Alumni Impact Awards
Distinguished Alumni Award
The Information School Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes alumni who have made significant and exceptional contributions to the information field through their profession, in the community, or with their involvement with the Information School and the University of Washington. This award acknowledges those who continue to uphold iSchool values by helping others discover, learn, innovate, and solve problems beyond their UW years.
2026 Awardee: Prem Kumar
Informatics 2006
Prem Kumar is the CEO of Humanly, a startup he founded in 2020. Humanly is a job candidate recruitment platform that uses artificial intelligence to automate candidate evaluation for employers, as well as to aid job seekers in their job search and career development. Humanly has grown rapidly in the past few years, serving more than 200 companies and raising $48 million in venture capital. Under Kumar’s leadership, Humanly embraces an ethos of “AI done right,” prioritizing fairness, transparency and privacy in its systems and working to remove bias from hiring processes.
GOLD Alumni Impact Award
The GOLD award celebrates recent graduates for their contributions to the information field.
2026 Awardee: Steph Ballard
Ph.D. 2023, MLIS 2017
Steph Ballard is a director of Responsible AI at Microsoft. In a fast-changing environment, Ballard stays on top of regulatory changes around the world and provides clear guidance to engineering teams to ensure the company’s products are built responsibly. As a Master of Library and Information Science student, Ballard leaned into the more technical aspects of the program, taking courses in data science that help her now as she works with engineers and developers. After completing her MLIS, she joined the Information School’s doctoral program and focused on Value Sensitive Design, working under Professor Batya Friedman.
- Learn more about the award criteria
- Nominations for the 2027 iSchool Distinguished Alumni and GOLD Impact Awards will open in early 2027.