2025 Distinguished Alumni

Chelsea Hirschhorn is the CEO and Founder of Frida, the parent company of Frida Baby, Frida Mom, and Frida Fertility. A pioneer in baby care and women’s wellness, she has been on a mission to prepare parents for the unfiltered realities of parenthood since 2014, challenging outdated norms and reshaping maternal health care.

From the cult-favorite NoseFrida The SnotSucker, with over 50,000 5-star reviews, to a portfolio of 150+ innovative products, Frida has redefined parenthood by addressing real-life parenting and postpartum challenges. Chelsea’s 2019 launch of Frida Mom shattered societal taboos with a revolutionary product line, creating an entirely new category in postpartum recovery and maternal care.

Over the past decade, Chelsea has led groundbreaking initiatives, including depicting the first lactating woman in a primetime TV commercial and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s historic feature of a C-section scar—a first in the magazine’s 58-year history. Through bold marketing and advocacy, she has destigmatized conversations around C-section recovery, pregnancy loss, and fertility struggles. In 2023, she introduced Frida Fertility to support women through conception, as well as Frida Uncensored, a platform dedicated to educating and empowering women on the physical realities of pregnancy, postpartum, and breastfeeding.

Today, Frida is a trusted global brand, available in 50+ countries and 50,000+ U.S. stores, spanning mass-market retailers, grocery chains, and specialty stores. The brand has earned prestigious recognition, including spots on TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies, Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, and Brands That Matter. Chelsea has been honored on distinguished lists such as CNBC Changemakers: Women Transforming Business, Business Insider’s 100 People Transforming Business, Adweek’s Women Trailblazers, and INC’s Female Founders 100 for her contributions to business innovation and women’s health advocacy.

A former corporate attorney, Chelsea practiced at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York before transitioning into executive roles with the Miami Marlins. She holds a bachelor’s in political science from WashU (2006) and a Juris Doctor from Cardozo School of Law.

Chelsea resides in Miami Beach, FL, with her husband, Eric, and their four children. Her personal experiences as a mother serve as a daily inspiration for Frida’s product innovations, many of which were developed from her firsthand parenting journey.

Henry D. Warshaw is the co-founder and president of Virtual Realty Enterprises, LLC, a nationwide real estate development firm. Born in Neponsit, a neighborhood of Queens, New York, Henry arrived in St. Louis in 1972, planning to attend Washington University in St. Louis and return to his hometown following graduation. Fifty-two years later, he calls St. Louis his home and is actively involved in the St. Louis and WashU communities as a leader, entrepreneur, and mentor.

Henry earned his bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in economics and psychology in 1976, and his master’s in business administration in 1979. When he was a graduate student at WashU, he met his wife, Susan. Susan earned her master’s in social work in 1979 from the Brown School. They have been married for 42 years and are proud parents of Jake and Eleanor, also a WashU alumna. Eleanor obtained double master’s degrees in social work and public health in 2018. The Warshaws are high-impact WashU benefactors, especially for undergraduate scholarships, the Olin Business School, and the Brown School.

Beginning his career in the banking sector, Henry was appointed president of Mark Twain Bank-Frontenac at age 29. Henry has also served on the Board of Directors of Enterprise Bank & Trust, served on its executive committee, and was the chairman of its Clayton branch.

At WashU, Henry serves on the Board of Trustees and the Olin National Council, as an emeritus member of the Alumni Board of Governors, and as a member of the Danforth Circle Eliot Society Committee. He has participated in several university task forces and served as co-chair of his reunion committee on multiple occasions. He has reached out to many WashU students over the years, helping them with future career opportunities by providing internships and externships at his company. Henry took a leadership role in Leading Together: The Campaign for Washington University, which concluded in 2018, by serving on the development committee for the Brown School. He was honored with a Founders Day Distinguished Alumni Award in 2013 and, alongside his wife, Susan, received a Distinguished Volunteer Award from the Brown School in 2017.  

Henry has always been an engaged member of his community and is currently a member of the following boards: Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the Goldfarb School of Nursing, and the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. He served as a chairman of the investment committee on the board of trustees of Temple Emanuel. He served on the board of directors of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and the board and executive committee of The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital. As co-chair of the board of trustees’ development committee for Crossroads College Preparatory School in St. Louis City, he helped ensure the completion of the building addition for the first LEED platinum-certified grade 7-12 school in the Midwest, transforming what was originally a grocery store into a state-of-the-art educational building.

Henry remains actively involved in backing Broadway shows, including the Tony Award-winning production Hamilton, and has cultivated an extensive coin collection. He also enjoys playing tennis, pickleball, and golf.

Ruth S. DeFries is the Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University and Chief Academic Officer, Co-Founding Dean Emerita of the Columbia Climate School. She also co-directs Columbia’s undergraduate program in sustainable development. Ruth teaches ecology and sustainable development and uses satellite imagery to examine changing land use patterns in the tropics. She studies Earth’s vegetation and the consequences of resource demands on climate, ecosystems, and people – including food security, biodiversity conservation, and tropical forests.

Her research aims to contribute to realistic pathways for people and nature to thrive. She mainly focuses on central India, which is a hotspot for climate impacts on vulnerable populations and is vital for tiger conservation. 

Ruth is committed to linking science with policy through her involvement with the Environmental Defense Fund, Science for Nature and People, and World Wildlife Fund. She founded and continues to direct the Network for Conserving Central India, which promoted partnerships between stakeholders to forge sustainable futures.

Among many scientific honors, Ruth was elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006, received a MacArthur “Genius” award in 2007, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2024. In addition to publishing more than 200 scientific papers, she communicates the complexities of sustainable development to popular audiences through her books. The first one was published in 1990, entitled One Earth, One Future: Our Changing Global Environment, followed by The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis in 2014 and What Would Nature Do? A Guide for Our Uncertain Times in 2021.

Ruth earned a bachelor’s in earth sciences, summa cum laude, from Washington University in St. Louis in 1976, and a Ph.D. in geography and environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1980. Subsequently, she held positions at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, the National Research Council, and the University of Maryland, College Park. Ruth is married to Dr. Jitendra Bajpai and is very proud of their two children, Triveni Defries and Avi Bajpai, as well as several grandchildren.

Michael Kumar was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland. He joined the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He then served in the United States Army for 12 years on active and reserve duty, rising to the rank of captain.

Since January 2024, Michael has been deputy chairman and interim group chief financial officer for the Klesch Group, an independent refiner, where he is responsible for strategy and finance. Prior to this position, he worked at Morgan Stanley from 1997 to 2023. Michael held several senior roles, including managing director of the project, commodity, and infrastructure the finance group and head of global structured products. He was responsible for capital raising across the infrastructure and energy sectors, raising more than $100 billion in capital for global projects. He also managed Morgan Stanley’s investments and portfolio in renewable energy projects and was a member of the management and operating committees for the global capital markets division. Michael served on the advisory board and investment committee for Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and the advisory committee for Morgan Stanley’s joint ventures in Japan.

Beyond his current position with the Klesch Group, Michael is a senior policy advisor for Squared Capital, a London-based company, and a director of the boards of Kinetik in Houston and Tepsa in Paris. At WashU, Michael has been a member of the Arts & Sciences National Council since 2012. He was also a campaign volunteer from 2012 to 2018 and a gift co-chair for his 25th reunion of the class of 1989.

Michael is highly committed to the Center for Career Engagement and has visited campus often to engage with and hire WashU students. He has created a pipeline of recruiting efforts for WashU hires in investment banking at Morgan Stanley.

Michael is married to Jully Kumar, and they have two children, Alexander and Emily. Alexander is a freshman at the University of Chicago, and Emily is a high school junior at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Michael and Jully are WashU benefactors and created the Michael and Jully Kumar Scholarship in 2012 to support Arts & Sciences. Most recently, the Kumar Family Scholarship was created in 2023 to support undergraduate scholarships for the university.

David Conner is an international businessman who was hailed as one of the best CEOs in Asia and a driver of economic development in Singapore. He also is a committed philanthropist, alumnus and leader for Washington University in St. Louis.

David has extensive banking experience in the Asia-Pacific region, including 26 years with CitiBank. He joined Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) in 2002 as CEO, leading the development of OCBC into the second-largest bank in Singapore.  

During his time at OCBC, David was a council member, a two-time council chair of the Association of Banks of Singapore, and a member of the Corporate Governance Council of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He served on the boards of the Singapore Olympic Foundation and the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and the advisory board of the Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University.

After stepping down as CEO, he remained a director of the OCBC’s board until 2014, when he returned to St. Louis. Since then, David has served on the boards of Forest Park Forever and Nine PBS. He also has served on the board of Standard Chartered Bank, a London-headquartered bank with extensive businesses throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

At WashU, David is an emeritus member of the Board of Trustees and serves on the national councils of the School of Medicine, the Institute of Public Health, and the School of Arts & Sciences. A committed philanthropist, he established the Selina Okin Kim Conner Professorship in Arts & Sciences, named after his late wife. He also helped endow a renal research fund in her honor at the School of Medicine and a scholarship fund in the name of his late brother, Noel Steven Conner.

David and Paulina, his wife since 2013, are members of the William H. Danforth Leadership Society as well as Life Eliot Society members and Danforth Circle Chancellor's Level members. David was a member of the Executive Committee for Leading Together: The Campaign for Washington University, which concluded in 2018. 

In addition to his bachelor’s degree in anthropology from WashU, David earned an MBA from Columbia University in 1976. He has two adult children: Marion Markwort, AB '03; and Daniel Conner, MS '10 and MBA '12.