Class Notes

2 minutes with:

Asylum seekers realize there are not enough supplies for everyone.

Gregory Bull (Jour’91), Associated Press photographer

Bull started covering the U.S.-Mexico border as a newspaper photographer in 1994. In May, he was part of an AP team that won a Pulitzer Prize for how they covered migrants’ journeys into the United States.

Where is this photo set?
Hundreds of asylum seekers were caught between Tijuana and San Diego in 2023, when the pandemic-era health order that allowed the United States to turn away migrants at the border expired.

This picture was taken as migrants started to realize there were not enough donated supplies for everybody. People were frantically but politely pleading for blankets. My hope, as I shot this, was that it might convey that sense of disorder and urgency we were seeing all along the border.

How was the photo made?
A photo like this is more about connecting with people—achieving a level of trust to where you can kind of disappear and wait for those elements you need to convey that feeling of urgency. Technically, you need a wide enough angle of view to allow for a larger “stage.”

What makes it work?
The bars in the wall provide a dependable vertical pattern, so it was a matter of looking for diagonals to break that up. The woman’s hand at right brought this picture together. But design elements aside, I think this picture mostly works because of the look of despair on the face of the woman at center. For me, she embodied the overall emotion people were grappling with.

Photo by Gregory Bull (Jour’91)��of The Associated Press

Jill Painter Lopez (Jour’94), Reporter and analyst for CBS/KCAL Los Angeles

Lopez was the only local journalist granted an interview with Caitlin Clark when she accepted the Wooden Award for outstanding collegiate basketball player this spring.

How did you score the interview?
It goes back to my CU journalism days. We were always taught about developing your sources and being aware. I knew the Wooden Award executives and watched the schedule, and so that’s
how I got it.

How does interviewing someone like Clark change how you prepare?
I don’t think it did—the research you do for an interview should be the same, whether that’s a 13-year-old golfer or the most polarizing player in basketball.

Your three favorite athlete interviews.
Kobe Bryant, John Elway, Tiger Woods.

Favorite college memory?
The CU-Nebraska game in 1991. I grew up on Broncos football, my family had season tickets, we love football—and I can’t believe I left at halftime because it was below freezing. It ended up in a 19-19 tie.

Favorite place to visit in Colorado?
Fort Collins—not because of Colorado State! It’s where I grew up. I love to get back to Boulder every year, but Fort Collins is my favorite.

Best part of your job?
Telling people’s stories. I love to bring out what makes people unique. I’ve been doing it for a long time, and I still love it.

Huck Sorock (StratComm’23), Co-founder and CEO of Refr Sports

As a CMCI student, Sorock created Refr Sports, which digitizes how youth sports leagues schedule, hire and pay referees. He took second prize in CU Boulder’s 2024 New Venture Challenge.

You want to make life easier for referees. That puts you in pretty small company.
I started reffing in high school, where I saw a lot of problems with the industry, in terms of how you’re scheduled to work and long delays before you get paid.

Tell me about the business.
We’ve basically built a CRM, or customer relationship management, platform for referee assigners—who schedule refs to work youth games—to manage their business, while offering technology to help refs pick up games and get paid faster.

Describe your team.
My co-founder and I complement each other well. While I focus on the front end—raising capital, sales and marketing—he handles the back end with his technical and analytical expertise, managing operations and leading our team of developers.��

How did you start a business as a college kid?
I was bred into entrepreneurship. My dad is a serial entrepreneur and when it came to jobs—which he always called “the J-word”—he’d say, “We make those. We don’t get them.”

Best part of your job?
Learning—from doing and from my network. I’m a young entrepreneur. I’d rather learn from someone else’s $50,000 mistake than make that mistake on my own.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa (Jour'86)