Unveiled on June 6, 1930, USC’s Tommy Trojan statue has long served as a handy meeting spot. Known as the Trojan Shrine, the sculpture created by Roger Noble Burnham remains ageless, while fashion, landscaping and students’ preferred modes of transportation shift with the sands of time.

Learn more about the Trojan Shrine.

This story originally published on June 7, 2016.

The USC Board of Trustees on Wednesday welcomed veteran investment manager Robert Bishop of Impala Asset Management and trial attorney Daniel Prince of Paul Hastings law firm as new members of its prestigious ranks.

“Robert Bishop and Daniel Prince will bring tremendous expertise and perspective to the board,” USC President Beong-Soo Kim said. “Aside from their impressive backgrounds in finance and law, they are deeply committed to working alongside me to strengthen the Trojan Family and advance USC’s academic mission. We couldn’t be more excited to have them in these new roles.”

“On behalf of the Board of Trustees, we are delighted to welcome Bob Bishop and Daniel Prince to the board,” USC Board of Trustees Chair Suzanne Nora Johnson said. “They significantly expand the local and national philanthropic networks and resources that will ensure USC can continue to compete, innovate and lead with excellence and distinction in the future.”

Bishop, who founded Impala Asset Management in 2004 and turned the company into a family office in 2022, brings more than two decades of investment and asset management leadership to his new role, and he hopes to help the university plan financially and strategically for a bright future.

“USC has a very strong board, and I believe in President Beong-Soo Kim’s vision and the direction he wants to move the school towards,” Bishop said. “I’d like to help the university in whatever way I can.”

Prince — a double Trojan who received his bachelor’s degree from USC in 2000 and his master’s degree in 2002 — joins the board after serving as president of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors for the past two years.

“This is an incredibly special opportunity and a full-circle moment for me,” Prince said. “I’ve always been a huge USC supporter, and to have the opportunity to be president of the Board of Governors was a huge honor. To progress to the Board of Trustees is something I would have never in my wildest dreams imagined.”

Also at the June 3 meeting, the board renewed the positions of USC Trustees David C. Bohnett, Stephen M. Keck, Shelly H. Nemirovsky and Tracy M. Sykes. Trustees Kathy Leventhal, Leonard D. Schaeffer (also Chair Emeritus of the USC Health System Board) and Jeffrey H. Smulyan became Life Trustees, while Marc R. Benioff, Patrick C. Haden and Wenxue Wang became Honorary Trustees.

An honorary Trojan

Bishop’s love of the Trojan Family and all things USC is decadeslong and runs deep. Despite growing up in Ohio and attending Northwestern University, Bishop is a lifelong fan of USC football and a strong believer in the power of sports to bring people together. He and his wife, Perri Bishop, who also works in the investment world, were among USC’s first cornerstone donors to support the soon-to-open Bloom Football Performance Center, a facility that will provide first-class care and resources for student-athletes while supporting recruitment and retention for USC athletic programs.

Whether visiting USC to watch a football game or to see his daughter during her years as a student at the university, Bishop said he is always impressed by the warmth of the Trojan Family.

“It’s a very special place where young adults are balancing studying hard with being part of a bigger college Trojan Family,” he said. “There’s a lot of joy that comes from not just succeeding in academics but also being in a great setting with great people. I’ve always loved the school, and the more I’ve gotten to know it and gotten involved, the more I see that there’s a lot of opportunity.”

Bishop’s past work experience includes a tenure as chief investment officer at Soros Fund Management, serving as a principal at Maverick Capital and working as managing director at Tiger Management, among other high-profile positions managing investments in industries such as manufacturing, commodities, transportation and energy. He hopes this experience in investment and helping large organizations make necessary changes for financial stability will be an asset to the board and the university.

“I think the priorities are being set well at USC and things are starting to move in the right direction — now it’s just a question of executing well,” he said. “Hopefully I can add to that on the financial side.”

A new world of possibility

When Prince came to USC in 1996, he had never stepped foot out of the state of California. The Los Angeles native came to the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism on a full-ride scholarship for his debate prowess in high school, and his experience as a member of the Trojan Debate Squad and as a USC student would open his eyes to a world of possibility, community and civic duty.

“Coming to USC is undoubtedly one of the best things that I could have ever done, and it paved the way to what I would end up going on to do in my legal career,” Prince said.

Prince originally planned to be a broadcast journalist, but a senior-year course in First Amendment law, in addition to his debate experience, planted the seeds for his award-winning legal career.

After earning his law degree from the University of Chicago in 2004, Prince immediately joined Paul Hastings, where he serves as a litigation partner and hiring partner for the firm’s downtown L.A. office.

Prince credits his sense of civic responsibility, which includes extensive pro bono work, to his time at USC serving as chair of the university’s Black Student Assembly and as a member of the Alpha Delta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. Once he became a practicing lawyer, he served as president of the John M. Langston Bar Association of Los Angeles. “USC is famous for preaching about the importance of building relationships, and my life’s been a big testament to that,” Prince said. “I had great professors, great deans and people with whom I formed relationships that are still friends and still mentors.”

Prince began mentoring USC students early in his career. What began as small dinners and events with groups of students eventually progressed to his role on the Alumni Association Board of Governors.

“It was really about what I could do to make an impact,” Prince said. “That opened the door to me being reengaged with the university as a member of the alumni community.”

As a trustee, Prince plans to use his legal experience in “creatively identifying solutions” to help navigate the university in a landscape fraught with regulatory, political and financial considerations.

Navigating difficult times and looking ahead

Both new trustees acknowledged that this is a difficult time in higher education history and expressed confidence in Kim’s leadership.

“With President Kim coming on board, I think he sees both the challenges and the opportunities of this very interesting point in time,” Bishop said. “Challenges can bring the best out of universities, and I think that’s the opportunity here.”

“I’m super excited to give back to the university as much as I possibly can with my time, my treasure and my talent,” Prince said. “The board is a very special group of people, so it’s humbling to be at the table with those individuals and to really think about how to chart the course for the next great chapter of this university.”

Harvard University-bound high school senior Richard Manzanares Alvarez relished the opportunity to publicly pay tribute to the USC Leslie and William McMorrow Neighborhood Academic Initiative for its crucial role in his academic journey.

“NAI gave us more than academic support,” Alvarez said in a heartfelt speech at Thursday’s annual gala for USC’s signature college preparatory program. “It gave us confidence. It gave us community. It gave us people who believed in us sometimes before we fully believed in ourselves.”

Alvarez, flanked by his fellow NAI graduates, pointed out that while they grew up in communities filled with resilience and potential, opportunities like the ones NAI provides are not to be taken lightly.

“NAI taught us that where we come from does not determine where we can go,” said Alvarez, valedictorian of James A. Foshay Learning Center. “The success of this class belongs to our families, teachers, mentors, advisors, donors and every member of the NAI team who invested their time, energy and heart into us.”

The event at Founders Park on USC’s University Park Campus marked the culmination of a seven-year journey for Alvarez and 88 other college-bound local students who began a program of rigorous study in sixth grade.

“You are now joining 30 years of graduating NAI scholars who turned aspirations into reality,” USC Senior Vice President for University Relations Samuel Garrison said as he welcomed attendees. “When students combine hard work and opportunity, they can achieve extraordinary things.”

Turning aspirations into reality

Most school days, NAI students in grades 9-12 start their morning at USC taking classes. The students then take a bus back to their Los Angeles Unified School District schools for the rest of the academic day. NAI scholars also spend most Saturday mornings at USC following a pre-college curriculum from language arts to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The program also features tutoring, summer programs, and family engagement and support.

Since 1997, more than 1,780 scholars who live in the neighborhoods near USC’s University Park and Health Sciences campuses have graduated from NAI. The program maintains a 100% high school graduation rate and a 99% college enrollment rate.

Participants come from Woodrow Wilson and Abraham Lincoln high schools in East L.A. and the Foshay Learning Center in South L.A. The program expanded last fall to also include Crenshaw and Susan Miller Dorsey high schools.

A grateful Trojan legend returns

While the evening belonged to the students, it also included the presentation of the Community Impact Award to the national nonprofit organization Baby2Baby, which provides basic essentials to children in need. Trojan football legend and retired NFL player Rodney Peete also received the USC McMorrow NAI Champion Award.

Peete, who attended the gala with his wife, actress Holly Robinson Peete, was moved by the occasion.

“I’m reminded that this community has always been about more than just achievement,” Rodney Peete said during his speech. “It’s been about belief, opportunity and the power of one generation lifting the next. The USC family is real.”

He talked about the importance of “the life-changing moment when someone says, ‘We see you, we believe in you. Keep going, we’re behind you.’”

“For so many students, that belief becomes the difference between simply hoping for a future and truly stepping into one,” said Rodney Peete, who was inducted into the USC Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009.

Hopeful NAI students look to future

NAI graduate Jayden Hamilton could barely contain his excitement as he stood at the pre-dinner reception with fellow students.

“This is breathtaking,” said the Foshay Learning Center senior, who will be attending USC. “Just being here right now is more unreal than I even ever imagined it to be. I used to watch the NAI gala videos and think, ‘I can’t wait for my moment.’”

Hamilton was accepted into 22 different universities and colleges across the United States, including Pepperdine University, Grinnell College, Tuskegee University as well as several public universities in California.

“I waited four years to be able to apply,” he said. “To see each acceptance, it was like a trophy and achievement for me.”

Lincoln High School graduate Andres Pereda-Olympia was accepted to 10 universities and chose to attend USC. The track and field athlete and high school football player credits NAI for helping to keep him focused on his goals.

“This is a really cool moment for me and my peers,” Pereda-Olympia said before the dinner. “All that work that we’ve put in since middle school up until now, it really has paid off.”

Foshay Learning Center senior Jolie Hillman, who will major in human biology at USC, described herself as “so blessed and just happy” before posing for a group photo with fellow graduates.

“This is just a dream come true,” Hillman said. “This is what I’ve been working for since sixth grade. NAI gave me confidence, pushed me and helped me believe that whatever I want to do, I can do.”

Four USC faculty members have been named 2026 Guggenheim Fellows, joining a class of 223 scholars, artists and scientists selected from nearly 5,000 applicants worldwide.

The fellowship, one of the most prestigious honors in intellectual and creative life, provides recipients with the financial support to pursue independent work “under the freest possible conditions,” a mission the Guggenheim Foundation has maintained since the organization’s founding in 1925.

The USC honorees are:

• Kyle Abraham, Claude and Alfred Mann Endowed Professor of Dance at the USC Kaufman School of Dance.
• Natalia Molina, Distinguished Professor and Dean’s Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
• Amy O’Neal, lecturer in dance history, hip-hop and composition at USC Kaufman.
• Jennifer West, professor of practice of fine arts at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.

According to Guggenheim President Edward Hirsch, the 2026 Fellows represent the world’s best thinkers, innovators and creators in art, science and scholarship.

“As the foundation enters its second century and looks to the future, I feel confident that this new class of 223 individuals will do bold and inspiring work, undaunted by the challenges ahead,” Hirsch said. “We are honored to support their visionary contributions.”

Fellows were selected through a rigorous application and peer review process from a pool of nearly 5,000 candidates. Members of the 2026 class were chosen based on both prior career achievement and exceptional promise.

Kyle Abraham

Known for his innovation as a choreographer, dancer and artistic director, Abraham is the founder of the groundbreaking Brooklyn-based dance company A.I.M. He joined the USC Kaufman faculty in the fall of 2021.

In addition to being named a Guggenheim Fellow, Abraham has been the recipient of several other prestigious honors. In 2013, he was named a MacArthur Fellow by the MacArthur Foundation, which noted his work as “a choreographer and dancer probing the relationship between identity and personal history through a unique hybrid of traditional and vernacular dance styles that speaks to a new generation of dancers and audiences.”

His work has been shared throughout the world, including notable venues in the United States, from New York City Center to Lincoln Center to Brooklyn Academy of Music to The Joyce Theater.

Abraham received a Princess Grace Award for choreography in 2010 and a Princess Grace Statue Award in 2018. In 2019, he received a Bessie Award for exceptional dance and performance in his original production The Radio Show. In 2012, Abraham was a Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award recipient and Ford Fellow. The following year, he served as a choreographic contributor for Beyoncé’s British Vogue cover shoot.

Among many other career accolades, he was a 2016 Doris Duke Award recipient. Most recently, Abraham received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from his undergraduate alma mater, SUNY Purchase College, earlier this month.

Natalia Molina

Molina’s Guggenheim Fellowship marks both recognition of a career spent exploring race, citizenship and belonging in the United States and the opportunity to deepen that work through her current book project, Hidden Histories in the Garden. The book reveals the untold stories of laborers who helped to build and maintain The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in the Los Angeles suburb of San Marino.

Drawing on census records, archival fragments, maps, photographs and rare interviews, Molina reconstructs the experiences of Mexican and Japanese workers who cultivated and maintained the estate’s landscapes and European immigrants who served as staff and estate engineers.

She also uncovers the historical context of the era, including the Indigenous communities dispossessed of their land and Chinese immigrants whose labor on the railroads helped to generate the wealth behind Henry E. Huntington’s empire.

These stories, often absent from official narratives, reveal how cultural institutions are influenced by broader histories of racial hierarchy and exclusion. “This project asks what it means to reframe cultural institutions through the experiences of those once rendered invisible, and what shifts when we center the stories that were silenced,” she said.

“I’m honored to receive the Guggenheim Fellowship, which makes it possible to continue telling histories from the perspectives of those whose voices were never meant to be heard,” Molina said.

It’s not Molina’s first major accolade: In 2020, she was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

Amy O’Neal

After more than two decades as a dancer, choreographer and dance educator in Seattle, O’Neal relocated to Los Angeles in 2016. Two years later, she joined the faculty at USC Kaufman, where she teaches hip-hop, house and hybrid hip-hop contemporary and improvisation techniques, and lectures on Black social dance history, practices and media literacy.

O’Neal’s passion and research meet at the intersection of the hip-hop, house and contemporary dance communities, where she explores the “nuances and layers of hybridized movement vocabularies.” Her evening-length work Opposing Forces toured from 2014 to 2017, and a documentary about the show, How it Feels, premiered in 2019.

As a guest practitioner of Black dance culture, O’Neal has participated in experimental, all-styles battles and house dance battles, co-organized and co-produced Seattle House Dance Project, and developed hip-hop curriculum for the University of Washington. Since 2019, she has been creating experimental dance work, centering on the people and practices of hip-hop and house culture, while directly addressing race, gender and the nature of innovation.

Prior to being named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, O’Neal received grants from Creative Capital, National Performance Network, National Dance Project, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and 4Culture. She is a two-time Artist Trust Fellow, DanceWEB Vienna scholar and Herb Alpert Award nominee. In 2014, she received the inaugural Distinguished Alumni Award from Cornish College of the Arts, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Jennifer West

West is a Los Angeles-based artist who has explored the materiality of film for over two decades. She is a 2025-2026 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow.

Her work spans large-scale moving image installations and site-specific interventions, with major projects commissioned by the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, the High Line in New York, Frieze Los Angeles, LIAF Biennial, MIT List Visual Arts Center and Aspen Art Museum, among others. In 2022, Radius Books published Jennifer West: Media Archaeology, launched at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on the occasion of Typofilm: Jennifer West.

Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Times Square Arts, Yuz Museum in Shanghai, Seattle Art Museum, S1 Artspace in Sheffield (United Kingdom), Kunstverein Nürnberg (Germany), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Joan Los Angeles, MAN Museo d’arte Provincia di Nuoro, Tramway Glasgow and White Columns in New York, and included in major group exhibitions at the Barbican in London, CAPC in Bordeaux, Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Whitney Museum and the Drawing Center in New York. Her work is held in leading public collections including LACMA, the Hammer Museum, the Getty Museum, Kadist, MONA (Museum of Old and New Art), MOCA Los Angeles, the Thoma Collection, Rubell Collection and the Saatchi Collection.

Her writing has appeared in publications including Artforum, Frieze, Mousse Magazine and Mubi Notebook. She has served as director of USC Roski’s MFA Art program since 2021.