Beyond the work that happens within the classrooms and halls of our campus, there are several distinguished alumni who have spread the university's name across the globe as they have become household names.
Wolf Blitzer
Best known for his television presence, Wolf Blitzer is the host of The Situation Room on CNN. He has been with the network since 1990 and is now its lead political anchor.
Blitzer graduated from UB with a bachelor of arts in 1970. He was a member of the Jewish fraternity on campus, Alpha Epsilon Pi, and majored in history.
In 1948, Blitzer was born in Augsburg, Germany. His parents, who were Holocaust survivors and refugees from Poland, moved to America when Blitzer was young. Blitzer grew up in Buffalo, and after graduating from Kenmore West Senior High School, he decided to remain local and attend UB.
After graduating from UB, he studied for two years at Johns Hopkins University earning his Master's in international relations. As a graduate student, he studied abroad in Jerusalem and learned Hebrew. He began his journalism career through the Tel Aviv bureau of Reuters, an international news agency.
In 1973, Ari Rath, an editor of the Jerusalem Post, hired him as the newspaper's Washington correspondent. During the 1970s and '80s, Blitzer covered American politics and the Middle East for a variety of newspapers.
In 1990, Blitzer began working at CNN and has held positions ranging from military affairs reporter to White House correspondent to host of a Sunday morning interview program. He began anchoring his first show in 2000. Since 2005, he's been hosting The Situation Room, a three-hour newscast on weekday afternoons.
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein produced Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, The Aviator, Sicko and The Artist and several other Hollywood movies and independently financed productions.
In 2012, TIME Magazine listed him as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
The executive producer graduated from UB in 1973. Weinstein, his brother Bob and his friend Corky Burger were known for producing rock concerts in Buffalo during that time. Weinstein grew up with a passion for movies. He established a production company with Bob from the profits of the concerts. They called it Miramax, named after their parents Miriam and Max.
During the '80s, they had modest commercial success with art-house films that earned attention before becoming the biggest independent studio in America in 1989, when they released Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape - winner of the Palm d'Or (the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival).
In 1993, Disney offered the Weinstein brothers $80 million for ownership of Miramax. After accepting the deal that allowed them to remain head of the company, they released the blockbuster and international phenomenon Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film also won the Palm d'Or.
In 2005, Weinstein left Miramax to form The Weinstein Company. He has continued to be one of the biggest film producers in the industry.
James Starks
James Starks was born and raised in Niagara Falls. At Niagara Falls High School, he was captain of the football team but was considered only a two-star recruit by Rivals.com. His only Division I scholarship offer came from UB.
In 2011, he won Super Bowl XLV as a running back on the Green Bay Packers.
While at UB, Starks had a stellar career. He set a career-rushing record with 3,140 yards and 40 touchdowns. He aggregated over 1,000 yards in his sophomore and junior seasons as one of the top backs in the Mid-American Conference - becoming the first 1,000-yard rusher in the UB's Division I history.
In 2010, the Packers selected him in the sixth round as the 193rd overall pick in the draft. Starks got injured during training camp and had to sit out the majority of the season until making his NFL debut for a December game against the San Francisco 49ers. His debut resulted in a strong performance, and in the Packers' Wild Card game in the playoffs, Starks broke the team's rookie postseason record for rushing yards in a single game.
The boy from Niagara Falls was able to do more than that in his rookie season - he helped his team win the Super Bowl. Starks continues to play for the Packers. He is number 44. Look out for him on Sundays.
Ellen S. Baker
Ellen Baker is the chief of the education/medical branch of the NASA Astronaut office.
The physician-astronaut studied geology at UB and received her B.A. in 1974. After college, Baker went on to medical school at Cornell University and subsequently worked for NASA. She started working as a medical officer at the Lyndon Johnson Space Center before being selected as an astronaut candidate. In June of 1985, she officially became an astronaut.
She has traveled into outer space on three occasions (in 1989, 1992 and 1995) and overall has spent 686 hours in space.
Baker was born and raised in Bayside, N.Y., by Claire and Mel Schulman, a politician and a doctor, respectively.
Jeremy Jacobs
While many in Buffalo lament with the saying, "Buffalo is a drinking town with a hockey problem," Jeremy Jacobs, owner of the Boston Bruins, has surmounted this aspect of the perceived geographic curse.
Jacobs maintains a residence in East Aurora, a suburb of Buffalo. He was born and raised in Buffalo and attended UB's School of Management. His father, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, founded Delaware North Companies, now a global hospitality and food service business that Jacobs currently owns and operates.
He became owner of the Bruins in 1975, and in 2011, they won the Stanley Cup. Jacobs is widely known for his philanthropy work - donating millions of dollars to charities every year. He's even given $1 million to Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo and recently pledged $100,000 to victims and families of the Boston Marathon bombings.
In March, Forbes magazine ranked him as one of the world's billionaires with a net worth of $2.7 billion.
UB granted Jacobs an honorary doctorate and named the Jacobs Management Center to honor the Jacobs family, including Jeremy's father, who donated $1 million to the university in 1985.
Email: eric.cortellessa@ubspectrum.com
