UWC‑USA’s Giulio Regeni Alumni Impact Award honors alumni who carry the college’s mission into the wider world, advancing justice, peace, and human dignity in concrete ways. The award is named for Giulio Regeni ’07, an Italian alumnus and doctoral student at Cambridge who was abducted and murdered in Egypt while researching independent trade unions there. This year marks the 10th year since Giulio was killed. His life and tragic death underscore both the courage and the risks involved in pursuing truth and social change—qualities this award seeks to recognize and keep alive in the UWC‑USA community.
One of this year’s three finalists, Amie Ferris‑Rotman ’98, has spent her career on the front lines of global journalism. A British‑American reporter and editor, she has covered Afghanistan, Russia, Ukraine, and the wider post‑Soviet region, bringing complex conflicts and human stories into sharper public view. Beyond her own bylines, Amie founded Sahar Speaks, a program that trains and publishes Afghan women journalists, opening doors in a media landscape that has often excluded them. By amplifying voices that would otherwise go unheard, she strengthens public understanding and helps ensure that women’s experiences of war, displacement, and resilience are part of the global record.
Jessica Horn ’97 has become a leading force in African feminist organizing and philanthropy. Through roles with grassroots organizations and major foundations, she has focused on women’s rights, bodily autonomy, and freedom from violence, helping build and sustain movements across the continent. Her work has included supporting women’s organizations in conflict‑affected countries, challenging harmful practices, and directing resources toward those most affected by injustice. In her leadership roles, she has pushed large institutions to listen to feminist activists on the ground, translating movement priorities into funding and policy that can improve the everyday lives of women and girls.
Pilar Maria Weiss ’94 works at the heart of movements challenging the U.S. criminal legal and immigration systems. As founder and director of Community Justice Exchange, she has helped build national infrastructure for organizers fighting criminalization, incarceration, and surveillance. She also launched and nurtured the National Bail Fund Network, now a collaboration of dozens of community bail funds that free people from pretrial and immigration detention and support protestors facing arrest. Her work helps families stay together, protects the right to dissent, and offers practical tools for communities resisting systems that disproportionately target poor people and people of color.
Together, Amie, Jessica, and Pilar illustrate the enduring impact of a UWC‑USA education. In very different fields—journalism, feminist organizing, and movement infrastructure—they draw on habits first honed in Montezuma: crossing cultural and political boundaries, listening deeply, examining power, and acting with courage. Their lives show how the UWC‑USA experience can equip alumni not only to build successful careers, but to place those careers in service of communities, human rights, and a more just, peaceful world. The winner of this year’s Giulio Regeni Alumni Impact Award will be announced at the end of April, but all three finalists already stand as powerful examples of the mission in action.