Summertime Look Back: The NJIT Alumni Who Exemplified Success
NJIT alumni have gone on to start their own businesses, become forces in a variety of industries and make an impact on society. In this third of a six-part series, we take a look at several of the Highlander graduates we profiled during the past few summers. Click on the headlines below.
Four-Star Power: From ROTC to the Pentagon, the High-Flying Career of Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski
At a ceremony at the Women in Military Service Memorial, Ellen M. Pawlikowski '78, was promoted to the rank of four-star general in the U.S. Air Force. Just the third woman in the branch’s history to receive a fourth star, Pawlikowski directs the 80,000-person Air Force Materiel Command, whose stated mission is to “equip the Air Force for world-dominant airpower.”
Joe Marazzo '80: The Ice Cream Man Cometh
It’s a sweet treat, but for Joe Marazzo ’80 it’s so much more and has been since he was a child. Indeed, ice cream not only represents a family legacy for the NJIT civil engineering alum, but also the means by which he paid his way through college.
Jheryl Wilson: NJIT Basketball Legend, NBA Digital Media Globetrotter
When Edward Jheryl Wilson graduated from NJIT in 2011, he did so in heroic fashion — etching his name in university lore by leading the Highlanders to their first winning season since joining the elite ranks of Division I basketball in 2006 — and becoming NJIT’s first Division I 1,000-point scorer in the process. However, Wilson’s successful journey in top-level athletics was not without adversity from the start, nor would his journey be quite over after he left NJIT.
The Time of His Life: Alumnus Jonathan Ferrer Designs Modern Luxury Watches
Jonathan Ferrer sits in a cushy armchair inside the bustling coffee shop on the NJIT campus. The watch designer is in his element, casually scrolling through his phone while sipping a cup of joe amid the harmony of coffee beans grinding and milk gurgling. Ferrer’s idea to meet up at Tech Café to chat about his enterprise is no coincidence. Brew Watch Co. offers a luxe line of contemporary watches that are born out of a love of coffee and draw inspiration from espresso machines.
David Isbitski '98, Chief Evangelist for Amazon Alexa, on the Power of Voice
Four years ago, David Isbitski ’98 was the first person hired by Amazon for its newly created Alexa skills kit group. Today – tens of thousands of skills later – he is the voice-activated technology’s chief evangelist, and one of the keynote speakers at the VOICE 2019 Conference. In this Q&A, Isbitski describes his early embrace of technology and his belief in its power to restore human interactions increasingly lost in a mobile, fast-paced world.
Playing His Cards Right: Kalpesh G. Kapadia M.S. '97
When he was 22 years old, Kalpesh G. Kapadia immigrated to the United States from Bombay, India. A commuter student who lived in Kearny, Kapadia attended NJIT on a full scholarship, with cooperative work at the pharmaceutical company Schering-Plough. However, like many other international students, he struggled to establish his credit profile. Thus, the inspiration to offer a means by which international students can obtain and build credit was derived from his own personal experience with the credit system in the U.S.
