moved from there to RCA, he went on what he calls “a special run of signings,” hooking up with artists including SZA, Childish Gambino and H.E.R. He went on to start his own label, Keep Cool, in 2018. That work earned him the chance to come aboard at Def Jam in 2022.

The idea scared him at first. He had a good thing going where he was, and the idea of taking on more responsibility—particularly on the business side—was intimidating. But ultimately Balogun opted into the opportunity to put his imprint on such a storied label. “Def Jam is one of the last labels that has a mandate to uphold Black music,” he says. “I just felt like I was being called to do the role. Spiritually it’s kind of what I’ve been trying to do this whole time.”

That transition also thrust Balogun from a largely behind-the-scenes role at RCA into a very bright spotlight at Def Jam. “RCA is an amazing label, and I had a great time working there, but no one’s checking that it is living up to the culture of what it’s supposed to be,” he says. “Things at Def Jam are scrutinized. People are checking to see the types of signings I’m making. I appreciate the accountability of it.”

The scrutiny remains intense, but he’s also come to appreciate the pressure. It reminds him of just how much Def Jam’s work matters to people, and the importance of continuous self-growth. “I tell my artists [that] you can’t get comfortable and think nothing’s going to change, because you blink and everything has shifted,” he says. “You have to remain hungry and uncomfortable in order to evolve.”

In addition to the specific pressure of life at Def Jam, Balogun also has to weather the storms of a business model that’s trying to figure out where it stands as album sales figures slump and races for TikTok virality reign. But he insists that he’s not one to chase trends, instead relying on finding good artists who make interesting work, and being patient in helping them find their audience. “I want to work with people who are staunchly themselves, no matter the platform,” Balogun says. “And then they figure out, ‘OK, how do I be myself on this new platform, as opposed to [changing] myself to fit the platform?’”

To that end, he’s less interested in digital dominance and more focused on finding fans wherever they are. “In music right now, success happens when creativity meets community,” he says. “If an artist can actually galvanize people who care about what they’re doing, those people become the ambassadors for their songs, for their albums, for their shows. They help spread your music. They put it on their stories, they run your fan accounts. You usually have to start small, but I find that most of the people who are successful in this era understand that it’s not about reaching the masses first. It’s about cultivating your own little world and double, triple, quadrupling down on it.”

As an example of this kind of fandom-building, Balogun points to rapper Doja Cat, who—long before the pandemic inspired many musicians to perform directly for fans online—was streaming on Instagram Live two or three times a week and making songs in her bedroom. “She really did build a bulletproof community of people who will never leave her, and then layered bigger and bigger songs on top of that.” he says.

It’s clear that as much as Balogun understands a balance sheet, everything he does comes from a deep-rooted passion for music and creativity. But even the hottest passions can burn out, especially when you have to engage with them in a professional setting, day after day. How does he keep the spark alive?

“I have to constantly revert to ‘Tunji the fan,’ and remember that, while all the industry stuff is cool, at the end of the day it’s really about the artist and the fan,” he says. “I have to remind myself not to overthink it. You won’t get burnt out [if] you actually love the stuff that you’re working on.”

When the non-music parts of the job threaten to take over, Balogun makes sure to follow up long days in the office with long nights in his studio staying on top of the latest themes and explorations in music. Some of his breakout picks from his current crop of artists at Def Jam include R&B singer Muni Long and Fridayy, who Balogun describes as a “hybrid artist” mixing R&B, Afrobeat and gospel. He’s also excited about Coco Jones, as well as LiAngelo Ball, whose brothers Lonzo and LaMelo are both NBA players. “He’s gonna have one of the best years in hip-hop,” Balogun predicts.

At this point in our conversation, Balogun has long since picked up his In-N-Out Burger; it’s cooling in the car next to him. More calls are coming through, and texts about an artist’s song leaking. It’s time for him to return to his work: the creative part, the corporate part, all of it. He’s tired, but he seems certain that he’ll be able to keep his compass pointed north, so to speak, even as he faces the challenges of a difficult job in an uncertain industry.

“I’ve been a fan, I’ve been an artist, I’ve been an executive, and all of those different experiences have informed my approach,” Balogun says. “Deep down, I’m still a fan, and still an artist. I’m not putting music together or making records or anything, but I think I have the heart and the soul of an artist.”

Mac Marnett ’04 (photo by Chris Black)

By his senior year at Pomona, Mac Barnett ’04 knew what kind of stories captivated children.

What he didn’t know was how to write them.

Barnett, an English major fascinated by complex poetry and other pieces of fiction, spent his college summers as a camp counselor in Berkeley, California, reading to preschoolers. One book in particular, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszka, kindled Barnett’s love for children’s literature.

“I thought, ‘This is the kind of thing I love and that I study, but these 4-year-olds aren’t going to get it,’” Barnett recalls. “But when I read this book to them, they were getting the most sophisticated jokes. That’s when I figured out that kids were the best audience for the kind of stories that I liked.”

Impassioned his senior year to write for children, Barnett convinced the late author and Pomona Professor David Foster Wallace to let him into his creative writing class. On top of challenging his students to shed their writing habits, Barnett says, Wallace underscored the importance of the writer-reader relationship.

“He had such a focus on taking care of the reader,” Barnett recalls. “Him explaining how you, at a desk alone in a room, should have your audience in mind and consider how a sentence or plot twist is going over with the reader—it just made so much sense, especially for picture books, which are usually read out loud to kids. Consider the adult reading and the kid listening.”

Twenty years after graduating from Pomona, Barnett has written more than 60 books for children and won myriad awards.

In February, The New York Times best-selling author was appointed the ninth National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress. During his two-year term, Barnett will travel the country championing children’s picture books as a quintessential American art form.

“Taking children’s books seriously requires us to take children seriously,” he says. “Children are misunderstood, overlooked, dismissed, not listened to—and really caring about the books they read requires us to see them for who they really are [as] dimensional human beings who feel deeply and think in interesting and complicated ways.”

Learning how to think

Barnett wanted to be a writer long before leaving the Bay Area for Pomona in the early 2000s.

He started writing poetry in middle school, then plays and novels as he got older. At Pomona, he wrote sketch comedy and developed an interest in journalism and nonfiction that he once thought would turn into a future in academic writing.

As Barnett pondered his career prospects, he says Pomona professors like Paul Saint-Amour encouraged him to be skeptical, thoughtful and curious.

“Pomona taught me how to think from different perspectives, to look at problems in different ways, to let go of certainty, which I think is often the enemy of literature,” Barnett adds. “I would be a much less interesting writer if I hadn’t gone to Pomona.”

One day his senior year, Barnett mentioned to a Pitzer College friend that in the summer he’d discovered the book Stinky Cheese Man while at camp. The friend was Scieszka’s daughter, who introduced Barnett to her father shortly thereafter.

In 2008, Scieszka was named the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. A year later, Scieszka helped Barnett publish his first book, Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem.

Barnett says that, when he left Pomona, he told himself he would take a year and try to write a picture book. If it didn’t work out, he would go back to get a Ph.D. somewhere.

“Even when I got my third book published,” he says, “I didn’t think writing would be a career.”

Mac Barnett ’04, seen here at his inauguration as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, draws inspiration from art, music and theatre, and incorporates the complexities of those mediums into his stories. 
(Shawn Miller/Library of Congress)

Writing for young readers

Barnett learned early in his career to listen to children.

Writing for kids and adults is similar, he says, in that both appreciate the great themes of literature—love, jealousy, betrayal, discovery. Barnett hit his stride as an author when he started focusing on concerns children have and asking young readers questions rather than answering them.

In 2017, Barnett published The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse—the picture book he says epitomizes his approach to writing.

“What’s powerful about picture books is that they can go very deep very fast,” he says. “It’s a short form of literature—32 pages, sometimes 40—and not a lot of words per page. But it can get to some of life’s deepest questions, and I feel I did that [with The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse].”

Barnett draws inspiration from art, music and theatre, and incorporates the complexities of those creative mediums into his stories. He says that, because children tend to be insulated from much of the world, children’s books tend to feel cloistered from the rest of literary culture—but that the best ones are sophisticated, thought-provoking and challenging.

“As adults, when we encounter something we don’t understand, we often push it aside because it makes us feel stupid,” he says. “But kids just bravely charge into challenging texts. It’s really inspiring to watch.”

With more than 5 million copies sold and a stop-motion animated series on Apple TV+ based on his and co-creator Jon Klassen’s Shapes series of picture books, Barnett recognizes the responsibility he has in writing for a time in a young reader’s life.

As National Ambassador, he has the platform to enlighten adults on the power of children’s books and the brilliance of the kids who read them. He says that he appreciates living in the space of early childhood, likening it to a train station where kids are constantly passing through.

“I’m sitting there [with my] violin … [trying] to play them a beautiful piece of music that makes sense in that moment,” he says. “Maybe they’ll remember the tune when they get where they’re going, but even if they don’t, all that matters is that I played a good piece while they were there.”

Growing up as a Boston Red Sox fan, Melissa Hooke ’19 never imagined herself celebrating a championship at Yankee Stadium. Yet there she was, cheering as the “Commissioner’s Trophy” was raised into a beautiful October night sky in the Bronx. Hooke, a senior quantitative analyst with the Los Angeles Dodgers, had just become a World Series champion.

Strangely enough, baseball wasn’t even her second favorite sport growing up. Hooke was recruited for basketball but also played soccer at Pomona. “I was looking at small liberal arts schools in New England, then visited Pomona and fell in love with campus,” she says. “Last minute, before early decision deadlines, I applied.”

She played midfield in soccer and guard in basketball, sometimes juggling both seasons. “Especially with our [soccer] team—we made the NCAA tournament a couple of times, so I’d join basketball midseason and have to catch up fast.”

Though an accomplished athlete, Hooke prioritized academics. “For me, it was always school first and then sports as an add-on.”

Like many incoming first years, Hooke wasn’t sure what she wanted to major in at Pomona, but after taking math and psychology courses, she ultimately declared as a math major.

“It was really my junior fall semester when I took a class with Jo Hardin [that] I decided that I really did love math and that there were career paths that attracted me,” she says.

Hooke’s time in the math department also brought her in contact with Associate Professor Gabe Chandler, a former Sagehens baseball coach who built an impressive pipeline to Major League Baseball—not for athletes, but for data analysts. Alongside his colleagues, Chandler has seen a remarkable number of graduates land roles in professional baseball analytics. Though he became Hooke’s thesis advisor, he never pushed her toward the sport.

“I don’t think I ever mentioned working in baseball, other than [sharing that] such career paths exist, as we’ve had a lot of alumni working in that space,” Chandler says.

Hooke and Chandler’s connection extended beyond academics. Athletics took a backseat for Hooke after knee injuries ended her college career, but she joined Chandler’s intramural basketball team, “which made a deep run in the playoffs, with Melissa hitting at least one game-winner,” Chandler recalls.

Academically, Hooke thrived under Chandler’s mentorship, earning Best Paper at the 2020 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Aerospace Conference for her thesis on Bayesian modeling.

A junior-year internship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology introduced Hooke to aerospace analytics, leading to a full-time offer before her graduation in 2019. While her foray into aerospace wasn’t necessarily expected, the position fit like a glove.

“I was working on early mission concepts and designs,” Hooke says. “Basically, they’d come up with some crazy idea and say, ‘we want to fly a probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere and figure out what the composition is. And we want to fly these four science instruments.’ I would help the team come up with that architecture and estimate the cost based on previously flown historical NASA missions.”

Hooke spent five years at JPL, enjoying the space industry before an opportunity with the Dodgers emerged: A former JPL colleague working for the Dodgers and aware of her sports background sent her a job listing and “wouldn’t let [her] get away with not applying.”

Hooke started with the Dodgers near the end of the 2023 season, just as the team finished with the third-best regular-season record, only to be eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. Heading into 2024, expectations were high.

Among Hooke’s duties as part of the 2023-24 analytics team: crunching the numbers to evaluate effectiveness of pitchers lower in the Dodgers’ depth chart.

“I think this year was a challenging year for the Dodgers, in some ways, with all the expectations. Obviously, the team dealt with a lot of injuries. And as an analytics department, we had experienced a few disappointing seasons leading up to this. So, going into the playoffs, there’s a lot of angst in the office. People are really nervous. A lot of people are too nervous to watch the games.”

Hooke’s Dodgers job is about removing emotions from decision-making in areas
such as player evaluation, game strategy and team management. She primarily works on pitcher evaluation.

“Math has pushed the game of baseball forward. As we get more data, we’re able to uncover more about why certain players are good,” she explains. “For pitching mechanics, we track pitcher movement, and teams can use that data to extract information about delivery mechanics—when a delivery leads to better outcomes, worse outcomes or even injury. That’s how we’re helping teams move forward.”

While analytics can clash with instinct and tradition, Hooke sees growing acceptance of its role.

“At the Dodgers, the coaches [and] executives really buy into it,” she says. “We have a culture of accepting it, and that trickles down to the players.”

That buy-in led to another successful regular season as the Dodgers finished with the best record in the MLB. But injuries left their pitching staff short-handed in the postseason. Part of Hooke’s job was to identify pitchers in the lower ranks who could contribute to a World Series-winning team.

Melissa Hooke ’19 at Dodgers–Yankees game in New York.

The Dodgers made it to the World Series, and Hooke found herself on a team-chartered plane heading to New York. After falling behind 5-0 in Game 5, she recalled the team’s resolve.

“I think we kind of just said ‘well, we’ll get it done in L.A.’ And then, as the fifth inning progressed and we started coming back, we said ‘let’s just finish this off.’”

The Dodgers did finish it off, winning 7-6, and Hooke became a World Series champion.

“It was a bit of relief, but also just pent-up from the last few years,” she says. “Having a disappointing postseason ending before, everyone expected us to [disappoint again]. It was a celebration. It was different being in New York, but I’m glad that we were because it just tied together that magical experience.”

After college Desiree (Golen) Wicht ’08 created a bestselling Tetris app, launched a pop-up restaurant startup, scrubbed the decks of John Kerry’s $100 million yacht and then quit the landlocked life entirely in 2014 when, within three months of meeting her partner Jordan Wicht, she decided to travel the globe in a 50-year-old, 30-foot sailboat—having never before hoisted a single jib.

Over the last decade the Wichts have cataloged the trials and tribulations of boat life through weekly YouTube videos as “Project Atticus,” with roughly 300,000 subscribers following their adventures doing everything from spearing hogfish in Belize, to fleeing Turkish warships, to spending the pandemic off-grid in Panama, to giving birth to their daughter Isabella on the island of Malta.

“We went on this adventure because we wanted the freedom to be able to go anywhere from the comfort of our economical, sustainable, floating home,” Desiree says. “As the tiny-home mantra goes, ‘the world gets a lot bigger when you’re living small.’”

Desiree (Golen) Wicht ’08 and her husband Jordan Wicht spent more than half of the last decade on their 30-foot sailboat Atticus, braving hurricanes, Turkish warships and even pirates.

Along the way, Desiree transformed from a 20-something who’d never touched a screwdriver, to a seasoned seafarer bartering her boat-repair skills for groceries. She and Jordan had to wear an array of hats ranging from carpentry to amateur meteorology, all while dealing with unusual professional hazards like running out of water and evading Honduran pirates. (The team bootstrapped the 10-year project via merchandise sales, video sponsors, several side hustles and thousands of annual donations from followers on YouTube and Patreon.)

“We operated on the adage that, in 20 years, we’d likely be more disappointed by the things that we didn’t do than by the things we did,” says Desiree.

Desiree (Golen) Wicht ’08 on bow of Atticus sailboat

As of this fall, the Wichts have returned to solid ground—a decision brought about by the imminent birth of their second daughter Scarlett in January of 2025. After a few months exploring different areas of Appalachia, the couple decided to settle in Bryson City, North Carolina, nestled in the Smoky Mountains—and they continue to film and release weekly videos as they build a mountain homestead DIY-style. While Desiree has no regrets about their time on the water, she says that she’s very happy to be back on dry land for this next chapter of life.

“I always thought of myself as a traveler who needed to see and experience the world to feel fulfilled,” she says.“But what surprised me the most about our travels is that after a while I started to really understand how special my own home, my own family, and my own country is to me. Now I’m excited to make roots, without feeling like I’m missing out on what’s ‘out there’ anymore.”