If you’ve been at IUP for longer than a day, you already know that Chad Hurley, co-founder and former CEO of YouTube, is an alum of our humble university. Hurley graduated in 1999, launched YouTube in 2005, graced the cover of Forbes in 2006 and Parade magazine in 2007. And while we all love the “YouTube Guy,” there are other IUP alumni who have gone on to do great and important things.
With this in mind, lets look at a couple other notable alumni; actress Trisha Rae Stahl and CEO Stephen J. Pasierb.
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Have you heard of the Partnership for a Drug Free America? Of course you have; its a very popular non-profit organization that runs campaigns against teenager drug and alcohol abuse in the United States. The New York based organization, now called The Partnership at drugfree.org, was founded in 1985 and is best known for the ‘This is your brain on drugs’ tv advertisements. Today the CEO of this notable non-profit is IUP alum Stephen J. Pasierb. Pasierb was an honors graduate in 1986 with a M.ed in Communications Media and a B.S in Criminology. He also serves on the board of directors of the Treatment Research Institute and the national advisory committee of Darkness To Light. Pasierb was elected to the American Advertising Federation Hall of Achievement in 2003. In 2008 he received the IUP Distinguished Alumni Award.
Are you a Gleek? If so, then you know our next Campus Celebrity, Trisha Rae Stahl. She plays Millie Rose on Fox’s teenage musical Glee. As Millie Rose, Stahl plays a poverty stricken mother and lunchlady at McKinley whose undying support and loyalty for her daughter Marley, gives Marley the strength to join the glee club despite her family’s shortcomings.
The talented Stahl graduated from IUP in 1998 with a degree in Theatrical Performance. She also has a Masters degree in Special Education from National University in Sherman Oaks, California. Stahl shared her story with IUP last fall and spoke fondly of her time here.
“We were very close with the professors,” she says, “spending lots of time with them in the theater and in their homes. It was a close-knit family, but they demanded professionalism.”
Other places you may have seen Stahl is on ER or Punk’d. She was also in the horror film Trailer Park of Terror, based on the Imperium Comics of the same name.
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As for our friend Chad Hurley, we love our “YouTube Guy” and the platform he helped to create that allows us to watch and share videos globally. Hurley and his partner Steve Chen are at it again with the website Zeen.com which is currently in beta mode. According to the site, “Zeens are portable, bite-sized pieces of content that are easy to make and fun to share.” In other words Zeen.com is a place where you can create and share magazines on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and GooglePlus. You can visit Zeen.com here and start your own magazine now.
IUP time and again has been seen as an acronym for I Usually Party. But for these successful alumni, IUP could easily stand for I Usually Prosper.
images courtesy of:
mashable.com
iup.edu
drugfree.org
trisharaestahl.com
teksocial.com