Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees Joel Bervell (CAMED’19) (clockwise from top left), photo courtesy of Forbes; Julian Shapiro-Barnum (CFA’21), photo courtesy of Forbes; Raya Bidshahri (CAS’17), photo courtesy of Forbes; Griffin DiStefano (ENG’19), photo courtesy of Griffin DiStefano; and Toshit Panigrahi (CAS’17), photo by Martin Zhu; and 100 Most Powerful Women honoree Shari Redstone (LAW’78,’81), photo via AP/Evan Agostini/Invision

Alumni

Six BU Alums Celebrated in Latest Forbes Lists

Terriers named to the magazine’s 30 Under 30 lists for 2025 and the 100 Most Powerful Women list for 2024

Five BU alumni—a media marketplace manager, an online high school founder, a medical mythbuster, a video production phenom, and a viral playground interviewer—have been named to this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 lists.

The annual Forbes magazine lists celebrate the biggest and brightest young talent across a multitude of industries. 

A panel of judges—including musician Jon Batiste and ballerina Misty Copeland—reviewed more than 10,000 submissions to create the final lists. The result? “Six hundred young leaders steering the future of business and culture in 20 different industries,” the Forbes article reads. “They’re inventing new tech to treat tumors, expanding access to electric vehicle charging, making credit cards more secure, and even dreaming of reflective satellites that could bring the sun out at night.”

Alums frequently appear on the lists. The five who made the 2025 lists: Toshit Panigrahi (CAS’17), media; Julian Shapiro-Barnum (CFA’21), social media; Joel Bervell (CAMED’19), social media; Griffin DiStefano (ENG’19), media; and Raya Bidshahri (CAS’17), education. Plus, one alum made Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women list for 2024: Shari Redstone (LAW’78,’81).

Get to know more about the honorees below.

30 Under 30

Joel Bervell (CAMED’19) 

Bervell, who has a master’s in medical science from BU and is a fourth-year medical student at Washington State University, is known as the “Medical Mythbuster” on social media. Bervell uses his platform to educate followers about racial disparities in healthcare. His popular videos cover topics like how a device used to measure lung function incorrectly adjusts for Black and Asian patients, leading to lower levels of diagnosis for pulmonary conditions, and how a common heart condition often goes unrecognized in women and racial minorities. His content also explores medical history and explains trending healthcare topics, such as the Biden-Harris administration capping insulin costs at $35. 

Bervell’s work has attracted national attention. He was tapped to participate in a White House healthcare roundtable, chosen for an American Medical Association digital fellowship, and asked to speak at the US Food and Drug Administration.

Raya Bidshahri (CAS’17)

In 2021, Bidshahri founded School of Humanity (SoH), an internationally accredited online high school. SoH educates students aged 11 through 18, offering a personalized, project-based curriculum for homeschoolers and other nontraditional learners. Both students and parents praise the curriculum, which gives learners an opportunity to tackle real-world problems, like minimizing food waste. Since its founding, SoH has taught more than 500 students in 25 countries.

Griffin DiStefano (ENG’19)

DiStefano, who was a mechanical engineering major at BU, turned his love for video into a production company after graduating. He’s the cofounder of 6Degrees Films, which has garnered an impressive list of clients since launching, including Chelsea Football Club, PUMA, Levi’s, Google, and U2. One of the company’s most viral projects was in 2023, when 6Degrees partnered with Inter Miami FC ahead of Lionel Messi’s arrival to the soccer club. The branding and design that 6Degrees created for Inter Miami’s social media campaign drew more than 50 million views, according to Forbes.

Julian Shapiro-Barnum (CFA’21)

There’s a very good chance you’ve seen Shapiro-Barnum online. He’s the founder of Recess Therapy, a comedic video interview series with kids that sprung out of a BU College of Fine Arts senior thesis project. Shapiro-Barnum’s interviews ask the important questions—Do you have any crushes right now? If you threw a party, what would it be like? What’s the most magical place in New York?—to unpredictably hilarious results. (Answers: Three-and-a-half, one human and hundreds of skeletons, and Jersey Mike’s.) His videos frequently spawn megaviral moments, like Corn Kid. Recess Therapy has more than three million followers, including celebrities who often appear as guest interviewers. 

How does Shapiro-Barnum get kids to be so funny, video after video? He compares it to fishing. It’s a matter of providing “leading questions that will bring their ideas to the next level,” he told Bostonia magazine in 2022. “I think it’s one part listening, but another part me trying to use my comedic mind to shape the conversation.” 

Toshit Panigrahi (CAS’17)

TollBit, the platform cofounded by computer science grad Panigrahi, helps its publishing clients capitalize on AI news services rerunning their content. TollBit, a kind of media middleman, lets clients like TIME and Adweek set a “price per scrape” for their content, and then manages the transaction and assists both parties in collecting data. Writes Forbes, “TollBit aims to build a sustainable AI ecosystem to protect content creation and help it thrive in the age of AI.”

100 Most Powerful Women

Shari Redstone (LAW’78,’81) and family

Redstone, chair of the media giant Paramount Global, and her family are ranked at 40 on the Forbes list. The School of Law alum has facilitated two massive mergers during her tenure—between CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. in 2019, and the ongoing merger between Skydance Global and Paramount—and is the first woman in the country to own such a sizable stake in a US media business. (Forbes puts her as controlling a $30 billion empire.) Redstone is the daughter of the late media mogul Sumner M. Redstone (Hon.’94), who endowed the College of Communication’s annual Redstone Film Festival and donated almost $20 million in 2012 for the School of Law’s renovation.